Awakening

Last Sunday, I walked up our long garden with little Margot. On the way, we passed the stump of the old horse chestnut tree. It was felled four years ago and I now use it as an extra bird table. I was quite efficient at removing any signs of new growth as we did not want the tree to grow back via side shoots.

On Tuesday afternoon, I took our kitchen  caddy bin up to the large compost bins that are situated near the top of the garden. Again this involved passing by the horse chestnut tree stump. Within those forty eight hours, something amazing had happened.

A lot of mushrooms had burst forth from the earth - dozens of them in clusters. We had never seen fungi there before and I am sure it was connected with the dying tree stump and its roots that no doubt reach out like tentacles beneath the soil's surface.

Perhaps the air temperature and the autumn moisture in the air had ignited this sudden burgeoning of life. And it's funny how this should have happened just as I was beginning to read the book I recently retrieved from a drystone wall - "Entangled Life". It is all about fungi and the secret worlds it occupies across the globe.

Our fungi is I believe a common honey fungus. It is especially connected with dead tree root systems and can be quite destructive in any garden - perhaps spreading to other susceptible plants. There are no known chemical treatments that can successfully destroy honey fungi. You either live with it or dig out old tree roots and stumps before burning them. Some gardeners even bury rubberised barriers like pond liners in the ground to prevent the potential spread of honey fungi but there's no way I will be doing that. I prefer to let nature simply takes its course.

McKee

I think I have blogged about Pete McKee before. Let me see... Yes! Go here.

He is a fifty nine year old Sheffield artist who found his own, distinctive  style some years ago. His work is much loved in this city and many homes display original McKees or prints of his work.

A typical painting by Pete McKee - "Spit and Polish"

He grew up on the Batemoor housing estate to the south of the city and attended a secondary school where I used to teach. In fact, he was there at the same time as me in the early eighties.

The city's Weston Park Museum honoured him last year by inviting him to curate an exhibition of his own work and through the past eleven months that particular gallery has been very popular. I had been before with the granddaughters but I vowed to go back on my own so that I could soak it all up without distraction on a quiet midweek afternoon. That absorption day was Wednesday of this week.

Pete McKee based this painting on a seaside photo booth snap

Only a few months later his mother would be dead.

Through the paintings and the carefully considered labels that sit alongside each one Pete McKee bared his heart. His mother died when he was only seven years old and that tragedy has stayed with him like a tattoo. He knew deprivation but his two brothers, his older sister and his widowed father gave him a loving family home which he recalls with gratitude, affection and good humour.

He has always been passionate about music and his football club - Sheffield Wednesday. His pride in the city of his birth is almost tangible. He would not want to come from anywhere else.

Pete McKee's painting of Sheffield's "pram man" - John Burkhill

who has raised over £1 million for Macmillan Cancer Support

Pete McKee does not paint for high brow intellectuals and he does not have some lofty philosophy to convey through his art. His style is simple and cartoonish, rooted in his experience and the warm, often humorous way that he looks at the world around him.

There were some instructional videos at the exhibition

I thoroughly enjoyed those two hours of absorption and I am very glad that I took the trouble to go back before the exhibition shuts down next month. Thank you Pete!

"The Wake" - Pete McKee recalled his mother's funeral when he was seven

BOSH!

That's my boy Ian on the right. With Henry, who is on the left, they formed a vegan food company nine years ago. It is called BOSH! They have had a big impact as vegan influencers and have sold over a million cookbooks.

Recently they have been working with Britain's biggest supermarket chain to produce a new range of vegan ready meals. The supermarket chain is called TESCO and earlier this week the BOSH! ready meals started to appear in hundreds of TESCO supermarkets throughout Great Britain. Smaller TESCO stores are not yet stocking these new BOSH! products but all of the bigger stores are. It is quite a coup.

I keep my fingers crossed that this initiative will really work out for Ian, Henry and their team. The truth is that TESCO are very skilled when it comes to launching new products. They tend not to back losers.

This evening our family evening meal consisted entirely of the new BOSH! products:  

• N’duja Sourdough Pizza
• Margarita Sourdough Pizza
• Creamy No-Duja Pasta
• Goan Chickpea Curry
• Creamy Mac & Greens
• Teriyaki Mushroom Noodles
• Hearty Vegetable Lasagne
• Ultimate Bean Chilli

They were all very tasty and though we think a couple of the dishes could be tweaked a bit more we were pretty delighted with the range. I especially liked the Teriyaki Mushroom Noodles, the Creamy No-Duja Pasta and the Margarita Sourdough Pizza.

I should apologise to North American, German, Swedish, Irish and Australian visitors because currently you won't be able to purchase these new BOSH! products in your local supermarkets but here in Great Britain I hope that some of you guys will look out for BOSH! chilled ready meals in the cold display aisles at TESCO.

Needless to say, I am pretty proud of that son of mine. To make it with TESCO is quite a thing.

Poem

 

Utopia

There you can be who you want to be -
Nobody’s yelling or carrying on.
Pure brooks replenish rivers
Fit for swimming and drinking
And on the seashore, no tangled plastic
Nor the matted corpses of seabirds.

There you can really create stuff -
No one’s dissing your best endeavours.
Sleep is easy in the quiet safety of home
With dreams that are serene
And on the TV screen no endless tales of crime
Nor gloomy broadcasts all the flaming time.

There you feel you are truly living -
Nothing’s menacing your peace of mind as
Starlings flock in rhythmical shoals
When autumn days submit to dusk
And on the edge of felicity - no sudden thuds
Nor faraway grey thunder grumbling.

Elsecar

It's not too far to Elsecar. Using my South Yorkshire Senior Travelcard, I paid only £3.50 for my return rail journey (American $4.70). From Elsecar Station, I plodded a six mile circular route in sweet autumnal sunshine. 

The walk took me in the vicinity of Wentworth Woodhouse - a palatial mansion that is currently being restored by an army of volunteers. It was the country seat of the influential Fitzwilliam family. They were fabulously rich and in the  eighteenth century even had spare money to build several follies within sight of the grand house - such as Needle's Eye - shown above.

Close to that edifice, I passed Stump Cross Cottages that were knocked through to create one larger residence. This was the scene at the front with a compass design over the bricked up doorway and Halloween gourds on the table... 

In the estate village of Wentworth, I took pictures of two churches named Holy Trinity. Below is what remains of the old church that was superseded  in the 1870s by the bigger church in the next photo. This was funded by a member of the Fitzwilliam family - William Thomas Spencer Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, the 6th Earl Fitzwilliam. He and his wife Lady Frances had fourteen children. His vast wealth was derived almost totally from coal mining though he never raised a pickaxe himself.

Back in Elsecar, I spotted this magnificent residential building basking in the October sunshine - Fitzwilliam Lodge. It was built in the mid-nineteenth century to accommodate single men who were coal miners in the nearby pit. More recently, it has been converted into single unit apartments.

Along my way, I spotted this tantalising sign nailed to a telegraph pole and it has already given me an idea for tomorrow's hideously unpopular post. You might be able to guess what is stewing inside my thick skull...

Sisters

 

Margot and Phoebe yesterday afternoon. Sitting on the step in our kitchen drinking mugs of hot chocolate before their Sunday roast. Margot has learnt to stick her hand out like a traffic policeman as she says, "Stop it Grandpa!" Meanwhile Phoebe's ability to catch footballs has improved tremendously and she is really starting to get the hang of reading now. You should have seen her little face light up when I said, "Wow! That's amazing Phoebe. I am so proud of you!"

Sorry the picture is slightly blurry. It was a quick snapshot capturing that happy sisterly moment in the early autumn of 2025.

Meantime, I caught another train today - off on another photo walk. I will say more about that in tomorrow's blogpost. Nowadays, at Sheffield railway station, travellers are greeted by a massive image of a bottle of "Henderson's Relish" which has been produced in this city since 1885. Though perhaps similar to Worcestershire sauce, it contains no anchovies and is therefore suitable for vegans and vegetarians. I struggled to get the full picture of the bottle...

Fashion

 

Poor old  Meghan Markle (Duchess of Sussex). She came over to Europe in order to attend The Paris Fashion Week. Tragically, her luggage must have been temporarily lost in transit - but being ever resourceful, she cleverly swathed herself in hotel bed linen before attending the first event in her diary. In my humble opinion, the outfit looks kind of cool but unmistakably it's still bed linen. I hope she informed the hotel management beforehand. Apparently, the little black clutch bag contained a sausage roll and a "Mars" bar in case Meghan needed a snack while sitting next to the cat walk.

All international fashion weeks are important as they set the direction for high street fashions in the year ahead. I know that many women who visit this humble Yorkshire blog are very fashion-conscious and keen to keep up with modern trends. I doubt many of you will be engaging with Meghan's wraparound  bed sheet idea but the following Maison Alaïa outfit has appeared in Paris this year and I predict that in a few months you will all be wearing it. See how thrilled the model was to be clad in such a trailblazing combo...

Maison Alaïa helpfully explained..."Clothes move like kinetic sculpture, living, animated with pleats and drapes. Hoods conceal and reveal, framing faces like a portrait of a woman, a portrait of beauty.

Body consciousness here means a consciousness of the body, inside its dress, protective and cocooning. It is also a consciousness and reflection of femininity, clothes shaped to mirror the topography of the female form through curves and padding, through layers that act like an armour to shield.

Your body is yours."

We should all remember the wisdom of that final remark when purchasing new clothes... "Your body is yours".  I must admit that previously I never thought of my body that way.