Potpourri

My old A level Art teacher at Beverley Grammar School was Mr Doyle.  When it came to art, he taught me to avoid the trap of  being too easily satisfied - to push myself harder and thereby improve my creative offerings. In that spirit, I had another go at my cartoon of Liz Truss, now crowned as this country's latest prime minister:-

And I am sure that if I  attempted further versions I could make it better still but I am quite sick of Liz Truss already. Drawing her is rather depressing.

Before he departed, Johnson delivered a typically bullish, unapologetic speech from Downing Street. He likened leadership to a relay race, claiming that for him the rules of the race had been changed halfway through it. That was another lie. He broke the rules. His opinion of himself is so inflated that it is surprising he hasn't floated away like a huge pig-coloured hot air balloon.

Yesterday, I managed to get a three mile walk in amongst the abandoned stone quarries  and the woods above Padley Gorge north of Grindleford. Countless stone blocks for the construction of the Derwent dams came from here and there were train tracks and engine houses etcetera - all removed, ruinous or returning to Nature.

In earlier times, thousands of millstones were crafted in the area until the bottom fell out of the market just as World War One happened. I spotted these eye-catching old millstones now clothed in moss:-

And here's another picture I took - not a Mayan temple but the ruins of an old engine house that was used to lower massive stone blocks down the hillside to the railway track at the bottom before being transported up the valley of The River Derwent:-