Introduction

This is the introduction to the COP26 conference which began in Glasgow today. It appears on the official website https://ukcop26.org/ :-

___________________________________________________________

Around the world storms, floods and wildfires are intensifying. Air pollution sadly affects the health of tens of millions of people and unpredictable weather causes untold damage to homes and livelihoods too.

But while the impacts of climate change are devastating, advances in tackling it are leading to cleaner air, creating good jobs, restoring nature and at the same time unleashing economic growth.

Despite the opportunities we are not acting fast enough. To grip this crisis, countries need to join forces urgently.

They also agreed to step up efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change and to make finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.

By completing and implementing the Paris Agreement at Glasgow, we can show that the world is able to work together to tackle this crucial challenge.

And by uniting behind a green recovery from coronavirus, which creates sustainable jobs and addresses the urgent and linked challenges of public health, climate change, and biodiversity loss, we can safeguard the environment for future generations.

                     ___________________________________________________________

I think the second paragraph is too optimistic. It is pretty evident that the strides that humankind have taken so far to address the climate crisis are nothing but baby steps. Ahead of us there's a mountain to climb and the route is fraught with difficulty. The "advances" referred to are marginal. "Unleashing" economic growth sounds like a rabid dog has been freed.

The fourth paragraph that begins "They also agreed..." is disconnected from the previous three paragraphs. Who are "they"? It's just flawed writing that hasn't been properly checked. It slipped through the net.

For me this introduction lacks the sense of urgency that is needed. It's far too polite and seems to imply that solutions will be pretty easy if we just come together and try "we can safeguard the environment for future generations".

Another criticism I have of this neat introduction is that it makes no reference to the fact that Earth has become grossly overpopulated.  If that truth is not vigorously addressed then we will never turn back time and save our planet.  Build all the wind farms you want and churn out as many solar panels as you wish but there are just too many people here.  At this precise moment, the world's population is 7,903, 624,070. Way ahead of  forecasts made a decade ago, we will reach eight billion in 2023. That is far more frightening than COVID19..

Imagery

To be honest, I was stuck for something to blog about today so instead I have chosen to post some more pictures that I took in Lincoln on Monday. Here's The Usher Gallery - the only purpose-built art gallery in Lincolnshire:-

I snapped this picture of rooftops from the south west tower during our rooftop tour:-

Also, while up on the roof I saw this - the twin towers and the lead roof that was, I believe, renewed in the 1980's:-

On The Strait in Lincoln, looking towards the central tower of the cathedral:-

Three doors on Bailgate - number 60, number 60½ and number 61:-

New carving on the south west tower - replacing crumbling stonework. The eagle represent St John and the winged man represents St Matthew:-

Arresting modern statue of The Blessed Virgin Mary, installed in 2014:-

And finally, high up above the altar this blurry image of the famous Lincoln Imp which has become the city's principal symbol. The nickname of the  local football team - Lincoln City - is The Imps:-

Well, I hope this visual post was okay and interesting enough for you.

Delivery

American skunk cabbage on the front cover

The western world seems to be crowded with delivery vans and delivery people these days. Soon every other vehicle on the roads will be an Amazon van. Well, that's how it seems to me anyway.

This morning, I was sitting at this very computer when a yellow DHL van pulled up outside. A man in a DHL uniform jumped out with a package for me. He photographed  it on our doorstep to prove that it had been delivered. This procedure is becoming quite common and of course the deliverers never seek permission to take those snaps.

A package for me? I wondered what on earth it might be. Inside the yellow DHL plastic bag was a cardboard box. Spotting it - that's when the penny dropped. My calendars had arrived!

My Geograph site had for the first time given contributors the opportunity to have  personalised  calendars made - using their own chosen  images. Given the fact that I have contributed almost sixteen thousand photographs to the Geograph project I had plenty to choose from before settling on my final thirteen - twelve months and the cover image.

I am delighted with the quality of the finished product.  It's so professional. Perhaps I should have ordered more than the six I paid for. Now it's too late. The curtain has come down on the initiative which was hatched in order to boost Geograph funds.

Of course, I was obliged to include a cow...

Trespass

Every October, my home city - Sheffield - hosts a festival of the written word. It is called "Off The Shelf" and this is its thirtieth year. In twenty eight of those thirty years, I  attended two or three events but I realised the other day that I had not been to anything this time round.

I checked out the programme and spotted something that appealed to me this evening. It was held in The Millennium Gallery in the city centre  - a talk by an  environmental campaigner, artist and writer called Nick Hayes. He has recently published a book titled "The Book of Trespass" and as the title suggests it focuses upon land ownership and the limited rights that people have when out and about in the countryside.

It is a topic that has interested me for a long time. How can landowners possess rivers? Why can't people automatically roam where they wish to as long as they are not causing any damage? And how, for example,  did moorland get to be owned by anybody in the first place?

Nick Hayes addresses such matters in his book. However, though this evening's talk was supposed to be about the book, it tended to leap away from it from the very outset. This was partly the fault of the host presenter - a professor of chemistry at one of Sheffield's  universities. He allowed the talk to stray and seemed far too keen on the sound of his own voice.

Nick Hayes referred to a ground-breaking mass trespass that occurred in The Peak District in 1932 when countless ramblers climbed up onto The Kinder Plateau which was in the possession of wealthy landowners. Several protesters were arrested and jailed but their protest was not in vain because it brought about long overdue changes in the laws governing land access.

This evening's event was well-attended but there was little time for audience questions. Maybe I will buy "The Book of Trespass" one day but I have plenty of other books to read in the interim.

Nick Hayes

Lincoln

On the morning of October 25th 1981, we trudged up Steep Hill to Lincoln's magnificent cathedral. On the morning of October 25th 2021, we did just the same.

There was no ticket counter in 1981 - entrance was free - but in 2021 you must pay an admission fee. At the desk, I overheard talk of a roof tour and in an instant we had paid an extra £7.50 each for this privilege. Soon we were climbing spiral staircases, holding on to ropes and exploring the roof space with its medieval oak roof timbers. Of course we had a guide who was passionate about his hometown cathedral and knew a great deal about it.

View to Lincoln Castle from the cathedral's south west tower

We climbed high above the nave and had two opportunities to get out on the roof but not up to the tops of any of the three towers. They still reached for the late October sky, high above us.

Since childhood, I have lived in awe of our medieval church builders. Their ingenuity, audacity and "can do" attitude saw the construction of hundreds of fabulous village churches and several marvellous cathedrals, abbeys and minsters including Durham Cathedral, Holy Trinity Church in Hull, York Minster, Beverley Minster, Ely Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Fountains Abbey, Westminster Abbey and Wells Cathedral. All wonderful buildings but my favourite of them all  is Lincoln Cathedral.

High above the nave in Lincoln Cathedral

On Sunday evening, we had a lovely anniversary meal in "The Botanist" and ate out again on Monday. Lunch in "The Lion and The Snake" and dinner in the "Samba Brazil". All great meals and there were a couple of visits to pubs as well - "The Witch and Wardrobe" which was attractively rough and ready and "The William Foster" on Guildhall Street.

The High Bridge in Lincoln

Back in 1981, Lincoln did not have a university but now it has one with numerous modern buildings and accommodation blocks south of Brayford Pool which was once the city's bustling inland port area. Our hotel  - The Holiday Inn Express was close to the university quarter. It fulfilled our requirements completely and we had no complaints though it was snug enough to feel like a cabin on an ocean liner.

We were so lucky that Monday was a bright, sunshiny day - rather like the one that Jimmy Cliff sang about in "I Can See Clearly Now". I wonder how many more moons will pass by before we return to Lincoln.

The tomb of Eleanor of Castile  (!241-1290) - married to King Edward I

Conundrum

 Before I write about our anniversary trip to Lincoln, here's a problem for you to solve...

What is this? I took the photograph in Lincoln but that is almost irrelevant. The solution will be given later today - Wednesday. In the meantime, I hope that a few of  this blog's esteemed visitors will make their suggestions. No cunning use of Google please!

________________________________________________

ANSWER

These are the 276 pieces of plastic that  were found in  the stomach of a 90 day old albatross chick that died on Midway Island in the North Pacific Ocean in 2012. They were arranged and displayed on that black background by award winning photographer and environmentalist Mandy Barker. Currently on display in The Collection gallery in Lincoln.

What have we done?

Ruby

Forty years ago tomorrow Shirley and I were married at St Martin's Church in the north Lincolnshire village of Owston Ferry. She was twenty two and I had just turned twenty eight.

As I recall, it was a very happy day when that virtual champagne bottle was smashed across the bow of our marriage. "God bless her and all who sail in her". It was witnessed by friends and family. A good number of the attendees are not here any more - my mum Doreen and my older brother Paul, Shirley's parents Charlie and Winnie, my grandmother Phyllis and Shirley's grandmother Minnie, my friend Ron Budd who died of alcoholism and several of Shirley's aunts and uncles. They exist only in our memories. I can hear them in the next room.

It was an inexpensive wedding. For example, the wedding breakfast was a simple buffet meal in a nearby pub and our wedding car was in fact Charlie's VW Passat driven by one of her many cousins. The weather was typical of late October - blustery but thankfully dry. Prince Charles had married Diana Spencer just four months before in St Paul's Cathedral, London. There was far, far less pomp and circumstance at our wedding. In fact there wasn't any.

We had just bought our first house in the Crookesmoor area of Sheffield. It cost us £15,250 and we picked up the keys for it on the Thursday before the wedding. There was a lot of work to do on that house before we could move in and that's the reason we didn't have a proper honeymoon.

Instead, after the wedding breakfast, we jumped in Shirley's little cream-coloured Mini and headed south to the city of Lincoln for one night. We had booked a room in the very modest St Catherine's Hotel. In the morning, after a full English breakfast, we wandered up Steep Hill to Lincoln's magnificent cathedral. Did you know that it was the tallest building in the entire world from 1311 to 1548? Furthermore, if the central spire had not been blown down in a storm, it would have remained the tallest building till 1889 when The Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris.. I find this information pretty awesome.

Anyway, me and my lovely bride are heading back to Lincoln tomorrow - this time for a two night stay in the Holiday Inn Express near Brayford Pool. We shall climb back up Steep Hill to the cathedral and if we spot a special something she wants, I will buy Shirley a gift to mark our ruby wedding anniversary. Forty years is quite an achievement - I am sure you will agree - though that blustery day in Owston Ferry, by The River Trent still seems like yesterday.

Madman

Track to Scarcliffe Grange

You don't have to be mad to blog here but it helps! 

As a member of the Geograph project I have a personal map that I call my red blob. Over the past twelve years my red blob has grown with every image I have captured in a different 1km square. Now I have collected 6402  different squares and submitted 15812 photographs in total. Below you can see just a section of my coverage map. As you will see, at the edges of the red blob it all becomes rather raggedy.

Yesterday, I set out with my faithful companion Tonto Clint to target seven squares I had not yet secured. Often such squares are in awkward locations. Perhaps there's no public footpath or no road or maybe I just missed them on earlier visits to that area. Before setting out I had some map study and pre-planning to do.

Signal box at Elmton and Creswell Junction

It was a lovely day and, with Clint's kind assistance, I managed to accomplish my vital mission. Before heading home, I called into the former mining village of Creswell where I purchased a late lunch - a portion of golden chips (American: fries) and a battered sausage with a can of Diet Coke from "Trawler's Catch" on Elmton Road. It was naughty nourishing and well, nice.

The accompanying pictures were all taken yesterday.

Elm Tree Cottage, Elmton

Above Whaley Hall Farm

Equity

Billionaire Roman Abramovich's superyacht "Eclipse" has 

an estimated carbon footprint of 25,100 tons of CO2 per year.

Nowadays we are all anxious about climate change. We wonder what can be done to slow it down or even halt it. We wonder about how our own lifestyles have contributed to climate change as we turn off lights, recycle plastics and think about reducing the amount of meat and dairy in our weekly diets. In various ways we are all guilty but some are more guilty than others.

I have had a fantasy about a world in which we all receive environmental tokens to spend on the things we need. Everybody receives exactly the same number of tokens making the spending process equitable. Poor people get the same number of tokens as the wealthy. After all, shouldn't we all be fighting this battle together?

The domestic consequences of this would be numerous. Private jets would no longer be allowed. Nobody would have enough tokens to own more than one motor vehicle. Living in large houses or owning two or three homes would be inadvisable because of the environmental toll. There just wouldn't be enough tokens to cover the expense.

Buying new clothes or having extensive wardrobes would be a no-no as would be the replacement  of electrical items  without proper reason such as breakdown or irreparability. Having a lot of money stashed away should not give you licence  to squander this planet's precious resources just because you can. Some things are more important than your self-gratification including ensuring the longevity of Earth for our children's children's children.

In the western world, it used to be that the majority of people dreamt of an affluent lifestyle like the rich lives we observed on our television sets - fast cars, fine clothes, big houses, posh  restaurants, first class travel etcetera but when you think of it, the rich have always used far more than their fair share of environmental tokens. Arguably the time has come for them to take stock and change in order to reduce their excessive and inequitable carbon footprints.

All this being said, I am well aware that compared with many people in this world  I am also stupendously rich. Generally speaking, African, Asian and South American peasant folk spend very little each year compared with me. Their environmental tokens pile up, virtually unused.

I don't believe that world leaders are truly serious about meaningful action in relation to climate change. They seem to be tinkering around at the edges playing the Green Warriors Game just  because it's the flavour of the day. In the past, our own political "leader" - Johnson was very scathing about environmental campaigners and now ahead of the Glasgow summit, he expects us to believe in his newly discovered  green credentials. Would he or any of his fellow leaders consider for one moment taking on the rich and curtailing their insatiable carbon appetites?  I am afraid that that would only happen when  it was far too late to make a difference.

Boatman in India. What is his boat's carbon footprint per year?

Lentran

 

1st August, 1974. Lentran near Inverness

What a horrible job I have let myself in for. This morning I earned just £1.20 working from 8.30 to 2.30. As I told the man at the employment exchange - "It is slave labour". And Jesus - I was not slacking as I picked 'em.

I have begun reading "The Grapes of Wrath"by John Steinbeck. It is very readable - the slow slow life of Oklahoma in mid-century with its prejudices and its changing agricultural methods and its dust storms is well captured. It is an American novel through and through though it is interesting to discover that Steinbeck's mother was Irish.

Inverness with 46 days of the holiday left. I've covered around 1,500 miles since this holiday began in May. What is to become of me? The pain of just living - not a sharp, thrusting,ripping, bloody, cataclysmic pain but a dull, drawn, out, quiet pain. Last night I looked into the milky face of a girl from a village near York - a beautiful, delicate, mystic, milky face which smiled back on a long, slender neck which in turn swept down to the curving breasts of her ripened womanhood. The agony lay between my wanting and her denial.

(p111) "You go steal that tire an you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business."

(p117) "You ain't askin' nothing, you're jus' singin' a kinda song. "What we comin' to?" You don't wanna know."

Public schoolboys aged eighteen earning £1 a day by  picking raspberries, complain about the poor wages and then buy a string of gin and tonics at 33 pence a piece. Public schoolboys talking politics, talking about justice when their own fathers thrive and prosper on profits made at other people's expense. They talk of flogging juvenile delinquents when that's what they are.

August 5th 1974, Lentran

Well Steinbeck's book is now read. As "The Guardian" saId - "The ultimate impression is that of the dignity of the human spirit under the stress of the most desperate conditions".

Perhaps that was the impression that Steinbeck wanted to convey above all others. At the end of the novel when Rose of Sharon suckles the starving man in the black barn, she smiles "mysteriously". That mysterious smile tells us a number of things. It tells us that despite everything the Joads and all families like them will get by, and despite all the many injustices they have suffered things will right themselves in the future. It is a smile that is smiled when the Joads have fallen to their lowest ebb. Their caravan and car are flooded and they are cold and hungry - things can only get better. 

It is a smile which certifies the truth behind Casy's comments earlier in the story: "Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way. Always goin' and  goin'". From that black barn we can be sure that the Joads will move on.

August 7th 1974, Lentran

Yesterday, I decided to walk around the municipal campsite in Inverness just in case Simon* and his pals were there. There was just a faint chance that they might be. I knew they were in Scotland  but had no real idea that they would have come to Inverness. The walk to the campsite was mainly to pass time but there they were putting up their tents! Half an hour later and I'd have missed them..

Last night we had a few beers and then some better stuff that Alan had grown on their farm. We scoffed raspberries back here at the raspberry farm and Simon became paranoiac about getting into trouble and wouldn't shut up. 

I slept like a log in my tent alongside this French guy who decided to move in. I don't even know his name. It's a bit of a crap really - the moving in I mean - not him. He arrived without a tent of his own and I took pity.

I'll probably still be at Lentran next Monday. "Time  passes slowly up here in the mountains. We walk beside bridges and talk beside fountains...." - Bob Dylan.

*Simon - my younger brother

Twenty

O'Driscoll's Castle, Cape Clear Island

In the summer of 1974, I was twenty years old. A lot of things happened that summer. I covered hundreds of miles through hitchhiking. I made some money working at a  Butlin's holiday camp and later on at a raspberry farm that overlooked Beauly Firth near Inverness in Scotland. I attended The Cambridge Folk Festival and I also visited Ireland for the first time, carrying everything I needed in a weighty rucksack - tent, sleeping bag, camping stove, extra clothes, toiletries, everything.

On June 12th in Dublin, I bought a little notebook which I used as a journal for the rest of that summer. I was pretty good at keeping up with the days. Fortunately, I kept that notebook and rediscovered it a few weeks ago. It is the diary of another me - a sapling. A young man in search of things - for understanding, wisdom, happiness, new experiences and of course love. 

By June 29th I was on Cape Clear Island off the coast of County Cork. This is what I wrote that day:-

_________________________________________

There is a castle on an island promontory which looks out from  the very edge of Europe. Years of gales and human neglect have caused its walls to crumble, so that instead of towering nobly above the mother rock, it has, rather like a chameleon, taken on an appearance that blends in with the cliffs and the rocky islets that cluster around it.

Ah, but in spite of this decline, the ancient fortress has not yet surrendered its history which the jealous rocks watched  being formed. Still, still midst the tenacious rock plants in the crevices, standing there without motion you can sense times that have gone... A pirate called O'Driscoll, on those decaying stone stairs, his footsteps padding, a tankard of Spanish wine in his right fist. He stops on the parapet above that frothing sea, hacking his throat clear. He looks out through the moonless night to the horizon and his gaze stumbles upon distant torchlight upon one of his wooden ships returning from the Americas.

On that very same horizon two centuries later it's the blue and white spinnaker of an elegant French yacht which reveals itself to the island and the now crumbling castle. Oh that that man of the sea with lice burrowing in his scalp and food stains on his raggedy beard could see his proud fortress as it is today. 

Perhaps standing with me in the soft summer grasses on the clifftop, his hard shell  would crack and at last words would rise from his hidden heart: "I didn't know. I didn't know" and we would walk along the island's rim watching seabirds gliding to their ledges and O'Driscoll would survey it all then lean over the edge searching for his reflection in the waves below and having failed to find it he would renounce his days of power and plunder and see like me a world of waiting and wondering - not rushing to pursue foolish dreams.

Seagulls, rock plants, yachts, cliff faces, a distant lighthouse - I missed it all loading my camera.

Inner page of the notebook showing my 1974 sketch map of Cape Clear Island

Etcetera

Okay. Time for another blogpost before Monday October 18th 2021 ends. Trouble is I haven't got the faintest idea  what to blog about so I will just ramble on about this and that - nothing in particular.  I don't feel like giving you a blow by blow account of the football match I attended on Saturday afternoon. It was  a Yorkshire derby between The Tigers and The Terriers. Perhaps if The Tigers (Hull City) had beaten The Terriers (Huddersfield Town) by two goals to nil it would have been a different matter but we lost by that score.

Furthermore, having just written a glowing Trip Advisor review for our local Miller and Carter steak restaurant, I don't feel like returning to that subject. Suffice to say that it was my friend Mike's seventieth birthday and I was there with our other quiz stalwart - Mick - for a lovely meal that was made even lovelier because Mike paid the entire bill. Strangely, I think it is much more common for women friends to arrange special meals together than male friends. I asked the two Michaels to get my own seventieth birthday meal pencilled in their diaries - just two years from now. I hope I make it but if I don't  at least I will save myself some money.

Here in England the news is all of the traumatic killing of a much-respected Member of Parliament. His name was David Amess. He had been a hard-working and cheery elected representative for thirty eight years. He was assassinated by a wicked nobody with a knife. It's awful to  contemplate and just now I don't feel like writing any more about it. You can imagine what I might say. 

On the family front, Frances, Stew and Phoebe will be sleeping in a hotel room in Ottawa, the capital of Canada tonight while our son Ian will already be sleeping in  a luxurious hotel room in Dubai with his lovely girlfriend Sarah.

And that's that. Midnight is fast approaching and I need to click "Publish" before October 18th 2021 disappears forever. Hopefully, there will be better blogposts ahead.

Coelacanth

Coelacanth

Once, before the pandemics and the third world war and all the other stuff that happened afterwards, we lived very different lives. It seems like a dream world now, a place  of innocence before the collapse came.

I recall a vast flock of starlings coming back to the copse on the hilltop to roost each October evening.  Hundreds of them in perfect synchronicity. They swirled in the waning light  -  a spectacular avian wave, a murmuration that rolled and twisted like a shoal of silvery sardines in a blue ocean. Together as one while we just stood in awe. Watching.

It’s almost gone now. All of that – that beauty. Those pristine white beaches where coconuts were washed up, pushing down roots at the tideline. That rustling of the humble hedgehog amidst crinkly leaves, its elderberry eyes and snuffling snout seeking plump worms. That eagle that hovered majestically like a kite over yon purple valleys and noticed everything.

When you consider it, we had it all. We were honoured guardians, custodians but it was a role we carried too carelessly for we were almost blind. We could not see beyond the end of the week or the end of the year. Of course it is far too late now. We are way beyond the pale. Way beyond.

There were wildebeest and orang-utans and coelacanths and deep in jungles or faraway mountains other people lived. Quiet people with whom we had had no contact. It was their world too.

And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. Little did the lyricist  think that its song was in truth an alarm call. It sings no more, like the carrier pigeons and the cuckoos and the birds of paradise that danced with hope unseen in magical clearings when shafts of sunlight broke through. Golden and green.

Yes it’s misty now that happy ever after world where we once resided. We can never get it back no matter how hard we try. It’s lost between the container ports and the concrete towers, between emissions from plastics factories and the orange blue netting tangled in a young whale’s belly.

Listen and you can hear the finale with extended notes from a violin piercing  the night sky, sending a message to the outermost stars: “We were here. Long, long ago. We were here.”

Hulland

Friday's weather forecast promised sunshine and an absence of rain so guess what - another long walk in the countryside beckoned.. I programmed Clint's onboard computer and soon we were heading off to Hulland - a village between two pleasant Derbyshire towns - Ashbourne and Belper. It's a journey of an  hour and fifteen minutes.

By chance I met the landlord of "The Black Horse" in Hulland Ward. He kindly allowed me to park in his extensive car park for the duration of my walk which was to last five and a half hours. Where that time went I have no idea. I just kept plodding and only sat down once to drink water and eat my fruit in the village of Atlow.

I could easily flesh this blogpost out with accounts of two more unwelcome encounters with over-excited young cattle. One incident saw me lifting up a galvanised gate and blocking the gap between two fields as the galloping beasts sought to join me in the new pasture. The resulting diversion - away from the route of the public right of way was challenging to say the least but  I got through as this blogpost demonstrates.

It was six thirty in the evening when I got home feeling drained of energy but very peaceful too. I didn't sit down again until I had prepared our evening meal - roasted slices of loin pork with baked potatoes, broccoli,  fried onions. and apple sauce.

Bell on the west wall of Bradley parish church

Canada

Granddaughter Phoebe is nine months old today. There she is on the lakeside decking of the cabin she is currently staying in in the Algonquin Provincial Park in northern Ontario, Canada. It covers a lot of land - three thousand square miles and boasts over 2,400 lakes. The English Lake District is slightly smaller and contains fewer lakes - in fact there are only sixteen!

On Wednesday, Phoebe and her parents travelled to the place where Lake Erie drains into Lake Ontario. I am sure you can guess where they were. See below. I don't know if they rode on "The Maid of the Mist" - right up to the base of the falls. That's a thrilling experience for certain but I am not sure if the operators  allow nine month old babies on board.

And here the little family is/are  at the top of The CN Tower in Toronto. Phoebe doesn't look too happy does she?

TV

Our Ian was on television again today. He and Henry were doing a cooking slot within the Channel 4 chat show - "Steph's Packed Lunch". It is the third time they have been on there. 

Each time the pressure has been on to talk to the hostess - Steph McGovern while simultaneously demonstrating the preparation of a vegan dish. In my opinion they're not given quite enough time. Another minute would be a huge help, making the process less frenetic.

Today they were making pulled pork sandwiches with apple sauce and carrot crackling. Of course it's not really pork but roasted and shredded jackfruit which when suitably seasoned can take on the flavour and texture of pork. It seemed to go down a treat with Steph and her other studio guests.

By the way, the show is filmed in Leeds so Ian and Henry had to travel up from London early this morning. I have lost count of the number of times they have been on television now. With each TV experience they seem more relaxed and confident in front of the camera. 

Ian knew nothing of this particular job when we saw him last weekend. This coming weekend he is off to Dubai on an all expenses paid trip - partly to promote vegan cuisine and also to play a small part in encouraging holidays to Dubai. Incidentally, I have been there twelve times but never left the airport!

Smartphone

Being around our Ian for any length of time, you realise how important his smartphone is to him. It is like an extension of his being.

Let me tell you some of the things I witnessed this past weekend. He used the smartphone as an oven timer. He used it to take and send photographs. He used it to listen to music. He used it to pay for the parking of my car - The Clintmobile. He used it for online banking purposes and to check the weather. He used it to book and pay for theatre tickets. He used it as a spirit level. He used it to order a taxi. And would you believe it - he even used it as a telephone!

As I said on Monday, he has an electric Mini Cooper and as it will only cover 120 miles on a single charge, he needs to locate and use charging points quite regularly. The smartphone points him to where there are available charging points - not just their locations but whether or not other people are currently using them. Of course, he also uses the smartphone to pay for these charging sessions.

He is so adept with the phone, so comfortable with it and the services it can provide to facilitate and lubricate a busy modern life. In contrast, I have never possessed any sort of mobile phone and for example I have never sent a single text message in my life. If I go out into the world, I am happily uncontactable - be it on a country  walk or a car journey. If I go to the supermarket, Shirley cannot phone me up and tell me to get the soap powder or toilet rolls she forgot to mention.

In this sense, Ian and I are worlds apart. I  have just never felt a pressing need for a smartphone and think to myself - well I have got this far in my life without one, why bother now? I notice how obsessed millions of other people are with them. They are checking them all the time - no doubt looking at Facebook, Instagram or other social media. To me it all seems so alien and I just wouldn't wish to be hooked like that.

Nonetheless I recognise that for Ian and millions of other users, the smartphone is a vital tool both socially and for work purposes. If I felt I needed one then I would get one though I would have a lot to learn and I rather fear that my frankfurter fingers would be too big for the slippery touchscreen.

Increasingly, I notice that businesses and even governmental organisations will often assume that everybody is in possession of a smartphone. That wrong assumption will sometimes hinder or obstruct those of us who don't have them. It's a kind of discrimination born out of  ignorance and it can be pretty infuriating.

Culpability

There are lots of ways you could kill someone...

You could throttle them with your bare hands. You could lace their porridge with poison. You could stab them or shoot them. You could drive them off the road or push them over a cliff.

And there are other ways...

You could put pollutants in their rivers and reservoirs. You could clad their high rise buildings with flammable panels. You could instigate wars. You could simply neglect them. You could delay action at the start of a deadly pandemic, perhaps imagining that everything would be okay in the end, even when the signs from abroad suggested otherwise. In mitigation,  you could chant repeatedly "We're following The Science" even when "The Science" was never clear. You could transport infected hospital patients to care homes without proper safety provision or informed agreement.

Who knows how many British deaths might have been avoided if Johnson had been a wise political leader and not an unapologetic optimist and showman? His dithering and delay at the start of the pandemic caused thousands of avoidable deaths and this is the clear conclusion of parliament's Health and Social Care, and Science and Technology Committees. 

Will he ever appear in a court of law to answer to the charges that should by rights be ranged against him? Never. As sure as eggs are eggs, he will get away with this unintentional mass killing scot-free. There will be weasel words and the world will move on and one day Johnson will write a book about his years in office. It will sell like hotcakes but he won't give a penny of the profits to the grieving families of his coronavirus victims. No way will he do that. He will remain a killer on the loose just like Tony Blair.

London

By The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

Down to London on Saturday morning then back today. We had a lovely time. We visited our Ian's flat in Shepherd's Bush for the first time. He was so pleased to have us there and the flat was most splendid. Mind you, at half a million pounds it needs to be.

Lovely Sarah was there too. They have been together for a full year now. It seems serious. Funny word to use that isn't it? "Serious" - to describe a relationship that is joyful and loving with much laughter and touch.  In finding each other, they feel less alone in the world and so in a sense less serious! More light-hearted.

We had lunch in "The Ship Inn" at Hammersmith by The River Thames and then we walked back to Ian's little flat before heading up to Camden to see one of his old school friends in a two man play called "Fritz and Matlock". Though the audience was small, the drama was excellent and afterwards we met the TV actor Mike Stevenson who plays a paramedic called Ian Dean in the long-running BBC medical drama - "Casualty". Co-incidentally, he also hails from Sheffield.

Pub on Goldhawk Road, Shepherd's Bush

On Sunday I drilled holes in Ian's walls in order to put up four framed pictures and a floating shelf. This mission was completed successfully without fuss. Then we went off to the nearby "Westfield" shopping centre - the biggest in Europe - where Shirley bought a new coat and we looked at some other items but didn't buy.

By now it was late  - a beautiful autumnal afternoon. We headed over to Kensington Gardens in Ian's electric car - a black and yellow Mini Cooper. After finding a free car parking space we wandered through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park right over to The Albert Memorial.

This stone carving represents "America" and forms 

a corner of The Albert Memorial

It struck me that this gaudy rocket ship of a memorial with its stone carvings, mosaics and gilding was arguably the very pinnacle of The British Empire. A monument to a man but also a statement of imperial self-confidence, achievement and pride. Queen Victoria's German consort died of typhoid in 1861 but his memorial was not fully completed until 1876.

The Royal Albert Hall opposite The Albert Memorial

Back at the flat Ian prepared a delicious vegan stir fry and I made  an apple crumble for dessert using  windfall apples from our own garden.

After a lazy Monday morning we headed back  Up North, stopping briefly at the Northampton motorway services in order to inspect the lavatorial facilities and purchase refreshments kindly prepared by Ronald McDonald. Please don't tell Ian...

Ian with his mama by The Round Pond