13 August 2020

Confession

Assarts Farm, Meden Vale

No doubt this will come as a huge surprise to "Yorkshire Pudding" visitors but I confess that I made up the Robin Hood story. Guilty your honour. It was all a product of my fecund imagination. My apologies to all those readers I deceived but in my defence I would say two things.

Firstly, there is a sense in which all fiction is deception - great big lies. Ironically, though creative writers habitually seek to unveil  truths, the means by which they do that include craftiness, falsehood and trumpery. My Robin Hood lie is no different from any other.

Secondly, I did go to Market Warsop on Monday and I did venture into the forest, enjoying the cool shade of the trees on a summer's day we must have borrowed from South East Asia. So hot and clammy.

The River Meden

A funny thing happened when I returned to Cherry Grove off Sherwood Street. As  is my wont, I was leaning upon Clint's hatchback boot (American: trunk) changing out of my trusty walking boots into my driving shoes when a thirty something young woman emerged from the nearby house and called over her garden.

"Are you all right duckie?"

She was talking to me.

"Yes fine thank you! I have just been on a long walk and I'm changing out of my boots. Very kind of you to ask though!"

And we smiled at each other and raised hands of friendship. By the way, in Nottinghamshire the nouns "duck" and "duckie" are commonly used as social terms of endearment just as in Sheffield the term "love" is widely used when addressing strangers. You won't hear these friendly terms in London or anywhere else that is Down South.

Abandoned chicken farm near Meden Vale

After my eight or nine mile walk I headed back to Sheffield ready to make Nurse Pudding's evening meal so I did not have to invent excuses for staying out all night eating wild boar and carousing with outlaws in Sherwood Forest. Quite simply, it didn't happen! I made it up.

St Peter and St Paul Church, Church Warsop

29 comments:

  1. Faction is fiction based on facts YP. Did Robin Hood exist? I have been to his bay near Scarborough. "Are you alright Cock?" A Lancashire greeting.

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  2. Ha,ha😄. I heard "alright babe?" when I was in Kent last August.

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  3. Ah! So you did meet Maid Marian. "Would you like to look inside my Lynton Triumph, duckie?" she whispered seductively. Did you avert your eyes?

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    1. Exploring Marian's Lynton Triumph brought back happy memories of yore.

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  4. What?! You made up that story?! Who knew?
    Ha.
    Around here we use "honey," "sweetie," "sugar," etc. for those endearments. "Darlin'." That's a good one. No wonder we're all so fat.

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    1. Maybe you could introduce some healthier terms of address - celery, lettuce leaf and grape perhaps.

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    2. It's worse, Ms Moon. "Sweety" is just yuk. "Sweety Pie" make me sick.

      I take it that "honey" and "sugar" are peculiarly American. Question being why no one claims you to be Treacle or Syrup. More is the pity. Sour Gherkin.

      Call me Vinegar, just to balance the oil in the dressing,
      U

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  5. You won't be called "Duck/y" down South. You will be called "Love" down South. Make no mistake. Still comes as a bit of shock to me. LOVE? Come on. I am just buying a loaf of bread from you, a stranger. And then there is "Darling" (not least in London - and everywhere else on these isles). Beloved by members of the theatre because they have so many lines to learn they can't be expected to remember your name.

    I do dispute that fairy tales and fiction are "deception". I'll spare you my reasoning lest I'll be myself or turn into Hamel'd (in terms of wordiness). Had a bit of a hoo ha some time ago, on line, when an American accused parents of "lying" to their children on account of Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. Bull. Magic and imagination is where it's at. Round the camp fire.

    Hot tip of the day, YP, don't believe that making a "confession" is the gateway to heaven. Though will absolve you on this occasion, if only because you were so "fecund".

    U

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    1. My absolution is a great relief. I thought I was damned. It seems to me that children are generally much better than adults at blurring the lines between make-believe and what we think of as reality. In a sense the killjoy fellow was right about the "lying" but it is a kind of "lying" that has been a feature of child rearing for thousands of years and the "lies" are generally spun with love.

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  6. My grandmother called me duck. She was a true Londoner. Or at least I thought she was.

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    1. Perhaps she simply thought that you looked like a duck or maybe you were quackers.

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  7. I confess I did not know what to make of that Robin Hood post, which is why I didn't comment! I mean, I knew it didn't happen, but beyond that I was flummoxed.

    I have occasionally been called "love" here in London, by shop workers or other strangers. I think cockneys use that expression, don't they? Never been called "duckie," but I've heard it used on TV or seen it in books.

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    1. The Robin Hood post was just to avoid another rather predicatble account of a walking expedition. I am sorry that you were flummoxed by it. It was just for fun.

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  8. Why I rather enjoyed yesterday's post but then I am accustomed to the tall tales of yours Mr. Pudding!

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    1. I forgot to mention...

      Mistress Bonnie was the landlady of "The Hog's Head" public house. She ruled with an iron fist and woe betide any of the merrie men who failed to observe her house rules.

      Once she even threw out Friar Tuck who had supped a surfeit of ale and was struggling to stand up.

      "Get out of my pub you fat ox!" she had yelled, putting the fear of God into the rotund man of God.

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    2. That's right Sir Pudding, and the rules applied to all including that gold-toothed Robin!

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  9. Love is a northern saying not a southern

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    1. You may agree with each other all you like, John and YP. And who am I to argue? Bloody forinner that I am.

      Fact is I live in the South (if I went any further South I'd fall into the sea). Has it occurred to either of you that people actually move? Say from North to South? And vice versa? Darling.

      U

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    2. I am thinking of the prevalence of usage - not exclusivity.

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  10. I didn't comment, either. It was just too weird. A walking expedition story is always readable.

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    1. I don't get it Joanne. It was a piece of fiction. Creative writing. I don't get how that can be weird.

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  11. I was once addressed as 'dear' in Brighton's Waitrose; it made me feel as if I was almost in my box.

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    1. Were you riding on your mobility scooter?

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  12. I always like your creative writing posts, Neil. There was one about a boy travelling with his father in medieval times, to deliver something, I believe. It was very evocative and so well done. As for the Robin Hood one, that was just, as you say, plain fun.

    In Yorkshire, people have said "duckie" to me often, in shops, on the bus and so on. My sister finds that so funny that she has given me a rubber duckie to sit in my shower room as a reminder. My mother-in-law calls me "love".

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    1. Statistically speaking, the use of "duck" and "duckie" is most prevalent in Nottinghamshire but I concede that the term may occasionally be used elsewhere.

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