In this big wide world there are many strange or funny place names. I am going to give you ten such place names and you are invited to match them up with the jumbled answers given below - all countries or two American states. I feel sure that some visitors will have been to these places. Good luck! (You'll need it!)
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PLACES...
1. Shitagoo Lake 2. Condom 3. Shit 4. Horneytown 5. Piles 6. Bottom Bush Scenic Reserve 7. Rectum 8. Mount Fanny 9. Dickshooter 10. Shitterton
COUNTRIES...
a) Spain b) Netherlands c) New Zealand d) Iran e) Australia f) France g) Canada h) England i) North Carolina USA j) Idaho USA
Often you want the wide picture but sometimes it's small details that can reveal a place. Looking back through the photographs I took on Saturday's visit to North Reddish and Bredbury, I have picked out a bunch that focus on details
The top picture is a close-up of Arden Weir on The River Tame. I noticed the riverside vegetation, the reflection of the sky and trees that edge the river and of course the water gushing madly over the edge of the old weir - constructed in the early nineteenth century in connection with Arden Mill - a big corn mill.
Close by, the sign on Arden footbridge reminds us of the potential dangers of open water and yet whenever we have hot spells in this country a few young people's lives end in rivers, reservoirs, canals and gravel pits. Is it the same in other countries?
Below - remember that tiger moth mosaic made from food lids and coloured bottletops? Well, this was the explanatory sign in the bottom right hand corner. Why does everything require a QR code these days?
Below - I think it is a pretty confusing image - taken from the towpath of The Peak Forest Canal at Woodley. Two Canada geese were heading my way, disturbing reflections of canalside properties. They probably thought I had food to throw to them but I had none. Why can't Canadians keep their greedy geese in their own spacious country?
A little way on from the geese, I walked under Woodley Railway viaduct and looked up at the intricate stonework. Interesting colours too. That viaduct has stood there since 1863. Another monument to the industriousness of our Victorian forebears.
In Bredbury, I walked by The Conservative Club and found it rather amusing that they have abbreviated "Conservative" quite appropriately in my view for a "con" is a trick or dishonest plan used to cheat someone out of money. As a verb, it means to deceive or swindle. One thinks of Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and the silly twerp who was PM for just forty nine days - Liz Truss. She has still not apologised for her economic vandalism and stupidity back in 2022. Perhaps she was responsible for the window signage - "Est. 202". What?
I am sorry that the sign below was both backlit and dirty. I spotted it in North Reddish Park. It recognises one of The Borough of Stockport's most famous sons - the champion tennis player of the nineteen thirties - Fred Perry.
So yes, they were some of the details of Saturday's walk but I leave you with another image from that day...
It's Woodley Stone Bridge on The Peak Forest Canal. The woman who is approaching on the tow path apologised for spoiling my picture but I advised her that she would enhance it. And we smiled at each other before she went her way and I went mine.
On May 1st 1981, five hundred working class British citizens set off walking from Liverpool's pierhead. They were marching to London with purpose. It was "The People's March for Jobs".
One of the main organisers was a fiery trade unionist from Birmingham called Pete Carter. He was admired by many and had a proud history of fighting for workers' rights in what had become Thatcher's Britain. Others felt differently about him - including most members of the ruling class, their newspapers and the aforementioned PM Margaret Thatcher with her deeply conservative cabinet.
Like all public figures, Pete Carter had a private life. He was married with two children - Susan and Michael but that marriage, that family life was breaking apart. Soon Pete would depart, making new relationships and two bitter children who found it difficult to love or forgive him.
Thirty seven years after the original march, Michael Carter set off from Liverpool with a heavy rucksack and a bunch of ideas. He would follow the exact route of "The People's March for Jobs" and he would talk to people along the way, observing his surroundings. And he would reflect upon modern Britain and his relationship with his late father. In this process maybe Mike would at last find some peace with Pete Carter.
"All Together Now?" is the story of Mike Carter's long walk but it is also a contemporary portrait of this kingdom, warts and all - focusing on globalisation, immigration, workers' rights, planning laws, industrial history, how the rich get richer while the poor get poorer and personal stuff too. The anger, admiration, hatred and affection that Pete (Mike never calls him Dad) lit in his heart.
I found it a fascinating account and I recognise many of the points that the writer makes about changes in our land. In lots of ways, it is a different country from the one that I grew up in and plenty of those changes are not for the better.
Ar one point this last week I told Shirley that the book was quite depressing, quite brutal. My view of modern Britain would not be quite as glum as that for I see more rays of sunshine and hope than Mike Carter appears to notice but in the final analysis I am afraid that the author really did cut through a lot of pretence - right to the bone. What he writes is deeply political and I must admit - on the whole true.
Here's a taster:-
Alone again, I looked at the council building where in 1981, the men and women of The People's March were billeted on camp beds overnight. Then I looked across the road for the public toilets. Pete had built them, and every time we drove through West Bromwich when I was a kid he would point them out. "I built that," he would say, and as it slid past the window I would think my dad was as important as Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Thomas Telford or any of the great engineers we were reading about at school.
But the toilets were gone. There was now a giant supermarket there. It should not have been a big surprise. Public toilets have been rapidly disappearing from our high streets, with over 1,700 facilities closing in the last decade, as local authorities have been forced to spend their slashed budgets elsewhere.(Page 227)
It almost goes without saying that when those determined participants in "The People's March" reached Number 10, Downing Street after twenty eight days on the road, Margaret Thatcher refused to meet with them. But she was happy to invite the ousted Chilean dictator General Pinochet round for dinner.
Today I booked a rail ticket to the dark side of The Pennines, intending to ramble around some of Manchester's southern suburbs. I boarded the 10.21 at Dore & Totley station only to find that it was packed - standing room only.
Five stops away at Edale, it seemed that half the passengers left the train. It made me wonder if there was some special event happening in Edale but it was more likely that they were just city dwellers out to enjoy the countryside in October sunshine. Anyway, it meant that I could have a seat and read another chapter of my book.
I disembarked at Reddish North which is a couple of miles south of Manchester Piccadilly. I had maps with me so I knew where I was going even though I had never before walked in Reddish, Brinnington, Denton or Bredbury.
Horse conference by Ross Lave Lane
Soon I was in countryside, trudging up Ross Lave Lane to Hyde Hall and the underbelly of Denton. I popped into "The Fletchers Arms" for a latte and a bag of cheese and onion crisps (American: chips). Then down to The River Tame with its long riverside walk known as The Tameside Trail - a lovely green corridor away from traffic. I reached Humes Wood Weir and as I was taking a photograph of the water cascading I spotted a grey heron standing on a nearby rock. He or she may not have noticed me for these distinctive birds are normally very skittish and fly off before you can remove your lens cap.
Not far from there a young Polish man asked if he could help me. He had seen me studying my map. Kindly he directed me to The Peak Forest Canal constructed in the 1790s.
The highlight of that stretch was probably The Woodley Tunnel - 176 yards long and no electrical lighting inside it. Then I climbed a flight of steps hoping they would lead me to street level. But at the top it was a place for floundering with brambly briars and security fences - there was no way through - so back down the steps.
Emerging from Woodley Tunnel
I reached Bredbury Station forty minutes before my train home was due so on Stockport Road, I entered "The Rising Sun" and ordered half a pint of cider.
At first the train home was less than half full but when we reached Edale again a hundred people got on and three women in their late thirties joined me at my four person table. They had met at The University of Durham twenty years earlier and reunite three or four times a year even though they now live far apart. They were pleasant, kindly and intelligent and it was nice to chat with them.
Lewis Carroll knew it and so did Spike Milligan. And a proportion of stand-up comedians know it too. Silliness is a good thing - especially in these beleaguered times when old certainties are being washed away. It's tempting to go around with a furrowed brow, speaking seriously and fretting about current affairs and wailing, "Oh woe is me!"
But a dose of silliness is good for you, like a healing balm. Letting yourself go and being daft like a kitten chasing its tail or a puppy cavorting on a beach. We need to nurture the silly genes inside us and give them airtime.
Jack Haggerty
When I walk Phoebe back to our house after school, we always pass a gateway where we share a daft idea. I once told her that a big, bad dog lives there so we tiptoe past keeping as quiet as mice. She knows it's just a silly game but she will still ask questions about that dog.
"What's its name?"
"Satan!"
"Do they keep it on a lead?"
"No. On a very thick chain!"
I think that children are much better about being silly than most adults are. In a sense, child rearing and formal education seem to be partly about squeezing out the silliness - as if being silly was some kind of undesirable condition requiring suppression.
Silliness is connected with light-heartedness, mischief, laughter and loosening up and I'm all for it. It's a vital release valve.
This post was inspired by Debra at "She Who Seeks" (pictured above)
This morning I needed to get out of the city, be in the countryside, burn off some calories by undertaking a long circular walk. Breathe in some country air and be alone with my thoughts.
Trouble is, during my retirement I have walked everywhere within shouting distance of Sheffield - every geographical square and pretty much every public footpath. So I have to keep going back to places. None of the thrill of virgin territory but at least I get my steps in - thousands of them. I took my camera too.
My sleek Puddingmobile - a gun metal grey Nissan Juke called Butch - transported me to Hollow Meadows on the A57. Then I turned up Rod Hill and deposited Butch in a little pull-in where I have parked several times before. It's safer to leave my metal companion off the narrow road.
With boots on, I set off on the first day of October in glorious sunshine. The temperature was mild. Fluffy white banks of cumulus clouds lolloped in a north easterly direction, further into Yorkshire. I strode along a moorland track called Stake Hill Road where many of the old drystone walls are ill-maintained these days. There's far less sheep farming than there was in times gone by so there's no practical reason for repairing the walls.
Down into the Bradfield Valley where Dale Dyke Reservoir sprawls innocently trying to keep its terrible secret quiet. It was on the night of March 11th 1864 that its dam burst and three million cubic metres of water surged down the valley to Sheffield causing some 240 deaths and the destruction of 600 homes.
Then along the valley and up towards Sugworth Hall. I took a rest on a wooden stile and closed my eyes in the honeyed sunshine for five minutes before schlepping up to Boot's Folly. By the way, the Yiddish verb "to schlep" does not have to involve carrying anything. It can just describe slow movement - rather like trudging along.
And then Boot's Folly appeared. Sometimes called Boot's Tower, I have blogged about it before. It occupies a prominent position at the head of the valley. In this picture you can see Dale Dyke Reservoir below...
Soon my circle was complete. Back at Butch I ate an orange and an apple and swigged water from my flask as I read a chapter of "All Together Now?" which no doubt I will review when I have finished it. It continues to engage me.
Then back to Sheffield where I was in time to pick Phoebe up from her school playground. The teacher told me she had been involved in some naughtiness at lunchtime with a classmate - barring some new reception children from the Y1 toilets. Naturally we had words as we walked back up the hill to our house.
The last photograph I snapped today was of Bent's Farm on the edge of the moors. Whimsically, I have often thought that if I ever became wildly rich, that is where I would like to live - in glorious peace but only half an hour from Sheffield city centre. No doubt "The Laughing Horse" Blogging Awards Party would take place there every New Year's Eve.
