Rhododendrons

In sultry heat, I took a path that climbs relentlessly through Blacka Plantation to Blacka Moor and the Hathersage road. The light was as fabulous as the stunning green foliage and ferns all around me and I had just  heard a cuckoo, somewhere in the woods. Overhead, the sky was as blue as a robin's egg, up there above the canopy.

Though I was climbing at a sensible pace, as I reached the top of the gradient I admitted to myself that I needed a short rest to catch my breath.  There was a large smooth-topped rock in the middle of the path and it was wordlessly inviting me to sit there, so I did.

The cuckoo kept calling with its woodwind sound. Two notes over and over. To me the most reassuring sound of any English summer. Only the male calls "Cuck-oo!" as he declares his willingness to mate. The female has an entirely different call, a trilling sound that is less commonly identified than the plaintive male call.

And as I sat there on my rock, I thought I would never leave. A hover fly hung like a miniature drone in a shaft of sunlight. Two bumble bees flitted about, searching and inspecting tiny flowers as an American grey squirrel fearlessly descended a tree  that I could have reached out and touched but stayed stock still and watched the squirrel as he darted down the stony woodland path.

I felt at one with the scene as, like William Wordsworth perhaps,  I looked "upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude". It was only when I heard the impending approach of a mountain biker that my reverie was halted. I rose from my stone seat and proceeded.

In the top section of Blacka Plantation, the rhododendron bushes are currently blooming. How they ever got there, I have no idea.

The home of nearly all members of the rhododendron family is the Himalayan region in Asia. Until 1763 there were no rhododendrons on this large island here on the eastern perimeter of The Atlantic Ocean.

They were introduced by a certain botanist with the same sort of ignorance that saw cats and rats arriving in New Zealand, rabbits in Australia and European starlings in North America. Why couldn't they just leave well alone? Perhaps we know better now - but I am not so sure.

Rhododendrons are almost as invasive and undesirable as Japanese knotweed. In the nineteenth century they were planted on many country estates and gradually got away, invading moorland, riversides, coastal margins and woods.

Though I am never a fan of invasive species - flora or fauna, I reluctantly admit that rhododendron blooms can be very appealing as I hope my pictures from Blacka  Moor Plantation demonstrate.

Dolls

Thanks to A.I., a new range of lifelike dolls will soon be available via Amazon. Bizarrely, the manufacturers have focused on bloggers. Above you can see the new "Elegant Lady" doll which is closely based on Meike from Ludwigsburg who recently got married to her longtime boyfriend OK. You will be able to have plenty of fun bending Meike's arms and legs and changing her outfits.

The "Captain" figure represents Steve Reed  who fled Trump's America in a small inflatable boat to become a British citizen. Just like Meike, Steve is bendable and he comes with a range of outfits including  redneck "Round House" overalls and a red MAGA cap. Weapons include a miniature AK-47. 

I was hoping that the manufacturers - ACME Dolls Inc. would have made a doll based on me but no such luck. I guess that Yorkshire Pudding dolls would have frightened small children and simply would not sell.

However, it seems that Karl, Tony and I will soon appear in a kids comic strip about three intellectually-challenged football supporters who went to London to watch their team win the Championship Play-off Final trophy:-

People

As well as witnessing a huge football match along with 84,505 other supporters, yesterday was also about people. I spoke with several fellow human beings apart from Tony and Karl with whom I spent the entire day.

1. Middlesbrough fans by Wembley Way

I needed somewhere to eat my Marks and Spencers "meal deal" - a tuna mayo and cucumber sandwich, a little tub of sweet grapes and a bottle of Diet Coca Cola. There was a concrete construction barrier under  a shady tree so I  went over there. Five Middlesbrough fans in their red and white were also hanging out there. Soon I found myself in conversation with them.

Gary was thirty years old. He seemed to know more abut Hull City's squad than I did. He was married with five children below that age of seven. He told me that he was a season ticket holder but had managed to see only a few matches this past season.

I asked why and he said, "Family commitments". He confided that  his sixty two year old father is dying from cancer. There were tears in his eyes.

Another fan in the group spoke about his prostate cancer and the treatment that had left him with, "Erectile dysfunction", admitting his frustration about no being able to have sex with his wife.  It was more information than I wanted to hear.

2. Lewis the London Tigers fan

After the game and the inevitable wild celebrations, the sea of amber and black Hull City supporters edged slowly to Wembley Park tube station. On the Metropolitan line platform, I met a London-based, East Yorkshire exile called  Lewis. That name was printed on the back of his Hull City team shirt. He was my age and knew the underground system like the back of his hand. 

We boarded a train to Baker Street where he kindly helped us to move seamlessly to the Hammersmith and District Line for a connecting train back to St Pancras. He was a man I would happily have been pals with for the rest of my life but when we split it was forever.

3. Helen and Dan on the train home

The 20.35 train back to Sheffield was cancelled like the 20.02 train before it. We climbed aboard the 21.02 train and it was as crowded as hell. We could not find a seat. I was grumbling like a bumble bee in a glass when we made it to the little storage vestibule just behind the driver's cab. There a young couple were squeezed upon the guard's drop-down bench.

The young man looked up at us and said, "Do you want our seat?"

I replied with surprised thanks, adding discreetly that a member of my little team had a "medical condition". Their kind and selfless act  meant that Karl had somewhere to sit on the two hour journey home. His face was looking like uncooked pastry with beads of cold sweat.

Before the couple disembarked at Chesterfield,  I shook their hands and made them chuckle when I said I  would nominate them for a "Pride of Britain" award, insisting that not many people would have done what they had done. They had been down to the capital to see a matinee performance of the stage musical, "Titanic". 

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There were others too. The three birthday women who sat opposite us on the way down. The Coventry City supporter who boarded the train home at Derby. He studied Geography and Transport at The University of Leeds. The young British Asian mother with her two children on the steel benches near the Sheffield platform at St Pancras and the tattooed young man with long ear lobes I met in "The Sheaf Island" pub as I walked home before midnight from Sheffield Midland station.

"You'll get relegated next season," he claimed.

But I did not give a damn for we had won the match on a truly magical day when the sun shone and all was well with the world. I felt entirely alive.

"City till I die!  I'm City till I die! I know I am, I'm sure I am. I'm City till I die!"

McBurnie!

Just back from London! What a day! A poacher's goal from Oli McBurnie and we are back in The Premier League. The stuff of dreams...

Hull City 1 Middlesbrough 0

News

Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye

Cheerio, here I go on my way

Your correspondent will be London-bound in the morning. Not to see our Ian and Zach but to visit the national football stadium at Wembley. There, my team - Hull City will be playing another Yorkshire club - Middlesbrough - in The Championship play-off final. The prize will be a place in The English Premier League.

I just hope that our lads put up a good fight. If we lose - so be it. May the best team win.

Hull City have been in two previous play-off finals - 2008 and 2016. We won them both - first against Bristol City and then Sheffield Wednesday. I attended both matches and blogged about them here and here.

My best mate, Tony, will be with me all the way along with another Tigers supporter - Karl from Rotherham. Tragically, he is fighting the demon they call Cancer so this big match is extra special for him. It is good that Tony and I will be with him because he is on heavy duty medication as you can imagine. Let us hope that City win it for him.

Normally I never dress in club colours but tomorrow I will be getting out the same team shirt that I wore in 2008 and 2016 as I join the black and amber army. "COME ON YOU 'ULL!"

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In other Yorkshire Pudding news, your faithful correspondent walked out of the house this warm day in late May and walked and walked in a four mile loop that took in Ecclesall Woods, Dobcroft Road, Millhouses Park, London Road and Ecclesall Road. It was all about exercise but you never know what you might see along the way:

Messing

Blogger David Godfrey in his dream car

I have been doing a bit of messing about with AI- produced imagery courtesy of Microsoft Image Creator. You load up a  photo of your own and the AI machinery does the rest in the twinkling of an eye. It's all quite amazing really and to think that AI is still  very much in its infancy. The possibilities are surely boundless.

If you think you might get a kick out of making your own AI images , go here. This is the facility that I have been using though I am sure there are other pathways into creating AI images.

This was our little Margot on World Book Day...

And here's the AI version with Margot as a toy figure:-

Here's my new friend Richard Hines:-

And here are two AI takes on him:-

This was me and Phoebe on the occasion of my seventieth birthday:-

And here we are as a pencil drawing:-

This is my wife, Shirley as a fire fighter

And finally, this was the three grandchildren last weekend. You might remember the photo that spawned this simple AI image:-

Oh yes blogmates, you can have hours of fun making images with the help of AI. Please don't ask me why - it's just fun.

Things

The end of my mother's life came in a residential home for the elderly in Beverley, East Yorkshire. She lived there for two years as her savings dwindled away to pay for her accommodation.

It was quite a nice residential home. She had her own first floor room and the staff - who mainly came from Bulgaria and The Philippines - were great. For some odd reason, Mum imagined that they all came from Kosovo.

If you are interested,  I blogged about the end of my dear Mum's life here and here and here. She was eighty six years old when she died. I still think of her as a warrior. She taught me so much that I would not know where to start. 

In the old folks' home, they sometimes sold off, at bargain basement prices,  the left behind belongings of those residents who had shuffled off their mortal coils. It was at one of those sales that Mum bought a "Winnie the Pooh" glass. Typically, it was an act of kindness. She wanted our daughter to have it as a gift. Trapped in an old people's home - what else could she buy?

Frances was on the verge of leaving home to begin her student days at The University of Birmingham and didn't want to take a used Pooh glass with her so it stayed here in the family home.

It has been upstairs on our bathroom window sill for nineteen years now and hardly a night goes by without me drinking a few gulps of water from it. And I swear that every time I do that, I think fondly of my mother. It has become a constant reminder of her existence. Once she was here.

Mum with Ian and Frances on the East Yorkshire coast in 1990

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And here's another "thing" that has been in our house for a long time, sitting in the spice cupboard. I bought this green and white tub in Britanny, France in 1998. It is  "Sel de Guérande" or salt from the salt marshes of the Guérande peninsula in Britanny . The words at the top read, "Sel Marin Moulu Aux Aromates" which means "Ground Sea Salt With Herbs".

The sell by date on the tub is "31/12/2002" but it was only last week when the contents of the tub completely ran out. I only ever used it to season boiled eggs and even then I used it quite sparingly. So yes - it took twenty eight years to disappear.

Boiled eggs with ground pepper and salt is not quite the same - as I discovered yesterday morning. Consequently, one of my most immediate goals in life is to somehow acquire myself a replacement tub. In Britanny, the producers are still trading though the tub designs have been upgraded. If the worst comes to the worse I will ask my ex-pat brother Robin to source some "Sel Marin Moulu Aux Aromates" for me.

How can I live without it?