Blessed

As far as I know, I have only one friend in the city of Florence, South Carolina. Her name is Jennifer which means  "the fair one".  After reading my last blogpost, this is how "the fair one" commented:-

Naturally, I was upset and anxious to repair my relationship with Jennifer. After all, as an old saying declares, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".

And so today, after driving back to Sheffield this afternoon, I am about to post a picture of Zach and his Yorkshire grandpa taken just yesterday in the top floor restaurant of the Peter Jones (John Lewis) department store by Sloane Square, London.

Grandpa is saying, "Where's the money kid? Tell me where you put it!"

Zach is thinking, "There's no way I am going to spill the beans! I ain't afraid of this grandpa guy. I don't care how big he is!"

Again the little man looks kind of serious but I am happy to report that over the past four days we witnessed many smiles, interesting attempts at verbalisation and various explorations with hands and fingers.  We learnt to love him more than before. Ian and Sarah are truly blessed to have little Zachary in their lives and we are too.

Londinium

American gas guzzling car on Bishop's Road, Fulham... actually 

this tiny car is an electric vehicle. 

You may or may not have gathered that we are currently down in London. Because we drove down this time, I was able to bring the old laptop - the one with the broken "s" key. It makes typing anything problematic. I wish the broken key was an "x" or a "z". That would make written communication a lot easier.

Ian is away in The Colonies just now, visiting a little known fishing village called San Francisco. Then he will be in The City of York's little brother settlement - New York City for two nights before heading home to London and his lovely girlfriend Sarah and baby son Zachary.

Historical milestone by Fulham Road

Zach is over four months' old now. With his big brown eyes, he is absorbing so much every day and he thrashes about, reaching out for things and studying faces. He gobbles down baby rice and will soon get to taste some other soft or pureed baby foods.

Today, by bus, the four of us went on a little shopping expedition to Sloane Square where we visited the John Lewis department store. We had lunch in the sixth floor restaurant which has marvellous views over that part of affluent west London.

And now I am afraid that I am getting increasingly fed up with finding ways of addressing the "s" key issue.  Fish and chips for tea. We'll be driving home tomorrow.

Memorial obelisk by the A3 on Putney Heath. It is dedicated to the invention

of a fire safety construction method developed by one David Hartley in the

1770's just over a century after The Great Fire of London. His system 

proved to be unworkable, costly and over-hyped.

Pilgrimage

Today, following in Steve Reed's footsteps, I made it to Putney Vale Cemetery where Sandy Denny is buried. Her voice and her song-writing figured importantly in the soundtrack of my teenage years.

She died a tragic death at the tender age of thirty one. Her only child - Georgia - had  been born just nine months earlier. I took a handful of white flowers to Sandy's grave and I popped them in a heavy glass vase that I found tipped over behind her gravestone. With a little water I hoped they might last longer.

That's when I noticed the grave immediately behind hers. It contains the mortal remains of her mother Edna, her father  Neil and her brother David. The latter died in a tragic Colorado car crash in 1980 - just two years after his more famous sister.

Quiztime

As usual we were up at the quiz at "The Hammer and Pincers". Of course,  the quiz questions tend to have a British bias but with that in mind I am nonetheless giving you ten of the twenty five questions to have a stab at. The answers will be given in the Comments section.

1. Which national flag is green with a red circle in the middle?

2. Which Beatle would have been 81 years old this past weekend?

3. In translation which Italian pasta means "little ribbons"?

4. From which sport do these terms come - turkey, badger, sparrow and gutter ball?

5. Which term connects  offence, annoyance and the shadow cast by trees?

 6. Anagram of a famous person - CAKE CLAIMS JOHN.

7. Name the year -  (It's the same year!)

• The film "Grease" was released starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John
• "Space Invaders" the computer game was released
• The American soap opera "Dallas" was first aired on TV.

8. Which vehicle was the subject of the 1990 film, "The Hunt For Red October"?

9. Which flavour of soup is made from the tails of bovine animals?

10. Which well-known family resided at 0001 Cemetery Lane?

Explanation

Over several months, I became friendly with Janet,  a dizzy grandmother who used to come into the Oxfam shop where I worked. She usually appeared in the last hour before closing time. I also met her daughter, her son-in-law and her two young grandchildren - Loretta and Roy. They were the reason she had moved up to Sheffield from Birmingham.

Janet was always looking out for things she could buy for the kids - little treats, toys, books or items of clothing. She was very kind and I often chatted to her. Like her daughter and son-in-law, she was staunchly working class with typically old-fashioned values.

The manager of the shop was Catherine - a couple of years younger than me and in most ways a great, hard-working shop manager but looking back I think she was also  a bit of a misandrist*. She had put a poster up in the shared staff toilet advising men about how to use toilets, including leaving the toilet seat down for female users. It was not a joke.

Anyway at the back of the shop floor there was a door that led to the staff area and just beyond that door you would often find Catherine sorting out clothing donations -  separating the wheat from the chaff as it were. On the shop side of the door was where children's books and toys were displayed.

Late on a Wednesday afternoon in March 2020 with no other customers in the shop, Janet had found a colouring book that she wanted to give to her little grandson Roy. She showed it to  me and asked what I thought about it. Now this colouring book was very clearly aimed at little girls. It had a pink cover and contained mermaids and seahorses and cute little princesses.

I said to Janet, "I think it's aimed at little girls and I am not sure that your daughter and son-in-law would be too happy about it, Maybe we can find something more suitable for Roy."

At that moment the back door opened and in front of Janet I was angrily  berated by Catherine, "How dare you say that! If my daughter heard you saying that about books she would rip your head off!"

I was flabbergasted but because Janet was still standing there I could not say a thing.

I had worked at the Oxfam shop for just over five years and because of that had received a bronze badge for my voluntary service. Although I could have done battle with Catherine and given her a piece of my mind about this incident, I decided to walk away instead.

The following week when she was having a day off, I left a letter on her desk saying, "I have always been happy working in this shop and I am proud of the service I have given to Oxfam but I am not happy any more and so I won't be returning". When you are an unpaid volunteer you have that luxury of being able to just walk away.

The following week the shop closed for the duration of the first COVID lockdown. I still think to myself - how dare she try to angrily  correct me in front of a customer and how dare she jump to such a wrongful conclusion anyway. She had, I think, never seen or met Janet before and knew nothing about her circumstances.

* misandrist = a person who hates men just as a 

misogynist is defined as a person who hates women.

"Sheffield"

I was going to  apologise about the messy video content in this blogpost. It just would not load up and display as I intended. All I was trying to do was to upload a single tiktok video - the subject of which is a poem called "Sheffield" read out on a BBC radio show by John Cooper-Clarke who is sometimes referred to as Britain's alternative poet laureate. He is also often called our number one punk poet though he scorns that label

He's 75 years old now and still going strong in spite of the fact that he looks as though he is suffering from some kind of terminal disease. Anyway, I hope I have got the tiktok link almost sorted now.  You may only get to see a section of the radio reading.Afterwards, you'll find the written version of this poem.

This northern city where I am typing now is used to being neglected, overlooked, almost unseen in spite of the fact that it has a population of well over half a million so I wasn't going to allow a frustrating technical tangle to prevent me from sharing the poem tonight. Thank you for your forbearance. 

 ⦿

SHEFFIELD

I’ve travelled up and down this country
From St Helens down to St Ives
I’ve dined in the finest of places,
and there’s one word I read on the knives
displayed on any blade of quality
Sheffield Sheffield Sheffield
It calls to me.
I’m going to Sheffield
I really rate it
I mean Sheffield
I’m gonna reiterate it

S-H-E-F-F-I-E-L-D

Sheffield Sheffield Sheffield
It’s got to be.
There’s Richard Hawley on the corner
The Cockers both Jarvis and Joe
Henderson’s Relish to order
And a steak and kidney to go
Park Hill's airborne avenues above.
Sheffield – that’s a place I love.
I’m going to Sheffield
The reputation is stainless
Oh yeah Sheffield
Internationally famous
Where hobnail boots are shabby chic
And Wednesday ain’t some day of the week

S-H-E-F-F-I-E-L-D

Sheffield Sheffield Sheffield
Shoo be doo bee doeee
I’m going to Sheffield
My destiny walks here
You heard me right Sheffield
Republic of South Yorkshire
It’s a town that’s out on its own
I’m gonna shout it down this microphone
Sheffield is my second home

Sweet home sweet home
Sweet home sweet swingin’ ho-ome

by John Cooper-Clarke

Ectopic

Probably, apart from some ignorant folk who fully support the anti-abortion movement in America, most of us have heard of ectopic pregnancies. The medical  term "ectopic" comes from the Greek word "ektopos" which means "out of place" but in emotional terms the word could just as easily mean tears and bitter disappointment mingled with fear of dying.

An ectopic pregnancy usually involves a fertilised egg attaching itself to the inner wall of a fallopian tube. Over the last hundred years, the only medical response has been surgical removal of that fallopian tube. If allowed to grow, the tiny foetus would, in almost all cases, put the unlucky woman involved in serious danger of death.

In early 1986, I remember Shirley telling me one day that she believed she was pregnant again. She had noticed the early physical signs that she had experienced just two years before after our Ian was conceived. We were both delighted and Shirley's smile was for a brief period as angelic as only an expectant mother's smile can be.

But a week later, at the doctor's surgery, though a pregnancy was confirmed, something was wrong. It turned out that her pregnancy was ectopic and emergency surgery was required. The potential human being inside her didn't have a name and we don't know if it was male or female. I was just thankful that Shirley was alive - that she had survived this serious threat to her existence.

In 2019, a bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not even exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”. The legislators pressed on without paying heed to the fact that there had never been a successful reimplanting in such circumstances. Plain crazy. I guess the reality of ectopic pregnancy does not fit comfortably into the anti-abortionist, "Pro-Life" narrative.

Fortunately, healthy women have two fallopian tubes and after Shirley had avoided possible death, our lives continued till in 1988 we were blessed with a second child - this time a beautiful daughter who we named Frances Emily. Fears about the possibility of another ectopic episode evaporated at the end of the first trimester.

In late 1989 or was it early 1990, Shirley told me that she was again pregnant. After all, she knew the signs. Instinctively, I was anxious and I even asked if it could possibly be another ectopic pregnancy but she she assured me that such a tragedy could not befall us a second time. However, my worry was ominous and after some discomfort and bleeding a second ectopic pregnancy was diagnosed and once again emergency surgery was required.

As in 1986, we never knew the gender of the wrongly placed embryo - no bigger than a small pea and we never gave it a name. Sadly, just like the other fertilised egg it was one of Nature's  errors, a stray bullet, a might-have-been. Of course this second episode meant that Shirley could never again naturally carry another child.

• Overall, ectopic pregnancies annually affect less than 2% of pregnant women worldwide.
• In Great Britain, between 2003 and 2005 there were 32,100 ectopic pregnancies resulting in 10 maternal deaths
• In the developing world, however, especially in Africa, the death rate is very high, and ectopic pregnancies are a major cause of death among women of childbearing age.
• In women having had an ectopic pregnancy, the risk of another one in the next pregnancy is around 10%

It has taken me almost nineteen years of blogging to tell this story but it has been lurking inside me for much longer than that.

Grandson

Last evening - that's my son with his son. Little Zach will be four months old on Saturday. It's sad that they do not live just round the corner from us so that we can be a big part of our grandson's life - just as we are with Phoebe and Margot. At least Ian and Sarah and Little Zach do not live in some faraway country like Australia or Canada or Lesotho. I guess we should grateful about that.

Zach is doing nicely. He likes kicking his feet in the bath and watching the world go by. He has just had his first spoonfuls of baby rice - helping him to put on more weight.

Next week we will be heading down to London to stay with Zach and his mama. We will be staying for three nights. Ian will be away on business and we want to give Sarah some support as well as cuddling Zach.

If any unscrupulous bloggers, blog visitors or nasty trolls imagine that they might burgle our Sheffield mansion while we are away then think again!  The premises will be temporarily occupied by my old friend, the weightlifter Tyson Grimes and his ex-police dog Satan. Besides, anything of value will be placed in secure storage over the weekend. Naturally, every room is covered by our CCTV system.

While in London, I hope to go south of The Thames to Putney Vale Cemetery where I have recently discovered that one of my musical heroines is buried. Sandy Denny died in 1978 and here she is singing her most famous song...

I might take her a flower or two.

Navalny

We have all heard the news. Alexei Navalny is dead. Nobody apart from The Russian State doubts that he was killed by The Russian State. He was a thorn in Putin's side and so Navalny was killed. Ultimately, it is as simple as that.

Intelligent, brave and charismatic, Navalny represented hope for a new Russia, a better Russia, a Russia in which ordinary Russians could be free and optimistic - instead of suffering and keeping schtum under the brutal dictatorship of the widow maker - Vladimir Putin.

Navalny didn't need to die. He could have claimed sanctuary in the west but after recovering from a botched novichok  assassination attempt, he returned to his home country in January 2021 and was promptly arrested. He was then of course on the inevitable road to martyrdom. It was just a matter of time.

The Russian authorities have still not released his body as they try to cover up their sins. Perhaps they will never release it and in the meantime they clear up the floral tributes that have been laid in sweet memory of Alexei Navalny.

Of course, he said many things, including this: 

"All evil needs to triumph is the inaction of good people"

Let us hope that he did not die in vain and that one day Putin and his ilk will be long gone as Russia begins to blossom in the healing light of freedom and hope echoing these words from another legendary freedom fighter who also gave his life for a righteous cause... "I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

Alexi Navalny with his wife Yulia, daughter  Darya and son Zakhar

Threesome

Over at Orinoco, book sales have been rising like murmurations of starlings. The first edition of "Going Gently" by John Gray has completely sold out. For the second edition, the author requested a different, more cheerful front cover and our design team were happy to oblige:-

In other book news, we finally agreed a contract with the elusive Anglo-American writer Stephen G. Reed. He had been frolicking over at Leonardo di Caprio's pad in Palm Springs, California. So anyway here's the 1,370 page tome's first public viewing with a teasing extract from Chapter Eleven:-

Olga strained on her leather leash, pulling our intrepid hero deeper into the overgrown cemetery. They were in a brambly thicket where he had never been before. It was a shadowy place but under the overarching trees he spotted some light. There were torches (American: flashlights) and three burly, whispering men were busy digging. Our hero crouched behind a purple rhododendron bush (rhododendron catawbiense) observing this furtive activity and hoping that Olga would stay quiet... (page 684)

⦿

As the CEO of Orinoco, I decided that it was nigh time to cast off my innate modesty and use my advantageous position to finally publish a novel I wrote several years ago. It is called "Love in The Peak District" and it is literally the best romantic novel ever written. Eat your heart out Barbara Cartland! No doubt film makers will be squabbling to secure the film rights to this timeless story. I advise readers of "Yorkshire Pudding" to purchase their copies immediately to avoid severe disappointment. The golden vans are ready.

"A rollicking good read that made me laugh as much

 as it made me cry" -  James Wood "The New Yorker"

Bamburgh

No. I did not take this stunning photograph. It was snapped by another Geograph member back in 2011. His name is or was Alfie Tait. He hasn't added any extra pictures to Geograph since 2013.

The subject of the picture is Bamburgh Castle on the north east coast of England. Alfie Tait appears to have been at the right place at the right time. He has captured the castle in a spotlight of golden sunlight with a threatening storm forming in the east above The North Sea. I hope you will agree that the contrast is .pretty spectacular.

Strange as it might seem, Bamburgh Castle was not built as a tourist attraction nor as a subject for amateur photographers. It was constructed for practical defensive purposes upon a site that had seen several earlier fortresses dating back through the mists of time.

A good quiz question is this: Which English county contains the most castles? The answer is Northumberland with a grand total of 81 castles. They were mostly built in the fourteenth century in connection with on-going conflicts  with Scots from across the border. It is generally accepted that the  most significant Northumberland castle is Bamburgh which has  such a colourful and complicated history.

Here's another Geograph picture of Bamburgh Castle - this time by Billy McCrorie and taken in May 2013:-

Athenry

Pete St John - writer of "The Fields of Athenry"

Memories of Inishmaan led me east of Galway to the little market town of Athenry. It appears on the very edge of the map I put at the head of my last post.

Athenry is a sleepy place that may have remained unremarkable in its obscurity were it not for a song written in the nineteen seventies by a man called Peter Mooney whose stage name was Pete St John. That song, "The Fields of Athenry" reflects on past injustices and perhaps  how  the potato famine and forced transportation affected ordinary lives.

It is a very simple song but the chorus has lifted so many hearts, creating a supernatural sense of togetherness and identity - mostly in those who have Ireland in their blood. It is sung in stadiums by Liverpool supporters, Celtic supporters and The Irish national rugby team to name but three:-

Low lie the fields of Athenry

Where once we watched the small free birds fly

Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing

It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry

Peter Mooney died in 2022 at the age of 90 but I suspect that his famous song will last forever - well almost forever.

It has been recorded by several individuals and bands but I think that the definitive version is by the Dubliner - Paddy Reilly. With his mellow, tuneful singing voice he took the song where it needed to be - finding its rightful place in Ireland's rich cultural heritage. Here's Paddy Reilly in 2010 in Cork Opera House:-

At Pete St John's wake in a Dublin bar  in 2022, we see and hear Paddy Reilly as an old man singing the song that made his name too. He was with Glen Hansard who also sang at the funeral of Shane McGowan. I must admit that I  began to weep half way through this unplanned version:-

Aran

Off the wild west coast of Ireland you will find the Aran Islands. There are three of them - named Inisheer, Inishmaan and Inishmore. In translation from Irish Gaelic, that simply means, small island, middle island and big island. They have been populated for many centuries.

One summer over twenty five years ago I went out to Inishmaan with my kids, my brother Paul and his two sons. We had tents and I recall we stayed on the island for two nights in clement weather, making camp amidst tussocky grasses not far from the wharf. There was a pub nearby where we had access to a lavatory and a tap for clean water. It was a great adventure.

Last night I was checking out the islands with aerial imagery courtesy of Google and I was struck by the patchworks of tiny fields on each of the islands. Those lines show handbuilt walls that you never get a proper sense of at ground level.

Below I have chosen regular images from the islands along with aerial views. I think the aerial clips are quite amazing - like newly discovered wonders of the world...

Inisheer

Inishmaan

Inishmore

The current population of the three Aran islands is 1347 with by far the greatest number residing on Inishmore. Irish Gaelic is still spoken as a first language in most homes.

Empire

It is amazing how quickly the "Orinoco" business empire has grown. I guess it's true what they say about little acorns and mighty oaks. The accompanying photographs show two of our state-of-the-art  warehouses, the fleet of golden delivery vans we ordered from Toyota in Japan and the mighty golden freight plane just delivered by Boeing. Remember that wise old saying, "The camera never lies?" Well, it's true.

I used to think that developing a successful mega-business would be hard but it has proven to be so, so easy. Like rolling a snowball down a hill. Small at first, it just gets bigger and bigger.

In other "Orinoco" news, we are delighted to announce that we have secured the rights to the song "Orinoco Flow" by the Irish singer Enya. Well, to be honest, we offered her a price she should could hardly resist. It will be the company song in cinema and online advertising. We may change the song's title to "Orinoco Flow Chart" in the course of time but here, just as a reminder, is the original...

Repeat

People who have been bloggers for many years can investigate their own big blogpost libraries where we may occasionally look back on how things used to be - what we did and what we thought - sometimes revisiting special moments in our lives - like births and deaths and holidays.

Re-blogging has not been my style but today I thought I would give it a go. After all, the regular visitors I once received have mostly been replaced over the years

This is a  blogpost I first posted on February 14th 2010. That's exactly fourteen years ago when I was  a young lad of 56. I wrote it just a few months after I had retired and I was still getting used to a new life beyond my busy role as The Head of English in a tough Sheffield secondary school.  It was a job that had just about drained the lifeblood from me.

Shirley and I had been away for the weekend - to the place where, millions of years ago, Cro Magnon went to school...

⦿

Fenland

At Wicken Fen

Living here, it is easy to forget that England has so much variety, so much beauty, so much history, so much evidence of our forefathers' ingenuity.

Shirley and I decided to have a weekend break in an area of England we hardly know - the fenland north of Cambridge. Here the rich peaty soil is as black as coal. The mainly flat landscape is criss-crossed with dykes and ditches that were first dug by hand in medieval times to drain what was once a waterlogged marshy world. Above those marshes, occasional clay and gravelly hillocks rose - perhaps only a few feet higher than the surrounding marshes but it was here that ancient fenland settlements grew like islands. One such island was The Isle of Eels where the tiny city of Ely is situated. In medieval times eels were incredibly plentiful in the area and they were an important source of both food and wealth. It is said that each stone of the magnificent Ely Cathedral was paid for in eels.

Ely Cathedral began as a simple Saxon church in AD 673, founded by Saint or Queen Ethelreda. So when the Normans arrived, there had already been an important place of worship in Ely for four hundred years. They set about constructing a vast abbey and monastic complex. That job took over a hundred years to complete and then in the fourteenth century, reflecting East Anglia's economic power, further additions were made including the unique "Octagon" in the centre of the cathedral with its lantern tower that rises 43 metres above the ground.

Above - Ely's "lantern" - internal and external views.

For me one fascinating aspect of medieval church construction concerns the origins of the stones that were used. Around Ely there is no stone at all. The limestone that was selected had to be brought along ancient waterways by barge from quarries over fifty miles away. Imagine that! Hewing huge blocks, dragging them onto carts, taking them to primitive wooden wharves to manoeuvre on to wooden barges that were powered by sails or horses and then days later dragging those same blocks from the Great Ouse wharf at Ely before hauling them up to the cathedral site. Voyage after voyage. The audacity of it! And what was driving them? The power of Christian belief or some sort of economic might that had to declare its presence?

On Friday night we had an amazing curry in the Sylhet curry house on Market Street, drank several beers on Saturday night and on Sunday morning we headed south to Wicken Fen - a National Trust property. Wicken is both a bird sanctuary and a piece of the original fenland landscape with sedge meadows, an original wind-driven pump, reed beds and watery channels. Agriculture has never mastered these unique acres.

Studying the map, I see Thetford, Downham Market, Kings Lynn, Saffron Walden, March, Chatteris - all Fenland or East Anglian towns we have never seen. This was once the cradle of England's economic power - especially as the wool trade burgeoned in the fourteenth century. I think we will be back some day soon...

Wow!

Wow! Considering that yesterday was the first full day of trading for "Orinoco", we blew our sales forecasts to smithereens! I am already looking for a site for our first mega-warehouse. It will be massive with a big "Orinoco" "O" on the side. There will also be a fleet of electric delivery vans running up and down city streets like woodlice seen from above.

On the back of yesterday's phenomenal sales, we have brought forward the second tranche of books by bloggers. It had been scheduled for March 1st. There are ten new publications in total. The price remains $20 US per book plus postage and packaging. See the new titles below:-

One man and his dog Billy, roaming the mean streets of 

Brighton and the leafy lanes of south west France.

"Come here Billy!" I yelled but he was gone.

As in an Australian junk shop, you can find all things here. Antipodean 

writer Kylie Tai takes us on an entertaining  romp through Sydney, her home city.

"Wendy Whiteley's Secret Garden is a place you can really get lost in!"

With his wife Jean, he built a house on the edge of the 

Canadian prairie and they called it home.

"Come in Red!" she called. "It's time for dinner!"

"Okay. I'll be right there my sweet!"

Woke writer Bob Slatten paints a picture of modern day America

which may be unrecognisable to some readers.

"He told them to vote blue but thousands entered 

the trap - just like those kids in Hamelin, Germany."

"Local writer and socialite, Meike Riley, has set her tale of 

romance and fashion in and around our fair city and 

she never disappoints.  I just couldn't put it down!" 

-The Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung (translation)

Children's author Ms Pixie takes boys and girls on another magical journey

to Fairyland, passing The Deep Dark Forest where the monsters dwell.

"My nana wrote it! Poppa read it to me a zillion times!" - Jack (aged 4)

Some boats on the ocean are heading somewhere but others are just drifting along.

"She fried up some mashed potato and boiled cabbage from 

yesterday and then Andrew was like putty in her hands."

Amateur archaeologist Thelma Wilcox creates a vivid sense of 

what life was like in The British Isles during The Bronze Age.

"I can thoroughly recommend 'North Stoke' " - Professor Alice Roberts

From the brains behind The Friday Funnies comes this tour de force 

from the North Dakotan writer and popular former radio host, Bruce Taylor. 

Half comedy and half encyclopedia of strange things, you won't 

be able to put 'Oddball Obsunvations' down!

"I'm so proud of Bruce!" -  Katie Hobbs (Governor of Arizona)

Deals were done by the bend in the river. Shady deals between men who were 

out for as much as they could get until Sheriff Chuck Grassley rode into town!

"Ed Travis's best book yet!" - Des Moines Register

Orinoco

You have probably heard of the Amazon sales giant. You can get just about anything from Amazon but it all began with books.

As I am eager to be ultra-rich just like Jeff Bezos, I have decided to launch my own sales giant which I have decided to name after another South American river - The Orinoco. This will be our logo and in the next year or two it is bound to become as familiar as the "a" of Amazon:-

Following Mr Bezos's example, we are starting off with books - specifically eight books by bloggers that are exclusive to "Orinoco". Each title may be purchased directly from Yorkshire Pudding for the unbelievably low price of $20 US + postage and packing...

A charming and amusing  tale of life in a North Wales 

village - a modern day "Under Milkwood".

"Roger, come here you little bugger!"

A tenderly written novel about love and life in a sultry Florida community.

"What ya doing honey?"

"Just planting beans."

"Splendid read!" - Tallahassee Democrat

The true story of how a king penguin from Washington Zoo  travelled the world. From the author of  the bestselling"The American Bar Association in Disneyworld".

A romantic romp through the hills of south west Ireland.

"She wanted him like nothing she had ever wanted before."

Edwards's linguistic skills are legendary and quite endearing.

"I didn't understand a frigging word" - Liverpool Echo

Deception and intrigue from The Isle of Man's top crime writer.

"Lord Peregrine grabbed the hold-all and sprinted to the helicopter"

It's surprising what you can see from the balcony of a high rise 

apartment in a little known Australian city.

"The cover design is as remarkable as the book itself!" - The Age

The true story of a Yorkshire lad raised in the wetlands near Goole 

who battled against the odds to become the assistant 

manager of a supermarket in Huddersfield.

"I liked potted meat in my sandwiches in them days".

"Recommended if you have trouble sleeping" - The Huddersfield Daily Examiner