Sloth

"La Paresse" by Félix Vallotton (1865 – 1925)

Sloth 

Quiet in the canopy

I move in slow-mo.

After rain, I notice the jungle

Steaming.

After dark, I notice the jaguar

Breathing.

I eat leaves and shoots

And once a week 

I shit.

Quiet beneath the duvet

I listen to traffic.

After ten, I stumble to the bathroom

Dreaming.

Afternoon, I fumble in the kitchen

Yawning.

I eat toast and fruits

And once a day 

I shit.

Obsession

No seven deadly sin poems today - the other six will be added intermittently in the future.  No - today I have to confess that I have become addicted to photographing ordnance survey 1x1 kilometre squares for the Geograph project. Above you can see a small section of my photographic mosaic (5x5 km) which has covered Sheffield entirely and is now reaching out like a puddle of pictures into the surrounding countryside.

Sometimes - for whatever reason, you miss squares and they appear in your mosaic as empty green spaces (see above top left) so yesterday afternoon I went out with the sole intention of "capturing" four previously "unbagged" squares. Yes - I know what you're thinking - I must be bloody mad but I guess that this addiction is preferable to crack cocaine, tobacco or pornography. I am not hurting anybody am I?

Here are the pictures I chose for the four newly "bagged" squares yesterday. They were all in the vicinity of Great Hucklow...

View from Nether Bretton Lane

View to Abney Grange and Abney Moor

Glider above Abney Moor

The track from Berrystall Lodge

This wonderful countryside is on Sheffield's doorstep. We are so lucky to live so close to it. As William Wordsworth knew so well, close communion with Nature is good for the soul. When he wrote "and then my heart with pleasure fills/ And dances with the daffodils",  those Buttermere daffodils were merely Nature's representatives. His heart had been filled with pleasure because he had refreshed his relationship with Nature and been uplifted. See? More evidence of my lunacy!

Sins

We have been reminded of the  so-called "seven deadly sins" since Early Christian times. Used as a vehicle for religious flagellation, and suppression of sinful congregations, they are of course: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Oh Lord, please forgive me for all of these sins have tormented my mortal soul - churning in my head like a lethal broth - weak and unworthy sinner that I am!

Anyway, just as a variant on my normal blogging activity, I have decided to set myself a little challenge - to write a poem for each of the seven deadly sins - not all at once. Just one at a time. Today I start with envy. And for each poem there will naturally be a picture:-

"Envy Plucking the Wings of Fame" by François-Guillaume Menageot (1744- 1816)

Envy

Magazine lives

Celebrity restaurants

And filmstar wives
Automatic gates

Gliding over gravel

Horses in paddocks

Business class travel

Or

Maybe

That pauper

With heaven in his eyes

Looking through the bullshit

Immune from all these lies.

Sylvie

My last little post bemoaned the passing of Sylvie Kristel. It reminded me of another Sylvie I once knew and I'd like to tell you the story...

In the early summer of 1972, I had to spend a week at Southlands College in Wimbledon, London - learning how to teach before jetting off to be a V.S.O. volunteer teacher in the Fiji Islands. At Southlands, we had small classes of international guinea pig students upon whom we could test out our little lesson plans. One of these students was a young French woman called Sylvie from Paris. On a couple of evenings, she was in the college group that descended on a local pub to drink and chat. She asked if she could write to me while I was away and I agreed. She could be my French penfriend.

I hadn't touched her, kissed her or shown any love interest. She was just a French girl who wanted to write to me. As far as I was concerned, that was all. Besides, I already had a girlfriend back in Yorkshire. After a couple of months in my island paradise an aerogramme letter arived from France. It was from Sylvie. She was asking me how I was doing and I replied - all very polite and matter-of-fact.

A couple of months after that,  she wrote back. Again the communication was just about the factual details of her life in France so again I told her about Fiji - the wild pigs and snorkelling out beyond the reef and the tradfitional dancing and drinking muddy "grog" with the old guys from my village.

In late August 1973 I returned from Fiji. This was in an era when young people didn't travel abroad as they do now. My experience was quite novel. My parents met me at Heathrow Airport and we travelled back to the heartland - to my beloved Yorkshire.

Two days later, there was a knocking at our door. My father told me that there were two French girls outside and they had come to see  me. It was Sylvie and her friend, Chantelle. I was flabbergasted. They had reserved a room in our village's "New Inn". That evening, Sylvie told me she loved me. I was horrified. "But I don't love you!" and "What are you doing here?" and  "The letters meant nothing - just chitchat!" were just a few of the remarks I made.

The two girls hung about in my East Yorkshire village. Then a  few days later my father drove me up to Scotland where I was to begin my university studies in Stirling. Two days after that - guess what - Sylvie arrived in Scotland! For two weeks, she stalked me. By now I was almost yelling at her. "Get lost! I am just not interested in you! Please go away!" I recall a particular lecture - "An Introduction to Shakespeare". I was scribbling down notes in my A4 pad while behind me sat Sylvie, staring at me for the full hour like a puppy dog waiting for its master to offer a biscuit. "GO AWAY!"

Finally, I thought I had got her to understand. There were tears of realisation and she agreed to return to Paris. "Just one kiss! Please!" she pleaded but I wouldn't even giver her that. "No, I don't want you Sylvie! Just leave! You'll find somebody else who really wants you but that isn't me!"

The relief I experienced after she had gone was palpable. No longer would I find her sitting cross-legged outside the door of my hall of residence study bedroom. No longer would she be hovering around as I tried to converse with new acquaintances, no longer would I have to suffer this weird French stalker.

A month later she was back. And more insistent than before. She got into the kitchen area  at the end of my corridor and made me meals - including prime rump steaks seasoned with salt and pepper and parsley. The way to a man's heart may truly be through his stomach but it was with reluctance that I sank my gnashers into that lovely meat. She brought me a copy of "Germinal" by Emile Zola with a hessian cover that she had embroidered herself. She was there. There all the time and there was nothing I could do to drive her away.

One night I had been at "The Allengrange" - the student pub, getting sloshed and when I got back to my room at two in the morning - who should be there again but Sylvie. She barged her way in  and proceeded to undress. "I want you! I'm going to sleep with you! I love you!" she announced.

I guess I just flipped. I had had more than enough of all this and I was as drunk as a Tory MP after an equestrian event. She was stark naked when I forcibly bundled her back out into the corridor - throwing her clothes after her. Almost hysterically, I yelled at her that I hated her and wished I had never met her. I slammed and locked my door, trying to ignore her wailing and hammering and the next morning she was, miraculously, gone!

But not gone! She came back again the following April when I was at a low ebb and I felt like an animal that had become tired of the chase so finally I gave in and for a couple of weeks we played the parts of lovers but it was mechanical and meaningless and I think she finally realised that I could never love her with my heart. It just wasn't in me. So finally, finally, Sylvie went away for good and I never saw or heard from her again.

There are several other things I could say about Sylvie but in this brief account I think I have given you the gist of what occurred. Even today there are times when I wonder if she will come knocking again or when the phone rings and there's an empty void she will announce herself and I won't have to hear a voice from an Indian call centre - trying to squeeze money out of me.

Departed

Sylvie Kristel 

Sept 28th 1952 - Oct 17th 2012

Gentlemen of a certain  age will recall with fondness her rich contribution to the world of cinema while ladies will admire her hairstyle and make-up. She was certainly what Ms Katherine de Chevalle of Tauranga, New Zealand would  refer to as "eye candy" but youth fades and many, like Ms Kristel, have to pay the ultimate price for the excesses of their salad days. Farewell to Sylvie who, in various ways,  frequently invaded my most private dreams. There - I have confessed!

October

Hedgerow and field - Brecks Lane near Barrow Hill, Derbyshire

Poem in October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill’s shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart’s truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year’s turning.

by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Buildings

Your intrepid explorer, Captain Hercules Pudding has been out and about again braving the dangers of modern day exploration just to bring you this post. "What dangers?" I hear you chortle. How about two rabid Staffordshire bull terriers sprinting from  remote White Lodge Farm or a Heavy Goods Vehicle with driver on a mobile phone swishing past you so close that your shoulder polishes the wheel arches? Oh yes - my friends - a simple country ramble is fraught with hazards.

Yesterday (Monday) I parked in the tiny north Derbyshire village of Hundall, just next to this attractive stone cottage:-

A mile across the fields and I was in the hamlet of West Handley where I "bagged" this lovely thatched farmhouse  at Ash Lane Farm:-

With a detour to Marsh Lane, I finally arrived in Middle Handley where I snapped this eye-catching pub - yet another Derbyshire inn that's  called "The Devonshire Arms":-

This is Southgate Lodge to the east of Middle Handley. It commands magnificent views:-

And then I came to the grim post-industrial village of Barrow Hill with its rows of former pit cottages. You can still make out the shape of the old slag heap and trace disused railways tracks. Life must have been so hard for the community that lived and worked here and even today I noticed that very few houses had cars parked outside them. On cue the sky became iron grey and drizzle began to fall. I snapped this picture of Barrow Hill Methodist Church built in 1872. Superficially, it could easily be confused with a shed for pit ponies or engine parts:-

Onwards to New Whittington our brave Hercules progressed. Now that Barrow Hill was behind us the sun came out again and I snapped this picture of Highland Road with it's modern "ticky tacky" cloned houses cramped together like fish in a shoal. Behind them, the shape of another former slag heap rolls like a mammoth whale:-

Back at Hundall, I decided to pop into "The Miners Arms" for a pint of Tetley's elixir of life and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. It was only four in the afternoon but inside there were sixteen people from the local community - chatting, drinking, reading newspapers, doing crosswords, ignoring "Deal or No Deal" on the TV. I played them sea shanties on my concertina and we roasted a suckling pig in the beer garden. (I made the last bit up!):-

Savile

Savile's grave - now broken up and sent to landfill

Almost a year ago, I posted positively about the death of British TV's eccentric Sir Jimmy Savile. Now I feel that I must apologise about that post because last November his many skeletons had not emerged from  the stinking cupboard of his private life. But now they are well and truly out and the whole country has had to radically revise its view of this "roguish and flamboyant" celebrity.

Overseas visitors to this blog may now be flummoxed, so let me explain. Conservative supporter Jimmy Savile was eighty four when he died. He was the first presenter of BBC's seminal weekly contemporary music show - "Top of the Pops". He was the face behind Britain's national safety campaign for car seatbelts - "Clunk! Click! Every Trip!" and he fronted popular family programmes such as "Jim'll Fix It" in which viewers' dreams came true. He was a member of MENSA. He ran marathons for charity and was an enduring supporter of Leeds General Infirmary and the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville, But something else was happening in the murky shadows of his life over a period of perhaps six decades.

He was a serial abuser of teenage girls - some of them as young as thirteen. He took advantage of his fame as if he were bulletproof and used his cunning to make many of these girls think that they themselves were to blame for his cynical predation. So many stories have emerged and if Savile were alive today. it wouldn't be Guy Fawkes dummies we'd be burning on Bonfire Night, it would be the Savile Monster himself. He has blighted many lives. Some victims of sexual abuse are able to put the horror behind them and lead pretty normal lives but the majority will carry that weight to eternity.

I am lucky. When I was a child, I was loved but never abused. However, during my career as a teacher  I encountered several children who were badly damaged by abuse.One of them killed herself - plunging from a block of Sheffield flats at the age of thirteen. What a waste.

Last week, Savile's family had his elaborate marble gravestone dug up and destroyed. It had occupied a commanding position in Woodlands Cemetery, Scarborough. A cliffside path previously labelled Savile View had its sign removed and even the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust will be closing down or changing its name out of respect for the predator's victims. They suffered in silence and solitude, fearing that they would never be believed and realising they had no physical evidence to prove Savile's wrongdoing but since the ITV documentary "Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile" was screened on October 3rd more and more victims have bravely stepped forward from the shadows.

Society is wiser about abuse these days. There are more safety nets and much more awareness than there used to be. That's one of the shocking side issues about Savile's gross litany of abuse. Even in this more open climate, he had to die before the truth would out. For the dead, we often say R.I.P. but for Savile the blessing should instead be W.I.T. - Writhe in Torment.

Overstones

Yesterday afternoon. Driving home from a ramble near Tideswell. I decided to take the back road from Hathersage which would lead me past Stanage Edge and across Burbage Moor. Weatherwise, it had been an odd afternoon with a mixture of scudding clouds and crystal clear October sunshine. At one point, my face had even been lashed by very fine hailstones as I followed the path to Pittlesmere Lane from the Bronze Age burial site on Tideslow.

I have photographed Overstones Farm before - like many Peak District visitors- for it is located in a popular walking area just three miles west of Sheffield.. It sits beneath the exposed millstone grit escarpment of Stanage Edge which nowadays is much frequented by rock climbers in Ford Fiestas. In the past, it was used as a quarry for millstones and you can still find many discarded or broken millstones beneath the two mile long edge.

I pulled in to a passing place, watching the angry raincloud swirling eastwards like smoke from a forest fire. Waiting by the drystone wall with camera at the ready, I hoped there'd be a moment when sunlight would  theatrically illuminate the farm buildings against a shadowy background of cloud and jagged millstone and then it happened... I am rather pleased with the result. What do you think? There was also this "landscape" version which you can enlarge by clicking on it:-

Poemoholic

Plaque on a railway bridge - The Monsal Trail, Derbyshire

After all these years, I have finally come to admit that I have an addiction. Yes folks, I’m Mr Pudding and I am… I am a poemoholic. Been writing poems since I was six years old and I’m still writing them now as I approach sixty. Okay, I don’t write poems every day but the addiction is always lurking in the background – like a skeleton in the secret cupboard of my mind. They surface from time to time and I’m sorry, okay? Sorry that some of them have forced their way into this humble, everyday Yorkshire blog. I just can’t help myself – I’m an addict.

I realise that some regular visitors to this blog are almost anti-poetry and if they had a poet living next door they’d probably laugh and point at him/her as he/she walked by. It would be more embarrassing than living next door to a pervert like Jimmy Savile. Your house value would surely plunge.

On a few occasions, comments on my poems have revealed this antipathy towards poetry with some correspondents suggesting I should lighten up or as Neil from “The Young Ones” might have muttered, “Heavy man!” But we poemoholics will protest that one of the main purposes of poetry is to peel away the skin of human life and go for the jugular, to root around in the attic until you find what has been hidden. The oft-times superficial and jolly poetry of Edward Lear or Pam Ayres should not be dismissed – it has its place - but to me that’s not real poetry, it’s more wordplay… entertainment. Real poetry should connect with the reader and make you think and the words it employs should sometimes sing to you like music. I’m not saying I always reach that goal but like other poemoholics, I try.

As an English teacher, I frequently encountered youngsters who automatically moaned when poetry was on the day’s menu: “I hate poetry” etc.. I would often point out that they liked songs which are simply poems set to music and when loved ones die we will invariably fall back on poetry – at the funeral service or in newspaper announcements. Poetry is in nursery rhymes and football chants, advertising copy and greetings cards and it’s in the rhythm of everyday conversation – the language we choose, our turns of phrase, how we try to describe our experiences.

I turn the clock back over fifty years. I’m up in my bedroom writing a rhyming poem about an imagined hero who presses on through the mountains, crosses gushing rivers, slays dragons and battles through snowstorms to reach his goal… There, it’s done. Excited, I thunder downstairs. My family are about to settle down for their Sunday tea and I’m seven or eight years old and I say, “Listen! Listen! I’ve been writing a poem!” They go quiet and they listen as, pleased as punch, I recite the juvenile poem to my loved ones. I finish, close the little blue exercise book and wait for their reaction. They burst out laughing – it’s infectious. My mother has tears of laughter in her eyes and I redden with a mixture of puzzlement and anger before storming back upstairs where I stay, refusing to come back down for my tea. I bet Walt Whitman never got that reaction – nor Alexander Pope nor e.e.cummings. But as you know, it didn’t put me off. I’m still a poemoholic and I’ll most likely die one:-

Here lie the bones of Yorkshire Pud 

Who often erred 

But tried to be good 

Afflicted by the poetry disease 

He could never find a life of ease

Long Dale, Derbyshire - the inscription reads
"The road up and the road down are one and the same"

Etonians

The  end of the 2012 Old Etonian  Tory conference in Birmingham

At the age of thirteen, our pompous beloved prime minister went to Eton College in Berkshire following his "father" and elder brother Allan Alexander Cameron the barrister and QC. Eton, a cradle of wealth and  privilege, is possibly the most posh famous independent school in the world and "the chief nurse of England's statesmen". Six weeks before taking his O level exams, Cameron was discovered smoking crack cocaine cannabis He admitted the offence but because he had not (allegedly) been involved in selling drugs, he avoided automatic expulsion, and was instead fined, prevented from leaving school grounds, and given a flogging by the school matron "Georgic" (a punishment which involved copying 500 lines of Latin text).

The Conservatives now boast nineteen out of touch twits Old Etonians on their benches in Parliament. An astonishing 100% 54% of Tory MPs attended fee-paying schools. In the general British populace, just under 7% of any one generation attend private, fee-paying schools.

Scene from "The Omen" Cameron when an eleven year old prep school pupil
What was he saying or about to sing?A free pack of Real 
Yorkshire Puddings for the funniest response.

Brian

Brian Cutts is a Yorkshire comrade - currently in hiding in Catalonia. MI5 have a hefty dossier on him and it is said that he was the mastermind behind a plot to blow up Lancashire in the nineteen nineties. Evidence suggests he was betrayed by the now disgraced Sir Jimmy Savile. Disguised as a French onion seller, Brian cycled down to Dover and made his way across to Boulogne before proceeding to Barcelona where he fell into the arms of a Catalonian freedom fighter called Sofia. 

Anyway, enough of that. Recently, Brian blogged about his dimly remembered favourite walk in South Yorkshire and, largely for his benefit, I followed in his footsteps yesterday afternoon. After all, it can't be much fun - so far away from his beloved South Yorkshire. I thought I would give him a pleasant taste of "home".

As instructed by Comrade Cutts, I parked at the Elsecar Heritage Centre before hiking in lovely October sunshine to The Needle's Eye, Hoober Stand, The Mausoleum and Wentworth Woodhouse. These places have a special resonance for me because my mother knew them when she was a girl - growing up in Rawmarsh. She enjoyed picnics and rambles in the area in the early nineteen thirties.

In their day, the Fitwilliam family must have been so darned rich that the modern equivalent would  be the Bransons of Virgin Britain or the Gateses of Microsoft California. They had such wealth they could build the widest stately home in England along with a number of largely pointless follies - just to stave off the frustration of having such a vast reservoir of money in the bank. So here's my walking album - specially for Brian but of course, everybody else is welcome:- 

Elsecar Heritage Centre - thronged with visitors

The Needle's Eye

Horses grazing with Hoober Stand in the background

The Mausoleum for Charles - the second Marquis of Rockingham

View over Morley Pond to Peacock Lodge

Wentworth Woodhouse - the widest stately home in England

Windmill turned into a home in Wentworth

Brian's favourite pub - "The Market" in Elsecar where the
plot to blow up Lancashire  was allegedly hatched

Poem

History 

You speak of Auschwitz
I think of the night Dad died
In that cold cardiac bed.
You talk of Dallas November 1963
I think of Mum September 2008
And her blue-eyed passion for life.
You remember nine eleven in New York
I think of our Paul in the County Clare
Early that late June morning two years back
He the fiddling raconteur and catcher of the rat.

You tell me of kings and queens and presidents
And treaties and wars and inventions
And transient celebrities and I
I think of weddings and births and funerals
And New Years' parties and work and holidays
And grinning friends.

You show me pictures
Of assassinations in Vietnam
Of adventures in Afghanistan
Of a striking miner in a copper’s hat.
I think of photos
Of our son up a tree and things like that
Of our baby girl’s first steps
Of Shirley on our wedding day.

What can I say -

Yours is like a celluloid tale or
Something seen through a high street window
While mine courses through my veins
- Such things so close to my heart -
Yes yours is akin to fantasy or mystery
But mine, mine is the real history.

Hillsborough

Hillsborough - yesterday afternoon. Hull City substitute, Aaron Mclean is mobbed by his team-mates after forcing home the winning goal in front of the famous Leppings Lane away stand. Famous? Yes - for this is where - in April 1989 - ninety six Liverpool fans were crushed to death ahead of their team's FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. Those who died were not responsible for their deaths. Others were to blame including South Yorkshire police and the local authority and the Football Association but they were not the ones pushing and squeezing into the middle pen from the back of the stand just before kick off.

After Mclean's goal there were scenes of jubilation at the Hull City end and soon we were singing across to the Sheffield Wednesday "tribe", "We can see you sneaking out!" and "Is there a fire drill?" as frustrated Owls supporters haemorrhaged from the stadium.

Afterwards, as we made our way back up the hill to Vainor Road where Tony's car was parked, we passed lines of redundant police officers in hi-visibilty jerkins. One of them had a video camera on a tripod filming the emerging Hull City supporters. They weren't offering helpful directions or chatting cheerfully to supporters like bobbies of yore. Their aggressive expressions were reminiscent of Nazi strormtroopers. Above us, the police helicopter whirred, adding to the intimidating atmosphere as a giant grey police horse defecated on Leppings Lane.

On Vainor Road, we passed the semi-detached house that Shirley and I almost bought in 1989. We pulled out of the deal when the survey revealed that the vendors had not had building regulations approval for a loft conversion. I considered how different the pattern of our lives would have been if we had moved there. Different schools for the kids, different friends, different footsteps on different pavements. A different local pub. It's funny how random choices, random moments can utterly change the character of one's life.

We deserved to beat Wednesday yesterday afternoon. Then  we went to "The Cremorne" on London Road before a delightful Turkish meal in the Turquaz restaurant - made all the better because we were joined by our beautiful son Ian - up from London for the first time in two months. It was great to see him and our friends - Tony and Fiona were great company as usual. I also very much enjoyed the sight of a grinning belly dancer undulating sexily amongst the tables. Later we were in "The Greystones" before walking back to "The Banner" for more traditional English ales. It's weird how such nights are all the nicer when your team has earned a victory. Up The Tigers!

Leaving

Leaving on a Jet Plane (Song for Abu Hamza)

All his bags are packed he's ready to go
He's standin' there by the aircraft door
He's tried every trick not to say goodbye
But the law has spoken he'll soon be gone
A cheer goes up from everyone
Already we're so happy we could cry

So please smile for the T.V.
To America you soon shall flee
Seatbelt on it's nearly time to go
Cause you're leavin' on a jet plane
You'll never see these shores again
Oh Abu, you really gotta to go!

There's so many times you've been in court
But all those tricks have come to nought
I tell you now, you don't mean a thing
Every bitter word, I'll think of you
Every IED, I'll wish on you
If you come back, you'll get a good kick-ing

So sod off and go away
Don't come back another day
Hold on like you're on a fairground ride
Cause you're leavin' on a jet plane
You won't come back here again
Oh Abu, there's no place left to hide...

Abu Hamza al-Masri - born in Egypt in 1958. Entered Britain in 1979 on a student visa. Estimated cost to the British taxpayer - £2.8 million in welfare, medical and housing benefits plus his massive legal costs.

After his interminable and very expensive  trial in 2006, this was the end result:-

• Guilty of six charges of soliciting murder under the Offences against the Persons Act 1861. 
• Guilty of three charges related to "using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred" under the Public Order Act 1986. 
• Guilty of one charge of owning recordings related to "stirring up racial hatred". 
• Guilty of one charge of possessing a "terrorist encyclopaedia" under the Terrorism Act 2000. This charge under the Terrorism Act of 2000 related to his possession of an Encyclopedia of Afghan Jihad an Al Qaeda Handbook and other propaganda materials produced by Masri. 

Other "crimes" include direct and indirect involvement in fatal terrorist activities in, amongst other locations, Yemen. America accuses him of several other terrorist crimes that have yet to be teased out which is why at long last he is to be extradited from our fair shores. Now America can pick up another enormous legal tab. Sometimes "justice" doesn't seem like justice at all - especially when the legal system is being manipulated by someone who clearly has so little respect for our ways or the rule of secular law. Old Abu won't be missed. Will he?

Walking

In a state of turmoil over The Real Yorkshire Pudding advertising campaign, I decided to walk away my confusion these last two days. Co-incidentally, the weather was quite lovely for October. On Wednesday, I parked up in the delightful Peak District village of Biggin for a four hour hike and on Thursday I parked on Station Road in the north Derbyshire township of Eckington for another four hour march down towards Staveley along a disused railway track and then through a plantation of willows to Foxstone Dam and back to Eckington.

Surprisingly, the River Rother had overlapped its banks south of Renishaw and I had to wade through a water meadow before reaching dry pathway again close to the curiously named Slittingmill Farm, Once back in Eckington, I visited TJ's sandwich bar where I enjoyed a mug of tea and a tuna mayo roll while reading "The Daily Mirror" and these awful revelations about Jimmy Savile which convince me he can't possibly have been a full blood Yorkshireman because we abhor any form of  sexual abuse and where children are concerned we form baying lynch mobs. What will his house plaques say now? "Here lived Jimmy Savile - TV personality, charity fundraiser, pervert and abuser of underage girls... oh, and his mother was Irish".

So, anyway, here are three choice photos from Wednesday's walk out of Biggin:-

St Thomas's Church in Biggin

Gratton Dale with evidence of lead mine workings

Rain cloud over Hartington Nether Quarter

And here are three from Thursday's walk out of Eckington:-

Toadpool Farm

At Foxstone Dam

French's Ironmonger's in Eckington

Vote

There has been much debate about whether or not to use a Yorkshire terrier in the Real Yorkshire Pudding advertising campaign. Here is Daphne - a typical Yorkshire terrier:-

I mean, she is hardly capable of embodying the spirit of the great Yorkshire republic. The current Yorkshire terrier is a rodent-like lapdog which enjoys yelping hysterically without reason. It ought to have been called the London terrier. See Brutus below. Now that's what I call a dog! Let's ditch the Rottweiler monicker and rename him a Yorkshire Postman Hunting Dog:-

Of course one Yorkshire stereotype that endures is the image of a man with a flatcap taking his whippet for a  run on a windswept moor. Below you can see John - a whippet from Grimesthorpe. A stupid looking creature but he may have commercial appeal.

Colonel Gowans, creative director of The Real Yorkshire Pudding ad campaign wants to know which pooch we should use in the filming. Daphne, Brutus or John? Please vote and give a brief reason for your choice.

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Above you can see a mock up of a screenshot from the planned first TV commercial for Real Yorkshire Puddings. The ads will star a Yorkshire terrier called Ian - also pictured above. The creative director for the ad campaign is currently on location in Angola shooting ads for a garden pond company. He is none other than Maurice T. Gowans, former soldier, goatherd, whisky distiller  raconteur and life member of the Synod of the Church of England. In his application for this prestigious contract, he offered three mouth-watering scenarios for the commercials  - all featuring Ian the terrier. The Board were suitably impressed.

SCENARIO ONE

I see a man sitting at a kitchen table eating a RYP. Behind him you see a Yorkshire Terrier repeatedly leaping into the air, whatever it is he is leaping for is off the top of the screen. Sound of front door opening and a woman’s voice, ‘I’m home Love, I hope you gave the dog plenty of exercise, you know he gets restless at night if he doesn’t!’ ‘I did Love’ he replies. ‘I expect the exercise did you some good too?’ She says. ‘Oh yes!’ he says popping the last of the RYP into his mouth whereupon she walks in and stops dead in her tracks with a look of amazement. Then you get the full shot of the kitchen showing a RYP hanging from the ceiling light just out of reach of the leaping terrier. The advert could end with something like ‘Real Initiative… Real Yorkshire Pudding!’

SCENARIO TWO

Adman Maurice T. Gowans with Gabby - his pet goat

Man sitting in front of the TV. Terrier trots off into the kitchen and comes back carrying an egg and places it on the floor and looks expectantly at his master. Guy carries on drinking his ale and watching TV. Dog trots off again and comes back pushing a bag of flour. Same thing. Dog trots off and comes back rolling a milk bottle. Same thing. Dog trots off and comes back with a salt cellar. At this the man relents and says, ‘Alright, Lad’ gets up and goes to the kitchen. Next shot is of the pair of them enjoying a RYP. This one ends with ‘Real Ingredients… Real Yorkshire Pudding’

SCENARIO THREE

Man puts a banknote into an envelope and gives it to terrier who takes it in his mouth and trots off down the street. Dog comes to pelican crossing and sits down while he waits for little red man to turn green whereupon he crosses street, goes into shop and gives envelope to shopkeeper. Shopkeeper puts RYP and change into bag and dog trots off back home again. On the way dog sees gorgeous female terrier (cue romantic music) whereupon the two of them gambol off into the countryside and enjoy a romantic meal for two of RYP naturally. Terrier arrives home and man looks in bag and sees only a few crumbs of RYP and his change. Man looks a terrier enquiringly whereupon terrier looks towards door and female terrier appears. ‘You old Dog!’ says man affectionately.