On Wednesday, I set off early from home en route to Oxfam, making a detour through Endcliffe Park. Queen Victoria looked down on me imperiously. This statue once stood in the very heart of Sheffield but in 1930 it was exiled here - possibly because of traffic issues in the centre of the city or maybe because the socialist-leaning city council no longer wished to view The Empress of India when scurrying to attend town hall meetings about poverty, water supplies, education, housing etcetera.
The cafe looked rather quiet. It's very popular on summer afternoons - especially at the weekend. A young father was taking his toddler daughter for a stroll in the park - she with her first bicycle dressed in a warm pink jumpsuit.
A young woman was sitting cross-legged under a tree, scribbling in her diary. I wondered what she was writing. Half an hour later I saw the same young woman entering "The Lescar" public house on Sharrow Vale Road. Her attire was what you might describe as bohemian and there was something slightly melancholic about her. Not many young women scribble in diaries these days. They're usually checking out Facebook or exchanging Instagram messages with friends. This girl seemed deeper than that.
Of course Sheffield was built upon steel industries and that fact was in my mind when I snapped a picture of Number 1, Steel Road. Steel Road? Seems a very appropriate street name in a City of Steel. It links Neill Road with Sharrow Vale Road. From there I walked on to Frog Walk, down by The River Porter where the old snuff mill still stands and along to the General Cemetery. But there was no time for further investigations of its sprawling jumble of Victorian graves. It was time to get to work.
Queen Vic certainly was not amused when posing for that statue. She would've been even less amused, I imagine, if she'd learned it had been moved! She would not have been moved!
ReplyDeleteThat's a cosy looking cafe.
Vicky was looking down at me as if she was about to yell, "Off with his head!"...The cafe is nice and cosy but the menu prices are a shade too high for my liking so I have rarely ventured in.
DeleteGood walks bring you to a good variety of things to see.
ReplyDeleteI keep my eyes open Red.
DeleteOld snuff mill? Tell us more.
ReplyDeleteAlphie
See
Deletehttps://sharrowmills.com/
And go down to History.
The pink jumpsuit of the little girl against the green of the café, that's a nice contrast and possibly what made you take the photo?
ReplyDeleteHow did you know the girl was writing her diary? Could have been poetry, too... or lyrics to a song.
I am amazed she was sitting on the ground! Even in the sun, I imagine it was rather cold from below. Good job she later went to a pub to warm up.
As I went past the girl under the tree, she adjusted her position and I saw the word "Diary" written on the front of her book so, rather like Sherlock Holmes, I deduced that the book was in fact a diary.
DeleteI just wanted someone to walk by the cafe and create a little human interest. It just happened to be the young father and his little daughter. I had seen them earlier by the duck pond, casting bread upon the water.
"A young father was taking his toddler daughter for a stroll in the park - she with her first bicycle dressed in a warm pink jumpsuit."
ReplyDeleteI could not believe my good luck in finding you had written this sentence - after all the teasing you've laid on others! My life is complete :) (goes away, humming loudly, picturing a bicycle in a pink suit)
(Hoping you take this in the spirit in which it's intended!)
I had to read this four times to figure out what the joke was!
DeleteBoo hoo! You got me Jenny! How shall I live with myself now that I know I am not perfect after all? (sound of sobbing)
DeleteThank you for being properly wrought up :)
DeleteWonderful photos of a peaceful winter morning. Whatever that girl is writing in her notebook, she's doing it with pen on paper! Incredibly great!
ReplyDeleteShe might have been writing "Dear Diary...There's a bloke pointing his camera at me! What should I do? Keep scribbling and ignore him or get up and protest? Life is filled with dilemmas.
DeleteNo 1 Steel Road - that house looks in a state of disrepair just like the poor old steel industry. If only houses could talk, I bet it could tell some tales.
ReplyDeleteIt is in a desirable slightly bohemian part of the city but I see what you mean about the door and the window surrounds. Thy could do with a lick of paint.
DeleteI wonder how many statues of Queen Victoria exist in the world, quite a few I imagine. I like the pink suited bicycle photo.
ReplyDeleteQuite a few statues of Vicky I guess. I saw a very similar one in Hong Kong.
DeleteDo they still do lovely cakes there still?
ReplyDeleteNo. But they do deliciously plump scotch eggs coated in golden toasted breadcrumbs. They are still warm and the free range egg yolks inside are golden and runny. The sausage meat casings are locally sourced, seasoned with a hint of fresh thyme and sometimes flavoured with crumbs of black pudding and tiny lardons of oak-smoked bacon. They are very popular with young policemen in stab jackets, handcuffs and shiny truncheons dangling from their belts.
DeleteI would give quite a bit to see John's face as he reads this.
DeleteHe'll be salivating like Winnie - drool dripping from his billy goat beard.
DeleteScotch eggs with runny yolks? What is the world coming to.
DeleteGreat photos, as always! Queen Victoria...a handsome woman, one might say.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear there are still some old-fashioned bohemians out there, wrestling with poetry in paper notebooks.
Hmmmm..."one might say"? Do I detect a hint of irony? I'd rather have Queen Victoria than King Trump any day. I like the idea of wrestling with poetry..."In the red corner, weighing in at 220 pounds let's hear it for the challenger - Truth and in the blue corner weighing in at a king's ransom and the current reigning champion of the world - ILLUSION!"
DeleteUntil you started uncovering its secrets YP I always thought of Sheffield as quite an ordinary sort of place.
ReplyDeleteIt is, I think, the most hilly city in Britain and those hills give it a special visual quality... but of course it isn't really old - like Lincoln, York, Hull, Ripon or Richmond.
DeleteA rather wistful post I thought.
ReplyDelete