Balls

 

Balls? I thought that might get your attention for some reason. 

Above that's one kind of fungi known as earthballs and below that's another kind of fungi called  puffballs. I googled images of them sliced open to see how they might compare with the "thing" I shared with you on Saturday night.

I am still no closer to coming up with an airtight explanation. If I had spare banknotes aplenty I might send the curious item off somewhere for chemical analysis.

I should emphasise how light the item is and when you squeeze its surface it is springy - like a sponge. It has no odour and since I sliced it open its inner whiteness has not changed. Just as a reminder, here's the dissected image that I posted on Saturday:-

Maybe it is some kind of sponge for cosmetics or their removal but no amount of googling revealed anything similar.

Ah well, thanks for all the helpful suggestions but  maybe I will never know.

I ended  yesterday's blogpost with this odd line that had Meike in Germany puzzled: "Mama done told me there'd be days like this". It referenced a song that played in my head before I pressed the "Publish" button. First recorded in 1994, that song is "Days Like This" by Van Morrison and for your elucidation and entertainment, here it is:- 

Happy

Detail of Shirley's Women's Institute tree in the cathedral

Please do not worry about me but for the second time in a week, I visited Sheffield Cathedral yesterday afternoon. There is absolutely no chance that I will be converted to Christianity as my belief in atheism is rock solid. All that stuff about the baby Jesus, wise men and  shepherds is a lovely legend that is part of our western culture but in the final analysis it is pure hogwash. Sorry to disappoint you if you had been taken in by the mythology.

I have always loved to sing Christmas carols and that is why I was at the cathedral. I had a front row seat and a song sheet. Shirley was volunteering at the "Age Concern" shop. I was set fair and from my unholy mouth burst forth the following very familiar carols:"O Come All Ye Faithful", "Away In A Manger", "The Twelve Days of Christmas",  "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night", "Hark The Herald Angels Sing" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

Sheffield Town Hall clock tower and a massive Christmas tree

My singing voice was in fine fettle and perfectly in tune though I say so myselff. I probably overwhelmed the excellent choir of The Sheffield Chorale who were making a guest appearance and slightly frustratingly sang three extra carols  that did not require audience participation. Grudgingly, I must admit that their delivery was damned near perfect.

It was a joyous programme, interspersed with some of the boring stuff - like slices of white bread around pieces  of grilled sausage. You know what I mean - "The Lord's Prayer "  and biblical readings from Micah, Luke and Matthew: "On entering the  house, they saw  the child  with Mary the mother and they knelt down and paid their homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold,  frankincense  and myrrh."

Sorry folks - but there is no evidence that that happened.

After the service, I had a bowl of delicious carrot soup and a small wholemeal roll in the cathedral cafe before making my way home in the fading light. Past  the town hall, down The Moor then across the inner ring road to London Road and along Abbeydale Road before making a detour down Broadfield Road to take photos of the lion with electric eyes that I have passed several times in the last two months.

For whatever reason, I felt  really happy yesterday - at peace with the world - as I made my way home in the darkness via Carter Knowle Road, Struan Road, Jowitt Road  and  Bannerdale Road. It's a long slog up that hill. Colourful Christmas lights were twinkling in dozens of windows and I helped an anonymous old man with his shopping bags before  getting home to cook rump steaks. In short, I was fully alive, entirely alert and very comfortable in my own skin. Mama done  told me there'd be days like this.

Burger restaurant on London Road

Thing

 

Yesterday, I toddled up our garden to empty the caddy bin in which we collect vegetable peelings, used teabags and other compostable stuff. On the way back, something caught my eye sitting on the bark chipping mulch that covers a little border in front of a laurel bush.

At first, I thought it was either a stone or some kind of mushroom. Crouching down, I studied it for a few moments. When I finally decided to gently lift it, I expected that it would be secured to the earth with a stalk but there was no resistance and it was surprisingly light.

I brought it into the house and asked Shirley to come and have a look at it. She was as puzzled as I was. It weighed very little and had no aroma. How had it got into our garden if it was not growing there? Perhaps a fox had deposited it or a neighbourhood cat or a bird. It remained a mystery.

Next I took a sharp knife to it and with some difficulty managed to saw it in half.  The inside was dense and almost pure white. Shirley decided that it must be a sponge but I was not entirely convinced. I mean, I have never seen a sponge like that before and the shape of it was not entirely regular.

Natural and artificial sponges invariably have a more bubbly textured interior but this thing is uniformly dense.

I have tried googling its identity, searching for likely sponge culprits but to no avail. Maybe Frances or Stewart will know what it is when they come for their Sunday dinner tomorrow afternoon. Also, I guess there's the possibility that you, dear reader, will be able to lead me to a definitive solution.

Zeppelin

Stealthily and slowly the zeppelin moved across that summer sky, sometimes appearing briefly and largely unnoticed in the gaps between evening clouds. In those days, military airship navigation was a rather crude process and the given targets were therefore quite general. It was August 9th 1915 and The Great War had, like my father, just passed its first birthday. The huge L9 aircraft, manufactured in Friedrichshafen, Germany was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Odo Loewe.   

Ahead was the little Yorkshire port town of Goole.  With its first few bombs, the enemy attempted to blow up Goole Railway Bridge where it crosses The River Ouse. They failed miserably before drifting on to the town itself.

Goole Railway Bridge on Wednesday

In the little terraced streets north east of the docks, citizens were getting ready for bed. No doubt some were mending shoes, ironing clothes, playing dominoes, reading books, eating supper, stoking fires or settling children. Goole had never been bombed before and the people were blissfully unprepared for what was about to happen.

In total, sixty bombs were dropped on the town that night. It was like winning a reverse lottery. Roofs and walls came down. Fires erupted. Screams were heard and in the neighbourhood of Aire Street and Bridge Street, it was as if hell had broken out. The zeppelin drifted serenely on to the docks where minimal damage was caused before turning back to The North Sea and Germany beyond. The last few bombs were dropped in fields near the village of Hotham in The East Riding.

Behind lay the innocent dead, dying and injured - victims of a war that they neither created nor understood. Isn't that characteristic of all wars? 

Those who died that night were: Sarah Acaster, 65; Sarah Ann Acaster, 34; Kezia Acaster, 32; Violet Stainton, 18; Hannah Goodall, 74; Alice Harrison, six; Florence Harrison, four; Margaret Selina Pratt, nine months; Agnes Pratt, 36; Alice Elizabeth Woodhall, three; Grace Woodhall, 31; Mary Carroll, 32; James Carroll, 26; Alice Carroll, four; Gladys Mary Carroll, three, and Alice Smith, 17.

As I was walking in and around Goole on Wednesday, I looped round the cemetery and saw this, though at that precise moment I had no idea what it was:-

It is a memorial to the unfortunates listed above. Here's a close-up:-

The second photo is from the Historic England website.

My morning research into this tragedy conjured up an evocative  letter dated August 12th 1915 and written by Mr West, a resident of Goole, to his daughter who was a student in Leeds at the time - training to be a teacher:-

Mr Gunnee carried girl out, all flesh of one leg torn away - next he fetched a young baby, but the sight finished him; he was done ... sick ... he went away ... to vomit. Had it been a man, he says he would not care. Next fell in Ouse Street (back) near T.K. Wilson's baker. Hole in wall, drive horse and car thro' - floors are all down in the cellar, furniture just a pile of ruin, pictures hang akimbo.

Let us pray especially for the children whose lives had only just begun - Violet, Florence, Grace, Gladys, the four Alices and last but not least Baby Margaret. It goes without saying that they did not deserve to die that night.

As for Kapitänleutnant Odo Loewe, six months later in January 1916, he was commanding another zeppelin - the L19. It had to be ditched in the middle of The North Sea but all of the crew survived in a life raft.  Their signal flares were spotted by a passing  Grimsby fishing trawler but when the skipper of that boat, William Martin, realised that all of those seeking rescue were German airmen, he refused to pick them up, fearing they might take over his vessel. Subsequently, all sixteen, including  Loewe,  drowned. Perhaps it was predestined that that number precisely matched the tally of death in Goole.

Goole

Terraced houses on Pasture Road, Goole

Yesterday, I boarded a train bound for the town of Goole. It's forty three miles from here. I first blogged about Goole back in April 2022. By the way, it's where my brother Robin was born back in 1951 when my family lived in the nearby village of Barmby-on-the-Marsh.

Unlike Sheffield which is a very hilly city, Goole is as flat as a pancake. Round there you could walk for miles at exactly the same small height above sea level - just over three feet. In fact, I went to Goole for a long walk that took me to the village of Hook and then along the bend of the mighty Yorkshire Ouse.

By The River Ouse, heading back into Goole

Goole has a population of around 20,000 people  and it is Britain's biggest inland port. The town is situated some fifty miles from the mouth of The River Humber and though really big ships or container vessels cannot use the port, it is perfect for medium sized coasters and barges. That is really the reason why the modern town exists at all.

Round the back of St Mary the Virgin parish church in Hook (below), I came across a lone woman with a backpack and walking boots sitting in the open porch enjoying some rays of sunshine in what she called a "moment of reverie" We conversed politely for a little while.

Back in Goole itself, I visited the little town museum above the library before catching the 15.48 train home. The daylight was already fading in these northerly latitudes and by the time I disembarked at Sheffield Midland Station, the veil of inky darkness had already descended. It's only ten days to the winter solstice.

The clock tower in Goole's fading afternoon light

Before catching the 81 bus back to our neighbourhood, I made a special detour to The Moor - one of the city's main shopping streets - just to see the Christmas lights. It had been another grand day out with welcome exercise in the sunshine.

Sadiq

 

Sadiq Khan shares my birthday though he came into this world seventeen years after me. Born in the London borough of Tooting, he became the Member of Parliament for that constituency back in 2005 having spent the previous ten years as a practising solicitor specialising in human rights. He became a  member of Britain's Labour Party when he was fifteen years old.

Sadiq grew up in a Sunni Muslim working class family that had its roots back in Pakistan. His father was a bus driver and his mother was a seamstress. With his seven siblings, he was raised in a three bedroom council flat. You could never say that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He attended council run schools before undertaking a law degree at The University of North London.

In spite of his native intelligence, Sadiq had to fight for everything he got,  often experiencing racist treatment along the way. He was first democratically elected to be The Mayor of London back in 2016 and has since then succeeded in two further elections. White or black or brown, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist - the people of London wanted him and that is why the majority put their crosses in his box.

Being the chief executive of a vast modern city like London - often with funding challenges - is no mean occupation. It takes a special, gifted human being to take on such a role. His areas of responsibility include policing, waste disposal, street lighting, air quality, education, transport, tourism and a whole bunch of other things not listed here.

Sadiq has had to keep a clear head and maintain focus on action plans in spite of critics such as the  generally right wing London media and wealthy landowners. He has also had to cope with attacks from both Jewish and Muslim organisations as well as extreme leftists and the ominous right wing Reform Party. The ocean he steers across is often stormy.

Sadiq married another lawyer - Saadiya Ahmed in 1994. They have two daughters - Anisah and Ammarah who are both in their twenties.  He once said, "I am proud that London is a city where, the vast majority of the time, Jewish people, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, those who are not members of an organized faith, black, white, rich, young, gay, lesbian - don't simply tolerate each other but respect, embrace, and celebrate each other."

He also said, "London is the greatest city in the world" which is of course wrong because everybody knows that the greatest city in the world is my adopted Yorkshire  city - Sheffield! He must have been joking.

Personally, I admire Sadiq Khan greatly for his steadfastness, his brilliance, his tolerance, his humility and his focus.  I am of course leaving showman Boris Johnson out of the equation when I say that being The Mayor of London is not  a job for ninnies.

Keep up the good work Sadiq!

Sadiq Khan with his wife Saadiya at a festival in Hyde Park

Sorrow

This picture was taken a good few years ago. On the right is one of my all time favourite singer songwriters - Jackson Browne. And on the left - that's his oldest son - Ethan Browne. Ethan's mother was Phyllis Major who took her own life in 1976 when Ethan was just three years old.

Now it seems that Ethan has done the same - not through an overdose of barbiturates this time but through a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He died in his own home in Los Angeles which is where local police officers discovered his lifeless body. It was November 25th, two weeks ago.

Parents are meant to die before their children and  you may agree with me that there's something extra tragic about the death of a child - even when that son or daughter is fully grown up. And it doesn't matter if the only remaining parent happens to be  a millionaire singer songwriter.

I was privileged to see Jackson Browne in concert at Sheffield City Hall back in March 2009. I was there with my late brother Simon and we enjoyed the occasion enormously. For me it was almost a dream come true. I knew so many of the songs by heart and one of them was "Fountain of Sorrow" from the "Late for the Sky" album (1974).

I leave that song for you to listen to and in memory of an American man I never knew - Ethan Browne who finally gave in to his demons...

Soup

An English lady of mature years resides by the coast in southern Spain. She has often visited this blog and left comments that reveal her genuine and thoughtful engagement. She is known widely as Coppa's Girl though her real name is Carol. 

Anyway, just last week, she planted the seed of an idea in my mind when she justly derided my consumption of packeted instant "soup in a cup". Carol said she regularly makes a big pan of nutritious homemade soup which she stores in her fridge and consumes over several days. As you can tell, she is not just thoughtful but sensible too.

The seed was planted and like most seeds it grew. Yesterday, I roasted a chicken for our family Sunday dinner and instead of throwing the used carcass out on the back  lawn for the foxes, I retained most of it for soup making. I didn't want to utilise the rather grim inner body cavity of the unfortunate bird so at least the foxes got that.

The rest of the body - legs, wings, skin and breast leftovers went into a big pan of seasoned boiling water.  Then, after a few minutes, I added yesterday's leftover gravy, one large chopped carrot, a chopped onion, a handful of dried red lentils, chopped garlic, a bay leaf and a tablespoon of chicken seasoning.

I allowed it all to simmer for an hour before carefully removing bones, gristle and shreds of floating skin with the help of a sieve.. Then I added an "Oxo" cube and little pieces of broccoli as well as a handful of grated strong  cheddar cheese.

Naturally, along the way, I kept tasting the soup  before more salt and pepper was added. 

At first, my concoction was watery so I mixed a little "Bisto" powder in cold water with some cornflour and poured that into the saucepan just to thicken the liquid slightly. I would have liked to use double cream but Shirley told me that that was fattening. Who knew?

And then the soup was done. I had a bowl for my lunch and it was most wholesome and delicious. There's half a gallon left in the saucepan. In Carol's honour I shall call my soup - Coppa's Soup which sounds, somewhat ironically, like Cup-a-Soup! Ah, well.

Development

Normally. when I am inspired to write a poem, it comes out quite quickly. I have the idea and the words swim through my brain and out onto the page or the computer screen. There are usually some small revisions as I try to get the best words in the best order but after a day or two the deed is done and by then the tide of my inspiration has receded.

With "Stanage Edge" I am deliberately doing it differently, putting reins on the emerging poem and sometimes leaving days between my tinkerings and final word choices. You may recall that I first shared my little scheme a month ago in a blogpost I titled "Incubation".

I want to do justice to this poem  because Stanage Edge is so special - not just to me but to lovers of the outdoors  in this northerly region of England. When my late brother Paul was studying biological sciences at Liverpool Polytechnic at the end of the 1960s, he was a member of the rock climbing club that visited Stanage Edge several times and when our children were very small we had a brief tradition of putting the big turkey in the oven on Christmas morning and then heading out to Stanage for a breezy winter walk. Stanage Edge is as familiar to me as Trafalgar Square is to London taxi drivers.

To write a worthy poem about Stanage Edge is a challenging but ultimately satisfying task. I might not get there but I am doing my best. Metaphorically speaking, it would be easier to stay home watching the television of inaction than tramping about on the moorland edge of poetry, exposed to the wind.

Last Sunday as I walked between the Handleys, two lines arrived in my mind like seals coming up for air. I did not consciously beckon them, they just arrived at the surface and when I got back home I remembered to write them down:-

Unfleshed the naked bones

Nothing changes like permanence

I rather like those lines for they do speak of the geology and the seemingly apparent timelessness of Stanage Edge. Now the  task is to incorporate the lines within the main body of the poem though I might leave them as an epigraph that provides a hint or foretaste of what will follow.  

In building the poem, I have written more than 2000 words so far in a Word document and I have handwritten a thousand more words on lined paper. I have researched history, geology, birds and plants as well as the names of rock climbing routes. Stable buildings require solid foundations.

So yes, I have not forgotten my ambition but I think the poem needs more time to mature like cheese or wine. I will keep working on it, editing, polishing, adding new ideas, deleting others. I feel that I owe it to myself as well as Stanage Edge.

Sixth

Saturday December 6th - St Nicholas Day... This morning Shirley and I picked up Phoebe and took her by bus into the centre of the city. Our prime mission was to visit Sheffield Cathedral. There some forty Christmas trees have been decorated by different organisations including Shirley's Women's Institute branch. The trees are all the same size and all have identical strings of white electric lights. It is a kind of competition to raise money for nominated charities.

As Phoebe approaches her fifth birthday, it's fascinating to tune in to her inquisitiveness and her evolving skills in reading and arithmetic. Around the cathedral, she asked me several questions about the things she saw - including the stained glass windows and the fifteenth and sixteenth century tombs that are located close to the main altar. To see things through a child's eyes can be pretty instructive.

I filled in the Christmas tree voting form and Phoebe popped it in the special postbox. You might be able to guess which tree I voted for but I must admit that it had been nicely "spruced up" - what a fine pun!

We had a light lunch in the cathedral cafe. Phoebe had a gingerbread reindeer, Shirley had a toasted teacake and I had a bowl of curried vegetable soup. It's nice to eat somewhere where all profits are used to support charities and Sheffield Cathedral does excellent work with the city's homeless throughout the year.

Upon leaving the cathedral, we headed through the "TK Maxx" store to Orchard Square then out into Fargate and past the city's magnificent late Victorian Town Hall before descending into The Peace Gardens. There was a lovely pre-Christmas buzz about the streets with choirs singing, musicians playing and traders selling their wares from temporary Swiss-style wooden kiosks. And there were plenty of shoppers and visitors bustling around too - just like Saturdays used to be.

We headed down The Moor and popped into "Next" and "Primark" looking for a sparkly Christmas jumper for Phoebe but there were none to be found and time was pressing as she had been invited to yet another birthday party. We had to get her home by 1.30pm. 

At the front of the top deck of the Number 88 bus home, Phoebe was insistent that Grandma should sit next to her and not smelly old Grandpa with his bristly chin. Grandpa was rather cold-shouldered as she played "I-Spy" with her favourite grandparent but I managed to fight back the tears of rejection. Walking up Greystones Road on the way home, the little princess did allow me to hold her gloved hand.

Manners

When I was a small boy, my parents drummed into me the importance of saying "please" when I wanted something and "thank you"  when I received it. Sometimes I would forget and my mother would snap, "What do you say?"

As far as I know the "please" and "thank you" training goes on in nearly all British homes. We followed the tradition with our own children when they were growing up.

"Have you forgotten something Ian?"

"Oh yeah, please may I leave the table?"

"And Frances. Can you remember those two little words?"

"Errr...mmm... oh - thank you Daddy!"

And now I see our granddaughters getting their "please" and "thank you" training from our daughter and son-in-law.

In a human lifetime, I guess we say "please" and "thank you" a million times each. I will not complicate matters by throwing in all the "excuse mes" and the "pardons" and "sorrys". Let's  just stick with the pleases and the thank yous.

Is it just a western thing? Do other cultures have their "please" and "thank you" equivalents - drummed in to the young from an early age? I decided to google the question and this was the AI response:-

No, not all cultures use direct equivalents of "please" and "thank you"; many express politeness, gratitude, and respect through context, tone, gestures, specific grammatical structures, or words for different levels of favour, as the need for explicit niceties often arises from anonymous interactions in individualistic societies, not small, interdependent communities. While essential in some cultures, frequent "thank yous" can be seen as odd or even insulting in others, where kindness is assumed or shown non-verbally.

What use are hollow  pleases and thank yous when they are just parroted ritualistic words? Surely they have to mean something and be delivered with genuine consideration for the listener involved.

Is it good manners to keep reminding people - usually young people - of their forgetfulness? What would folk think if the corrected child said, "To tell you the truth, I find your persistent corrections quite unmannerly for I consider the please/thank you ritual to be a cultural affectation that has filtered through generations without question and requires some re-evaluation. So would you please go away and leave me alone. Thank you so much!"

Nuts

There is a stall in Sheffield's covered Moor Market called "The Nut Bar". Perhaps you are thinking it's a regular bar but for nuts like Bruce Taylor, Bob Slatten,  Meike Riley and JayCee Manx to meet up for beer and chat - but sadly, it is not that kind of bar.

No. It is just a regular market stall that happens to specialise in nuts. There are all manner of nuts there - all carefully packaged by Jack Schofield the market trader who has been selling nuts for the past forty six years. Actually, there's a team of seven staff members.

This is The Nut Bar's message to the world, "We stock every kind of nut from peanuts, cashews and macadamia nuts to wasabi or yoghurt-coated nuts, as well as fruits, dried cranberries and goji berries. Our nuts, fruits and seeds come from around the world. If we don’t have what you want, we will do our best to source it for you."

This may sound nuts but when I visited the stall on Tuesday of this week, I was not after nuts. I wanted dried apricots, dried cranberries and banana chips. It was so much cheaper to buy these items there than in a regular supermarket or health store.

I wanted these natural products  to snack upon occasionally during this phase of my life when I am trying to shed two or three stones with the assistance of weight loss medication. No more potato crisps, cheese and biscuits or late night sandwiches. Instead, bring on the cranberries and the dried apricots if you would be so kind.

But now I get to the real reason I decided to write this nutty blogpost. Each of the three packages I bought was labelled up showing the countries of origin. My apricots came from Turkey, the banana chips from The Philippines and the cranberries from the USA.

I find that a little crazy and further evidence that we do indeed live in a mad world. I get the same feeling when I see mange tout from Kenya or  strawberries from Spain or rice from Thailand in our supermarkets. All those air miles! All that fossil fuel! It was not like this when I was a boy. Most of what you ate was seasonal or it came from our own island - not from some faraway place. 

To add to the nuttiness and hypocrisy, this evening I  booked a little holiday in Egypt. A seven day Nile river cruise from Luxor to Aswan and back. We will be seeing some of  what remains of Ancient Egypt and perhaps also  fields of green beans being harvested by Tesco, Sainsburys and Aldi. That's 95 days away in early March. Something to look forward to as we emerge from  the bitter depths of winter.

Improvement

Lord knows how Ken and Doris's gravestone got to be the filthiest in that part of the churchyard but it was. It had become like something out of a horror film. And isn't it funny how I recently reviewed a book that was wholly concerned with fungi.

Ken and Doris have no surviving relatives apart from their niece Josephine who lives in Lower Hutt near Wellington in New Zealand. They never had any children of their own and perhaps that is why they were always delighted to see our kids when they were little.

Looking back, I am very proud of the support that I gave to Ken and Doris as they reached the ends of their lives. It was one of the best things that I ever did in my entire life. How they would have navigated those final years without me - and to some extent Shirley too -  remains a mystery I shudder to consider. We were there for them when they needed help.

That help included shopping for them, taking them for rides in the countryside that they loved with real passion, taking them to hospital, arranging their transfer to residential homes when the time was right, visiting them in hospital and in their rest homes, arranging their funerals, arranging the purchase and installation  of the gravestone, clearing their house ready for sale and keeping Josephine au fait with what was happening. 

Doris was a bright woman who was good with words and all her life she had written poetry. Not high brow, esoteric stuff - her poetry tended to be singsong verse but very well-crafted. In fact, the verse inscribed on the headstone was written by Doris herself.

And today I continued with my headstone cleaning mission. The trip to Broomhill went to plan and by one o'clock I was back in the graveyard with my canister of magic spray:

I followed the instructions which meant I had to leave the freshly sprayed tombstone for half an hour before wiping and rinsing it.  That time was spent studying other stones in that section of the churchyard. Each headstone has its own story or stories to tell. I saw the grave of a five year old child, a stillborn baby and a centenarian. Some gravestones were as elegant and simple as can be whereas others were wordy and surrounded by ornamentation - more like shrines than final resting places.

After today's work on Ken and Doris's stone, I was fairly happy with the outcome but as you can see from the picture at the top, it has hardly been returned to its original pristine condition. I am afraid that most of the staining that is left is imbued in the stone - not superficial dirt and fungal growth. I finished the job by putting sprigs of holly and ivy in the flower holder.

Probably, if I had cleaned the gravestone annually, it would now be in a much better state but hey, Doris and Ken were not blood relatives, they were just the nice old couple who lived in the corner house at the top of  our road...

Easter bonnets circa 1990

Headstone

Dear Jo,

At long last, I went up to Ecclesall churchyard this morning with the intention of sprucing up your Uncle Ken and Auntie Doris's gravestone. It was a bright, dry day and not too chilly for December 2nd.

I guess that a couple of years have passed by since I last went up to see it and I was pretty shocked with what I saw. What had once been a clear, creamy white headstone was now blackened with fungal growth. I could hardly read the inscription.

In my bag, I had brushes, cloths, kitchen cleaner and two milk containers filled with warm soapy water. I got on with the job but it soon became clear that a lot of the fungal growth would not budge.

There was certainly significant improvement but I was not satisfied.

Back home, I checked out a couple of YouTube videos about cleaning gravestones and realised that I would need some kind of special stone cleaning fluid or spray to complete the job to the best of my ability.

Research led me to the discovery that I could only buy the necessary spray off the shelf at Williamsons in Broomhill. I phoned them to confirm this and I will be heading up to Broomhill on the Number 6 bus tomorrow morning as it is so hard to park a car at Broomhill these days.

By the way, in a strange co-incidence, just as I was about to set off to the graveyard this morning, the postman brought me your Christmas card - all the way from New Zealand! Thank you so much!

I hope that you and Keith are in good health just now and no doubt looking forward to yet another Christmas - perhaps with your family. Please see the two attached "before" and "after" photos but I hope that the next picture I send you will evidence an even bigger transformation.

Ken and Doris were such a sweet old couple and I was privileged to be able to help them as they reached the ends of their lives. As I scrubbed at their headstone this morning, I swear I could hear them singing folk songs beneath the turf.

Kind regards,

Neil

Entangled

Back in September, I found this book in a broken drystone wall up near Redmires reservoirs. It had been placed there by the vlogger, Jack Roscoe whose channel is called "Northern Introvert". Fortunately, I was the first of his followers to get there.

Well, I must admit that a science-based book about fungi  is not the kind of book I would normally pick but because of the delightful circumstances by which I acquired "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake, I felt almost compelled to read it.

Merlin Sheldrake is an expert mycologist and passionate about his chosen area of study. He attended The University of Cambridge and later undertook his PhD study of underground fungal networks in Panama's tropical forests as a predoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. 

He is not some sort of New Age charlatan promoting magic mushrooms. He is fundamentally a respected scientist who has discovered that the more he studies mycylial networks and fruiting fungi, the more he has yet to learn. Mycology is a branch of scientific enquiry that has not been greatly encouraged nor well-funded in our universities. Compared with say botany it is very much a poor cousin.

Honey fungus I spotted in a Lincolnshire churchyard ten years ago.

Just the briefly fruiting tip of an underground mycylial network.

Part of the problem with it is simply that so much of what you need to look at is below ground.

For me as a non-scientist there were sections of "Entangled Life" that I found hard to follow but I stuck with it to gain the reward of insights that I would never have predicted. I felt some of Sheldrake's enthusiasm and awe as well as his intellectual agility.

One of the things that I shall remember about this book is how our planet's plant life is invariably connected with mycylial networking. From grasses to mighty trees there is a powerful interdependent symbiosis happening just below our feet but is little known and by no means fully understood.

"The Guardian" said this when the book first came out:

A “door-opener” book is one with a specialist subject in which it finds pathways leading everywhere. This is a genre devoted to connectedness in all directions, 

and is one well suited to our times. Sheldrake’s book is a very fine example.

While travelling on a train recently, the ticket collector noticed what I was reading and remarked, "That's a bloody brilliant book!" and upon finishing it I  agree with him - even though I admit that I found the reading process hard going. Of the 358 pages in "Entangled Life", no less than a hundred are given over to acknowledgements, notes, an extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index.

Merlin Sheldrake

Unstone

General view of Unstone

A day of sunshine today. I was up and away just after nine, ready for the ten mile drive over into North East Derbyshire which borders the southern suburbs of Sheffield. Past Meadowhead and Low Edges then on through Dronfield on the B6057 till I reached Unstone. Left turn then up the lane to the main village where I parked Butch - my Nissan Juke.

Boots on and I was off in the sunshine - a six mile circle to complete. Heeding advice from a few well-meaning blog visitors, this morning I ate a bowl of porridge with a mashed banana in it and half a spoonful of honey too. There was proper fuel in the Pudding tank.

I walked through two tiny villages that are served by unclassified roads - quite off the beaten track. They were Hundall and West Handley. If I had then walked a further mile eastward I would have reached West Handley's sister villages - Middle Handley and Nether Handley.

In West Handley, I saw this sad plaque on the side of a house:-

I undertook a little research about this awful event and discovered that Eliza and Benjamin were not only husband and wife but also first cousins. A contemporary newspaper described Ben Hudson as "an idle, ignorant, selfish and cruel-hearted man". The fatal beating he gave Eliza with a hedge stake was as horrendous as it was unjustifiable. Ben Hudson was tried and found guilty of murder at Derby Assizes Court and later hanged in Derby Gaol.

Path across a field of  young rapeseed plants

Given recent rains, some of the paths I was following were quite treacherous so I walked with caution to avoid slipping down. As Monica (Beyond the Lone Islands), Jason (Arctic Fox) and Elsie (Drifting Through Life) have recently reminded us all, having a fall can have very regrettable outcomes for senior citizens. I did not wish to join that list.

It was a lovely, varied walk. I saw some things and made good use of a sunny morning at the very end of November.

Thatched farmhouse in West Handley

Food

Lunch today: Tinned mackerel in a spicy tomato sauce with

 baby broad beans and a mug of instant chicken soup

The last month has been quite weird for me in terms of the food I have consumed. In the previous seventy two years. I ate and drank what the hell I wanted and there were no significant constraints placed upon me either by my inner voice or any health professionals I encountered. Nobody ever said to me, "You need to lose some weight!"

And so I carried on with breakfast cereals, rounds of toast, bacon sandwiches, potato crisps, curries with rice, generous Sunday dinners, fish and chips, stir fries with noodles, stews, pies, plenty of vegetables,  salads, puddings, fruit and biscuits. My appetite was often ravenous. Onlookers might have whispered, "My - he likes his food!"

And through the decades there were pints of beer and bottles and cans of beer at home.  Pubs and clubs and holidays. Guzzling beer like a champion. Of course, beer is also a foodstuff.

High blood pressure and the daily consumption of anti-hypertension pills led me to the obvious conclusion that I needed to lose weight. If successful, this would surely make the pills less necessary and help me to stave off the possibility of slipping into Type 2 diabetes. Less weight could therefore mean a longer life.

For the last month I have been on the weight loss reduction medication "Mounjaro" which I have to self-inject once a week. Since the start I have had no bread whatsoever apart from two mini-nan breads with chicken curries I made.

Breakfast has mostly been a mug of unsweetened tea, a banana  and a handful of dried fruit or grapes. Occasionally, I have had two boiled eggs without toast.

My lunch menu has been more varied. Sometimes soup without bread or toast, sometimes tinned mackerel or sardines with vegetable  accompaniment. There have been no snacks between meals and at night no supper apart from an occasional rice cake. However my evening meals have been as per normal with reduced carbohydrate content.

"Mounjaro" has certainly affected my appetite. The old cravings for food have been driven back into their kennel. The medication is helping me to look at food differently and to be much more wary about what I eat and my portion sizes too.

This past week I have deliberately not drunk any beer since Sunday night at the pub quiz though I have drunk five glasses of red wine and some Baileys cream liqueur.

Summing up - I am happy with way it has gone so far. Change is happening. It is as if I have grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and said, "Wake up Mr Pudding! Your old relationship with food cannot carry on as before!" But these are early days with "Mounjaro". We will see where we are beyond Christmas.

Quiztime

Unfortunately. the result of the "Quiztime" referendum that appeared here on November 18th was inconclusive. Consequently, the production team here at Pudding Tower will simply carry on in their own merry way creating random quizzes for your amusement. For example, today's quiz happens to be all about Canada. As usual, answers will be given in the comments that succeed this blogpost.

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1. Pictured here as a young man, who was this very famous Canadian songsmith?

2. In which Canadian city will you see this tall structure?

3. Approximately, how many lakes are there in Canada?

(a) over 25.000 (b) over 450,000   (c) over 2 million (d) over 1 billion

4. Shown here with his Yorkshire wife, who is this Canadian blogger? You can supply his name or the title of his blog. (Clue: his blog is listed in my sidebar)

5.  The largest and most northerly territory in Canada is called Nunavut but currently how many people live there according to the census of  April 2025?

(a) 4,150 (b) 41,500 (c) 415,000 (d) 1,415,000

6) Everybody knows that July 4th is American Independence Day but when is Canada Day? 

(a) July 1st (b) Also July 4th (c) July 7th (d) July 31st

7) Who is this famous Canadian writer?

(a) Alice Munro (b) L.M. Montgomery 

(c) Margaret Moore (d) Margaret Attwood

8. What is the name of the Major League Soccer team located in Vancouver?

(a) The Pioneers  (b) The Beavers

(c) The Whitecaps  (d) The Maple Leaf Warriors

9.  Who said,  "The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State"?

(a) Big Bird from "Sesame Street  (b) Animal from "The Muppets" 

(c) Bart Simpson  (d) Trump

10. Poutine is considered to be the Canadian national dish. It is mainly french fries but topped with what?

(a) crispy onions and Brie cheese (b) maple syrup and salmon roe (eggs)

(c) bacon lardons and French mayonnaise (d) cheese curds and brown gravy.

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That's all folks! How did you do?