24/10/81

24/10/81 or as those crazy Americans would record it - 10/24/81. Yes my friends, on this very day exactly forty five years ago, I married my sweetheart Shirley in St Martin's Church, Owston Ferry, Lincolnshire. It was the happiest day of my life.

On that day, we could have never imagined that we would still be together forty five years later. Two children. Two ectopic pregnancies. Three grandchildren. Memorable holidays, thousands of meals and the comforting rhythm of ordinary days passing by. Ups and downs. Together.

Today, to celebrate, we went out to a local restaurant for a three course prix fixe lunch with glasses of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. The french onion soup they served as a starter was the best I have ever had - savoury and thick with slow-cooked onion slices and crispy onions on top with a slice of toasted rye bread with cheddar cheese beside the bowl.

Back home, to mark our anniversary in a special way, I continued pulling up the old carpeting from our staircase, the hallway and the landing. For the first time in our married life we have hired professionals to decorate the area next week and afterwards there'll be new carpeting and hopefully a much happier appearance. It had been looking quite tired for a few years.

That day in 1981, during my school's October half term holiday, the weather was blustery but dry. After our budget reception in a local pub, we drove down to Lincoln for our budget wedding night and two days later, I carried Shirley over the threshold of the terraced house we had just bought in the Crookesmoor area of Sheffield.

It was time to set to with decoration and carpet laying, as we embarked on our married life together. Forty five years... and for my Lincolnshire lass, here are forty five kisses: 

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Jettisoned

Looking at my "Blogorama" sidebar, I note that three once favoured blogs are now no longer active. The time has come to cast them from the good ship "Yorkshire Pudding". Let them float upon The Sea of Blog Memory until they wash up on The Island of Lost Blogs.

Some of you will remember Bruce Taylor (centre), the comic mastermind who produced "Oddball Observations" at his home in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Sadly, Bruce lost his wife Judith at the start of this year and then, as so often seems to happen with older couples, Bruce died on March 24th. I have kept his blog in my sidebar as a mark of respect but now it's time to let it go. Bruce is never coming back.

Fourteen months ago, my favourite Anglo-Irish blogger Dave (left) told his regular visitors that his wife Jean had died very unexpectedly. His blog was and is called "Northsider" because he lives on the north side of The Sheep's Head Peninsula in County Cork. Since that tragic time, Dave has only blogged once more and throughout this calendar year he has been totally silent.

Maybe "Northsider" is only mothballed and it is quite possible that Dave will return but I have the feeling that he may have left the blogosphere for good. If he comes back, I will be happy to reinstall his blog in my star-studded sidebar.

And then there's "Eagleton Notes", distilled on The Isle of Lewis in Scotland by senior blogger Graham Edwards (right). There was a time when Graham refreshed his blog twice a week but gradually his output has dwindled and I am afraid he hasn't added a new blogpost since Jume 22nd when he explained his reduced blogging commitment with this remark: "I keep getting sidetracked with life". He was just about to go down to Glasgow for another important hospital appointment so I am actually worried about him. Did he get back home?

Perhaps we will never know. Graham was always kind-hearted and sensible which is how he approached other people's blogs. Frankly, I miss him and I hope he returns to blog again. Then he will be reinstated in the sidebar faster than a ferret up a trouser leg which is a metaphor that would surely make Graham chuckle.

Nothing lasts forever and here in the blogosphere people come and go. Things change. I guess it's just the way of the world. In the meantime, as I cast those nice fellows off, I not only salute Bruce and Dave and Graham, I toast them too..."To life's incredible journey! Cheers!"

Autumn

Today was haircut day for me. I have a haircut roughly every twelve weeks - something like that. My appointment was for two thirty so before I went over to Woodseats, I decided to burn off some calories with an extended walk in our neighbourhood.

It's clearly autumn out there right now and on Sunday morning British households will once again go through the rigmarole of putting our clocks back an hour to mark the end of BST (British Summer Time). Why can't they just let time plod along instead of arresting it twice a year? Ridiculous.

The top picture shows Brincliffe Edge Road - just three hundred yards from our house. I love roads like that where trees arch over and the road itself takes on the appearance of a tunnel. That road soon leads to Chelsea Park where this unidentified yellow tree was clearly singing its autumn lament.

And then on well-heeled Chelsea Road I noticed leaves gathering in clusters or up against walls, making late October collages without human assistance...

I like the look of this modern house squeezed into a triangular plot on a short road called Brincliffe Gardens. Fallen leaves are gathering in the driveway waiting for the householders to bring out their garden rake and sweeping brush. It's the same on our little driveway. The lost leaves gather annually like confetti drifts in a churchyard.

Home from the haircut, I noticed the volunteer sumac tree in our garden blazing red in late afternoon sunshine with its weird furry staghorn spears pointing to the skies above. 

And so yes, that summer of summers has truly gone now and we are most definitely under autumn's spell, waiting for the darkness where Jack Frost resides, already cracking his knuckles.

Todd

 

A week ago, I wandered through the charming little Lincolnshire village of Little Ponton. In such places, the most interesting and certainly the most historical building is likely to be the parish church. No wonder then that in my countless country rambles I have taken very many pictures of country churches.

The church in Little Ponton is dedicated St Guthlac of Crowland who was a hermit and spiritual example to others in the early eighth century. Never before had I visited a church dedicated to Guthlac and in fact I have just learnt that there are only nine parish churches in England that bear his name. None are in Yorkshire or Derbyshire. 

The photograph directly above was taken last week - with the gates of the churchyard invitingly open. I popped the picture into Microsoft Image Creator - a popular AI facility and requested a version in "oil paint" and the picture that emerged is the one shown at the top of this blogpost.

As I sat on the only churchyard bench there was, I noticed a cluster of family graves close by. I read them and realised that the family's patiarch - Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd had been predeceased by three of his four sons with two of them committing suicide. Their gravestones were also in the cluster. I guessed there was a story there but doubted that I would ever know it.

I was about to carry on with my day-long walk when I noticed an inscription on the central gravestone  - "Exit dashing young blade". It seemed an odd thing to put on a ninety year old man's grave. By the way, I did not take the picture below. I found it courtesy of Google Images.

Back home when researching the church, I discovered that Richard Palethorpe-Todd was none other than Richard Todd - a significant film star of the 1950s. In fact, he was Ian Fleming's first choice to play James Bond in the very first 007 film - "Dr No" (1962). Famously, that role went to Sean Connery instead.

Richard Todd was friends with both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher both of whom he hosted at The Old Rectory in Little Ponton.

He was Oscar-nominated in 1949 and in 1955 he starred as Guy Gibson in "The Dam Busters". Interestingly, he willingly played his part in World War II and was one of the first British* soldiers to parachute into Normandy on D-Day. A hero on screen and off it it seems. "Dashing young blade" was a term fondly applied to him by The Queen Mother.

* - He was born in Dublin, Ireland

Crassness

Woke, liberal leftie, communist, intelligent, anti-racist, trans-loving, book reading people like me have been appalled by the current President of The United States of America since he first stepped across the threshold of The White House on January 17th 2017. When you think he simply cannot go any lower, he goes lower.

His crassness is now legendary and many of his diehard supporters accept it with knowing smiles. Last week, the BBC's North America correspondent interviewed typical Republican supporters in Iowa. One of them, the wife of a farmer, said "We knew he was no choirboy!" - as if to say, we can forgive him his human failings and moral stumbles as long as he is getting on with the job of being president.

I think the entire connected world knows about the tragedy that occurred in The Yorkshire Wildlife Park on October 10th. A young man with a long history of mental illness scaled two fences to enter the tigers' compound. And there, very sadly, he died. By the way, that young man had a name and family members who loved him. His name was William Chapman. He was twenty four years old.

There was some video footage of the incident. In their heartbreak, William's family asked people not to share that video. But what did the forty seventh American president do? Why, he shared that video on his self-congratulatory Truth Social website. The video was freshly captioned, "Don't mess with Nature!"

I found that new caption worthy of some extra head-shaking. After all, this is a nitwit who has burnt up countless gallons of aviation fuel just to fly down to his gaudy Florida mansion for long golfing weekends. Isn't that messing with Nature? And what about his "Drill Baby Drill!" mantra? What kind of attitude does that show towards Nature? The hypocrisy is breathtaking but of course perfectly in character.

A couple of days later, giving not a moment of thought to William Chapman's memory or his grieving loved ones, The President of Crassness posted an AI video of himself chasing a tiger and wrestling with it. Ha-ha! Very funny you unkind and tangerine felon!

It was disgusting but arguably not as disgusting as the way he has sided with Putin during his cruel war upon Ukraine, instead of backing Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the hilt. President Zelenskyy is a proper leader,  and not a fake president like the one who currently lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington D.C.. 

Let's hope that American voters punish him severely in the mid-term elections. If you happen to be American and you are reading this post, please remember to do your bit for sanity, reason and a better future and simply VOTE! The world will be watching.

Quiztime

 

This is a "pot luck" quiz for once. No theme. Just ten typical general knowledge questions. I am not even providing multiple choice answers this time. You are on your own mate! Even so, I wish you good luck! Answers will be provided in the comments section but please - no peeping until you have finished!

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1) Name one of the two original "seven wonders of the world" that were in Egypt.

2) What is the capital of Kenya?

3) Who was the second president of the United States of America?

4) Who wrote "The Handmaid's Tale"?

5) A baby cat is a kitten but what is a baby  swan called?

6) What is the main unit of currency in Sweden?

7) In terms of land area what is the biggest Australian state?

8) Which British group had hits with "Get It On", "Metal Guru" and "I Love to Boogie"?

9) Who played Odysseus in this year's blockbuster film version of "The Odyssey"?

10) What is 0℃ on the Fahrenheit scale?

How did you do?

Portraits

As a roving amateur photographer, it's very tricky to get portraits of strangers. Whenever I do happen to manage it, I am most grateful. Mostly I have to stick to scenery and the physical environment around me but - if the truth be known - I would love to have gathered hundreds more pictures of people. And I am talking about willing strangers - not secretly snapped pictures of unaware subjects.

I know I am not alone in being fascinated by faces - reading what's behind the eyes, trying to see into someone else's otherness. Throughout my life, I have doodled and my doodles are almost exclusively of faces. Yes, I have created thousands of faces with pens and pencils but to acquire photos of faces sometimes seems taboo.

Anyway, today Phoebe was keen for me to show her a pictures of me stroking a tiger. This happened in northern Thailand in April 2011 but I don't think Phoebe believed me.

With a little scrolling through my archives I was able to locate the picture quite easily. She was duly impressed.

It was almost time for her to go home. After she had gone, I flicked through other images I had gathered in Thailand around the same time. I was reminded of a little side trip I took to a kind of rural show village occupied by members of the Karen or Kayan hill tribe.

These people have had a long tradition connected with neck rings. Some of their women still wear heavy brass rings that push down the collarbone and rib cage to create an elongated neck look. As a nominated girl advances through her adolescence, more rings are gradually added.

The practice is quite abhorrent in my view. It is difficult to imagine the discomfort and pain that the long-necked Karen women must endure and you wonder - how do they sleep at night?

And yet my portrait at the top of this blogpost seems to show a dignified, calm and healthy young woman who is getting on with life in spite of the odd cultural tradition that has arguably blighted her life. Below, a younger Karen girl near the start of her neck ring journey...