Imagery

The Sanctuary Ring (12th Century) - North door, Durham Cathedral

Saturday was not the most auspicious day for photography. Though there was never more than a mere inkling of January drizzle, the sky above was a heavy grey eiderdown through which weak sunlight was filtered in its struggle to illuminate County Durham. In spite of this, I am sharing ten of my images with you.

Old telephone kiosk in Shincliffe

"The People's Lamp", Bowburn

On the south wall of Durham Prison

Church Street, Seaham

"Tommy" on Seaham seafront - the statue weighs 1.2 tons and is over 9 feet tall

Plaque in Durham Cathedral - American visitors should find this especially interesting

Lego model of Durham Cathedral in the museum

North Sea at Seaham

The grave of Saint Cuthbert (634 AD - 687AD) in Durham Cathedral

Back

"Durham" by J.M.W. Turner (c.1835)

You may be relieved to learn that I did not die on The Great North Road - though one or two of you may now be yelling, "Shucks!" at your screens. Since I departed for our forty eight hours in the county of Durham, masked American ICE agents have killed another decent citizen in Minneapolis. Not only did they do that, they also lied blatantly about what had really happened.

In Trumplandia, truth seems to be an inconvenient barrier to be negotiated. 

Please  rest in peace Nurse Pretti - you were the best of us, no matter what the fascist liars might say.

The house in Shincliffe was marvellous - so clean and roomy and warm and well-appointed and historical and "lived in". It was a joy to stay there even though when I was lying in the emperor bed, the empress seemed to be lying in an adjacent parish. 

And it was nice to spend time with Carolyn. She and I have always got along easily.

On Saturday, I walked into Durham and met up with the sisters in the cathedral. Then we drove to the coast and parked in the seaside town of Seaham that was once home to a productive coal mine.

We enjoyed  excellent meals out in Shincliffe's two  village pubs - "The Seven Stars" and "The Rose Tree Inn" and I began a colourful jigsaw called "The New Arrival" which Carolyn intended to finish after we had left.

I have not had chance to look at the photographs I snapped in the last two days and expect that they will feature in my next blogpost. 

So there we have it bloglurkers, I am back.

Durham

As if by magic, this blogpost has published even though I am not  sitting in my lair surrounded by my books, scribblings, papers, souvenir beach stones and imperial regalia. No, I am in a big house in the village of Shincliffe, very near  the city of  Durham which is a hundred and twenty miles north of Sheffield.

The post has been "scheduled" so if I have been killed on the Great North Road then I am in effect speaking to you from beyond the grave. WHOOOOOO!

For the very first time, Shirley's widowed sister Carolyn is currently house-sitting for strangers for two whole weeks. The wealthy owners of the property are away on holiday in India for six weeks. Other arrangements have been made for the following four weeks.

Carolyn doesn't even have to walk a dog. There's just a cat to look after and I suspect the owners also feel happier that responsible adults are living in their house during their Indian vacation.

In case you were thinking otherwise, the owners know that Shirley and I will be staying in their house for two nights. I believe we have been allotted "The Emperor Room" which seems most appropriate in my opinion. As an emperor I will rule with sagacity and benevolence  until someone crosses me - then there will be hell to pay.

The weather forecast is not very promising but hey, this is January. What should we expect? There will be better days ahead and spring will spring again.  Even now the days are becoming longer. We are a month past the hump of mid-winter.

I have been to Durham before with its magnificent Norman cathedral and I hope to walk there from Shincliffe to pay homage to one of my heroes - Saint Cuthbert who should by rights be England's patron saint. Saint George makes no sense whatsoever. He was not English and he never visited England.

However, if the weather is too inclement I may just stay in the big house with The Empress surveying our empire or watching Hull City v Swansea City on the imperial TV screen. Back Sunday evening.

The shrine of St Cuthbert in Durhan Cathedral

Lawrence

I feel heartened by the number of bright  and politically astute Americans who are critical of the Trump regime. Over at YouTube, several of them regularly comment pointedly on his presidential  antics. 

One of the most articulate and insightful of these observers is Lawrence O'Donnell who has a regular late night slot  called "The Last Word" on the MSN TV news channel.

Lawrence has enjoyed a varied and interesting career that has included writing, TV production, advisory political jobs in Washington and even acting. He is nobody's fool and he holds Donald Trump in absolute contempt, meticulously dissecting his outbursts, his character and his spurious claims.

I am creating this particular blogpost for American visitors as much as anyone else. You should be proud of this son of  Boston who tells it like it is. He is worth following. This was him just last night, speaking truth to power and not holding back...

Googlediving

"Googlediving"? I was introduced to this term by a prisoner who sometimes visits this wholesome, everyday blog. He goes by the name of "Marcellous" and is currently serving a fifteen year sentence for reasons I am not allowed to disclose. He has also requested that I should not state the name or location of the high security prison facility in which he is currently incarcerated. His internet use is frequently constrained by prison staff and of course his real name is not "Marcellous". It's Knuckles O'Haggerty.

Anyway, all of that is by the by. I just wanted to pick up on the term "googlediving". I think it is a useful term and one that everyone who has ever been on the internet can relate to. "Googlediving" has become a feature of everyday life in the western world.

Have you noticed how in the past couple of years, many of one's questions to Google are answered very quickly in the form of an "A.I.  Overview" that presumably makes swift sense of the lead answers that are floating around in the ether? It's quite remarkable really. As months pass by this "A.I. Overview" facility is becoming increasingly astute, more accurate and more fluent. And yet it has just drifted into our online lives without much trumpeting at all.

As a kind of experiment, I put two questions into Google. The first one concerns a blog that I visit nearly every morning. I know the real life name of this particular blogger but most of us know him as Cro Magnon. I had never paused to ask why he chose that pseudonym and why indeed he came up with the blog title, "Magnon's Meanderings" so I asked this and received the following response in approximately two seconds:-

This is the aforementioned America photojournalist - Paul Chesley:-

But I cannot see any link between this guy and Cro Magnon's blog. Perhaps I am missing something and confusingly there's also reference to "Lady Magnon" and a dog called Bok. Perhaps Cro Magnon himself may be able to illuminate.

Next, with curiosity, I asked this question:-

I like the idea of this blog being "notable" and also "eclectic" but I must say that I was a little surprised that after just two seconds, Google's AI Overview  was able to reveal so much knowledge about this little outpost of the internet. It's not especially gratifying - just interesting to see how deep the facility is able to go.  

I am not sure I want to visit "Rimping Supermarket" as "rimping" sounds like a rather rude activity that I  have no wish to explore. I am fine without "rimping" thank you very much! Happy to stick with "googlediving" instead.

Solidity

To all those out there in the blogosphere who thought that my "Alvin the Avenger" story was true, I have a confession to make. It was all pure, unadulterated fiction! The tyrannic reign of King Blabbermouth is not over. In fact, he has just invaded Switzerland. Sorry.

This afternoon I needed some self-therapy after all that fictionalising. With the afternoon brightening, I drove over to Stanage and parked close to the little car park  at Dennis Knoll.

At this time of year, summer swathes of vigorous green bracken have been replaced by dead and fallen vegetation that is rusty brown in colour. One advantage of this scene of death that is simply waiting for springtime is that you are better able to locate abandoned millstones.

The millstone industry probably began at Stanage Edge in the fourteenth century before peaking in the seventeenth century. The millstones were all laboriously hand-carved and were mainly used in flour production though some were used for grinding metal. They were exported far and wide.

The industry petered out at the beginning of the twentieth century when many perfectly fine millstones were simply abandoned. It was no longer cost-effective to hand carve them. They could be created with machinery instead and besides the millstone grit of Stanage Edge had been overtaken by the finer grained French "chert" which did not leave tiny grains of silica in the now fashionable pure white flour.

The result of all of this is that dozens of never-used but timeless grindstones can be found in the undergrowth below Stanage Edge. To me they are almost as evocative of times past as the famous moai statues on faraway Easter Island.

Alvin(II)

The first time I saw him, he entered a cubicle. You could hear him straining and muttering curses as I quietly replenished toilet rolls in the adjacent cubicles. I remained loitering silently in one of those conveniences as he emerged, still muttering, to wash his famously tiny hands.

He was bulkier than I had imagined and even from behind I could see how swollen his ankles were. Beyond the restroom door muffled disco music seeped inside from the golden ballroom.

"Beautiful!" he exclaimed to his own reflection as he preened what remained of his weird hair. It seemed amazing that I was effectively alone in that rest room with the bloated forty seventh president of The United States of America who clearly imagined that he was King of the World and perfectly safe in his Florida palace . However, like millions of other earthlings, I thought of him as  a narcissistic fraud, a dangerous fake president whose rampant authoritarianism needed to be stopped in its tracks. He had already caused too much hurt, too much chaos.

Somebody had to do it and I felt that the invisible finger of destiny had pointed my way. I owed it to the world and there was no turning back now.

I continued for weeks as "Good 'Ol Alvin". Other members of the maintenance team sometimes called me Chipmunk for some strange reason but I just kept on smiling inanely and humming those country and western tunes as I had done at The Palm Beach Country Club. I even got to see Dan Gilbert again and thanked him profusely for his "kind reference". What a dolt!

It was a question of biding my time and seizing the moment when it arrived. I had to be prepared. Almost twelve months  passed by with me polishing mirrors and taps, mopping floors, replacing toilet rolls and undertaking minor  plumbing repairs. "Patience", I told myself.

I had heard that He was back at Mar-a-Lago for another long golfing weekend and perhaps I would be lucky after several previous opportunities had had to be aborted - mostly because of other gentlemen using the bathroom facility.

However, on this occasion he was alone. As on the first weekend I saw him, he entered the first cubicle to defecate.  He vocalised as he strained and angrily muttered  unintelligible expletives before emerging.

He stood at the sinks washing his little hands and preening his mane, grinning at himself and saying "Beautiful!" three or four times. 

I waited until he was at the noisy electric hand dryer before swiftly grabbing my pre-prepared bucket of extra soapy water from the "Out of Order" cubicle. Silently, I flooded the marble tiled floor just behind him and as planned, the magic happened in the very second that he turned round.

His feet went from under him - as though on  black ice - and as he fell onto his back his skull thudded sickeningly against the unforgiving sink in which he had just washed his hands. Then his head hit the hard floor with a heavy scrunch. 

Almost immediately, there was blood.

I had to act quickly before somebody else came in. Most of the slippery water was mopped up in an instant and I put out  the two yellow "Wet Floor" warning cones that I had also stored in the "Out of Order" cubicle.

If he wasn't dead, he was at least out cold. The pool of blood was growing. It all appeared exactly as I had envisioned. A belligerent, entitled old man had entered the restroom, ignored the warning cones and slipped on the floor, fatally fracturing his skull. It had all the characteristics of a "terrible accident". Nothing sinister or suspicious.

I could not resist booting his fat bulk twice. "That's for Renee Good!" I hissed. And in my head I said, "That's for the deaths you caused by defunding USAID!"

With no time for anything else, I got back in the "Out of Order" cubicle with my bucket and mop, locked the  door and stood in silence on the toilet bowl so that nobody would see my feet. I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat as I waited there like a bird of prey on my porcelain perch.

And then the voices came. First an aide yelling, "Help!". Then two or three security guards arguing about what should happen. One said, "I think he's alive! Shut up guys! Call 911!" Others came and a woman - possibly Karoline Leavitt - screamed. Then ambulance personnel arrived with "Make space! Let us through!" There were flashes of photography.

Then after an hour or so, all went silent. I got down from my perch and slipped out through the cubicle door. The bleeding hulk of the odorous tyrant had gone - presumably to Sollis Health Emergency Center at Palm Beach - or maybe, if my luck was in, to a morgue.

Like other staff members, I was questioned briefly by FBI men in dark suits who took down my name and address but when my work shift was over I headed back as normal to my shabby rented room in Roosevelt Estates.

Switching on my secondhand laptop, I checked out the live TV news. A grim-faced Fox News reporter with coiffured platinum blonde hair was in the middle of an announcement: "...passed away ten minutes ago... following a fall in his Mar-a-Lago residence...I repeat..." 

Naturally, I punched the air. "Yes!"

I continued working at Mar-a-Lago for the next month,  during the period of national mourning demanded by President Vance in association with Tesla and the McDonalds Corporation - until accidentally on purpose I knocked over a priceless Chinese vase outside the therapy facility. It shattered into a thousand pieces and I was promptly frogmarched into General Manager Andrew Kiser's office where, to my inner delight, I was fired on the spot.

"I haven't got a choice Alvin!" he said.

Days later, jetting back across the Atlantic, I sat in business class sipping cold champagne while smiling the peculiar smile of a cold-hearted assassin. Nobody else in the world knew what I had done and I determined never to tell anyone. For that, my friend. is the only way to keep such a deadly secret.