Yorkshire Pudding

9 February 2026

Survey

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1 . How long have you been visiting "Yorkshire Pudding"?

First and only visit today ⬜

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It feels like forever ⬜

2. How would you rate the quality of writing?

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I cannot understand what the hell he is saying ⬜

He tries to show off by using big words⬜

Tremendous, almost Shakespearean ⬜

3. Please rate the range of blogpost content

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Disappointingly narrow ⬜

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Old-fashioned and unappealing ⬜

It looks like the back end of a bus ⬜

Too damned green and the text is too small ⬜

Like a work of art . A true joy to behold. ⬜

5. How would you describe the author of this blog?

As mad as a hatter ⬜

Bigoted and intolerant ⬜

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6. Would you recommend "Yorkshire Pudding" to your friends?

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Wholeheartedly and with much enthusiasm ⬜

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8 February 2026

Blue

White Nancy above Bollington, Cheshire

What a grey old time we have been experiencing in The People's Republic of Yorkshire in recent weeks. Not only have we suffered biblical rains, the sky above us has been a thick light grey canopy that mutes all colours and seems to drain away the landscape's very lifeblood. Fifty shades of grey.

In periods like the current one, you start to crave the colours and the brightness that you know Nature is capable of providing. The hues of spring and summer. I looked into my extensive library of summertime images for blue skies. All of the pictures that accompany this text were taken in the month of June.

The photos are, I think, a nice reminder that colour will, in the course of time, return and the enveloping grey blanket will be turned back far beyond the horizons that surround us.

Yesterday, under the grey above, I drove over to Hull to see my beloved Tigers beaten by Bristol City. This only added to the gloom. However it was nice to have a passenger - Karl from Wickersley near Rotherham. We conversed throughout the one hour journey and all the way back like bona fide chatterboxes.

Karl is only 62 but he has been battling kidney cancer for which he is receiving immunotherapy. He has had one kidney removed but the battle for life is still very much on. It was great that he felt fit enough to make it to the football. Shame the lads out there on the pitch couldn't send him home with a happier result.

As arranged, we also met my old friend Tony in the stadium. Years ago Karl and Tony were nursing colleagues in Sheffield's Weston Park Hospital. Perhaps ironically, it specialises in cancer treatment.

Limestone field barn near Monyash, Derbyshire

House in Chinley, Derbyshire

King of The Llamas near Tissington, Derbyshire

Dead tree on Low Moor, just west of Sheffield

7 February 2026

"Melania"

Have you been thinking of going to see the new blockbuster documentary film, "Melania"? Perhaps you need the help of a widely respected British film critic giving his honest views on the film after sitting through all 104 minutes of a production that cost $40 million to make and was mostly funded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

Hyped up in some quarters and derided in others, it's hard to know what to think but here Mark Kermode provides his expert independent view of "Melania". It should help you to decide:-

6 February 2026

Housekeeping

Nothing stays the same except impermanence.

Here at "Yorkshire Pudding" I have seen bloggers come and go. Once favoured blog buddies suddenly dry up and you wonder where they have gone when their once regular outputs shrink to nothing - often without explanation. Maybe they just get bored with the whole blogging show. It can happen.

Over at Geograph, I have been contributing images of the fabulous British Isles for over sixteen years. On that marvellous site, I have witnessed several unexplained departures. Members who contributed pictures just about every week suddenly ceased and we heard no more from them. I know that death has been the reason in several instances but often the disappearances have been unexplained.

It's just the same.

I know that it might sound ridiculous to non-bloggers but in the blogosphere you build up affection for and loyalty to other bloggers. They become like real friends but without the face-to-face familiarity or physical presence.

Here I regularly corresponded with bloggers that you might never have heard of... Daphne Franks in Leeds, Alkelda the Gleeful and Brad the Gorilla in Seattle and the troubled authoress of "Friday's Web" in North Carolina. They were special people but then they went away. I am sure that other long term bloggers have witnessed similar departures.

Now on to the present day and I look at my blog sidebar where thirty two other blogs are listed. But not all of them are active and it gets tiresome clicking on the links to discover that nothing has changed. These blogs are effectively frozen in time. And I often worry about the authors. Are they okay?

Sometimes the silent blogs will spark up again - but usually not for long. In the meantime, previously unseen blogs may have caught my interest without yet gaining a coveted place in the Yorkshire Pudding sidebar.

Anyway, today is the day for some blog housekeeping to happen. Though it saddens me to say this, I shall later remove:-

"A Yorkshire Memoir" - Tasker Dunham has not blogged since January 1st and this may be down to his challenging health battles. If you are reading this Tasker, I wish you all the best my friend.

"Arctic Fox" - Jason has not blogged since December 20th. Previously he had a ten year absence.

"Crafty Cats Corner" - Sweet Briony has not blogged since November 3rd.

"The Last Visible Dog" - Lovely Kate Steeds in New Zealand has not published since March of last year.

And the only blogs I intend to add to the sidebar today are:-

"To Baldly Go" - created by Kirt in another part of Sheffield - though we have never met.

"House Dust and Wander Lust" - from Diaday in Dayton, Ohio. This is a blog that I have only recently started to get into.

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To Tasker, Jason, Briony and Kate - can I just say that if you decide to return to the blogging fold, please give me a nod so that I can reinstate you.

5 February 2026

Starvation

Never before in my life have I had a day without food. I have been thinking about doing it for a while - just to see how it might be, how my body and brain might react. Of course, I realised that being on "Mounjaro" might somehow cushion cravings on this (perhaps) once-in-lifetime day.

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09.00 After six and a half hours sleep, I came downstairs to sit at this computer. I have a glass of warm water in front of me. Shirley has already gone out to the gym where she is a frequent attendee. Lying in bed, I thought to myself that sitting around in the house would not be a good way of suppressing food cravings so I am going to have a shower very soon and then go out to the retail park at Norton to hopefully purchase an umbrella for Phoebe and a replacement large coffee cup for me. Shirley accidentally smashed the old one that I have been using for the past sixteen years, Frances brought it back from Birmingham Southern College in Alabama. It was an Alpha Omicron Pi sorority mug. So far, I am happy with the warm water and feel calm about the unusual day ahead.

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01.30 Back from the retail park at Norton where I bought two new mugs, replacement kitchen tongs and an umbrella for Phoebe so that if we again have to pick her up from school on a rainy day she will stay drier than before.

I have just sat down with a glass of warm water. Nothing to eat yet and no particular cravings either. My tummy is not rumbling and I do not have a headache. So far so good. I will see how I am feeling at around 18.00 when we usually have our evening meal.

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19.00 I have been doing some sorting out in this study, wondering why the hell am I so bad at throwing stuff away.

Still no food has passed my lips. Shirley had her evening meal half an hour ago though I did not prepare it as I usually do.

Thoughts about food have crossed my mind but no urgent cravings. I am okay. I keep drinking glasses of warm water. Is my face a little flushed? I think it is. Perhaps not eating has weirdly pushed up my blood pressure. I will test it in a little while.

Taking my evening anti-hypertension medication was something I hadn't really thought about before. Does it count as food? I am supposed to swallow those particular pills in the evening at mealtime - Atorvastatin, Ramipril and Lercanidipine hydrochloride. Surely, one day won't matter.

I think I have been a little hyperactive this afternoon. I changed the cartridges on our "Canon" printer and reformatted three pieces of memoir writing from this blog that I plan to give to Richard and Jackie when I see them on Friday. He asked me to do this.

I have also riffled through some old papers and keepsakes that I had not looked at in years. Why do I keep them?

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23.45 Still no food all day. Just warm water. I have been trying to avoid the news fallout from the horrible Epstein business over here in Great Britain. In my judgement, our prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer will sadly have to leave office very soon. It's hard to imagine him carrying on even though he never even met Epstein. But in order to curry favour with Trump, he asked Peter Mandelson to become the new British ambassador to the USA. This is widely being seen now as an act of bad judgement, inflated by political opponents and right wing newspapers.

I like Keir Starmer. In my opinion, he is a decent, intelligent democrat who has worked hard for this country in difficult circumstances but the wolves are out to get him. He will have to go. Shame we can't say that same about America's current political leader who was Epstein's best friend and no doubt still holds on to a lot of significant information that could benefit the victims' cause.

About my day of starvation - or brief fast if you like - I have noticed one visible result. You may not like to hear this but the urine I am passing has become the same colourless, crystal-clear hue as the warm water I have been drinking.

I could eat something before going to bed having just about passed the twenty four hour target but I am not going to. I will sleep on an empty stomach and eat a bowl of porridge in the morning.

It has been a lot easier than I imagined it might be.

4 February 2026

Film

Weeks can go by without me noticing any films that I might like to see in the only Sheffield cinema I ever visit these days - "The Showroom". However, this week I walked into the city centre specially to see "H is for Hawk" which is based on the book of the same name by Helen MacDonald. I finished reading that book by our hotel pool in Sicily a couple of years ago and reviewed it here.

The book and the film tell the true story of Helen Macdonald's grief upon the death of her much loved father and of her relationship with a goshawk that she trained. She was a Cambridge academic - quite highly strung and disorganised but happy - until the day her father died.

In a way, the goshawk became her remedy for the pain of losing her father but the relationship she forged with this wild creature became a kind of torment that threatened to drive her to the edge of madness.

Helen's central role in the film was given to the English actress Claire Foy who I believe starred in "The Crown" - though I never saw one moment of that yukky nonsense. Claire Foy was brilliant in "H is for Hawk", acting with sensitivity, reserve and full commitment to what was a very challenging role. So very different from back in 2014 when she played Janet Shearon, wife of American astronaut Neil Armstrong, in the biopic "First Man".

I understand that Claire Foy put in many hours familiarising herself with goshawks so that when it's just her and the bird on screen, the relationship appears very believable.

One film critic that I greatly respect is Mark Kermode and I was pleased to see that he rated "H is for Hawk" very highly. He commented warmly on the musical score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch and how it had enhanced the drama - especially in the scenes where Mabel, the goshawk, is flying or hunting.

So yeah, yesterday's forty five minute walk to the cinema was well worth it.

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Tomorrow's blogpost will be titled "Starvation". Read it here exclusively on "Yorkshire Pudding"... the blog they tried to ban!

3 February 2026

Quiztime

Well, it has been a while since I last concocted a quiz for your entertainment or disgruntlement. It's way past time for another one. As you know, some famous people are mononymous - like the Glaswegian singer Lulu for example. Her real first name was always Marie. What were the birth forenames of these ten people? As usual you will find the answers in the the comments section that follows.

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1. Sting (leader of The Police)