Supertram

 

Is it a train? Is it a bus? No - it's Supertram! Some cities, like Melbourne in Australia or Miserable Manchester, have mere trams but Sheffield has Supertrams! They began serving this city in 1994.  It is a great system with a few lines but the network does not cover the entire city. The Edwardian system that was shut down in the 1960s was far more comprehensive. 

My nana - Nana Morris - was a Sheffield tram conductress for a couple of years in the early 1930s. I wish that I could talk to her about how it was back then but she died in 1988 just before our Frances was born. If she were still alive today she would be 125 years old. She was born just before the death of Queen Victoria.

Anyway, this past week, I went on not one but two Supertram adventures. On  Wednesday,  I travelled to the southern terminus at Halfway and on Friday I rode the tram to the northern eastern terminus at Rotherham Parkgate. Of course, my journeys were free because I am an old fogey with a senior travelcard.

On both occasions, after I reached the termini, I set off on planned long circular walks. Naturally, I wore shorts to show off my muscular Majorca-tanned legs. Keep back ladies!

I always think that "Halfway" is an odd name for a place but it is not the only one in England. It was a stagecoach stop that was literally "halfway" between Sheffield and Chesterfield. I think that's how the story goes. Nowadays Halfway is home to several modern estates with their samey, rather characterless houses.

That walk took in nearby Killamarsh, Nethermoor Lake, St Giles parish church, former railway lines and the overgrown coal mining wasteland that lies between Halfway and Killamarsh. It was a great eight mile workout for me and I saw many things of interest before getting back to the Supertram stop.

Railway footbridge at Halfway

Birds in Nethermoor Lake - once an opencast coal mine

St Giles's Church, Killamarsh

Friday saw me walking away from the Parkgate shopping complex and out into the countryside between Greasbrough and Rawmarsh before climbing the hill to Upper Haugh then down into Rawmarsh itself.

Quarry Street, Rawmarsh

That area has special resonance for me. Quarry Street, Rawmarsh is where Nana Morris was born and raised and it's where my mother and her brother Derek were also raised by my maternal great grandparents after Nana and my blood grandfather Wilfred Henry Jackson split up in or around 1929.

Mum always remembered those days with warm affection. It was the land of her heart. Years ago, when she was an old woman, I took her back to Quarry Street on a magical mystery tour. It brought tears to her eyes. When she was a girl, she could never have guessed back then how her life might turn out and of course she could not have foreseen World War Two when she volunteered to serve in The Royal Air Force.

Amazing cobbled bridleway heading up the hill to Upper Haugh

As I walked through Haugh Road Cemetery, it crossed my mind that Mr and Mrs White - my great grandparents could be buried there but in spite of looking I did not see their gravestone - that's if they even had one. I know that my great grandmother was called Annie but I have forgotten the first name of my great grandfather. This may spur me on to do a little family research.

First World War grave in Haugh Road Cemetery.

This is the grave of Fergus Law. He died of his wounds

in a convalescent hospital in Epsom, Surrey on May 15th 1917.

The bottom inscription reads:-

"SOME DAY WE'LL UNDERSTAND"

but frankly I doubt that.

"Tomorrow"

There was an old sideboard in our Majorcan villa. Half of it was filled with old paperbacks - no doubt left by previous renters. Ninety nine per cent of the titles and authors did not appeal to me with the genres being crime, horror or romance. Not my cup of tea at all.

However, amongst all that dross I spotted a rather thin novel by the living and much respected English writer - Graham Swift. Immediately, I was intrigued by the title - "Tomorrow". It reminded me of this speech by Shakespeare's Macbeth:-

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Knowing nothing about the novel, I nonetheless decided to purloin it. I liked the intriguing cover image too. As I often say, "Always judge a book by its cover".

In Majorca, when not being assailed by grandchildren, I occasionally picked up "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King so "Tomorrow" would have to wait. And then when I got home I needed to finish reading "The God Delusion". However, this week I picked up "Tomorrow". With only 247 pages it was likely to be a much swifter read (geddit?).

And I must say that I absolutely loved "Tomorrow". It was set in a suburban house in London. The narrator is forty nine year old Paula Hook.  She is wide awake but right next to her, in deep sleep, is her husband Mike. Sleeping in other rooms are their sixteen year old twins - Kate and Nick.

The little family has always been "normal", healthy and happy. Paula and Mike have had good jobs and they are comfortably off - or as we often say in Yorkshire - "not short of a bob or two". So what has Paula to fret about? Why is she awake? And why is she addressing her children?

The answer is revealed slowly. Tomorrow is going to be a momentous day, perhaps a turning point in their lives. Paula has no idea how everything will pan out so she's mulling over family history, thinking about minutiae which is what most of us do when we are awake in the middle of the night with things on our minds.

When I began reading the novel I imagined that we wouldn't be in Paula's head for very long - perhaps three or four chapters and then the drama of tomorrow would happen with everybody in the house awake and actively participating.

But I was wrong. The entire novel was Paula's sometimes confused but always tender and kindly nighttime monologue.

Of course, Graham Swift is a man so could he successfully pull off the trick of being in a woman's head? Later, I discovered that some past literary critics - all female - have derided his sterling effort. Perhaps that response was rather predictable.

To be honest I thought he did a great job of it. Intelligent, sensitive Paula is very believable though I felt that I could have done with less reference to her marital and pre-marital sex life. That jarred a little for me. Most people keep that stuff in safe boxes in their heads labelled "Private".

Here are two small  tastes of the language of "Tomorrow":-

"Everything's quiet, the house is still. Mike and I have anticipated this 

moment, we've talked about it and rehearsed it in our heads so many times..."

&

"How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same 

time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting."

I am so glad I read "Tomorrow" with zero foreknowledge, my mind untroubled by what critics might have written about it. To me it was quiet in its ordinariness and coloured with genuine humanity. Maybe I was ready for such a read but I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Graham Swift b.1949

⦿

On Wednesday I watched live streaming from Glen Hansard's funeral in Dublin. Good heavens, what an event that was! I blubbered several times. Nobody does funerals like The Irish. They know how to give a much loved relative, a friend or a hero a proper send off. And as the service ended and Glen's wickerwork casket was carried from St Patrick's Cathedral the performers and the congregation sang Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" in unison - extending it like a mystical dirge. It was as if they were singing Glen away. Outside on the green hundreds had gathered to watch the  funeral on a big screen.

Here's Glen's big brother Gary singing "I Can See God" by their uncle - Paul Cahill...

And here's the self-penned poem that Glen's wife Maire bravely read out from the lectern:-

Come to me with beauty,

I require it to stay alive.

I'm not talking of precious gifts,

nor do I want a dolled-up, dutiful

and well-assessed array of tender words.

Hurl the cash of what you've pocketed

from this day at my feet,

and then be brave enough to look me in the eye.

Push the boundary of two minds 'til it stretches,

'til there are two bodies in one embrace,

and a moment of understanding or acceptance,

or blind faith and a sense of the infinite jump and jive.

That to me is beauty, and I require it to stay alive.

Lions

Phoebe with "Heart of Oak" by Lydia Monks

Several blogposts back I told you about a new fund-raising drive by Sheffield Children's Hospital. It involves individually painted lion and lioness sculptures. Including the smaller cubs, there are three hundred to see this summer.

I saw four of them with Phoebe on Monday afternoon when we visited The Botanical Gardens. And four more outside our cathedral as I waited for a Supertram to Parkgate, Rotherham.  Needless to say, I did not go inside the holy building to pray for absolution.

I have provided four lion images to illustrate this blogpost.

This one is called "The Dame" in honour of our local

and great Olympian - Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill

Phoebe with "Queen of the Jungle"

As I know that this humble blog attracts some very kind visitors as well as fabulously wealthy bit coin investors and venture capitalists, I  ask you to consider donating to the "Pride of Yorkshire" initiative that, as I say, is raising extra funds for The Sheffield Children's Hospital which does magnificent work for children in need from this region. Check out this link. And remember that God is scoring your performance as you negotiate your earthly existence!

"Untamed" by Lisa Maltby

Odyssey

Matt Damon as Odysseus

On Tuesday of this week I went to see Christopher Nolan's film version of Homer's "The Odyssey". It has been in the news a lot recently.

My favourite film critic, Mark Kermode, voiced a few reservations about the film but in the final analysis he urged film lovers to go to see it - preferably on an IMAX screen to get the full epic effect. IMAX auditoriums provide a specialised cinema experience featuring giant, curved screens, powerful custom sound systems, and steep seating. IMAX films are created with high-resolution cameras, digital or 70mm film projection, and proprietary image enhancement to make movies feel massive and immersive. IMAX simply means - Image Maximum.

As it happens, Sheffield is home to one of the biggest IMAX screens in this country. It is within the Cineworld complex in The Don Valley.  I intended to take Mark Kermode's advice.

When I told my pub quizmates about my plan, Mick was quite keen to join me. He admitted that he hadn't visited a cinema this century even though he is a keen and pretty knowledgeable film buff with a large library of DVD recordings. Seeing "The Odyssey" on an IMAX screen would be a special treat for him.

And so we settled back into our padded seats smack in the middle of Row F. There we sat for the next three hours both hoping to be wowed by "The Odyssey".

As the final credits rolled we agreed that the experience had been okay but neither of us had been overwhelmed. There were various gripping episodes and moments such as the cave scenes with the giant cyclops Polyphemus. Quite jaw-dropping.

Mick and I agreed that at times we struggled to make out the dialogue in the booming IMAX multi-speaker sound system. We also agreed that Matt Damon was terrific as Odysseus - one of the best film roles he has ever played.

Mark Kermode said that Samantha Morton's portrayal of the sorceress - Circe had been faultless but in our blunt Yorkshire way we thought it was "nowt special".

I was a little irked by the modern American English accents and it did not sit right with me when Telemachus (Tom Holland) refers to Penelope (Anne Hathaway) as his "mum" and to Odysseus as his "dad". In addition, it seemed odd that Helen's part was played by a well-known black actress - Lupita Nyong'o and Odysseus's second-in-command, Eurylochus was played by British-Asian actor Himesh Patel. In my discomfort about this I guess I may be quite old-fashioned but certainly not racist.

"The Odyssey" was created with the assistance of a $250 million budget but it has already grossed £950 million at the box office. This is a phenomenal return. I guess that in making this film, Christoher Nolan had to ensure that it would appeal to the mass market and this key factor would surely have influenced a lot of his choices.

By the way and co-incidentally, it is claimed that Homer, the famous author of "The Odyssey",  was buried on the island of Ios - not very far from where I was rescued by Greek fishermen in my own little odyssey. It was his mother's home island.

Anne Hathaway as Penelope

Poem

The Summer of '26

In that summer of summers

The living was easy

As swallows skimmed 

Shrinking reservoirs

And purple emperors

Were seen sometimes in Surrey

Where people peered from windows

And The Strait of Hormuz

Seemed so very far away - like

Cricketers in a heat haze.

In that summer of summers

Apples fell too early
The size of ping pong balls
And I remembered past voices
As I walked these urban streets
In pools of cool starlight

Foxes dashing to Bannerdale

And weather people speaking of 

Jet stream patterns and UV rays.

In that summer of summers
Green lost its verdancy
Youths drowned tragically in rivers
Squeezed from distant hills
As desperate animals sought shade
In fields of burnt ochre and beige
And climate preachers wrung hands
Before robotic cameras
As our summer lawns ceased hissing.

Photo-illustration - Sheffield Botanical Gardens  August 3rd 2026

Continued...

August 31st 1982, Ios, Greece

The north west coast of Ios

"At about seven thirty, with the sinking sun about to touch the western horizon, I saw the sihouette of a motorised fishing boat - about a quarter of a mile offshore. 

Luckily, I had my little shaving mirror with me so I did my best to flash it at the boat. Maybe I'd read about this being done before in one of the adventure books I read as a boy but would it work? And I waved my white shirt overhead like a flag.

The boat passed out of view. My heart sank for several moments. They had not spotted me! But then, almost magically, the boat nudged back round the right headland and came into view. They were heading for my cove, my human containment trap.

Awkwardly and by now in a state of exhaustion, I was able to clamber aboard the blue and white fishing vessel in spite of the swell but with the welcome assistance of crew members. They did not speak a word of English but it was obvious that they were on their way out for some night fishing. I imagined I would have to spend that night with them which rather appealed to me - casting nets in Aegean moonlight as mariners did in Ancient Greece. But I was dehydrated and hungry. 

The fishermen gave me cold water which I  gulped down  like air as I pointed out the northern beach that I had tried to  reach. I indicated that they could deposit me there and I could then walk in the gloaming - back to Ios Town.

Before the four fishermen took me into the beach I tried to offer them money as a reward for possibly saving my life - "For birra! For retsina!"  but they refused it so I just shook their hands and thanked them profusely. I waved my saviours off to the purple and  rose horizon where shafts of golden sunlight indicated that the day was conclusively over and what is more - I was saved!

The walk across the island, along a rough and stony track was at least two miles. I stopped at a well to drink and later purloined a bunch of juicy grapes, overhanging from a little stone enclosure. How deliciously sweet they were.

Once back at the port of Ios, I went into the first taverna and bought a 1½ litre bottle of mineral water with a bottle of beer.  Camel-like I gulped the liquid down as I waited for a plate of traditional Greek food - egg and chips. That cost me just 65 drachmas.

I was soon joined by a Welsh gardener who had ordered another traditional Greek dish - sausage roll and chips with baked beans!

After this I walked to another bar for another beer and there I picked up a recent copy of "The Sunday People" which held my attention for a few minutes before the walk along the coast to Sunset Beach (known locally as Koumbara) where I was sleeping. Moonlight sparkled on the gentle sea waves -  so beautiful to see and after what had happened that day I felt so grateful to be alive.

I slid into my sleeping bag feeling contented and comfortable but when I arrived at the very edge of sleep I heard a rustling in the back of my shelter - no more than eighteen inches from my head. I sat up with my torch and saw a brown rat cowering with its coal black eyes. 

Hell, I have seen many rats and it never bothered me but I did not particularly wish to sleep with one! I pulled my sleeping bag out of the shelter and took it down to the beach's  tidemark and there I slept till morning light appeared again. I was woken by a labrador puppy from The Sunset Beach Taberna. He walked right across me and licked my face.

I have shaved this morning, had some coffee, studied more pages of "Hamlet" and now I am sitting in the taverna with a lemonade. No more rocky coves for me! Andros, the grizzled proprietor, has just played one side of an old Leonard Cohen album:-

Like a worm on a hook

Like a knight from some old fashioned book

I have saved all my ribbons for thee...

&

Now so long, Marianne, it's time that we began

to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again."

⦿

Most people face more than one brush with death as they travel through life and that time on the island of Ios was certainly one of my close scrapes. No wonder I had blogged about it previously - here in 2010 before I  recently rediscovered my little journal from the summer of 82. The first version was drawn entirely from memory but this second version is an actual transcript of what I wrote down soon after the event - while I was still on Ios.

1982

 August 31st 1982, Ios, Greece

"There were no paths. I just guessed where the beach would be. I slid down the cliff and to my dismay found I was in the wrong place - there was only a small pebble beach and fallen rocks with crumbly, sun-scorched cliffs all around.

Anyway, I decided to make the most of it. I swam and sunbathed, drank my water and read "Hamlet" until - at around one o'clock, I decided to leave the trap I had so willingly put myself in.

In that hot Aegean sun, I struggled upward  but when I was about fifty feet above that inaccessible beach, with unforgiving rocks below, I slid and slipped back about ten feet. Glued to the crumbling, unstable cliff-face, I trembled as a current of fear coursed through me and it was a few minutes before I became calm enough to descend the cliff, ever so slowly. Arriving in the secret cove had been easy enough and I never considered that ascending would be an issue when I decided to leave.

Over the next two hours, I made half a dozen attempts to climb out of the cove via the rocks on each side but found unassailable cliff faces after a while - on both sides. I had my blue day bag with me containing passport, wallet, air ticket etc. so I couldn't have attempted to swim a mile around the headland back to safety even if that had been something other than an entirely desperate idea.

I was more than tired because of my exertions so I found some shade in the lee of a large rock and simply rested for an hour or so trying to regather my strength. I was thirsty but all of my water had been consumed just before I attempted my first aborted ascent.

Around four that afternoon, I tried another route out of there but the same thing happened as before - the rock face crumbling under my hands and feet as I tried to find some purchase. Then I asked myself a question - if a boat passed by out beyond the bay would I signal for help?  The answer was a resounding "Yes" for I was more than a little scared and hyper-aware of my dangerous situation.

Again I rested, conserving energy but no boats came by so I tried yet another route up the cliff - my blue "Fjallraven" bag around my neck - but this effort was like all the rest - useless. If I had fallen I would undoubtedly meet death - either immediately or slowly  through serious injury. It was clear that nobody ever went there.

Where were the boats? Sunset was getting closer. I was starting to think that I would have to spend the night there with the sea and the sun-baked rocks and an empty water bottle. Would this in fact be my last resting place?"

To be continued...