Zeal

My classroom (Room 30) in 2008

During my teaching career, I never missed a day because of illness or other health matters - well, not for thirty six years anyway. It was only in the last two years that I missed a few days because of two short  hospitalisations. I could hardly say to the doctors, "Let's delay this till the school holidays".

I enjoyed robust good health and if a cold or flu symptoms came along I just battled through. Days off were for the weak. And as for dental appointments - they happened exclusively during my holidays.

For the last twenty years of my career I was the Head of English, leading a team of ten English specialists. Teachers came and teachers went. I was the only consistent figure, holding it all together and in many ways leading by example.

One time, a temporary post was filled by Nigel - an itinerant teacher from Leeds. Another member of my team - Emma - related this conversation to me. Nigel had asked her, "What's the score with sickies here?". Emma had replied, "Sickies? We never take them unless we're genuinely ill. Neil never misses a day." She told me that Nigel had been surprised. It seemed he was used to working in English departments where staff regularly took days off. Perhaps they had sickie rotas or something. 

Looking back, I realises that I was as zealous as a missionary - bringing English to the English. What could be more important than helping our nation's youth to gain good qualifications in English?  A good grade could be the stepping stone to a better future. Besides, English was civilising and personally enriching. It was not just about the grades.

I marked pupils' assignments deep into countless nights. I thought it was all so important. After all, I could not name any job that was more important. Teaching English mattered more than making money or working for a profit-focused business.

Now, years later, and with the benefit of hindsight, it does not seem so vitally important after all. There are many other jobs that are more important or equally as important if indeed importance is ever a useful measure.

Society is like a jigsaw and we need all the pieces to make it whole. They all have their places - the road sweeper, the airline pilot, the hotel cleaner, the tech entrepreneur, the farmer, the hospital nurse, the miner, the singer songwriter,  the car mechanic, the physicist, the shop assistant, the factory assembly line operative, the soldier, the stay-at-home mum, the banker, the baker, the candlestick maker  and yes the English teacher too.

We all belong to this human ant colony and during our working lives we perform interconnected roles, dependent upon each other.  Vocational zeal should be tempered by that simple truth.

Rambling

Blooming heather with Stanage Edge beyond on Friday

Frances, Stewart, Phoebe and Margot have been away from Sheffield for the past ten days. They have been in a terrible region called "Down South" - visiting Stewart's aunties, Peppa Pig World and friends who live in Bournemouth.

Meantime, here in the blessed region of "Up North", we have been filling our time and missing them all - especially the two little girls because we love them entirely. It is hard to remember how life was before those two little characters stepped into our world. But they will be back tomorrow, Back in Grandparent World which is probably quite similar to Peppa Pig World. I am Grandpa Pig.

Here in England, most schools will re-open on Thursday - a sure sign that summer is over and autumn is just around the corner. But what a summer we have enjoyed! A time of shorts and sandals and sheltering  from the golden orb. The grass turned beige and doom-mongers warned us "The End Is Nigh".

Normally I prepare family Sunday dinners and I enjoy doing that but for the past two Sundays we have been "out" for our Sunday dinners. A rare treat.

Last Sunday, we visited "The Lescar" on Sharrowvale Road. As usual the meals were brilliant - prepared lovingly in a hidden kitchen by a chef who knows what he is doing. The standard had not fallen. And the atmosphere in the pub was very pleasant and peaceful. It is a pub I have known since 1978 and it is little changed.

Today we went to the popular "Broadfield" on Abbeydale Road. It was busy and noisy too. You could hardly hold a conversation but our meals came quickly and mine was good.  Less "love" than in the hidden kitchen at "The Lescar" but still very tasty. I am glad that I went for the roasted half chicken and not the brisket that Shirley chose. I tried it and it was disappointingly bland.

With the noisy babble in the pub we left as soon as our meal was over and drove on to deliver a "New Born" congratulations card to one of Frances's long time friends. Sinnead gave birth last week and has been struggling to adjust to her new situation. Unusually, she stayed in hospital for a full week with the little boy who has still not been given a name. Thankfully, she is out of hospital now but we are all worried about her mental state and how she will cope with things.

For some women. giving birth to a small human is not entirely joyous. There can be anxiety, trauma and post-natal depression. Though the new baby was hugely wanted, Sinnead cannot help how she has been feeling. She never intended to be blue or traumatised but she has many friends, a good man by her side and practical, supportive parents who still live in Sheffield. I hope she pulls through and gives that little boy a name before long. I would suggest Neil but strangely that name is not very popular these days.

Juvenilia

You have to start somewhere I guess. Today I stumbled across a bunch of poems I wrote in my mid-teens - around 55 years ago. As a child, I loved written words - not just reading other people's words but actively trying to string my own words together to make stories and poems. I think that my creative urge was innate and there was nothing I could do about it. It was just there.

Several of the poems are about romantic love and a deep adolescent longing to be with someone, to connect, to find a soulmate. Looking back through the years I find these poems interesting in that they reflect my teenage immaturity and inexperience. Something is stirring in me and I am trying to give it wings to fly. It's like I'm feeling my way through the dark. I wrote this in 1969:-

MY PRECIOUS PERHAPS

Perhaps, one day, there will be me

and there will be you

And we shall have a love

To share -

For better or for worse.

But now for me there's disillusion

And for you there's someone else

But I can wait with memories

And my precious "perhaps"...

I feel better about the following poem written in 1970. Here I am not grasping at romantic love - something I knew so little about - but simply trying to process my feelings about an observed sunset at the coast. I am picking my words with some care, to produce a mood, an atmosphere connected with seasons changing and time marching on.

OCTOBER SUNSET

Colours which kiss like water

Across the day's death

Leave us as cold, grey shapes at windows watching

The pastel pools, forever merging

Beg the night crows come to swim

And through the rippling water rings

The dying summer fondly sings

Her annual farewell

We melt into the darkness, wondering...

In 1965 I was sentenced via scholarship to a posh school in Hull after passing my Eleven Plus exam with flying colours. They had a school magazine  called "The Hymerian" and it always contained selected poems by boys from different year groups.

In 1968, they published one of my poems. I remember picking the idea of a scrapyard or city dump location to deliberately cock a snook at the poshness of the posh school. I detested that institution and transferred to Beverley Grammar School sixth form at the age of sixteen. It was one of the best moves I ever made. By the way, I admit that I knew as much about scrapyards and dump sites as I knew about romantic love!

THE CONTENTED KING

Amid a mound of rust and wire

Of baked bean tins and Dunlop tyres

Sits the king of the county council tip

A Morris Oxford '46.

Its deep black sheen has long since gone

A coat of dust it has put on.

The pompous king stares at the view,

The black oil cans, the vintage crew

Of four stroke cars and Singer prams

Old motorbikes and wheels of trams

Abandoned by the corporation

Because of loss of automation.

After work the youngsters flee

To this ferrous Gethsemane

And there they're met with admiration

From the metallic congregation

And every door its handle lends

And every seat a welcome sends.

From the top of his rusty fell

Past Trafford Park and Dingle Dell

Are bubbling seas and golden sands

But the king knows not of those distant lands.

And so he governs all he sees

Contented e'er more to be.

And so for today that is enough I think. Maybe I will share more such juvenilia in a future post. As I recall I have previously shared the story of another of my adolescent poems in this blog. It was titled "And Now The South" - inspired by the tragic tale of Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to The South Pole in 1912. If interested, please go here.

Renaming

A certain someone, whose flatulent name I shall not utter, has taken it upon himself to change names that have in at least two instances existed for hundreds of years. Just yesterday, in a fit of pique, the tetchy  old man decided that Lake Ontario would henceforth be known as Lake America. I was astounded but then it suddenly occurred to me that if that dumbass (English: idiot) can change customary names then so can I . Here we go...

Don Junior and Eric - Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

Mar-a-Lago -  Palm Beach Lunatic Asylum

Ivanka - Barbie Girl

Jared Kushner - Captain Lapdog

Melania - The Snow Queen

Barron - Lurch

Natalie Harp - Sweetie Pie Darling Honeybunch

Robert F. Kennedy Junior - Mister Lobotomy

Pete Hegseth - Buzz Nightmare

The White House - The Brown For Now House

Trump International Golf Links (Aberdeen, Scotland) - The Gulf of Mexico

Trump National Golf Club Bedminster - Lake Ontario

"Shadows & Light" (blog) - "Plant World"

"Magnon's Meanderings" (blog) - "Mein Kampf"

"Yorkshire Pudding" (blog) - "Truth Social"

"Truth Social"  (social media platform) - "Falsehood Anti-Social"

Vladimir Putin - Satan

Trumpton (BBC children's TV  town) - Barackton

Black - White

White - Black

Well, I could go on - renaming this and renaming that but renaming stuff is quite tiring so I will give it a rest for now. And while I am snoozing can you come up with any other renaming suggestions? For instance can you rename the demented fool who chose to change Lake Ontario's name  instead of  reflecting upon the disaster in Nepal in an appropriately statesmanlike manner? Presidents Obama and Biden would certainly have done that but of course they were both far better and wiser men. 

Thank you for your ATTENTION to this matter! Y. N. Pudding

P.S. Note to the intellectually challenged cartographer. If you are using capital letters then  stick with them.  Do not arbitrarily mix up capitals and small case letters. I am thinking in particular of your two es and your letter i. This advice is given freely.

Manchester

Statue to blind World War One returnees

On Tuesday morning, Shirley and I took a train to the city of Manchester. I had not been there in ten years, even though it is only thirty five miles from Sheffield. Between our two great northern cities there's a chain of hills - The Pennines - often referred to as "the backbone of England". Many Lancashire people never cross those hills and it's the same over here in Yorkshire. We are all northerners but somewhat disconnected.

We were mainly heading to Manchester to visit The National Football Museum and Manchester Cathedral but I agreed with Shirley that she would have some shopping time. She is not the only woman who loves to have a mooch round shops whereas I, like most blokes, view that activity as a kind of slow mental torture.

After leaving Picadilly Station we made our way towards the Arndale Shopping Centre but first we found ourselves walking down one of Manchester's most famous streets - Canal Street which is the epicentre of the city's "Gay Village". With its bars and clubs and eateries it is a neighbourhood in which gay people can be quite open and confident in their associations. 

Times have changed for the better in that regard. Once homosexual people had to function in veiled secrecy, often watching their backs. I am not saying that all prejudice and discrimination has gone - it hasn't - but it seems to me that the wider society is far more accepting of gay culture than it once was. Canal Street is part of that change and this weekend, Manchester will host its forty first Pride Weekend.

Canal Street

Ten years on I was impressed with Manchester city centre. It was buzzing and though it pains me to say this, it certainly felt like the northern capital. There has been a lot of upward building, more pedestrianised streets, more public art and for a Tuesday there were a lot of visitors - mostly I am sure from the Greater Manchester region which includes big towns like Oldham, Wigan, Stockport, Rochdale and Altrincham.

We had lunch in Manchester Art Gallery  cafe and went upstairs to check out two galleries that contain works  by one of my favourite artists: Manchester-born L.S.Lowry ( 1887 - 1976).

"An Island" by L.S.Lowry (1942)

Then it was on to the cathedral which I had never visited before and nearby was The National Football Museum. In there I wore a virtual reality headset for the first time and played the part of a goalkeeper though the steward in charge told me not to dive as a proper goalkeeper does.

I also tried my hand at commentating on a "Match of the Day" game before watching the replay. I may have missed my vocation!

There were lots of football-related exhibits but I was miffed because of the murky lighting. Explanatory labels were very difficult to read and I wished I had taken a torch with me (American: flashlight). I was further miffed that there was hardly any reference to the big part that Sheffield played in the gestation of modern football.

The National Football Museum

This city is home to the world's first proper football clubs - Sheffield F.C. and Hallam  F.C. and Hallam's Sandygate Road ground is the oldest football ground in the world.. Furthermore the "Sheffield Rules" for football formed the basis of The English Football Association rules that followed  later in the nineteenth century. The National Football Museum should celebrate these facts in my humble opinion but of course it is in Manchester.

Rather than heading back to the railway station at teatime we had drinks on Canal Street and then went to the Arnero Restaurant for a traditional North Indian curry meal.

It was a grand day out. In "Uniglo"  Shirley bought herself some trousers and two tops while I chatted with a horse dealer from Stockport. It seems that his wife also suffers from the shopping virus. The train home was on time and Butch was waiting dutifully for us at Dore and Totley Station.

View from the west door of Manchester Cathedral

Quiztime

As Frances from Hertfordshire, England reminded me the other day - there hasn't been an episode of "Quiztime" on this blog for quite a while. So here we go. The theme is arches and all you have to do is decide where the arch is located - choosing from four alternatives. You will find the correct answers in the comments section. Good luck!

⦿

1. (a) Delhi, India (b) Singapore (c) Budapest, Hungary (d)  Bombay, India

2. (a) Brussels, Belgium (b) London, England 

(c) Melbourne, Australia (d) Athens, Greece

3. (a) Madrid (b) St Petersburg (c) Paris (d) Vienna

4. (a) Syria (b) Lebanon (c) Mexico (d) Malta

5. (a) Lisbon, Portugal (b) New York, USA 

(c) Tirana, Albania (d) Toronto, Canada

6. (a)  Edinburgh (b) Athens (c) Avignon, France (d) Rome

7. (a) Saudi Arabia (b) Japan (c) The Philippines (d) North Korea

8. (a) Cleveland, Ohio (b) San Francisco, California

(c) New Orleans, Louisiana (d) St Louis, Missouri

9. Sadly this natural arch collapsed in 2021

(a) The Orkney Islands, Scotland (b) The Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

(c)  Lofoten Islands, Norway (d) Chatham Islands, New Zealand

10. (a) Canada and USA border (b) Poland and Germany border

(c) North Korea and South Korea border (d) Ukraine and Russia border

⦿

That's all folks! How did you do?

Swearing

You may not have noticed but in this twenty one year old blog, written swear words are as rare as hens' teeth. I don't like gratuitous swearing. It jars my sensibilities and it rather irks me when I come across unnecessary swear words in other people's blogs.

It's the same with fiction and film, I feel uncomfortable with swearing that is clearly there for sensational effect and/or does not seem in tune with the context. It makes me bristle.

But I am not stupid. I know that  many people do swear. It's part of their natural vocabulary, an element of who they are. And I have to admit that when angry, frustrated or self-flagellating in the privacy of my own home, swear words will often boil out of me like steam from hot water. I can curse with the best of them.

And with all of this in mind, I have just finished reading a novel by the Glaswegian author, James Kelman. It won The Booker Prize in 1994 and its title is "How Late It Was, How Late".  It has sometimes been called a "stream of consciousness" novel. The central character and narrator is a working class Glaswegian who drinks and smokes and has been in prison for petty criminal activity. He is called Sammy and he swears like a trooper. Hardly a page goes by without a bunch of swear words to accompany his story telling.  

But here's the thing. I did not mind the swearing one iota in "How Late It Was, How Late". It was "right" for Sammy. He's filled with anger, self-loathing and a strong sense of injustice. Good fortune never seems to be on his side. It is very appropriate that his narrative voice should include a lot of swear words. What is more, I was hugely impressed by James Kelman's rare ability to think himself into the mind of an anti-hero like Sammy. In my view the novel was a supreme act of sustained creativity built on the perceived reality of Glasgow's mean streets. Deprivation invariably impacts on the language that disregarded and unsuccessful people use.

As a reader, I think it was pretty helpful that I spent my university days up in Scotland. It made the process of "tuning in" a little easier I think.

Here's a taste of the language:-

Fuck it, he had to get going, he had to get going; he would get going, it just took a while to get started; it's no he was lazy, he wasnay lazy, he just needed time to sort things out; once he had that right he could move as fast as any cunt; in fact sometimes he moved too fast for his own fucking good; that was how come he was in this situation. Typical, fucking typical. Nay wonder he didnay like moving fast man see when he did, he fucking

he fuckt things man, he just fuckt things, he fuckt things up.  (page 115)

I hope that in transcribing that  sweary extract, I have not immediately lost some of my most loyal blog visitors...

COMMENTS

Bob Slatten -  August 25, 2026 at 11:47 PM

I was outraged by the presence of both the "f" word and the "c" word in this foul-mouthed blogpost and I won't ever come back. You can stick your Yorkshire pudding up yer ****ing arse! (American: ass) 

Finally, I do not wish to give too much away about the novel but I will say that  Sammy has unexpectedly become blind after an assault in a  police cell. Let's just leave it at that.