Saturday

Daffodils in Bingham Park, Sheffield

I was confined to barracks for two days because we were having new flooring fitted in our kitchen. First there was screeding to do in the concrete section of the kitchen and the downstairs shower room. Then there was plywood to nail down in the floorboarded half of the kitchen. Afterwards the vinyl had to be carefully fitted. Oh - and I forgot to say, I had to move the fridge, the washing machine, the tumble dryer and all the other stuff you find in kitchens with utility areas.

The job was done by a tall fellow called Chris but his work friend Steve came to adjust the doors and kickboards. Together they did a good job but because of their work  I was homebound on two lovely, sunny spring days.

Yesterday afternoon I made a concerted effort to make up for my confinement by driving over to The Rivelin Valley. It's only ten minutes away - on the western edge of Sheffield. I parked Clint, donned my boots and set off. The pictures that follow provide glimpses of my day and of  this splendid  time of year.

Old packhorse bridge over The River Rivelin

Pine tree above The Rivelin Valley

Horse chestnut leaves emerging

Footpath sign by Coppice Road

1953

All of the best people were born in 1953...

January - Moon Jae-in, President of South Korea


February - Cristina Fernández de Kirchner - President of Argentina (2007-2015)


March - Chaka Kahn - American musician and singer


April - Sebastian Faulks - English novelist


May - Tony Blair, Labour politician and former British Prime Minister


June - Cyndi Lauper - Singer, songwriter and activist


July - Leon Spinks, champion heavyweight boxer


August - Hulk Hogan, wrestler and film actor


September - Diane Abbott (British Labour politician)


October - Yorkshire Pudding - Yorkshire pudding connoisseur and blogger


November - Xi Jinping - President of The People's Republic of China


December - Kim Basinger, former model and American film actress

Yes. It's interesting to discover who was born in your birth year or even your birth month. Who can you claim?

Scott

On this very day in 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott died in a tent in Antarctica. This was his final diary entry:-

Several weeks earlier, on January 12th, his polar expeditionary party had successfully reached The South Pole only to discover that a Norwegian team had made it there just five weeks before. Planting a British flag on the pole was meant to be a newsworthy moment that would once again confirm Britain's greatness in the post-Victorian world but the pesky Norwegians got there first. Scott wrote "God! This is an awful place! ...The worst has happened."

Two weeks after Scott's death in the bitter white emptiness of Antarctica, the "Titanic" went down in the North Atlantic. That ship was also meant to symbolise Britain's greatness. A huge, "unsinkable" ocean liner - the biggest and most luxurious ever built - and yet it went down on its maiden voyage.

In both cases, human error ensured disaster. Scott experimented with snow tractors and hardy ponies when the Norwegians under Roald Amundsen stuck with dogs to assist their arduous journey over the icy continent. And Captain Edward Smith, aboard the "Titanic", plotted a foolhardy course to New York in order to beat the existing transatlantic speed record.

Today, March 29th 2019, British parliamentarians continue to engineer another self-made disaster as they wrangle about leaving The European Union in a scene of "whirling drift". "I do not think we can hope for any better things now"... "For God's sake look after our people." 

Brexit

Brexit is a horrid word. It sounds as if it has been dreamed up by a slick advertising agency more used to running campaigns for new breakfast cereals or D.I.Y. products than contemplating the future direction of a nation.

'Try new "Brex", the tough space age superglue that binds surfaces together. Don't spoil it - Brex-it!'...'The  breakfast of champions, that's "Brexit" -  try new chocolate flavoured "Brexit" while stocks last!"

Or it might be a new street dance, a passing fad with associated rap-style lyrics - "Uh-uh-uh! Gonna do it honey! Down in the hood - Uh-uh-uh! Don't need no money honey! Gonna flex it at the exit! Let's Brexit! Gonna Brexit! Just text it!"

Many American visitors tune in to this blog. I know that most of them have heard about Brexit and yet they are puzzled about what's going on over here in The United Kingdom. To these American readers I say - join the club! British people - just like their politicians don't know what's going on either. It is all an unholy mess.

Tonight our beloved leader, Theresa May has promised that she will resign her leadership if only our parliament will get her wishy washy exit "deal" with The European Union over the line. It has been heavily defeated twice in parliament and she badly wants to give it one more try, But isn't that weird? If she is successful in getting her "deal" through, the reward will be her resignation! Very strange.

Yesterday, pollsters determined that if there was a re-run of the Brexit referendum tomorrow, the British people would vote heavily to remain in The European Union, not to leave as they did in 2016. 

Apart from anything else, two million old people have died since June 2016 and two million young people have reached voting age. Generally speaking, the old voted to leave Europe and the young voted to remain. Besides, in 2016, nobody forewarned the country that leaving Europe would be so complicated and so economically damaging.

I voted "Remain" in 2016 and have never regretted that choice. Lord knows, The European Union has its faults and its progress towards ever closer political union is not a movement that I ever appreciated. However, "Remain" seemed the best choice because over fifty years The United Kingdom's economic relationship with Europe had become as entangled as one of those balls of rubber bands you sometimes see in office drawers. 

Shamelessly, I would happily opt for another referendum. The people would vote "Remain" and then we could look back upon these past three Brexit-dominated years as an aberration, a bad dream, an attempted suicide from which we thankfully recovered. 

Sea

When one lives inland, being by the sea is always extra special. The sea is therapeutic. It is vast and it has many moods. Its tides are like a metronome, beating out the rhythms of our lives. Inhaling or exhaling or pulsing like the hearts inside our chests. I love the sea. 

I love the shoreline where birds swoop or seem to dance and also I love the pebbles, the shells, the flotsam and jetsam, the seaweed fronds, the fact that you can write things in the sand, the smell of the salty air, the wind in your hair, the changing light upon the surface of a bay, white waves gently lapping or thundering like mighty aquatic beasts. Yes, I love the sea.

Words on a window in The Turner Contemporary at Margate

The sea reminds us that this planet is mostly water. You could easily forget that when you live inland. 71% of our Earth's surface is water and 60% of any living human being is water. It is who we are.

And the sea has hidden depths where the creatures of the sea roam or cling to reefs. There are wrecks from long ago and caves and much of the life that dwells down there remains to be discovered. We send rocket ships into outer space when we still don't really know the seas that surround us. Perhaps it is best that way - allowing the sea to remain a domain of mystery and intrigue.

We are back from the north coast of Kent where The North Sea meets The Thames. And to accompany this blogpost I have included a few more pictures from the birthday weekend.

Beach huts at Tankerton

Organist in the parish church, Faversham

At Reculver on the north coast of Kent

Weekend

"The Old Neptune Inn" at Whitstable

Monday morning and the birthday weekend is almost over. It has been great.

Whitstable is a smashing little seaside town with an array of independent shops along with bustling restaurants and pubs. It's all low rise - giving the coastal settlement a human scale.

The town is famous for its oysters and when the tide goes out the oyster beds are revealed. It's big business with tractors operating at the water's edge and the oysters growing happily upon large chain racks. Look to the left of the top picture and you can just make out some of the oyster beds.

In fact our town centre rental is called Oyster Bed Cottage. It has been just perfect. Everything works. It's clean and it has its own parking space on the other side of fob-operated security gates.

London is fifty miles away. Our capital is a multi-cultural melting pot containing residents with roots in every corner of the planet. But Whitstable is not like that. Essentially, it remains a white Anglo Saxon place. On Friday night we were in the "Peter Cushing" Wetherspoons pub. A throng of local people were eating and drinking and there was a hubbub of   Kentish voices. I looked around the throng and there was not one black or Asian face. Perhaps it is little wonder that this region is the country's Brexit supporting epicentre. 

Street art by Whitstable High Street

I bought Shirley a  new watch by Mondaine and Frances and Stew gave her pearl earrings, Ian gave her a card with a cartoon of Freddie Mercury on the front and he's singing "MAMA OO-OO-H..." She also received many other cards that she opened on her birthday morning.

Yesterday, we drove along the coast to Margate in gorgeous sunshine and we promenaded after visiting the Tate gallery on the seafront. Later we had Italian pizzas in a rustic cafe on Whitstable high street before the young ones were driven back to the town's station.

At Margate

Oh, and I forgot to mention my cunning little birthday plan. I had been in touch with a local cake maker called Tessa and when we visited the weekly farmers' market in The Umbrella Centre, there was Tessa with the cake I had ordered. She opened the box to reveal an orange and passion fruit cake with "Happy Birthday Shirley 60" iced neatly on the top. The cunning plan came to fruition and  Shirley was suitably surprised.

Very soon we'll be heading back to the land of UpNorth where the wild things are. Bye bye Whitstable and thank you for a weekend to remember.

Sunset over Essex - seen from Whitstable Harbour

Whitstable

Yorkshire Pudding and Shirley

It's one in the morning on Sunday March 24th. I have consumed too much Kentish ale but I am still very much compus mentis. We are in Whitstable on the north coast of Kent - fifty miles east of London. 

We came here to celebrate Shirley's sixtieth birthday and were joined by our son and daughter - Ian and Frances - as well as Frances's fiancee Stew. 

Saturday was a great day. We walked five miles along the coast to Herne Bay and later enjoyed a delicious Moroccan meal in the Alimo restaurant. And afterwards we spent a couple of hours in "The Old Neptune Inn" by the beach, grooving to a splendid band called Squeeze Gut Alley - named after a very tight Whitstable alleyway.

For now, that's all I want to say but I am attaching two pictures to this post. My old woman is sixty. It's hard to believe when so often she seems so young. I first met her when she was still nineteen. We have travelled so far together. Happy Birthday Shirley! xxx

Frances and Ian

Noddy

The very idea that a horse might be able to talk was ridiculous. And yet that was the premise of a funny American TV Show called "Mr Ed". I can still hear the theme song now -  "A horse is a horse, of course, of course/ And no one can talk to a horse of course/ That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed!"

The show was first aired in 1961 and ran for six seasons. The star of the show was a palomino called Bamboo Harvester. 

I hadn't thought of "Mr Ed" for years until this very afternoon when I was walking through the village of Millthorpe. I had just passed the entrance to Cordwell Farm when a grey-white gelding galloped towards the galvanised gate to his field in order to check me out.

I scratched his cheek and patted his neck and emitted a few sentences including, "There's a good boy!", "I haven't got any food for you!" and "I don't really like horses!"

Then I carried on my way, not realising that there was another gate further along the hedgerow. Sure enough, the horse galloped along to this second gate and once again put his great big equine head over the top bar.

I ignored him and carried on, I had only taken a couple of strides when I heard a voice saying quite clearly, "And I don't like people!" I turned round and shook my head rapidly. There was nobody there just the damned horse. I did a double take.

The horse chuckled, showing his big horsey teeth, "Don't look so surprised pal! Horses are more intelligent than you might think!" His voice was deep but unlike Mr Ed, he spoke in a broad Derbyshire accent. To say I was astonished would be to make a massive understatement.

A couple of cars passed by and a wave of self-consciousness passed over me. After all, I was standing on the roadside talking to a ruddy horse! If anybody saw me they would think that I was a nutcase. Perhaps I am. I had to pinch myself to confirm that this encounter was not just happening in my head.

The horse asked for my name so I asked for his. He is called Noddy and he is six years old. There was another horse in the field called Blaze but Noddy described him as "Thick as two short planks. He can't talk like me pal."

I laughed and then Noddy said, "Fancy a ride Mr Pud?"

"What do you mean?"

"A ride round the field on me back!"

"But you haven't got a saddle and I haven't got a riding helmet!"

"You'll be okay. I'll take it easy. Ever been on a horse?"

I could only remember one other occasion. It was when I was a camp counsellor in Ohio. We were trotting along a woodland path in a line and then my horse bolted. It was all I could do to hang on. Perhaps that nameless horse had been stung or spooked in some other way.

I used the gate to climb up on Noddy's back. He snorted and whinnied and then he began a gentle trot around his field. Blaze watched in bemusement. And then I realised that Noddy's gentle trot was turning into a run. 

My bottom bounced painfully upon his spine as I clasped his mane. Noddy was laughing but I was begging him to stop. The run had turned into a full blown gallop and I was terrified about falling off. Briefly, I pictured myself in traction in a hospital bed but I needn't have worried. "Stop! Stop!" I yelled. Noddy slowed down and took me back to the gate so that I could dismount.

"I enjoyed that!" he declared.

"Good for you!" I said, with my legs wide apart like John Wayne. My arse (American: ass) felt as sore and swollen as a baboon's red butt. 

"Will you come again?" asked Noddy.

"Maybe."

"Well please bring carrots next time. And maybe an apple or two. Not those cooking apples. The sweet ones!"

I smiled and patted Noddy on his neck then he snorted and bounded off across the field again. 

Walking through the fields to Horsleygate and up the hill to Holmesfield, I  reminded myself that he is only six years old. Not the kind of horse with which one could have a serious, adult conversation but I still plan to bring him carrots and sweet apples.

Lee

Down at the Oxfam shop, the workforce consists of twenty six unpaid volunteers and a full-time manager. Of course we are not all on duty at the same time. Most volunteers - myself included - only work one 4½ hour shift a week.

This afternoon I met a new volunteer called Lee. He's nineteen years old and a business studies student at one of our city's two big universities. It was my job to get Lee up to speed with the shop's touchscreen till so I spent most of the afternoon with him.

What a charming young man he was - with a happy disposition and pleasant manners. We chatted at quiet times but when customers arrived at the counter, I helped him through the on-screen processes.

Lee was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire and he speaks with a distinctive Nottinghamshire twang. If you heard him on the radio you would think he was just a regular Nottinghamshire lad but there was  something different about Lee.

His parents and all four of his grandparents were born in Hong Kong and in his family home the preferred language is Cantonese. His family run a Chinese restaurant in the suburbs of Nottingham and every weekend he has to go home to work as a waiter.

Lee is going to America for the first time in June. He'll be heading to San Francisco where his girlfriend has cousins. He was very interested in my little tales about California.

I may not see Lee again because his designated shift will be on a Monday so our paths are unlikely to cross in future. Realising this, at the end of the shift I shook his hand and told him that I had enjoyed spending the afternoon with him. I said I hoped he'll have a wonderful time in San Francisco.

Meeting someone like Lee consolidates one's faith in younger generations. I recall that I was nineteen once but it was long ago in a very different age.

Daffodils at Whirlow Bridge this morning.

Son

Do you remember that dog from the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons? He was called Spike and he had a son who was very much a chip off the old block. The son's name was Tyke and Spike would often proudly declare, "That's my boy!"

Well, please look at the picture above. See the fellow on the right? That's my boy!

Ian is sitting with his "Bosh!" partner Henry in a warehouse in Glasgow. They are perched on a pallet piled high with newly printed copies of "Bish Bash BOSH!" In fact, Ian tells me, that there were many more pallets off camera.

Everything is building to the new book's launch dates. Its first public reveal will be at Sheffield Hallam University on April 3rd followed by the official launch at Vegan Nights on Brick Lane in London on the evening of Thursday April 4th. Go here.

Ian also tells me that their publishers have arranged for "Bish Bash BOSH!" ads to appear on the sides of several buses in London and Sheffield. They are also renting a prime hoardings site near Euston station (American: billboard).

The first cookboook - "BOSH!" has been tremendously successful. Better than the publishers anticipated. Here at Pudding HQ we are obviously hoping that the new book will do at least as well. The dream is not going to end tomorrow but if it should, Ian and Henry have already enjoyed an amazing ride that would have seemed impossible three years ago.

Visit "Bosh!" here. Then, if interested, navigate through their various social media channels.

We plan to see Ian next weekend when we mark Shirley's 60th birthday down in Kent. Moldovan security guards with dogs will be guarding our house - just in case you were planning to take advantage of our absence.

Weekend

It was a nice weekend.

On Friday night, I picked The Beloved Daughter and  Husband Designate up from the station. We sampled Bradfield Brewery beers and watched "Gogglebox" on the gogglebox. I had visited Bradfield Brewery on Thursday, thinking ahead about wedding beer for August.

On Saturday, Shirley and Frances attended a flower arranging class - again with the wedding in mind. Stew was seeing his best man and Clint was speeding me over to Hull to watch The Tigers play Queens Park Rangers.

I met up with my old friend Tony and we enjoyed pre-match breakfasts in the little Polish cafe we discovered a couple of years ago. By halftime we were up by two goals to nil but in the second half QPR came back to score two of their own. It felt like a defeat. 

Clint took me back home and soon afterwards he transported us all to the "Shapla" Indian restaurant in the city centre. We were all hungry and enjoyed a damned good meal before heading back to our local pub for beer and wine.

On Sunday morning, in spite of Clint's protests, I let Shirley drive him over to Tideswell where the wedding of the year will happen. Frances and Stew needed to attend the morning service as part of their qualification to be married in Tideswell Church. Being an irreligious devil worshipper, I stayed at home wallowing in my sins.

At midday I put a nice basted loin pork joint in the oven and got on with Sunday dinner preparations. Along with the tender pork there were roasted potatoes, roasted carrots, chopped leeks tossed in butter, garden peas, Yorkshire puddings, apple sauce and a tasty gravy made from meat juices and vegetable water. 

It all came together nicely and better still the churchgoers loved it. I took The Beloved Daughter and The Husband Designate back to the station for the four o'clock train to London and six hours later I moseyed on down to the pub again for a couple of pints with Bert and Steve. Fortunately, the St Patrick's Day shenanigans had ceased by that time. I still find it strange that we "celebrate" St Patrick's Day in English pubs. I would much prefer to celebrate Yorkshire Day on August 1st or St George's Day on April 23rd.

Anyway, that was my weekend. It was a nice one and now, on Monday morning,  I am sitting waiting for an electrician who should have been here an hour ago. He has probably forgotten. When he asks for his money I may have to calculate a 20% deduction. In my dreams.

Snapshots

Ahove - Sheffield Central Library. Can you see the art deco frieze on the corner parapet? This splendid civic building was opened in 1934 by the then Duchess of York - mother of our beloved Queen Elizabeth II. Sadly, there have been rumours that the library might be sold to Chinese hotel developers - causing much public outrage.

It was the day I went to see the Leonardo exhibition. After leaving The Millennium Galleries I walked through The Winter Gardens and took several pictures of the steel balls below. One ball appears to be larger than the other ball which, I understand, is not uncommon:-

And then it was onward to Pinstone Street where I snapped this picture of Sheffield's magnificent Victorian town hall which was opened by Queen Victoria herself in 1897. The interior is even more magnificent. The entire building speaks of civic pride and of Britain's wealth and self-belief at the height of its powers in the Victorian era:- 

Just round the corner in Barker's Pool you find Sheffield's equally magnificent City Hall, opened in 1932. It holds a special place in my heart because in 1972 I visited Sheffield for the first time in my life to attend a concert in the city hall. I was there with a school friend to see Buffy St Marie and Loudon Wainwright III. Little did I know that night that six years later I would find myself living in the city.I have been here for over forty years.

As I enjoyed a pub  lunch in "The Frog and Parrot", I noticed the David Bowie mural on the corner of Division Street and Trafalgar Street. To be frank, I think that the image looks nothing like Bowie but sometimes in life and indeed street art, it's the thought that counts

My snapshots give a glimpse of Sheffield's city centre. Back in 2005 I blogged about my home city for the first time and received comments from Free Thinker, Stony and Tara. These occasional visitors disappeared long ago so I thought it might be a good time to tell current Yorkshire Pudding visitors something about this great northern city.

Leonardo

The Bust of a Man (1510)

Leonardo da Vinci made thousands of drawings. In his lifetime, he never anticipated that these drawings would one day be treasured or gazed upon by legions of admirers. They were mostly preparatory sketches or studies, drafts or rough work.

Amazingly, a big proportion of these drawings survived after Leonardo passed away in France in 1519. They were gathered together and by the late seventeenth century they were in the possession of King Charles II of  England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. They have remained in the hands of the British royal family ever since - mostly hidden from public view.

However, to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, the keepers of The Royal Collection agreed to release some 140 of Leonardo's drawings in a nationwide exhibition titled "Leonardo: A Life in Drawing". One of the twelve venues selected was Sheffield.

Yesterday, I visited The Millennium Galleries and closely observed a handful of examples of the great man's sketching and scribbling. 

He had his fingers in so many pies: science, invention, physiology, sculpture, botany, poetry, map-making, astronomy and legend - to name but a few but the obsession of his lifetime was drawing. It underpinned everything and revealed his genius.

Ten years ago I visited Leonardo's childhood home in Tuscany. He was born and raised in a peaceful hamlet called  Anchiano - a  mile from a more substantial little town called Vinci.  I imagine that on countless occasions he walked the very same ancient path that I walked that late honey-warm afternoon - through vineyards, by  elegant cypress trees, never suspecting that he was remarkable or that he would be so revered centuries after his death.

Preparartory sketch of St Philip (Circa 1495)
For "The Last Supper" - sorry about the glare

Realisation

Mum at a school sports day in 1963

When you have got nothing much to blog about, you can always raid your memory bank. Some people's memory banks are no doubt like well run libraries with the memories neatly filed in alphabetical order. But my memory bank is more like an attic in an old house. The jumbled detritus of past years has been thrown up there and everything is jumbled. There are cobwebs and spiders and the lighting is poor.

After much rooting around, I managed to pull out this one. It's very personal, very private and I have never shared it with anyone before.

I am perhaps eight years old so it's probably 1961. I live in a house with three brothers, my mother and father; and I know nothing about girls or the mysteries of sexual reproduction. However, as you can imagine I am a clever little devil, always asking questions.

There's an evening drama on our little black and white "Bush" television. I am watching it with Mum and Dad. In this drama, a woman is apparently deciding whether or not to have a baby. Curious, I ask what is going on because up until that moment I had supposed that babies just happened. You couldn't decide, could you?

Mum looked at Dad and he looked back. I wondered why they weren't immediately concurring.with my wise observation.

Soon after that, Mum took me aside and gently gave me a very basic lesson about the making of babies. I was taken aback. She claimed that women had holes instead of willies and what is more babies emerged from these holes after growing in a mummy's tummy for nine months. And then I found out that the daddy was somehow involved in sowing the seed, a baby seed.

It was flabbergasting.

A few days later when Mum was dressing in the bathroom I reminded her of our little conversation about babies. I couldn't quite get my head around it all - especially this business about holes instead of willies so without any sense of impropriety I asked Mum if I could see her hole. 

She didn't know how to respond. I remember her blushing - wearing a rubbery corset  and gathering up her clothes. I didn't know that she was weighed down by the heaviness of social mores and a keen sense of lines that should not be crossed.

Secret talks with other boys from the village confirmed that girls did indeed have holes. Unlike me, several of the boys had sisters so they knew.

I very much hoped to see one of these holes myself and the following summer when my family were on holiday in southern Germany my wish came true. We went to a lovely verdant  park in Munich. You could swim safely in a river that flowed swiftly through the trees till you reached netting and could clamber out ready for another go.

And that's when I spotted a young German girl as naked as the day she was born. What Mum had said and what the village boys with sisters had said was true! 

Perhaps these linked memories have stayed with me through the years because they marked a staging post in my existence. Life wasn't as simple and straightforward as I had previously imagined and maybe there were many more new truths ahead to wrestle with.

Storm

"The Energy of the Wind" by Giorgio Vaselli

Storm on the Island

by Seamus Heaney

We are prepared: we build our houses squat,
Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.
This wizened earth has never troubled us
With hay, so, as you see, there are no stacks
Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees

Which might prove company when it blows full
Blast: you know what I mean - leaves and branches
Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale
So that you listen to the thing you fear
Forgetting that it pummels your house too.

But there are no trees, no natural shelter.
You might think that the sea is company,
Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs
But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits
The very windows, spits like a tame cat

Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives
And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo,
We are bombarded with the empty air.
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

Tattooist

Recently I finished reading "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" by Heather Morris. As the title perhaps  suggests, it's about  someone who was responsible for tattooing numbers on the wrists of new prisoners arriving in  that Nazi hellhole. The tattooist was a prisoner called Lale Sokolov and the book is imaginatively based upon his true life story.

Heather Morris teased out the story from the man himself. He had settled in Melbourne, Australia after the war, building a new life with his wife - Gita Furman who was also incarcerated in that inhuman  nightmare of a place.

I was looking forward to turning the pages and the book was certainly easy to read but for me it lacked the harsh authenticity I had been expecting. It was just too damned comfortable. Where were the moments that ought to elicit tears? Where were the moments to make you turn your head away from the text and shake your head in sheer disbelief?

The way that Lale and Gita were able to conduct their relationship  - well for me it made it seem that Auschwitz was rather like a holiday camp. It was just too easy.

I am sure that in reality Lale and Gita went through a terrible time of fear, physical deprivation, cruelty and uncertainty. Another writer - someone different from Heather Morris - could have made their true story really bite, really hurt, really resound in one's memory. However, there was something about Heather Morris's telling of the tale that made it all seem too sweet, too flaming nice.

Though it always held my attention, "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" failed to disturb me and I am sorry about that. I think that Lale Sokolov's  tale deserved a more poignant telling in honour of the  thousands who  were so cruelly eliminated - when ordinary men did such terrible things. 

Flatlands

English weather? I love it. I love it's unpredictability. It seems like a metaphor for life itself. You never know what you are  going to get.

On Sunday morning I woke to snow. It covered the garden and the blooming daffodils and the road and poor Clint - shivering in his special parking place. And then on Monday morning I woke to blue sky, bright sunshine and spring greenery. The contrast could hardly be more stark.

I drove up to the flatlands near the town of Goole - "England's premier inland port". I was there to walk and to take photographs in the beautiful light. 

Goole - seen across a bend in The River Ouse

I walked in four villages I had never visited before. They all sit close to The River Ouse, protected from flooding by earth embankments and flood walls and pumping stations. They were - Old Goole, Swinefleet, Reedness and Whitgift.

Old phone box in Reedness

South of these villages there is a wide expanse of flat farming land dissected by long straight drains. There are occasional lonesome farms and you ponder a while to imagine how it must be to live in such  places, without neighbours or communities. 

Whitgift has a lovely old church made from limestone even though there are no stone quarries for many a mile. I imagine rafts and barges bringing the stone down Yorkshire's river system - probably from the ancient quarries nearTadcaster. The church was built in 1304 - replacing an earlier building. It seems almost incredible that our forebears would go to so much trouble transporting stone like that.

The Church of Mary Magdalene, Whitgift

I would have tarried longer and explored some more. Perhaps I should have got there earlier but after five hours it was time to head home. I climbed in Clint's saddle and whipped his silver ass. To infinity and beyond! Well, Doncaster and then Sheffield...

Whitgift Lighthouse by The Ouse