6 February 2021

Suburbs

Nether Green, Sheffield looking to Ranmoor

Thanks to everybody who commented on my father's  fading account of an Indian adventure he undertook in 1944. Now I am seriously mulling over the idea of editing and transcribing his original manuscript. I do not feel duty-bound to copy it out verbatim. I will give myself  licence to make judicious alterations and add a little polish to it all. It will take many hours but hey, like everyone else, I have wasted oodles of time during this damned pandemic. There's plenty of time to spare.

Yesterday, after getting my act together - emptying the dishwasher, writing that last blogpost, having a shower and a shave, making a couple of phone calls etcetera - I  was keen to get some exercise so I drove over to the neighbouring suburb of Nether Green and parked Clint on Stumperlowe Park Road.

"Where are you going this time?" he asked as I was putting my boots on.

"Oh just for a mooch round. I will be an hour or so," I smiled, patting his silver roof.

Thirty years ago, we almost bought a house in Nether Green. Our offer was accepted but two months later the deal fell through. The owners had decided to stay put after all! So for us it was back to the drawing board and we ended up buying the house we live in now.

Typical million pound house in Nether Green

I have always liked Nether Green. It is a very pleasant suburb. It has a great pub - "The Rising Sun". Set back from the main road there are a lot of million pound detached houses but there are also terraced streets where less affluent people have made their homes. There's a nice mixture of people and it feels very safe there.

I wandered through the streets taking occasional photographs until I arrived at Christ Church in the adjacent suburb of Fulwood. It was a pretty grey day but dry - not too bad for February.

In the evening I made a nice spaghetti with a cheese sauce I concocted myself and chunks of salmon, chopped mushrooms and green beans. Afterwards, I phoned my brother Robin in the countryside south of Toulouse, France.  It was the occasion of his seventieth birthday and I wanted to send him my best wishes.  Both of us are still going strong after all these years .

Is it Art?  Behind the disused sports social club at Fulwood

29 comments:

  1. Sometimes we waste a lot of time during this pandemic. I have been planning to work on some family history but very little of it is being done.

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    1. It is so easy to fritter time away and before you know it, it is time for bed again.

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  2. Anonymous6:41 am

    It will be a great thing to preserve your father's writing. Ungortetly my tyoing skillss aren't great.
    I think the work is art.
    Nether Green looks very peaceful.

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    1. Sheffield is a pretty divided city. Affluent suburbs to the west and south and big areas of deprivation and social housing to the north and east.

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    2. Usually not as clear cut as in Sheffield John. It is said that the development of Sheffield was partly due to the prevailing winds. Affluent homes were established in the west and south of the city where industrial and indeed domestic smoke would rarely blow.

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  3. My last comment on yesterdays post now looks irrelevant but it was a thought.

    I think it is art.

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    1. I have felt quietly guilty for years about dad's neglected manuscript.

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  4. The Sound Of The Suburbs by The Members would be a good video to accompany this post.

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    1. Never heard that before Dave. Thanks.

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  5. Behind the disused sports social club at Fulwood? Couldn't you wait?

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    1. I confess I had a widdle there.

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    2. Better than pickling yourself.

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  6. Is that million pound house still available? I could buy two; one for me and one for the servants.

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    1. Boasting about one's pecuniary wealth is an unappealing tendency JayCee. Best to stay quiet about one's massive bank balance and profitable investments. Not everybody is swimming in money like you and his lordship.

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  7. Going through my mum's things, eight years after her death, I wish I had spent more time with her. We did spend some time going through photos and labeling those photos, putting them in an album, but there are questions I didn't even know I wanted answers to and now it's too late. My dad died twenty-three years ago and sadly I never missed him. He was such an angry, unhappy man, impossible to talk to. He tended to shout and shake. He needed far more hugs and attention than he ever got from any of us but he did a great job of pushing us all away.

    Anyway, I digress. The walk and the houses look lovely and best of all, no snow or ice. Right now it's -27C and bloody cold here.

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    1. Minus 27! Good grief! I hope you have got some gloves Lily.

      By the way, only last night my brother Robin was saying that there are many questions he wished he could have asked our parents.

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  8. In answer to your question- Is it art?- I have to reply that it may be. I am no judge of that. However, art or not, I don't like it.
    The world cares not.

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    1. I associate that "art" with dope smoking, aerosol sniffing teenagers and vandals who have clearly hung around that place. I don't like the "art" either but it speaks of the modern world and of teenage disassociation - not quite belonging.

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  9. Did you climb on top of someone's house to get that views of the roofs? Nice photo. I'm not keen on graffiti on buildings.

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    1. I was on Carr Bank Lane. It weaves up the hill. We would have had the same view from the house we almost bought.

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  10. If only every neighbourhood was as safe for children as Nether Green.
    As you said to Andrew, Sheffield is socially divided, with large areas of deprivation, like all of our towns and cities.

    The blind god of the free market can no more solve our social problems than a flock of Toulouse geese, waddling up Strumperlowe Park Road, can sort out our food banks.

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    1. Strumperlowe Park Road? You must have strumpets on your mind again John... as well as flocks of geese.

      I think Sheffield is even more divided than most British cities because of our hills. No other city in Britain is as hilly as Sheffield and the valleys and hills tend to act as natural dividers.

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  11. That top photo is a beautiful shot -- so colorful. (Which is hard to do in England in February!) I like the graffiti, but I'm sure it won't be to everyone's taste. And I wouldn't want it on my house.

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    1. How about IN your house? A similar face would look great on your living room wall. Thanks for your nice comment on the top picture.

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  12. In London it is so easy to go from a reasonably well-off area with multi-million-pound houses to a district with poor housing just by turning a corner. It makes such a difference to house prices and quality of life which council has control too. I have just looked back at your previous post and think you should transcribe your father's notes. You could make a novel out of it too. Greg left copious half-written stories which I have stored in the cellar in a huge box. I keep thinking I should dig them out and read them, but something holds me back.

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    1. How interesting that Greg left that creative writing behind. I am not sure what to say about the emotional affects that dealing with that material might induce. It could bring a fuller sense of closure but then again it could stir up some bad memories. Perhaps you should pass it on to Kay if you are anxious about dealing with it.

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  13. Nether Green sounds and looks a good place to live, or at least for walks when you don‘t feel like muddy paths on windswept slopes. I often walk the various suburbs of my town and have a few favourite houses and streets there, imagining what it is like to live in this or that place.

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    1. You see things when walking through the suburbs that you would never see when flashing by in a car.

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