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 hedge fund investors, 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...

Delusion

In 2006, the same year that Stephen King published "Lisey's Story", Richard Dawkins published "The God Delusion". I had never read it until this summer and now I have finished it. The act of reading those 450 pages was very different from the process of reading the King novel. Much more concentration required.

Of course I was drawn to the book because I have been an atheist as long as I can remember and instinctively I have always been 99.999% sure that the idea of a "God" is delusional. I realise that a few people who visit this blog are Christian believers and who knows - there may be a few Muslims, Hindus and Jews too as far as I know. But like Richard Dawkins, I firmly believe that they have all got it wrong They have been misled. It is indeed all a great big delusion.

We atheists are painfully aware that we live in societies where we are supposed to "respect" other people's views and their religious habits. If the truth be known, most atheists in general give that "respect" reluctantly while internally growling and dismissing the whole religious shebang as dangerous poppycock.

We look on as innocent children are indoctrinated with their parents' religious beliefs. Shouldn't they be allowed to form their own judgements when they are older and make properly informed decisions? How often are they presented with the illuminating possibility of atheism?

I found the early chapters of "The God Delusion" quite hard to read as they are framed in the style and language of academia. There are many quotations and references to wrestle with as Dawkins hacks his way through the troublesome undergrowth of religious belief. It can seem as though he is addressing an auditorium filled with quizzical postgraduates.

However, beyond the middle of the book I was finding the content much easier to master as the author explored such matters as the roots of morality,  Hitler and Stalin, Darwinism, the physical and mental abuse of children and the awful symbolism of the burka in Islam.

Richard Dawkins has thought the whole thing through rather like a scientist pursuing a big research assignment. Several times he paused to reflect on religiosity in America, the frightening ignorance of creationism and the unhealthy bond between religion and government over there. It's not easy to be an atheist in America and in that land of legends and fast food, folk frequently realise it's best to keep their godlessness to themselves while religious zealots espouse their nonsense and blow their proverbial horns.

Here, for your interest, are four random extracts from "The God Delusion":- 

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

&

“A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.”

&

“To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries”

&

“Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.”

The quotations above, I think, provide an authentic foretaste of the book.

First

In the entire calendar, this day, August 1st is more significant to me than July 4th (American Independence Day), April 23rd (St George's Day/ England's National Day) or December 25th when some baby or other was allegedly born in a smelly stable in faraway Bethlehem. Yes folks - it's YORKSHIRE DAY!

If you feel like getting out your bongos, your kazoos, your trumpets and your beat boxes then please do and play them with joyous delight as we celebrate all things Yorkshire. For this is a county of 5.6 million souls - slightly bigger than the population of Scotland but so often air-brushed and actively sidelined by successive London-based governments and the general British media. Where are the Yorkshire voices beyond that odious stereotypical soap opera - "Emmerdale"?

Let us celebrate flat caps and whippets, the chalky coves of Flamborough Head, The Bronte Parsonage, John Smiths Brewery, Sam Smiths Brewery, York Minster, rhubarb, parkin, Ted Hughes, Andrew Marvell, Amy Johnson, David Hockney, the curving spit of Spurn Head that guards the mouth of The Humber, the rolling Yorkshire Wolds, The Three Peaks, The Arctic Monkeys, The Human League, Joe Cocker, the coal industry that Thatcher butchered, Harold Wilson, Hull City A.F.C., Sheffield - the birthplace of modern football, Dame Judi Dench and Sir Patrick Stewart, Kevin Keegan and The Chuckle Brothers, William Wilberforce and of course the great Captain James Cook. And let us celebrate our many prehistoric sites, stainless steel and cat's eyes, the spring mousetrap and the first commercial steam railway in the world. And we give thanks for neighbourliness, kindness, common sense, hard work, bluntness and having the most beautiful no-nonsense women in the world and Wensleydale cheese, Yorkshire chutney, our public footpaths and of course, it goes without saying, the mighty Yorkshire Pudding that rises golden above all of us like a mighty pagan god.

Back in 2018, I wrote a poem to mark Yorkshire Day and I shall share it again with you today...

Yorkshire Day

August the first is Yorkshire Day!
Our hearts lift up, we shout hooray!
From Flamborough Head to the Pennine Chain
We cheer our county once again
Dear blogging friends, for what it’s worth
There’s nowhere better on this Earth.
You can keep your Sydney and L.A. too
Your South Sea isles and your Timbuctoo
I would rather walk a Yorkshire street
With Yorkshire ground beneath my feet.
From Middlesbrough to Malham Cove
Our county is a treasure trove
Of coastal path and rolling dale
And foaming pints of Yorkshire ale
Where people use their common sense
No empty words or proud pretence
A land of graft and imagination
Surely The Lord’s very best creation
So drink and feast and dance away
August the first is Yorkshire Day!

P.S. We do NOT give thanks for The Yorkshire Ripper!