Gurning

Every September, the town of Egremont in Cumberland holds its annual "Crab Fair". One of the highlights of this ancient festival - that can trace its origins back to the thirteenth century - is the annual "gurning" competition. In this event, contestants have to put their heads through a horse's collar and "gurn" - which means to pull an ugly face without assistance. This year, for the eleventh time, the winner was local man Tommy Mattinson who looks as if he often practised his winning face while sitting on the lavatory.

Below we see bloggers Shooting Parrots and kiwi Katherine de Chevalle giving gurning a go in a Manchester pub a few years ago. Of course none of the pub regulars gave them a second glance. 

This evening - before you go to bed - why not look in your bathroom mirror and gurn to your heart's content? Gurning tones up the facial muscles and who knows - if you keep practising, you could be at the Crab Fair in Egremont next September ready to depose the current champion.

Broomfleet

Beeches Farm, Faxfleet

There is a forgotten land between Goole and Hull, south of the M62 motorway and north of the point where the rivers Trent and Ouse conjoin to become the muddy River Humber. In past centuries, the area was always prone to flooding - until ingenious men created dikes and embankments to ensure that the fields, farmsteads and remote hamlets remain largely dry. 

You approach the area via single track roads that weave across the rich arable landscape. In former times,  there would have been more hedgerows, more woodland and more people making a living from the land. But now it seems that only large scale farming makes profit and the fields have become like open prairies. Only the vestiges of the old days remain. Before cars, perhaps the best way to travel to and from this watery world would have been by boat - east to Hull and west to Goole though of course most inhabitants would have been so wrapped up in day to day living that they probably rarely left Yokefleet, Faxfleet, Laxton, Blacktoft or Broomfleet.

Broomfleet - when I was a young lad my parents would occasionally take us there to see Auntie Mary, Bruce and Uncle Bill Coombe who was the headmaster of the little village primary school. Like the village's  "Old Red Lion" pub it is forever closed now. I recall Sunday teatimes there. On several occasions, Uncle Bill   gave us "indoor fireworks" displays which filled my brothers and I with awe. He also tricked us with stuff he'd bought from Dinsdale's Joke Shop in Hull - plastic dog poo, whoopee cushions, fart powder and so on. He was just a big kid at heart and for that we liked him enormously. You never knew what you'd get with Uncle Bill. Until yesterday, I hadn't been by that old schoolhouse in forty five years.

The old school and schoolhouse, Broomfleet

Across the September stubble to Low Metham Grange

A channel of the River Humber at Weighton Lock

Ploughing near Broomfleet with the twin towers of the Humber Bridge in the distance.

Holy Trinity and Old St Clement's Church at Blacktoft

After this pleasant diversion, in which I walked for two hours, I travelled on to Hull to watch Hull City absolutely thrash Millwall 4-1 at the KC Stadium. A great performance and a great day, later capped in my local pub with fifty third birthday celebrations for Ian the taxman. Cheers.

Star

Sheffield's evening newspaper is called "The Star". In the Letters section, they always include a "reader's photo" or "photo of the day". Remembering a conversation I had last weekend at the wedding, two days ago I decided to mail in three of my recent photographs and this afternoon I was pleasantly surprised to find they'd published a picture I took last week on the Kinder Scout plateau. Here it is. Those of you without memories like sieves may recall that I posted a different picture of this millstone outcrop last Friday.

Newsprint isn't the best medium for faithful colour reproduction. This is the original digital picture that I sent off to "The Star". It's a lot sharper.

DISCLAIMER: Regarding my photographic exploits, may I say there is no truth whatsoever in the rumour that I was in Provence, France last week scrabbling through the French undergrowth to snap saucy pictures of  the Duchess of Cambridge in a semi-naked state. I was there in search of the elusive  Pyrenean desman which is a far more interesting subject.

Paedophilia

I know nothing about paedophilia and if you are expecting a blogpost all about paedophilia then you will be sorely disappointed. The only reason I have titled this post "Paedophilia" is to test the water re. my blog statistics. Up until now, and rather bizarrely, my most popular posts of all time have been one titled "Chavs" that I made in September 2009  and another called "Desman" that I wrote quite recently on the subject of a little known aquatic mammal called the Pyrenean desman.

It is my expectation that out there in the world at large there will be people - some of them sick in the head -who are curious about paedophilia and they will be sitting in their ghettoes, mud huts or penthouse suites tapping away at their computers trying to find out more. Consequently, this will become my all time most popular blogpost and I will be the envy of my middle-aged blogging peer group - from Canton,  Georgia to Darkest Angola and from Wrexham, Wales to Brisbane, Australia.

I prefer the archaic spelling of the word - "paedophilia" - rather than the sloppy Americanised version - "pedophilia" which could easily be confused with the feet - as in "pedometer". Picking out the Greek roots of the word it literally means παῖς (child) φιλία (friendly love) -i.e. friendly love of children but of course the modern definition has an entirely sexual focus and even the word "paedophilia" has become like an alarm bell ringing - so much so that I expect an angry mob with burning torches to mill around our house before this week ends, simply because I dared to utter the word - "paedophilia". By the way, the story about a paediatric doctor in South Wales being murdered by an a vengeful and linguistically challenged mob is purely an urban myth.

P.S. If any paedophiles or would-be paedophiles are reading this, my considered advice to you is to get some professional counselling. The innocence of childhood is something that deserves respect and no adult has the right to scar a child's life forever.

Poem

Rooting around in our attic space this morning I came across a collection of poems published by The Co-operative Society back in 1993. The little anthology brought together all the winning entries in their Caring Poetry Festival. They received over three thousand poems - all on the theme of caring. I had forgotten my winning poem. As I sat amidst the dusty old suitcases, children's books and various other bric-a-brac, it was like reading someone else's work. I guess that nineteen years ago I had been thinking about the oft-repeated modern day tragedy of an old person dying alone and forgotten in their humble home - an indictment upon the sometimes impersonal nature of modern day urban life and a plea for people to be more neighbourly. This is what I wrote:-

Kinder

Kinder Moonscape

Thinking back to my post about Kinder Scout, those photos of The Wool Packs natural sculpture park don't really give a true impression of what the Kinder Plateau is really like. At its heart there are around ten square miles of what I can only describe as a moonscape of peaty hillocks and channels that can be an absolute nightmare to walk across.

Last Thursday, after several dry and sunny days the peat bogs were not as treacherously porridge-like as they can be and the visibilty was excellent. It would be so easy to get lost on Kinder and people have died there floundering around in wintry fogs. I made my way over the "haggs" and across the "groughs" towards the tiny cairn of grey-white stones at Crowden Head. The ancient peat mostly held my weight but at one point my left foot went deep into the black stew - right up to my knee. I was stuck but fortunately  close to the dry edge of a vegetated hillock. I wiggled my foot and hauled myself out - glad that I'd tied my boots on tightly. There was nobody else in sight. Walkers tend to stick to the edge of this huge porridge bowl - created around nine thousand years ago - during the Boreal period - when the plateau was apparently forested.

Like "The Creature from The Bog" I yomped westwards until I met a better defined stream bed that later becomes the Kinder River. I sat by another cairn and ate my banana, washed down with a small bottle of water before heading for Kinder Downfall. This is where the little river tumbles over the plateau's exposed edge. I had heard that sometimes you can see the stream water being blown back as wind surges up the V-shaped "clough" or river valley and indeed when I got there, although there wasn't much water running off, it was certainly being blown back in a fine spray as you can see from the last photograph.

Crowden Head

Go west young man

Perfect place for a picnic

Helicopter bringing up gravel for moorland conservation works

Kinder Downfall with stream water being blown back up the
rocks - like an upside down waterfall.

Wedding

Ros and Pete cutting  the famous wedding cake

Yesterday was so lovely, in spite of the fact that I had been sort of press-ganged into taking the photos at a friend's wedding. The September sunshine was as sweet as honey and Sheffield's Botanical Gardens were bathed in gorgeous clear light. As you know, I normally take landscape pictures but having snapped many sheep this summer, I felt well-prepared for capturing images of the wedding guests. Obviously, I remembered my shepherd's crook and my faithful sheepdog Shep.

It was a second marriage for both Ros and Pete. Shirley and I have known Ros for many years and well remember the unhappy and stressful circumstances surrounding her first husband's unexpected departure - leaving her to bring up three young children pretty much on her own. All three grew up to be well-balanced young people who each went on to university. She met Pete through a dating website. He's a surprisingly nice fellow from what we on the Yorkshire side of the Pennine hills call "the dark side".

Guests assembling in the Botanical Gardens

The civil ceremony itself was held by the open doors of one of the glass pavilions in the Botanical Gardens. Guests peered through the greenery as promises and rings were  exchanged and then we loitered in the sunshine before strolling to the reception at the Polish Club on Ecclesall Road. 

Shirley had made the wedding cake - a three tier affair decorated with fresh flowers and yet more botanical greenery. It was a true labour of love and everyone agreed that the end result was most professional. Not only can my dear and multi-talented wife achieve a masters degree in her early fifties - she can also create a stunning wedding cake for a friend.

There was a North African style meal, wine and pints of "Easy Rider" beer and we listened to the traditional  speeches before grooving to live music provided by a band recently formed by some friends of Ros's lads and then later my mate the saxophonist - Big Bob performed with his band - The Hummingbirds.

After the formal ceremony

Two families united

Dan - Ros's older son - gave her away

The Hummingbirds

As I say, it was a lovely day. The sun shone. Ros and Pete's families were united and there was goodwill and laughter in the air. Two nice, intelligent  and kindly people joined together for the rest of their days  - proving that when lives are devastated by the tsunamis that mark marriages ending - there is still hope and the chance of love and happiness in the years beyond. I raise a glass to Ros and Pete and wish them all the best.

Ros and Pete tarry near the fountain

Sculpted

The Wool Packs - general view

Between Sheffield and Manchester, there's a high and largely inhospitable moorland plateau called Kinder Scout. At its heart is a mazy "other world" of peat bogs, dark channels called "groughs" and spongy hillocks called "haggs" - it's like a different planet - but at the plateau's edges the underlying millstone rock is revealed in several places. I was there yesterday and wandered in the September sunshine through an area of exposed rocks known as The Wool Packs. To me it was rather like being in a sculpture park - created over thousands of years by Mother Nature and her assistants - wind, frost and time. Here were some of the "exhibits" I saw:-

"Mother and Child"

"Giant's Fist"

"Stone Finger" or "The Cannon"

"Helicopter Observers"

"Supine  Rock Giant"

"Pairs of Buttocks"

Desman

The Pyrenean Desman (Galemys pyrenaicus)

Named after the place of its home, the Pyrenean desman is a small aquatic insectivore closely related to moles, also known as the Iberian desman . This adept swimmer has many adaptations to its aquatic habitat, including an elongated head and body with a long tail, webbed, paddle-like hindfeet, and the ability to close both ears and nostrils to prevent water getting in. In contrast to moles, which have powerful digging front legs, desmans have powerful hind legs that are longer than the forefeet to help propel them through the water. The tail is also slightly flattened vertically, acting as a rudder and helping to steer and direct the animal as it swims. A double layer of fine dark greyish-brown fur includes a dense waterproof underfur and oily guard hairs. The eyes are tiny and eyesight is poor, but the long, black, almost hairless snout is highly sensitive and used to locate prey. The extremely rare desman lives at an altitude of 2200m spending most of its nocturnal waking time in the clear crystal mountain streams that descend from the Pyrenees.

22

Pathfinder Guide - White Peak: Walk - 22 Beresford and Wolfscote Dales. Distance: 8 miles. Suggested duration: 4 hours.

This is a part of the Peak District I never quite reached in the past. The walk included two gorgeous villages. Alstonefield is ridiculously beautiful and soaked in history. It's there in every limestone brick and every millstone window frame. And Hartington is also lovely with its village pond, its noble thirteenth century church and its cheese factory - all surrounded by verdant pastures defined by miles of painstakingly constructed limestone walls. Each village is home to around three hundred residents.

Stretches of the walk run alongside the River Dove which burbles and sings over weirs in the deep cleft that is Wolfscote Dale. There you see caves and marvel at the way in which The Earth and her primordial oceans created so much limestone millions of years before human beings evolved from the ape men.

I visited "The George" in Alstonefield where I drank my usual pint of orange cordial with soda water and ice. Lunch was a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and I sat out on a bench with the little village green before me. Weatherwise, September 3rd was a splendid day. T-shirt and shorts time and I thought I'd try out my new boots at long last. I bought them in "Lidl" when they were on offer. My other boots are still caked in bog mud from the walk I took last Friday up to Black Hill. The new boots were okay and I'm glad I've now broken them in without great discomfort.

Such a perfect walk in clement weather with sweat on my brow. Such rambles make you glad to be alive. So for a flavour of Walk 22, here's another small gallery. Hope you like 'em:-

Signpost in the centre of Hartington

Brown cows resting in How Narrowdale

Junction of paths near Greenhills Cottage

"The George" in Alstonefield

St Peter's Church, Alstonefield

Limestone barn on the way to Gipsy Bank

The River Dove in Wolfscote Dale

Caves and visitors beneath Frank's Rock

Back to Hartington and St Giles's Church

Reviews

Last week I went to the cinema to watch "Take This Waltz", directed by Sarah Polley and starring Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen and Luke Kirby in a kind of love triangle. Another "character" in the film is the bohemian district of Toronto in which the film is set. Before deciding to part with cash for the ticket, I checked out a few reviews of this film. If I'd accepted Peter Bradshaw's take on it, I wouldn't have bothered:- 

It is drenched in a choking, twee whimsy and supercilious indie blandness; everything about it, from the torpid performances to the soft-late-summer-glow cinematography, creates something stifling. It's all the more bizarre because what the film is supposed to be about is marital discontent and sexual tension, but the latter quality is quite absent from this weirdly bloodless, passionless film. - Peter Bradshaw in "The Guardian"

But Philip French's review was much more encouraging:_

Take This Waltz is so truthful and honest a film that on the rare occasions it hits a false note or becomes over-explicit or sentimental, it really jars. Like the Cohen song, Polley's movie touches on familiar feelings and evokes common experiences in a way that goes beyond what can be explained or paraphrased. - Philip French in "the Observer"

It is quite astonishing that two highbrow film buffs'opinions could be so very far apart. 

A few aspects of "Take This Waltz" were irritating but essentially I enjoyed it. It's a languid, domestic movie in which the central character - Margot - finds it difficult to accept the ordinariness of everyday life with her loving husband of five years - Lou. Her head is in the clouds and she's gradually drawn away by the romantic dream that Daniel seems to offer.

I liked the pace of this film and I liked the fact that it seemed to suggest various questions about everyday life compared with the possibility of escape to a tantalising other world. I don't think I have ever before watched a film set in Toronto and this Canadian city made for a refreshingly different backdrop.

I don't know how you feel about watching sex scenes in films but often I think they are unnecessary. After all, in ordinary life, sexual relations are usually conducted in private so why did we have to ogle at Margot and Daniel copulating in their loft apartment while we listened to Leonard Cohen singing "Take This Waltz"?And why did we have to see Margot and the rest of her aqua-robic class stark naked in the showers? Again - most unnecessary. Suggestiveness is often more effective.

But as I said before, I enjoyed this film. In spite of its essentially serious core theme it had several funny  tension-relieving moments. Michelle Williams is an accomplished film actress and Rogen and Kirby provided excellent support. Certainly a very different experience from the last film I saw - "Ted".

Daniel volunteers to use his rickshaw to take Lou and Margot to their anniversary dinner

Crowden

"Hello...Is that Mr Pudding? It's me. Wendy. I'm the cleaner at Crowden. I've got your car keys. You left them in the toilet. When you get this message phone me back. This is my number *********. Bye". - Message via The Puddings' answerphone service Aug 31st 2012

Triangulation pillar at Black Hill

I had driven over to Crowden on the Woodhead Pass that eventually leads over the Pennines to the modern day city of Gomorrah - Manchester. Upon arriving at the visitor car park, I laced up my walking boots grabbed my camera and headed up the path to the public conveniences next to the campsite. There I made an offering to the God of Lavatories before commencing my walk three miles northwards to the triangulation pillar at Black Hill.

It was hard going and often the path was invisible amidst the moorland bogs, peaty groughs, rough grasses and heather but eventually I made it to the middle of the Black Hill plateau before descending on a different path - The Pennine Way that clings to steep hillsides west of Crowden Great Brook. By the cliffs of Laddow Rocks a feeling of vertigo threatened to overtake me as I teetered along the edge knowing that with one unfortunate slip I could be crashing to my death on the boulders below - which would no doubt have pleased  some bloggers of my acquaintance.

Finally, I made it back to the car park, planning to drive home via Glossop and then make our evening meal. I had a nice quiche in the fridge and there'd be rice and salad too. But. Yes, but.. Where were my car keys? I searched my pockets, checked out my camera case, looked under the car. They were nowhere to be found.

I remembered the offering I had made in the porcelain booth that morning but when I got there the cupboard was bare!

Just next to the toilet block is a small campsite run by the Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain. I went into the office/shop and spoke with the warden on duty. "No, no keys have been handed in mate!"

It was about four fifteen in the afternoon and I knew that Shirley would be home from work very soon so I waited and then used the campsite phone. Now Crowden is about twenty five miles from our home in Sheffield and I am sure that the last thing Lady Pudding wanted to do after a week's work was to battle through Friday night traffic and out to the wilds of northern Derbyshire but she agreed to do it. I was left chatting to the warden whose name is Mark. 

What a bizarre world we live in! Turns out he's married to a woman from East Timor and ventured there last summer. He had several interesting tales to tell and it was a good way of passing the time before Lady Pudding finally arrived with the precious spare key. It was starting to rain by then as I shivered under a young sycamore tree by the car park.

We didn't get home until seven thirty. We scrapped the idea of the quiche dinner (or "tea" as we prefer to say in Yorkshire) and headed for "The House of Spice" - one of our favoured Indian curry houses. Well, every cloud has a silver lining! In fact our cloud had a double silver lining because when we got home I discovered the answerphone message transcribed at the top of this fascinating post. What a relief - not to have to shell out the £1,750 SEAT would no doubt have been demanding for a replacement car key!

Crowden Youth Hostel

View west across the Crowden valley

Laddow Rocks high above Crowden Brook

This post is dedicated to Wendy and her husband Dave who prove that most people are decent, kind and honest - there's a tenner in the post for them.