Taxis

What special qualities does one need to be a taxi driver? I imagine that if a Sheffield taxi firm had to draw up a list of commandments for new drivers, it would read something like this...

1. In residential streets when picking up fares or dropping off, make sure you block the centre of the road to inconvenience other drivers as much as possible. It is especially important to ignore any available parking spaces as using them would allow free flow of traffic.

2. If you need to turn around, always do a U-turn in the middle of the street. If other drivers honk you or screech their brakes, simply ignore such petulant reactions. Never do what non-taxi drivers do - find a quiet street and back into a driveway to turn around causing as little inconvenience to other road users as possible. That would make you a laughing stock at the taxi rank.

3. If at a side junction and you need to turn into the main street, just do it. No need to look. If by chance another car smashes into you then it would clearly be the other driver's fault.

4. When someone orders a taxi, make sure you arrive at least ten minutes after the appointed time. Try a range of excuses including "The traffic was busy", "This street isn't on my satnav" and "Control said twenty five to, not half past".

5. Practise suitable facial expressions when your customer is asked to pay the fare. Whatever sum of money is placed in your palm, look at it as if inspecting rodent poo and pause with an expression that says: "Well where's the god-dam tip you freaking miser!"

6. When queuing at Sheffield railway station for fares, ensure that you make every effort to prevent private cars from entering the station drop-off and pick-up zone. For example, pull up next to a friend's cab for a chat about racing pigeons or the political situation in Korea. If the hindered driver blows his horn or politely asks you to clear the road, simply take out a copy of "The Guardian" and begin the cryptic crossword.

7. When transporting a stranger to the city to their desired location, do not forget the importance of taking a circuitous detour which will allow the visitor to see some of the least visited parts of the city such as The Manor and Fox Hill Estates.

8. If you feel like conversing with a passenger sitting in the back, make sure you have pre-prepared a range of banal comments and questions which should be directed to the cab's front windscreen in order to muffle audibility in the rear. If the passenger says "Pardon?" or "Excuse me?" you should repeat your remark with an even greater degree of mumbling.

9. When driving your taxi around town, feel free to use your mobile phone both for making and receiving calls in transit. As a taxi driver you are a professional driver and therefore normal rules of the road do not apply to you. At traffic lights it is good to text any unnecessary messages and then proceed just before the light changes back to red, leaving non-taxi drivers fuming behind you.

10. Make as much money as you can and when banknotes are handed to you, never offer change immediately. Wait until the passenger demands change and part with it slowly and with great reluctance spluttering, "I've got a wife and four kids to support."

Rambling

View over Coombs Dale

Just before the first snow of winter snook down in the dead of night, my friend Tony and I went rambling in nearby Derbyshire on a sharp November day. The sky was sky blue. The sun was sunny. In hollows and shaded dells, frost clung tenaciously to dry leaves that crunched like gravel as we made our way along less trodden rights of way.

After parking in the village of Calver, we soon entered Coombs Dale with its ancient mine workings which , because of Nature's attentions, now present interpretation puzzles even for archaeological genii. After a mile we climbed out of the dale and into the light, striding across Longstone Moor towards Longstone Edge where I snapped this:-

Descending from woods which disguise the edge's history of mineral extraction, we noticed the delightfully peaceful hamlet of Rowland which sits at the end of a one way track:-

We observed comical "silkie" chickens in a garden looking as if they'd dressed in furs rather than feathers:-

After lunch, drinks and more nattering at "The Eyre Arms" near Hassop Hall, we headed for Bank Wood and a long walk back to Calver. To the south east, we could just make out Chatsworth House, palatial home to the Dukes of Devonshire. To the north east we noticed the exposed millstone grit of Curbar Edge and to the west the beautifully horrendous and much debated scarring effects of Backdale limestone quarry:-

Driving homewards I parked near White Edge and the Longshaw estate to take this sunset snap:-

I've known Tony for donkey's years. With him, it's always as if we're just continuing with a conversation we began back in 1979 when we first met. Thankfully, he walks at my pace both literally and figuratively. It was as Wallace might have said - "a grand day out"... And then the snow came whispering down while my adopted city slept.

Mistakes

Path through the forest

We all make mistakes. It's natural. We're human beings. We err. Without mistakes we would never learn what's right, never be able to appreciate the times when the choices we made were just right. Making mistakes can occur at both micro and macro levels. On a smaller scale, I will happily hold my hand up and admit that at times - in spite of my best efforts - I make mistakes in written expression. As an English teacher, I always made a tremendous effort never to belittle children for their mistakes but instead I sought to help them to see the reasons behind errors in their writing.

Once, in Manchester, on a sunny Sunday morning I made a mistake at some traffic lights and filtered right when I should have stopped. Thank heavens the oncoming driver in the opposite lane realised what was happening and was able to screech his car to a smoky halt just in time. I was taking Frances to an audition for a children's TV play. A crunching car accident was not the kind of drama she was after.

In life we take many different paths as we discard numerous alternative opportunities. Perhaps the routes we choose are littered with mistakes. What if I had done that instead? What if I had stayed there? What if we had met up again the next day as planned? We each find our way through the forest and though Edith Piaf memorably sang:-

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

most human beings do harbour regrets connected with what we see as our mistakes.

Looking back, I find that a good number of my most cringe-worthy errors were connected with times when I failed to say what I really meant or felt, choosing to keep a lid on the beast within. How often have I replayed those moments - like a loop of videotape in my head. I should have done that, I should have said this. The nagging tormentor that has often kept sleep at bay.

Instead of pondering on mistakes, we should all spend more time reminding ourselves of our best achievements, those golden moments when we said exactly the right thing, the good choices we have made, the times when everything went swimmingly well and the forest path was strewn with sunlight and flowers.

Poem

In my last post, I shared a photograph I took in the summer and threw out a fishing line - the question being, if this was an illustration in a poetry anthology what sort of poem would it be married with? "Mountain Thyme" (pictured right) left me this comment:- "I see a long poem in which one learns that being true to oneself, never compromising your beliefs, "running against the wind," so to speak is not all bad. One might be lonely at times, but one will grow strong and healthy and beautiful with roots firmly planted in the ground."

She was lighting the blue touchpaper of my poetry and this is what has, rather mysteriously, emerged:-

__________________

Rooted

No man is an island

But I have been an island

Salt waves crashing on my shore

Knuckles rapping at my door.

I counted the bells of midnight

With pauses between each one

And fought with hope and memory

Before the dark was gone.

And in dawn's seeping light,

I turned to face my wall

Sure that when we leave this life

There's nothing there at all.

Earth turned

Clouds of starlings on the wing

Like shoals of tiny fish beside a reef

I heard a distant blackbird sing

And sensed the molten core beneath

It churned

Like hope, like memory.

To run with the wind

To be gone with it

So many flew like kites

Their lines lost

Up and down on

Invisible air

You see such beings

Everywhere.

I anchored myself to the earth

Held on tight for all I was worth

Felt the ebb and watched the flow

For isn't this how life must go?

I looked in the mirror

And saw my face

Entrant in the human race.

Illustration

As winter winds gather in the north to turn this last full week of November from a balmy autumn into bitter winter, I give you a tree. A solitary sisterless tree. It stands at the very heart of England where Warwickshire meets Leicestershire. See how the dense new wheat which rustles around it is already beginning to change from green to gold.

It was close to the ridge-top village of Orton-on-the-Hill on June 26th, two days before my beautiful brother Paul died in his sleep. How lovely was our weather in the month of June this year. It truly flamed. Minutes after snapping this picture, I found myself in a field of rape. Beneath my boots the earth was cracked and dry, aching for moisture like an old man's weathered skin.

If my tree picture was selected to illustrate a poem in a new anthology, I wonder what that poem might concern. Perhaps not just a tree in a field on a summery day. Any thoughts?

Plusnet

In recent weeks, I have noticed an advertisement emblazoned on the backs of many Sheffield buses. It's for "Plusnet" a South Yorkshire based broadband provider who have been enlarging their niche in this lucrative market. Their headline slogan is "We Won't Be Beat on Price" which is of course grammatically incorrect. As a (former?) English teacher and lifelong pedant, this slogan grew to irritate me so much that I fired off a complaint to the company. Here it is:-

_________________________________________________

I wish to make a strong complaint about the slogan recently adopted by Plusnet and emblazoned, for example, on the backs of many Sheffield buses, namely - "We won't be beat on price". This is grammatically incorrect. The slogan should read: "We won't be beaten on price". This blatant error gives a very bad message to school children who are still learning to develop their literacy skills and it also begs this question - if Plusnet cannot produce grammatically acceptable slogans how can potential customers possibly believe that Plusnet will get their phone and broadband services right? N.B. I would be most grateful if you could pass this legitimate complaint up along the chain of command and not simply ignore it. Thank you.

______________________________________________________

A gentleman from the company at least took the time and trouble to respond to my complaint. Here's their response:-

_______________________________________________________

Dear Mr Yorkshire Pudding,
Whilst we take your feedback on board, we're trying to get our Yorkshire heritage across, hence the colloquial use of the English language.
Our campaign aims to show some of the positive values associated with Yorkshire that we feel are also true of Plusnet. I am sorry to hear you feel offended by this.
I hope my explanation helps clarify matters.
Regards,
Thomas South
PlusNet Customer Support 
__________________________________________

Naturally, I couldn't let Plusnet have the last word so a follow-up complaint was fired off from my bunker this morning:-
__________________________________________
Dear Mr South,
 
Thank you for taking the time and the trouble to respond to my complaint about your "Won't be beat on price" advertisement.
 
As a proud Yorkshireman myself, I am afraid I cannot see how grammatical inaccuracy in any way reflects my Yorkshire heritage. In my view, your slogan represents a dumbing down of the English language and as I suggested before simply reinforces a typical mistake that teachers have to address every day in our schools. It is an error born out of many children's inability to easily distinguish between the spoken word and the written word.
 
I guess we will have to beg to differ on this. If your ad had said something that was very obviously colloquial such as "Ee by gum...Plusnet! They're reght ont price", I would have had no complaint whatsoever and I think most Yorkshire folk would have seen the point of the oral connectivity.
 
Yours sincerely,
Yorkshire Pudding (Sir)

So that's Yorkshire Pudding 2 Plusnet 1 and you dear readers can now finally see what an annoying fellow I really am. What do you think? Are there healthier ways in which I should be spending my time? "I Won't Be Beaten on Ranting!"

Another

My last post celebrated the French national anthem. In the resulting comments, one of my most esteemed, worldly-wise, handsome and culturally-advanced visitors - Mr Brague of Georgia USA - gave us a link to the sleep-inducing Swedish national anthem. This could become a game of national anthem tennis with visitors hunting out the most obscure, trite and unappealing national anthems of all.

At great personal risk and in the full expectation that I will be tracked down and water-boarded by their secret agents, I give you the anthem of the People's Republic of North Korea:-

All together now!

Let morning shine on the silver and gold of this land,
Three thousand leagues packed with natural wealth.
My beautiful fatherland.
The glory of a wise people
Brought up in a culture brilliant
With a history five millennia long.
Let us devote our bodies and minds
To supporting this Korea for ever.

The firm will, bonded with truth,
Nest for the spirit of labour,
Embracing the atmosphere of Mount Paektu,Will go forth to all the world.
The country established by the will of the people,
Breasting the raging waves with soaring strength.
Let us glorify for ever this Korea,
Limitlessly rich and strong.