Lesson

Sit down you noisy bloggers and listen up! Adrian, put it away and get down off the window sill! Graham! How many times do I have to tell you, do NOT pull Kate's hair like that! It's cruel!...Oh good heavens John, why can't you leave your damned dogs at home! And Carol! CAROL! Take out your earphones! Helen, Lee and Leisha! This is not a beauty parlour! Put your make up away girls and don't "Oh sir!" me with your come hither eyes! Bob, stop fiddling with your organ and Brian, please speak in English - not in that foreign johnny language that nobody understands! Jan, thank you for the English bantam eggs - I'll have them for tea tonight. Oh Frau Meike - glad you could make it! What? I don't care how long it takes you from Ludwigsburg just get here on time tomorrow! Sit there by the wall next to Jennifer and Hilly and that chatterbox new girl Alphie Soup! Shut up Alphie! We don't want to know any more about making minestrone!

Okay, listen up! Now I know that most of you have already mastered this critical matter but there are a couple of you who haven't so we are all going to have to go over it again... Please don't groan like that!

I am talking about the difference between:-

its and it's

(written on blackboard with screeching chalk)

Right let's look at it's with the apostrophe. It is short for either it is or it has. It is what we masters of grammar call an abbreviation. Here are a couple of examples:-

It's sunny outside. ( Short for - It is sunny outside.)
It's got a strong beak and talons. (Short for - It has got a strong beak and talons.)

The other its - without an apostrophe - is reserved for possession or belonging. Here are a couple of examples:-
The dog ate its scotch egg. (The scotch egg belonging to the dog)
The River Leven burst its banks. (The banks of the river - belonging to it.)

Now take out your exercise books and your "Yorkshire Pudding Grammar Guides" and tackle the it's/its exercises that begin on page 232 and run on to page 274....

What is it Graham?...No you may not go to the toilet lad!...Well write to your M.P. then! Okay settle down and get on with the exercises everybody while I read my "Daily Mirror"... Urrgh Winnie! You disgusting creature! .... It's all over my Harris tweed jacket!...NO GIGGLING!.. Have you brought a spare fanny flannel John?

Doping

You may have heard the latest news about doping in athletics. It seems that hundreds of athletes have been at it and many of them were medal winners in top events - including The Olympics. 

Today's doping practice is usually aimed at increasing the red blood cell count in order to transmit bigger volumes of oxygen to the muscles. This was exactly what the disgraced  American cyclist Lance Armstrong's cunning method successfully achieved. And it is why he won The Tour de France an incredible seven consecutive times.

Doping is about getting ahead of your competitors, stealing a march on them but there are plenty of other ways of gaining advantage and they make me feel a little ambivalent about the current doping scandal.

Let's take genetic inheritance. Some athletes are born into naturally athletic families where good sporting physiques are passed down through the generations. Should we accuse the recipient of such beneficent genes of cheating? Plenty of other athletes compete in their sports in spite of the disadvantageous  physiques they have largely inherited.

The saying - "You are what you eat" has extra resonance in sport. The right diet can make a big difference when competing at the highest level and many top athletes are advised by armies of dieticians. Isn't that a bit like doping - gaining advantage through what you consume?

Good coaches can also make a big difference. They know how to train their athletes for success whereas poor coaches presumably make a lot of basic errors and may set their athletes off on ineffective  training regimes. Having a great coach can surely be like taking a performance enhancing drug. They give special advantage to their charges.

Similar arguments could be made about equipment, training facilities, family wealth and sponsorship. They all confer advantage upon the fortunate recipients putting them a step ahead of their competitors.

These are all reasons why I feel somewhat ambivalent towards doping in sport. Perhaps we should just say - what the heck! Let the games commence and take as many drugs or blood supplements as you need! Then we wouldn't have all these witch hunts and moral guardians preaching from their high horses. Mind you, the Olympic motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger" would suddenly take on extra significance - especially the "Higher" bit.

Astwith

It was last Thursday afternoon when I set off for the tiny Derbyshire village of Astwith. I would be astonished if its population exceeded fifty but it has a postbox, a village noticeboard and a modern phone box that is so rarely used these days that ir is being reclaimed by Mother Nature in the form of creeping ivy. Here it is:-

Boots on and a few minutes out of Astwith there are cows resting in a meadow with the hollow ruins of Hardwick Hall on the ridge beyond Stainsby Plantation:-

Beyond the industrial estate on the edge of the village of Holmewood, I meet The Five Pits Trail. Once a railway track, it connects five villages that used to boast productive coal mines but they are long gone and with each passing year the evidence of their existence becomes more obscure.

By the trail I see sheep grazing near High House Farm:-

 After the village of Pilsley, I pause to compose this summery picture:-

Then I am off again, plodding towards Tibshelf:-

Through Tibshelf, I leave the main road and head for Biggin Farm.  I see the ruin of another, smaller farm beyond a barbed wire fence and spiky hawthorn hedgerows but I can't get there so instead I take this photo of the rolling North-East Derbyshire countryside:-

Two miles further on and I am back at my car in litttle Astwith and it's seven o' clock in the evening. Time to head home. I had never been to Astwith before and it is likely that I shall never return. Close to the M1 motorway, thousands of motor vehicles flash by it every day but the drivers don't even know that Astwith is sleeping there as it has done for well over a thousand years.

Oklahoma!

How do you celebrate the night of Yorkshire Day? Why, you go and see a production of "Oklahoma!" of course. 

It was in Sheffield's beautifully restored "Lyceum" Theatre and we were just four rows from the front. The production was slick, vibrant and thoroughly entertaining and the quality of singing was tremendous. So too were the dance sections. In fact, I didn't spot a single unintended error or flaw in the entire show and the cast truly deserved their standing ovation.

Curly with Jud at The Smoke House in last night's performance of "Oklahoma!"

"Oklahoma!" first opened on Broadway in March, 1943 while the second world war was being waged in Europe and the western Pacific. Perhaps its "feel good" character was a deliberate antidote to war. This musical represented the very first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. It was immediately a huge box office success and seventy years later it still pulls in the crowds.

At one point in Act One, cowboy Will Parker returns from Kansas City having been mightily impressed with the place. And he sings:-

Ev'rythin's up to date in Kansas City
They've gone about as fur as they c'n go!
They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high,
About as high as a buildin' orta grow.
Ev'rythin's like a dream in Kansas City,
It's better than a magic lantern show!
Y' c'n turn the radiator on
Whenever you want some heat.
With ev'ry kind o' comfort
Ev'ry house is all complete.
You c'n walk to privies in the rain
And never wet your feet!
They've gone about as fur as they c'n go,

If only Will had known what the next seventy years would bring!

Theatre writer Thomas Hischak once wrote, "Not only is 'Oklahoma!' the most important of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, it is also the single most influential work in the American musical theatre. ... It is the first fully integrated musical play and its blending of song, character, plot and even dance would serve as the model for Broadway shows for decades."

Gene Nelson as Will Parker in the 1955 film version of "Oklahoma!"

Hurrah!

August 1st is Yorkshire Day!

In celebration, I invite you to watch this 

three minute video:-

It is little wonder that we think of 

Yorkshire as "God's own county"...

The Yorkshire Flag

Queensland

Mount Bartle Frere - Queensland's highest peak

Today I discovered that Australian blogger Leisha is also from Queensland! So that's four feisty Queensland women! Soon there'll be a rugby league team - captained by wily Helen from "Helsie's Happenings" and ably supported by IT expert Carol from Cairns and Lee the celebrity chef from Hinchinbrook Island and other places.

There have been blog visitors from other parts of Australia such as photo journalist Michael from Sydney and the delightful Ms Alphie Soup from Victoria but mostly this humble blog has attracted Queenslanders.

So I thought it was about time that I did a little research before sharing some information about Queensland - a vast state to the north east of the island of Australia. Right then, here we go. Ten interesting facts about Queensland:-

1. It is believed that the first aboriginal inhabitants of Queensland arrived from the north around 50,000BC.
2. The original inhabitants had at least ninety different languages.

George Bowen - the first governor
of Queensland

3. The first recorded landing of a European in Queensland was in February 1606 - by Willem Janszoon, a Dutch navigator.
4. Yorkshireman Captain James Cook claimed north eastern Australia for King George III of England in 1770.
5. George Bowen from Donegal, Ireland became the first governor of Queensland in 1859  when the new colony was first established - separated from New South Wales. It is named Queensland after Queen Victoria as the name "Victoria" was already taken!
6. Queensland currently has a population of 4,750,500 - almost half live in Brisbane.
7. In 1935 cane toads were first introduced to the sugar cane plantations of Queensland to prey upon pests but very quickly they became a pest themselves. Bizarrely Queenslanders refuse to eat cane toads which can be delightful if cooked fresh in a healthy stir fry or toad stew.
8. Mount Bartle Frere at  5322 feet is the tallest mountain in Queensland and was named after Sir Henry Bartle Frere the British president of The Royal Geographical Society in 1873.
9. The actor Geoffrey Rush was born in Toowoomba, Queensland in 1951.
10. Queensland has a land area of 715,309 square miles - which is very big compared with Great Britain's measly 88,745 sq miles. In fact it means that Queensland is eight times bigger than Britain! It is also nearly three times as big as the state of Texas.

The flag of Queensland

Invitation

Dear Walter Palmer,

You are now famous around the world for killing Cecil. You are such a brave man! Firing an arrow into Cecil and then following him in a jeep for forty hours before shooting him dead. Wow! No wonder you were smiling proudly in the photograph at the top of this invitation. Cecil may have been King of The Beasts but you Walter are King of the Hunters.

Not only have you rid the world of a dangerous man-eating lion, you have also bravely executed Marmaduke the Elk, Gordon the Zebra, Harold the Moose, Pierre the Black Bear, Darren the Grizzly Bear, Adrian the Rhinoceros and whole generations of deer and Minnesotan water fowl. What a guy you are Walter!

I can understand entirely why you chose to spend $50,000 on the killing spree rather than giving that money to African charities that tackle AIDS, homelessness and starvation. Ridding Zimbabwe of Cecil was a way of helping the country to get back on its feet and assist its benevolent and much-loved leader Robert H. Brague Mugabe.

Because of your great achievements in the manly world of hunting, I am inviting you to join me and some other bloodthirsty hunters upon the moors west of Sheffield. It is said that there's a monster out there with unnaturally  white teeth and a shiny bald pate. It preys on sheep, women and small children and has a ludicrously high opinion of itself.

We will gather by the car park at Ringinglow -  me and Fred Fox, Higgy, Steve Howlett, bloggers like Graham and Jennifer and Mama Thyme  and Carol from Cairns and Lee and an army of ordinary folk wearing Cecil T-shirts. We will chase the cruel monster mercilessly till he's breathless, sweaty and crawling like a wounded lion amidst the heather and the gorse and then we will blast his big-headed brains out with a Canadian hunting rifle. 

As it happens, our local moorland monster is also called Walter. What a co-incidence!

I await your positive response with eager anticipation.

Yours cunningly,

Y.P.

Hunting hero Walter Palmer with Adrian the Rhino