Fishlake

Yorkshire is England's Texas and though I know a lot about this green and pleasant county, I openly admit that I don't know everything. It's just so damned big. A Texan once boasted, "Our state is so vast that trains take two days to travel across it!" In reply, the Yorkshireman said, "Aye, we've got slow trains in Yorkshire too lad!"

A week ago, I had never heard of the curiously named Yorkshire village of Fishlake. It is situated some six miles north of Doncaster in a flat landscape just west of the M18 motorway. I must have zoomed by it a thousand times, heading for The East Riding of this nation's  honeyed and milky jewel of a county. And I guess sometimes I must have spotted Fishlake's church tower, not knowing where it was as I travelled by at eighty miles per hour.

In 1086, when the Domesday Book was compiled, the village was referred to Fiscelac - a name derived from Old English. Essentially it meant "fish stream", referring to the abundance of fish that local residents could catch throughout the year but especially when the River Don flooded - something that happened very often in the absence of levees.

I drove into Fishlake in the early evening and mooched around before heading towards the old church. It is called St Cuthbert's and was built in Norman times. The south door is quite magnificent - probably the finest Romanesque church doorway in Yorkshire with stone carvings that are still impressive even after a thousand years of gradual erosion. The church is named after St Cuthbert because his bones once resided here long after his coffin was removed from the holy island of Lindisfarne during the time of Viking invasions.

Many church doors are locked these days but I tried the door of St Cuthbert's and it creaked open. Inside I could hear singing from the vestry - a small choir practising. And they were singing:-

You'll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we walk in fields of gold

Sunlight filtered into the old church and I noticed the very beautiful east window - restored in 2001. Very simple and elegant and designed to frame the trees in the churchyard beyond.

St Cuthbert's is a  peaceful and much loved stone building that speaks of generations of Fishlake villagers - of their hopes and dreams, their weddings, their christenings and their funerals and of the river beside it that made this forgotten place a bustling little inland port in medieval times. In those flatlands by The River Don where water, land and sky converge.

Girlhood

Last week I went to see another film at "The Showroom". It was "Girlhood" directed by Céline Sciamma. The dialogue was all in French so there were subtitles. Actually the French title for the film is "Bande de Filles" which can be best translated as "Gang of Girls" - not "Girlhood" - a title which perhaps deliberately echoes "Boyhood" (2014) directed by  Richard Linklater.

"Girlhood" is set in the suburbs of Paris, in a tough community which is largely of black African origin. In fact, white France is noteworthy because of its absence. The central character is Marieme (Vic) played by  Karidja Touré. She finds friendship with a gang of girls who allow her to forget her troubles and show her how to have fun. They dance. They laugh. They run away. But they also fight. They are tough cookies.

It is a film about the brightness of youth - its aspiration and its energy. Under their tough exteriors, the girls are quite vulnerable and just want to be loved, to be happy. The ending might seem unsatisfactory for there is no neat resolution but to me this was just right. Marieme has had a little cry but she realises that she must not give in to self-pity. She has to accept her lot and simply carry on.

I found it a charming and engaging film. There's laughter and friendship and the sparkling, frenetic vibrancy of youth. I am pleased that I bothered to go. It is not the France I remember from childhood visits there but this entire world is in so many ways very different from how it used to be.

Updates

1) Last evening Fred Fox came to the middle of our lower lawn and seemed delighted to have discovered a bowl of "Fox Food" by Waitrose waiting for him. Instead of gobbling it down with gusto, he crammed as many chunks in his vulpine jaws as he could and ran off to hide them some place. Then he came back for the rest. As you can see, I managed to snap him in the fading light tonight - through our kitchen window.

Mmmm! "Fox Food"! It's delicious!

2) My friend Higgy remains in diagnostic limboland. Didn't Hamlet say "Osteoporosis or bone cancer, that is the question..."? He obliged me to do something I haven't done in twenty seven years when I popped into the "Spar" shop at Hunter's Bar to buy him two packs of "Embassy Number One".  £10.15 per pack makes each cigarette cost over fifty pence. I would have been happier buying him food supplies but Higgy's relationship with food is unusually difficult. The same is not true of his relationships with tobacco, lager and waccy baccy.

3) Sepp Blatter has resigned as President of The FIFA Gravy Train. He is trying desperately to depart with dignity when he knows that the legal wolves have him in his sights and are starting to circle. His deluded daughter Corrine imagines her daddy is being cruelly victimised.

There was an old trickster called Sepp

A pirate just like Johnny Depp

On June the Second

Retirement beckoned 

When he heard The Grim Reaper's quickstep.

Minotaur mosaic at Knossos, Crete

4) We may be off on a Mediterranean holiday in the next two weeks. I am looking at good deals in Crete - opting this time for a "package holiday" rather than the tailored kind of trip I frequently create via the machinations of the internet. Sometimes a package can work out cheaper and I think this will be the case with Crete. But it is still not booked yet.

5) Yesterday Shirley had a "once in a lifetime" experience - attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace in London. This year is the centenary of The Women's Institute and every branch in the country was allowed to send one rep. I believe my mother went to the fiftieth anniversary party, representing my home village's W.I. in 1965. The Queen wasn't hosting yesterday's event - it was instead The Duchess of Cornwall. I bet she didn't have to spend forty five minutes in a lavatory queue! Eight thousand women! If I had been there I would have had a jimmy riddle in the rhododendrons with the corgis.

The Duchess of Cornwall sharing dirty jokes with The Calendar
Girls at yesterday's WI Garden Party. Have you heard the one
about Adrian and the vicar's wife in a camper van?

Chunks

I do the majority of our grocery shopping at "Lidl" and "Aldi" though I notice that a new "Netto" store will be opening on Queens Road this month. It will be like meeting up with an old friend - that Scottie dog with the basket in his mouth. "Netto" is Danish for "value" you know.

Anyway I nipped into the supermarket of the well-heeled and affluent today - "Waitrose" - visited by coiffured women with haughty expressions and corduroy men with Range Rovers. They looked at me askance when I refused to doff my cap. Well, I wasn't wearing a cap but you know what I mean.

I was looking for fox food. And finally I found it in the pet section - massive cans of chunks in gravy with rabbit and turkey. Clever wording I think. Not chunks of rabbit and turkey but "chunks in gravy". Chunks of what I wonder? Tripe?

The can cost me one British pound in spite of the amateurish label design. Why put a picture of  a dog on food intended for foxes? And the writing at the top looks as if a lowly paid supermarket worker had just  picked up a blue felt tip pen. Besides, if I were marketing fox food I'd call it "Reynard" "Vulpine Delight",  "Farmer's Best" , "Ukrainian Village" or "Fox Feast by Jan Blawat". Not "Fox Food". That is so naff.

Anyway, I hope that Fred Fox appreciates my generosity. He is in for a nice surprise tonight.

Fred

A wily old dog fox called Fred
Lounged on a garden shed -
Surveying the greenery,
South Sheffield scenery
And the pigeons that flew overhead.

Fred the old dog fox becomes more brazen with each passing week. Yesterday morning, Shirley came bounding back upstairs to disturb her slumbering master in a state of great excitement. I thought my luck was in or perhaps we had won the National Lottery, but no, she needed to tell me that Fred Fox was sunning himself on the roof of a neighbour's shed.

Leaving my unfinished dream of a weekend in a Swedish cabin with Ulrika Jonsson behind, I bounded downstairs in my birthday suit to retrieve my camera, not expecting to find the local vicar at the bottom of our staircase. Fortunately, he wasn't.

Back in the bedroom, I flung back the curtains. Jill next door was putting out her washing and had an unexpected and may I say rather pleasant surprise when she looked up. I waved at her as she scurried back inside clutching her peg bag.

Then I snapped these fresh  pictures of Fred Fox:-

During Saturday, I did quite a lot of garden work before watching the FA Cup Final on television - live from Wembley Stadium. I left my Bosch lawnmower out on the grass  next to two thick foam mats I use when kneeling down. After the game had finished, I went into the kitchen to make the evening meal and there was Fred Fox lying next to the lawnmower atop my kneeling mats. Now that  really is "taking the piss" as less cultured bloggers might observe.

Limerick

There was an old man called Sepp Blatter
To whom football just didn't matter
As long as his crime
Through the fullness of time
Made his thick FIFA wallet grow fatter.

Grindleford

By The River Derwent in Coppice Wood

The weather forecasters got it right on Tuesday afternoon. Grey skies gave way to sunshine. After visiting my desperate friend Higgy to deliver eight cans of "Red Stripe" lager and a "Guardian" newspaper, I set off for the Derbyshire village of Grindleford - just six miles from home. It was 5pm when I got there.

Scratching post

I parked up in the recreation ground car park, donned my trusty boots and crossed the village's old stone bridge over The River Derwent. Then keeping to the river bank, I set off along the edge of sheep pastures to Coppice Wood. The lambs are growing fat now as they munch on sweet spring grass.

In Coppice Wood I reached a junction of paths and headed up towards Grindleford Station. Just after the railway bridge I saw a wonderful carpet of bluebells in ground that must have been cleared a couple of years back. This was on the edge of Rough Wood which was magical in the late afternoon sunshine. The six o'clock train from Hathersage flashed past on the nearby track - heading to Sheffield via Totley Tunnel.

The eye of an old stone gatepost near Grindleford

Then I turned left on the path that leads to Kettle House where a white horse and a little black one were feeding on a bundle of dry hay that their owner had just delivered. Back under the Hope Valley railway line and along to a farmhouse called Harper Lees. But no mockingbirds there. Some sheep were using an old stone gatepost as a scratching place. It must be infuriating not having fingers to scratch with.

Then along through more sheep pastures and back to Coppice Wood. Along the riverside I noticed pied wagtails flitting from rock to rock and a yellowy coloured bird that I couldn't immediately identify and there were wild ducks too - swimming against the current.

Back through the pastures to Grindleford. A two and a half hour ramble punctuated only by photo opportunities and by the time I got back to Sheffield, Shirley was still not home from her "super late" shift at the medical centre. I am finding that if I don't get regular walks in, it's like missing a "fix" so the Grindleford walk was probably essential for my spiritual well-being as I hadn't been out and about since last Thursday when I wandered around Darfield, Thurnscoe and Great Houghton - once the very heart of The South Yorkshire Coalfield.

A carpet of bluebells near Rough Wood. This photograph has not been touched up in any way

Old cast iron footpath sign in Grindleford

Harper Lees

At Kettle House

Maaaay!

Derwent Valley View