Zen

Today...A five mile walk in the nearby Peak District. The weather was as perfect as weather can be and the air was crystal clear. I slogged up Parkin Clough and then a flatter path that later descended to the tiny village of Aston. On to the slightly larger village of Thornhill before following the bed of an old railway that led back to Yorkshire Bridge where Butch was parked. I felt very calm in a Zen kind of way and took several rests along the route - sometimes just to pause and appreciate the beauty around me. A day like this one - it seemed like a reward for enduring the short grey days of January and February. There was light and greenery and new born lambs and it felt very good to be alive.

Retirement blooms in Aston - specially for fellow blogger Mr Steve Reed.

Bark

For no particular reason, I saved a piece of bark from Ian's horse chestnut tree. That tree had grown from a conker that he picked up when he was three years old. Over thirty six years, it grew to the height of about forty feet and was clearly bothering one of our next door neighbours. Following heart-wrenching considerations, we decided to have it chopped down.

Back in 2024, I took two or three of the resulting logs I had saved to a skilled woodturner south of Chesterfield and he created two lovely bowls for me which I later presented to Ian on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. That had been my intention all along. I blogged about this here.

Getting back to the piece of bark. It  had sat on one of the book shelves in my study for several months. It had vaguely crossed my mind that I could paint something on it.

I had never shown Ian the bark before. 

At lunchtime today he was preparing to return to London with Zachary when I showed him the bark which had entirely dried out and also stood up stably  on my shelf. I told him of my vague idea about painting something on it and immediately he said, "You could paint a tree!"

Yes! I thought to myself. Yes I could! In fact I could paint something resembling our lost horse chestnut tree. Not a realistic, photographic kind of picture but something more naive than that - as might befit a curled piece of bark.

Late this afternoon, I got out my oil paints and within ninety minutes, I had created this...

And what is more, I am pretty happy with it. It was nice to paint on a natural surface that is not flat. Now I am wishing that I had saved more pieces of bark. But this was the only one and if he wants it  another gift for Ian whose flat in London is, by the way, almost clutter-free. In that respect, he certainly does not take after his father.

Easter

Stewart prepared a special Easter Sunday dinner. The Lamb of God was on the menu with roasted potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, leeks, carrots, parsnips and peas. For dessert, Shirley had followed the vegan sticky toffee pudding recipe in the first "Bosh!" cook book  and all was good.

Earlier there had been an Easter egg hunt for the little ones and then we all went off to a Sheffield museum that I had not visited in many years - The Emergency Services Museum at West Bar.

Greatly improved and still run by volunteers, it was a perfect excursion for all of us and we finished up in the museum's little cafe enjoying a light lunch. We had seen police cars, ambulances, fire engines and even a redundant lifeboat called "City of Sheffield". We all enjoyed the visit. As you might imagine, I will be coming back to this museum in a future post.

On the way there,  the roads had been blocked off near Sheffield Children's Hospital as 750 motorcyclists arrived at Weston Park on what has become an annual charity parade - raising funds for that wonderful  hospital's amazing work. Many of the bikers were in fancy dress.

The pictures that accompany this blogpost were all snapped  on this rather happy family  day. I have much to be grateful for and the best thing is - I know it.

Saturday

 

They all went down to the park while I vacuumed the entire house, put a week's worth of washing on the line, mowed the lawn and prepared the evening meal. There was a meat chilli, vegan chilli, basmati rice, grated cheese  and soft wholemeal pitta breads.

They were having fun while I slaved away. A man's work is never done.

Ian is up from London with Zach and of course we had Stew, Frances, Phoebe and Margot round for the welcome home feast - followed by cream cakes and fresh fruit. Fortunately, Shirley helped out by setting the table. I was so grateful for her kind assistance. After all, I am sure you know how lazy some women can be around the home.

After finishing my ironing and washing up the pots - or putting them in the dishwasher - I slumped down on the sofa. Cousins Margot and Zachary were playing on the carpet. Zach loves little cars and other tiny vehicles. Ambulances and police cars are particular favourites.

On the other hand, Margot likes her dolls and shows nascent maternal qualities as she pats them or pushes them around. She speaks very sweetly to them.

Nobody consciously encouraged these stereotypical behaviours.

Margot and Zach's "due date" was just the same - in late October 2023 but Zach arrived on October 24th and Margot waited until November 2nd to pop her little head out. Just nine days separates them and it's interesting to observe how they are developing.

In the picture, Zach is holding my desk calculator. Phoebe has taken a shine to this helpful mathematical aid and recently she has asked for it as soon as she steps in our house. Because of this we decided to order her her own calculator and it arrived this very evening courtesy of Amazon. She was thrilled to bits.

Maybe I can now reclaim my own calculator which she taps away at as though it was a little laptop or something. She is usually oblivious to the random strings of numbers she churns out. She just likes the object's tangibility  and it is the same with my little magnifying glass and the foam wrist pad I use with my mouse.

Now I mustn't hang about any more. Shirley has her feet up watching a chick flick on the TV and she has yelled that she needs a cup of tea and one of my homemade scones. I also have some cucumber pickling and sock darning to do before I can hit the hay. Roll on Sunday!

Politics

Pudding Party  General Secretary  Grace Honeyman at the recent rally in Sheffield

A new political party has just been launched in Great Britain. It has been under construction for several months but now the curtain has been flung back to reveal The Pudding Party. Surely this will be the answer to all the disenchantment with politics, to dismissive electors who refuse to vote or simply cannot be bothered, to dumb moaning minnies who grumble "They're all the same!", to Nigel Farage and the Nazi Party Reform Party, to Zack Polanski and The Eat-Your-Greens.

Arise The Puddings! Your time has come... But every political party needs policies and The Pudding Party currently has just five headline policies to attract voters to our noble cause.

1) It will be the law that when it is your birthday you are entitled to an extra day off work or school. Retired people  will receive free bags of frozen Yorkshire puddings.

2) All vaping retail outlets will be shut down and vaping in any public places will be outlawed - attracting hefty fines, short prison sentences or flogging.

3) The voting records of American visitors to Great Britain to be carefully checked before entry decisions are made. Any visitors found guilty of voting for Donald J. Trump to be sent back in disgrace - without leave for appeal.

4) Poetry appreciation, artistic creativity, music making, pottery and Nature to become the lead subjects in every school curriculum. Mathematics to be resigned to history  as all number work can now happen on electronic calculators.

5) Desperate homeless people will be bussed to large second homes around the country that happen to remain empty most of the year - such as Sandringham House in Norfolk. There they will live comfortably with the cost of food and other basic needs met by the millionaire and billionaire classes who will unfortunately have no choice in the matter.

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Of course The Pudding Party has numerous other policies in the pipeline and naturally  there is the important issue of how handsomely the leader of The Pudding Party will be rewarded for his wise representation.

As yet, we have no idea who that leader will be but he could well be the bloke I sometimes see in the mirror. The one who regularly looks back at me as if to say, "What's it all about...Alfie?"

If you are interested in joining The Pudding Party you must first suggest  one extra policy that the party should seriously consider adopting.

Blonde

Just in case you were wondering, Jesus was a blonde. This fact was confirmed when I visited Christ Church yesterday - in the affluent Sheffield suburb of Dore. There was Jesus in a stained glass window looking very holy and as blonde as many Scandinavians. It made me wonder - did Jesus come from Denmark?

To tell you the truth, I do not think about Jesus very often and I have certainly never asked him to come into my life or anything like that. To me, he's just a heroic character in a story that may or may not have had its seed in long ago happenings during the Roman occupation of Palestine. That tale was later embellished by storytellers, medieval monks and others with vested interests in perpetuating the Jesus legend - including The Romans.

In Egypt, a civilisation flourished for two thousand years before Jesus was allegedly born in Bethlehem. How did they cope without his presence? The same over in China - five thousand years of civilisation before so-called missionaries arrived with the tale of Jesus. And then there were the Aztecs, the Incas, the Khmers, ancient cultures on the Indian subcontinent. All of them seem to have evolved and thrived without the Christian God and his only begotten son. How did they do that?

I looked up to The Blonde Jesus in Dore church and asked for explanation and enlightenment but Blonde Jesus never answered me. If the truth be known, he never does respond. It's all just imagining and wishful thinking.

I am sorry if this blogpost has offended any Christian believers and practitioners who visit this humble Yorkshire  blog. I know that there are a few of you out there. Were you aware that Jesus was a blonde and not a swarthy, dark-haired middle-easterner?  

Baksheesh

Baksheesh (or bakshish) refers to small sums of money, tips, or gratuities given in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa. Originating from Persian, it covers a range of payments from legitimate tipping for services (guides, hotel staff) to small bribes or "sweeteners" used to expedite services, bureaucracy, or provide alms. (Thanks to The University of Google for this definition)

Of course I knew about the phenomenon of baksheesh long before visiting Egypt. Over there it seemed that every Egyptian you encountered was after a tip or backhander. I guess it is an endemic feature of their culture.

When we visited The Aswan Museum on Elephantine Island, I paid for two entrance tickets. To tell you the truth, I do not think we were given official tickets and suspect that the fellow at the gate had a little fraud game going on - depriving the museum of much needed funds.

Once we were in, another  Egyptian man just latched onto us to guide us around the small museum. He never asked or anything and I found his presence quite irritating because it interfered with my reading of the explanatory labels. There were some mind-blowing exhibits from ancient times at a place that connected ancient Egypt with the Nubian region and Sudan to the south.

Obviously, our "helpful" guide was after some Egyptian pounds so I generously gave him £50 - the equivalent of about 70 British pence or one American dollar. He looked at this offering as if I had just put a sheet of used toilet paper on his palm but in spite of his discourteous grumbling, he was not getting any more from me.

The museum is right next to a gate that leads you into the site of The Temple of Khnum who was the "Lord of the First Cataract" and considered to be the creator of humanity, moulding souls on a potter's wheel. The temple served as the centre for his worship.It is now a ruinous site that has been investigated by various teams of German and Swiss archaeologists.

Annoyingly, at the gate, another Egyptian fellow latched himself onto us with one prime motive - money! To give him his due, he did take me to The Nileometer which I might otherwise have had trouble finding. I even took a picture of him with Shirley - standing at a timeless gateway that overlooks "the first cataract" of The Nile...

Sure enough when our little temple tour was over and I had just ascended the very ancient stone steps of The Nileometer, our friendly guide expected his baksheesh. Feeling especially generous, I gave him £100 Egyptian this time but like his pal at the museum, he looked at my offering as if it was mucky toilet tissue. The well-practised disdain made me want to laugh out loud and there was no way he was getting any more.

Our on-board educated Egyptologist Ayman was looking for baksheesh like all the rest. Staff inside temples. Men within the tombs at The Valley of the Kings. Our room cleaners, security guards, shopkeepers from whom you had just made purchases. 

And linked to the baksheesh phenomenon, I would also like to share this about Egypt. Shopping there can be nightmarish to westerners because there are no prices on anything. It's all about negotiation - arriving at an agreed price but of course Egyptian traders are very well-versed in the art of price negotiation. It is in their bones - passed through generations. Here in Yorkshire we simply never play that game.

Once or twice, I found the haggling process to be great fun but Shirley seemed horrified by it all. At one Aladdin's cave inside the souk in Luxor she would not even step inside as I jousted with the shopkeeper before buying a carved stone statuette of three monkeys - hear no evil, say no evil, speak

no evil.

How I had previously lived without this remarkable object beside me in my study I shall never know...