Poem

 

Nileometer
"I'll march beneath your banner while fortune it do smile,
And we'll comfort one another on the banks of the Nile." - Traditional

Always drifting north
My very name an anagram of Nile.
Up on deck I watch
That storied world sail by
Linked to Ancient Egypt
By filigree threads thinner than spider silk.

Baladi cows stumble through meadows
Eager to drink at the riverside
As a lone fisherman
In a cream galabiya
Casts his net where his forebears stood.
Exactly.
Before stars appeared
In the cool of early evening.

Verdurous palms and papyrus stands skirt the shore
Where brown children splash in Abyssinian waves,
Now that the crocodiles have gone -
Only their stuffed corpses at Kom Ombo
Sprawled behind glass gathering dust.
And beyond this green gullet of life
Lies a forbidden land
Of shortbread coloured crags
And scorched sand
Where scorpions hide and there is no water.
Just a biblical wilderness
Fit only for wandering prophets with delusions
And griffon vultures on thermals.

It was there in those fabled tunnels west of Luxor
In the lee of a pyramidal hill that
I thought I saw my life
Chiselled out in hieroglyphs
Flowing north like The Nile itself
But I could only surmise the meaning
For I had no code...
Nile…Line…Lien…Neil.

Where is the measure?
Who truly knows?

Then

Back then you addressed adults quite formally. Mr Assert was the school caretaker. Mrs Rosling ran the post office. Mrs Austwick had the sweet shop and Mr Peers was the proprietor of the village's general store. Next door was a widow from Northern Ireland. She was Mrs Varley and she was a pillar of the church. She sang to the rafters when nobody else seemed to be raising their voices in praise of "The Lord".

The village policeman was Sergeant Pepys. He had two daughters - Diane and Vicky and sometimes we played in what was once a rural court room - still part of their mid-Victorian police house.

Our village employed a street sweeper. He was Mr Grubham and he was small in stature. Looking back, it is possible that he had learning difficulties. You would see him with his brushes and his bin on wheels, forever sweeping the roads and footpaths and titivating the verges. He never said much but he did his job and people were kind to him.

Miss Spicer sometimes babysat us and Mum paid her for a couple of hours of cleaning every Friday morning. She polished the brasses and swept out the fires and I can still remember the musty odour of her body as she worked. Then she kept breaking things and Mum had to say it was the end.  I can still remember the tension and the tears for she had been like part of our family.

Back then we ate simply. There was no pizza, no spaghetti, no takeaway curries or Chinese meals. Once a month we might have fish and chips wrapped in newspaper from the village chip shop. That was a special treat. And we never "ate out" because pubs were very much for adults to drink and socialise in. Children were not allowed over the threshold. Besides, back then the majority of pubs did not offer food.

Back then, there were only two channels on our little black and white television - BBC and ITV. As I recall, programmes did not commence until about four thirty and they finished at midnight with The National Anthem - though I hardly ever saw that because I was tucked up in bed in my striped pyjamas. Sometimes I heard that familiar tune seeping up through the floorboards.

Back then, everybody was white apart from Steven Nicholson whose father was an American airman though Steven had never even met him. There was also an Irish family in the village but they were so well-assimilated that there was no hint of an Irish accent. And of course there was Mrs Varley too but she came from The North.

On summer weekends and holidays we were free to wander away from home - we biked along quiet lanes to outlying farms and sometimes we picked potatoes or peas. That was backbreaking work for little pecuniary reward. Sometimes we ventured by the canal which strikes west three miles to The River Hull.

Weeks had their rhythms and so did the years. Bonfire Nights were eagerly anticipated and around 1966, the village  took to creating a massive community bonfire on the school field. Guy Fawkes sat up there and the primrose coloured flames that destroyed him were like the tongues of cackling demons. Rockets burst in  the sky and Catherine wheels rotated crazily in the darkness. We ate toffee apples and baked potatoes.

Back then, it was all so simple, so uncomplicated. We were not bombarded with news or opinions or social media. We just got on with things. Just lived.

And what I have said here was merely the surface of "Then". There's so much more that I could say because "Then" is woven into my very being like the arteries that crisscross inside my body, carrying blood to every extremity or like the veins that take it back. And I am sure Dear Reader that you have your own "Then" that never really leaves you. Close your eyes and you return.

Cemeteries

In the Catholic cemetery

Not many people know Sheffield and its environs better than me. I have wandered pretty much everywhere - walking, exploring and taking pictures. However, I had never before explored the cemeteries on Walkley Bank.

Walkley Bank is a plunging, wooded hillside that descends to the valley of The River Rivelin. Many times I had driven past the gates to St Michael's Catholic Cemetery but had never ventured inside. And that was my goal today but when I checked the city map, I noticed that there are in fact three connected cemeteries on that hillside. 

Off Waller Road at the top there's the big general cemetery that was principally for Church of England and Methodist burials. Next to it is a small Jewish cemetery. From there it's a long way down to the Catholic cemetery.

Having just carefully repotted two large cacti, I  drove over to Walkley Bank on a hot summer's afternoon. T-shirt and shorts weather and of course I took my camera to give you blogmates a sense of  the three cemeteries that each suffer different degrees of neglect - but I kind of like that wildness, that sense of Nature returning.

I was enthralled with what I saw. So many stories. So much tangible evidence of lives passing. Once here, laughing and working and loving and raising families - now gone and pretty much forgotten. That is very likely what will happen to you and to me. A hundred years from now we will just be smudged names on our family trees.

I was particularly intrigued by the Jewish cemetery. Most of the  gravestones bore Hebrew carving and death dates were frequently provided according to the Hebrew calendar. Apparently there is a Jewish tradition in which years are measured from the imagined day on which Earth was created so that what we would normally think of as the year 1928 becomes  5688. By the way, we are currently in the year 5786. Yes folks - it's only 5786 years since our world was created so forget about the other stuff you may have heard about - you know - geology, dinosaurs, evolution - that kind of thing.

At the bottom of Rachel Rosenhead's tombstone are these letters - "C.P.H.D.S.I.P.". What on earth could that mean? I had never seen these initials on a grave before so I had to do a little research when I got home. It means "Come Perish Here, Departed Souls In Peace" and it is apparently quite a common addition to Jewish gravestones.

I could have easily spent a day exploring those three cemeteries but it was hot and I needed to get home to make our evening meal and to prepare to watch England play Ghana in Boston. 

It was a frustrating, nervy game and no goals were scored. Next in line is Panama on Saturday.

Military graves in Walkley Bank Cemetery. Both of these "private" soldiers died in 1921.

Men

No - not men in general - just two men. And they are Sir Keir Starmer and my son Ian. As Keir was resigning as Britain's prime minister this morning, Ian was flying back to London from The Netherlands after participating in the Ironman event in Hoorn.

I liked and respected Keir Starmer. As this country's political leader he was intelligent, hard-working, caring and clean as a whistle. He gathered good Labour people around him and was making a real mark on the international stage. Keir managed to bring Labour back from the edge of oblivion. Under Jeremy Corbyn, we seemed to be heading for extinction but Keir turned the party around.

During debates before the Brexit referendum in 2016, Keir was vehemently against leaving The European Union so I think it is tragically ironic that the repercussions of that dumb choice have been like thorns in his side throughout his premiership. We have gained nothing of note from Brexit.

Also from day one, Britain's right wing media campaigned against him, carping and haranguing - never giving credit where credit was due. It was like a concerted campaign to "Get Labour!" and "Get Keir!" and it was so vitriolic that it even caused many of of those who had voted Labour into office to question themselves as well as Keir's worthiness. That besmirching campaign was as unpatriotic as it was contrived but in the end, sad to say, it worked.

Keir left office with his head held high, in a thoughtful, dignified and honest manner. His emotions threatened to get the better of him when he referred to the support that his wife and children had given him but he managed to hold himself together. Perhaps this great country did not deserve a decent man like him at the helm. Here he was this very morning in Downing Street - I hope you will be able to see this BBC clip in foreign lands...

And the other man - my son Ian. Born in August 1984, he has only recently taken up marathon running but to test himself further, he signed up for a big Ironman event in The Netherlands. This involved swimming 1.2 miles in open water, a 56 mile bike ride and a 13 mile run. Ian completed this feat in just under seven hours and I am, of course, immensely proud of him. It's just a shame that Shirley and I could not be there to cheer him on. Oh - and what a great ambassador he is for veganism...

Mona

 

They killed Mona Khalil in southern Lebanon. She had become a passionate advocate for both green and loggerhead turtles that for countless centuries have laid their eggs on beaches near the city of Tyre. She made a home on that coast so that she could better undertake her conservation work. She was 76 years old when she died of her injuries on Friday. Her home had been hit during a bombing raid. 

But for heaven's sake, surely Mona should have realised that her turtles were running a Hezbollah command and control centre down on the beach. A military spokesman for the bombers who hail from an unnamed nearby country said that they would undertake a thorough investigation into what happened but quietly added that no one would ever see the results of that "investigation".

On behalf of green turtles and right thinking humans everywhere, I say a big thank you to Mona for your work and a big sorry that your life had to end that way. Hopefully, other conservationists will pick up your baton and run with it.

Green turtle in the sea off Lebanon

Wellies

Instead of travelling to Hoorn north of Amsterdam, I went down to our local post office to order a replacement passport. The postmaster assured me that my new passport would be with me in about two weeks which is quite reassuring as we are bound for a family holiday in Majorca next month - as soon as Phoebe's school term ends.

I was Mr Sleepyhead yesterday as I had only managed a couple of hours of fretful sleep on Friday night. Shirley had managed to requisition most of the duvet and I kept playing the passport movie in my head, moaning silently with self-recrimination.

Around midday, it was time to head out to the local primary school's summer fayre. Its purpose was to raise extra money for playground equipment and maintenance.

Naturally, I headed straight for the tombola stall which seemed to be being run by a bunch of incompetents. The queue moved slower than a Costa Rican sloth up a tree. Anyway, after about fourteen hours I managed to reach the front of that line and won a pack of "Frozen" cards, two bottles of flavoured oil, a used cuddly pig and  a "Paint Your Own Garden Wellies" set - no doubt an unwanted gift. (American visitors should note that in Britain we call gum boots wellingtons or "wellies" for short).

Phoebe had some glitter applied to her face and had her hair inexpertly sprayed pink and purple. I  bought a disappointing carton of vegetable biryani from a stall run by a small bunch of Muslim women.

Soon it was time to head home and Phoebe wanted to come with us. I played swingball with her for a while and then she wanted to see the little row of radishes that she sowed five weeks ago. The radish bulbs are now forming and so she picked her first ever radish.

There she is at our kitchen door holding up said radish. I love the shadow of it on on the door panel - like some kind of cartoon monster. And see how Phoebe has grown. Far from a baby these days. She has become a proper little girl now but we love her more than ever. Filled with character and questions and a joy to be around - just like Little Margot who went to Buxton yesterday with her mama to see a theatrical performance - "In The Night Garden" with Iggle Piggle, Makka Pakka and Upsy Daisy. They missed the summer fayre.

Calamity

Calamity - there's no better word to describe it. We should be flying to The Netherlands right now but we are still in Sheffield  and I am afraid that our Ian will have to complete his Ironman event without his two most ardent supporters - his parents.

What went wrong?

Simply - I lost/mislaid/dropped/suffered pick-pocketing of/misplaced my passport! I can still hardly believe it. We searched high and low and in the end had to give up. I feel as miserable as sin about this.

We were all set to go and then - when I began to check in online - I discovered that my passport was missing from our little "Travel" drawer where our passports and foreign money etc. are always stored. I feel dumb. I feel stupid and above all I feel sorry to both Shirley and Ian. She was so much looking forward to the whirlwind trip to Hoorn. It was going to be an adventure.

I offered to take Shirley to Humberside Airport so that she could travel to The Netherlands on her own but she declined. In past travel adventures, I have always been "the leader" when it comes to making arrangements and simply leading the way in foreign places. She would be extremely anxious on her own.

Let my passport calamity serve as a lesson to all you blogmates out there. Be doubly careful with important travel documents.  Zip up. Pat. Check and double check. I wouldn't want to wish this problem on anybody. I suspect that the only saving grace in this is that nobody died, nobody was injured and in the grand scheme of things it is just a happening that you have to shrug your shoulders about and move on.

Remember the last blogpost and those daunting tower blocks where some people have to live? I was in an impoverished part of Stannington which is a western suburb of Sheffield. I had gone there to visit a designated "Pay Point" shop in order to purchase an international driving permit.

The general purpose shop is cramped and filled with stuff and the area around the till is especially tight. I might be entirely wrong about this but I suspect that I was pick-pocketed. As I was completing my transaction and talking to the friendly shopkeeper, two men came up behind me - invading my personal space. One of them had a dog on a lead. I think this could have been when one of the men put his hand in my deep coat pocket and pulled out my passport. If I am wrong I apologise most sincerely to those two gentlemen who both looked as though they had seen troubles in their lives.

Anyway - just in case - I have reported this matter to the police. There is CCTV footage of my visit but I have only seen the first part of it - not the part where the two men come up behind me with the dog and get too close. No doubt if the police do ask to see the video footage at some undetermined time in the future, the tape will have been wiped by then. That's how these things usually go.

I couldn't sleep last night. I felt so stupid and so guilty and this morning it's pretty much the same. In my sleepy-headed state maybe the pick-pocketing is a figment of my imagination. Anyway, now I've got to get myself a replacement passport before we next travel abroad - in exactly a month's time!

Oh woe is me!