Innocence

 

On Friday at Matlock Farm Park and purely by chance, Phoebe bumped into one of her nursery school classmates. They had been in the same happy nursery class for two and a half years.

Whereas adults unexpectedly bumping into each other like that - twenty miles from home - would have made a little song and dance about the surprise meeting, Phoebe and Cora just got on with playing and running about as if it was just another day at nursery school. There were no expressions of surprise.

This past week both girls have been in educational limbo. No longer in nursery school and not yet in primary school. Sadly, they will attend different primary schools from tomorrow morning and no doubt contact will gradually be lost. Inevitably, they will even forget each other as new memories and new faces crowd into their little lives. Phoebe has another great pal called Elsie who will attend a third different school. It is her fifth birthday this very day. But their closeness will also evaporate.

And so to the weird thing they call "school". Years stretching out like fenceposts as far as the eye can see. Rules and stars and standing in line and "Yes miss!"/"No miss!" and school dinners and bells and uniforms and making friends and falling out and targets and levels and sums and books to write in and storytime and it's all like a train that you cannot get off as it rattles forward to place called The Future. School!

And as Phoebe's school train now prepares to leave the station of innocence, here's a very suitable poem by Roger McGough:- 

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First Day at School

A millionbillionwillion miles from home 

Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)

 Why are they all so big, other children? 

So noisy? So much at home they 

Must have been born in uniform 

Lived all their lives in playgrounds 

Spent the years inventing games 

That don't let me in. Games 

That are rough, that swallow you up. 

And the railings. 

All around, the railings. 

Are they to keep out wolves and monsters? 

Things that carry off and eat children? 

Things you don't take sweets from? 

Perhaps they're to stop us getting out 

Running away from the lessins. 

Lessin. What does a lessin look like? 

Sounds small and slimy. 

They keep them in the glassrooms. 

Whole rooms made out of glass. Imagine. 

I wish I could remember my name 

Mummy said it would come in useful. 

Like wellies. When there's puddles. 

Yellowwellies. I wish she was here. 

I think my name is sewn on somewhere 

Perhaps the teacher will read it for me. 

Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea. 

Duchess

 

Katharine Worsley, the Duchess of Kent, died on Thursday at the age of 92. Her title was deceptive because she was a Yorkshirewoman, born at Hovingham Hall in the North Riding of Yorkshire in 1933. Can you see that there is a cricket match in progress in front of the grand country house?

She married into the House of Windsor in 1961. Her husband was Prince Edward, The Duke of Kent. Princess Anne was one of the bridesmaids and Noel Coward was one of the guests. Unusually, this fabulous royal wedding took place in York Minster and not down in London.

Now, I should say at this point that I am not a great royal watcher. My idea of hell would be being locked in a room with royal TV dramas like "The Crown" being played continuously on a large screen.  Normally, I am just not interested and somewhat resentful of royal privilege. However, The Duchess of Kent had a special secret that made her quite admirable in my view. Let me share it with you.

For thirteen years, she paid weekly in cognito visits to Wansbeck Primary School on the Longhill council estate in north Hull. There she was known simply as Miss Kent and she taught music. Not just in a one off lesson for the media to record but thirteen long years of unpaid service. She was always passionate about music and wished to transmit that passion to disadvantaged children. She didn't just talk about it - she put her words into action.

In "The Hull Daily Mail", the headteacher at Wansbeck Primary School, said in tribute: "We are saddened to hear the news of the passing of The Duchess of Kent. ‘Miss Kent’ (as she was known to our school community) was an inspiration to the children when she taught music here over many years. She was a dedicated teacher who taught music with passion and showed the most amazing commitment to our school. Her kindness, compassion and talent for teaching lives on in the children she impacted during her time here."

"I love those children, I loved being there, and I love east Hull," the duchess once said. "I wouldn’t have stayed there for thirteen  years if I hadn’t."

Visitors to this blog who like tennis, will remember that The Duchess of Kent was for many years closely associated with the annual Wimbledon tennis tournament:-

With Venus Williams in 2001

Excursion

 

Phoebe (right) and Margot (left)  - picture taken today. It is not as easy as you might imagine to snap a decent picture of those two strong-willed sisters together. This one was the best I could come up with today.

I was with them and their mother Frances at Matlock Farm Park out in The Peak District. It is a countryside attraction developed with children in mind. There are pens for farm animals, a reptile house, a barn for small animals like rabbits and guineapigs, a huge trampoline, swings and slides and climbing frames. We also saw sheep racing and Phoebe got to ride on a horse called Boi. We also had our lunch there. It was a grand day out and the weather was kind to us.

Below - there's Phoebe on Boi and Margot back in the tractor cab and a highland cow refusing to storm the feeding station with her mates. After all, when it comes to dining,  manners are important.

Hippies

Over at "Travel Penguin" I jokingly suggested that Blogger David might be a latter day hippy for he had posted a philosophical blogpost that was about peace and love and independent thinking, diverting one's focus away from current affairs and the associated angst.

Afterwards, I considered what a "hippy" actually was. What did you have to do? How did you have to act or present yourself in order to be classified as a bona fide "hippy"? Did anyone who bore that label ever classify themselves as hippies? Or maybe it was just a name attached to them by conservatives who sought to denigrate young people in search of a better, more peaceful tomorrow.

In the early spring of 2005, I was delighted to stand on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco - the very womb of the American hippy movement. I guess my wife and children wondered - what the hell are we doing here in this unremarkable neighbourhood? But for me it was like the completion of a pilgrimage.

The so-called "hippies" of the late nineteen sixties  were so goddamn "woke"  that they were off the woke-scale. They were preaching peace and love, smoking pot, wearing flowers in their hair and angry as hell about the war in Vietnam.

Perhaps Donald Trump was a hippy in those days for he dodged the draft with absurd bone spur claims. Maybe he was seen in Golden Gate Park in a kaftan, smoking grass with the other draft dodgers and maybe he closed his eyes to listen to Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco"...

Armour

 

Our darling Phoebe is in limbo this week. Her nursery school days ended last week and next week she will enter her reception class in the local primary school - the same one that both her parents attended. But this week she is under her grandparents' supervision. On Monday her other grandmother ("Granny") looked after her all day but Shirley ("Grandma") and I have her for the rest of the week as both her parents are working.

Given the wonderful summer Yorkshire has enjoyed this year, today's weather was unusual - grey skies, rain showers  and even distant lightning and thunder. We decided to break up the day with a lunchtime trip to a pub in The Hope Valley called "The Old Hall Hotel".

After we had dashed in, Phoebe immediately noticed something in human shape standing in a corner guarding the toilet doors. It was a complete suit of armour - probably from the seventeenth century.

I hugged the figure and tapped the steel breast plate - the cuirass - but Phoebe remained daunted - not entirely convinced that there was not a medieval knight still standing within the steel suit. She had never seen a suit of armour before so this was something quite remarkable - astonishing even!

We settled down to our lunch, looking across the drenched Castleton road to Hope churchyard where dead people lie for decades on end. Halfway through the lunch, Phoebe had a desperate need to see the suit of armour again so I took her but again she could only look in amazement. There was no way she was going to touch that disconcerting metal figure from the past.

With lunch over, she checked out the suit of armour one last time and I promised to find pictures of similar suits online when we got home.

How difficult and burdensome it must have been to don protective armour in the past. Just getting the various parts on must have been a Herculean task and as for heading into battle - probably on a horse - why the weight of the outfit would have been close to unbearable. I will tell you one thing - I am damned glad that I was not a knight of yore, floundering around like a robot as swords clanged impotently upon my outer layer.

Seaside

 

Margate, Kent

I have just finished reading "The Seaside" by Madeleine Bunting. It is not a novel. It is an affectionate but searching investigation of modern English seaside resorts with reference to history, poverty and regeneration projects. The book was very well-researched as the bibliography and notes testify but of course Madeleine Bunting also visited the resorts and talked to many people.

You might say that the English invented the seaside resort and out on the periphery of our island there are numerous distinctive seaside towns. They range from big, noisy resorts like Blackpool, Lancashire to smaller and more dignified coastal towns like Aldeburgh in Suffolk and Hornsea, Yorkshire.

There are not many English seaside resorts that I have not visited and partly for that reason, I found "The Seaside" pretty engaging.

Skegness, Lincolnshire

I guess that the heyday of the English seaside resort was between the two world wars. Working people flocked there in their holidays, staying in boarding houses and cheap hotels. There were theatres, pubs, pleasure gardens, amusement arcades and of course the inevitable fish and chips.

You could buy sticks of pink rock and cowboy hats with "Kiss Me Quick" printed on the front because at the seaside you could let your hair down, away from the usual restrictions of real life back in our industrial inland towns and cities. In English summers, the people filled our seaside resorts to bursting point.

It's not like that today. Nowadays, most of the bigger seaside resorts are struggling. They contain hidden poverty, drug addiction, common health problems and low life expectancy. Many of the old boarding houses were turned into "Homes of Multiple Occupancy" long ago. The inland English working class  now pay for holidays in the sun - flying to Spain and Greece. Vacations that their grandparents could never have imagined taking.

I think the following extract from the book neatly sums up Madeleine Bunting's analysis:-

It's hard to make sense of the paradoxes of the English seaside resort: our 

deep affection and appreciation alongside the neglect, decline and deprivation. 

A place of second chances and last chances; a place for some to realise 

their most cherished dreams and for others to find despair. (p321)

Fisherman resting on the beach at Hornsea, Yorkshire

Burrows

 

"Burrow" is just another name for a rabbit hole. I don't know about you but when it comes to YouTube, I frequently find myself distracted then before you know it, I am plunging down random burrows - hardly knowing where I am.

Cleverly, YouTube's algorithms seem to know what I might like to watch. This is how I discovered intrepid explorers of rural China.

Today I spotted a 1966 video from Germany in which skilled stone masons patiently turn a huge lump of rock into a serviceable millstone. The video lasts for twenty six minutes. I watched it all, in awe of the men's craftsmanship but I guess you could just jump along to get the general gist of what these fellows did. They clearly knew what they were doing and had obviously made many other millstones before this one. I love the ringing sound of their tools upon the stone.

Another video I enjoyed this morning focused on some puzzling and rather huge rocks in America's wild west. The young explorer does not tell us which state he is in. Apparently, he discovered the fascinating location by studying Google Earth on his computer. Comments reveal that the discovery occurred in the state of Utah. This video lasts for twenty seven minutes so again if you are in a hurry, you might want to skip some of the footage.  In the end you are still left wondering - if this is a natural phenomenon or were humans of the past somehow involved in creating the site?

I must dash now. After all, there are many other burrows to go down. Anyone got some spare lettuce?

Guide

Fourteen years ago, I blogged about Doris and Ken - a sweet old couple who once lived on the corner of our street. They had no living family in England - just a niece in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

As a family, we befriended them and I oversaw some key matters for them as their lives entered the endgame  - arranging residential home places, their funerals and the clearance and sale  of their house.

In some ways, their home was like a museum that accommodated so much evidence of the wholesome lives they had lived. They had both been born before World War One.

 

Doris was involved in girl guiding, first as a girl guide and then later as a guide leader. Amongst her many papers I found an edition of "The Guide" dated November 11th, 1922 - "A journal for lovers of the open air, camping, hobbies etc.."  That flimsy magazine is now 103 years old and it is in effect washed up historical detritus from a very different age.

I just want to share two features from this magazine with you. First of all, I am aware that nowadays many lady bloggers and visitors have little idea how to make full use of their aprons....

I do not know if you can read that but essentially readers are being advised to hook their aprons to the table in order to create a kind of hammock. Very useful for peeling vegetables, shelling peas or polishing shoes etc.. And below there's great advice for fashion-conscious lady bloggers who  who are not quite sure how to put their hair up into bobs. Again, it might be tricky to read but both styles being addressed require several fine hair pins. As Edna Yorke who sent in the item declared, "These ideas will be found quite easy and practicable." Thank you for your attention to this matter!!! And thanks also to Edna for her sterling work with girl guides in Rugeley, Staffordshire. It was a long time ago.

Phubbing

 

You might have heard the term before but for me it was a new word when I heard it explained on BBC Radio 4 yesterday. It's "phubbing" - a clever conflation of "phoning" and "snubbing". "Phubbing" happens all the time when phone users ignore the people they are with in real life in favour of their phones.

Perhaps one should not blame phone users as much as we should blame the phone manufacturers and network providers. They have created an environment in which millions of people are hooked on their smartphones. For some, it is where their "best lives" reside - in favoured YouTube channels, whatsapp groups, social media and so on. All of that can, I imagine, be very comforting and less challenging than living entirely in the real world. 

When Shirley and I were in Newbury, Berkshire we went to a high street eatery. Sitting upstairs in the mezzanine area, I noticed a family of six coming up the stairs. The children were teenagers. They sat at a big table near to us and checked out the menu. 

After their orders were placed with the affable waitress, they did not interact as happy families used to do. Instead, all six got out their smartphones and were soon tapping away, chuckling or goggle-eyed as they studied their little screens. This went on for twenty minutes until their food orders arrived. It was as if they were drugged or hypnotised.

I myself have sometimes been a victim of phubbing. Since Shirley acquired her first smartphone she has become more and more enamoured with it and when walking in the countryside with my friend Tony, several natural conversations have been interrupted by his phone. I always feel like saying, "No! Don't answer that frigging thing. You are talking to me!"

Phubbing is yet more proof that this is a mad world. Before I leave this topic, I have a couple of side concerns to share. 

All over the planet people are charging their smartphones - often daily or nightly. That's a hell of a lot of electricity being drained from our tired planet. Aren't we supposed to be conserving our resources?

Secondly, why must smartphones be continuously replaced? Manufacturing them is another huge drain on our planet's finite resources. I guess that the prime reason is to keep profits rolling in for smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung.  It's a "live for today and forget about tomorrow" business model. "Screw The Earth" should probably be their shared motto.

Camel

It is a long time ago now and I can't remember the exact year but it was in the early nineties. At that time, yet another bandwagon rolled into the educational landscape. This time the driving notion was that secondary school teachers knew zilch about the commercial world. By allowing them to spend a little time in industry or commerce, they would be able to return to their schools better able to advise children on working life beyond the school gates.

I believe that the initiative was called Teachers into Industry (TiI) and for a brief spell it received substantial government funding. I jumped at the chance and was able to specify that I wanted to experience work in the advertising industry.

Of course the beating heart of all advertising in Great Britain is London but some advertising agencies do and did exist in other parts of the country. Unbeknown to me, Sheffield was home to a thriving little business called Camel Advertising. They were housed in a big stone house on Queens Road.

I worked there for two weeks and enjoyed every minute. There were no switched off children in sight and every member of the thirty strong team was pulling in the same direction - keeping the company above water and spreading its tentacles into new fields. There was a real buzz about the place. It felt like being a bee in a productive hive.

Outside in the car park, leading members of the team parked their shiny new cars. There was a yellow Ferrari and a silver Jaguar. Camel Advertising was proud and profitable and what I liked best is that it was a hotbed of creativity. There were graphic designers, a photographer and a creative director. They had begun to specialise in promoting computer games.

In the late 1970s I had investigated a potential alternative career in advertising and even sent out speculative letters. Camel was all that I hoped an advertising agency might be and I know this might sound stupid but in my two weeks with them, I sought to make a good impression partly because in the part of my brain marked "Fantasy", I was hoping they would offer me a job. 

Then I would be able to get off the treadmill of secondary school teaching and leave behind all the pettiness of school politics and recalcitrant kids who were resistant to education. Drawn from a large neighbourhood of social housing, there were many such pupils. Sometimes it could feel as though you were banging your head against a brick wall. Couldn't I use my energy and natural abilities in a more positive, creative workplace?

Anyway, my ploy did not work but they liked me right enough. I even appeared in our local newspaper "The Sheffield Star" as the project was deemed newsworthy and it reflected well upon Camel.

Amongst other tasks, I wrote the copy for a few double-page magazine spreads, including two computer gambling games called "Casino" and "The Big Deal" - "Enough to get Cool Hand Luke hot under the collar".

On the afternoon I left Camel, they presented me with a framed version of that very advertisement. On the back was a label that read: "To Neil - from your friends in The Camel Group". I received it gratefully but it was not quite as good as being offered a career switch.

Anyway, all of this came to mind when we recently disposed of a bunch of framed pictures that had been residing in our dark underhouse area. And now Cool Hand Luke has got to go too. After all, you cannot hang on to everything  - even pipe dreams from long ago. At least I will have the memory - here in this blogpost.

The building on Queens Road that was once home 

to Camel Advertising - now sadly demolished

Stats

Top visitor countries in last thirty days

Visitors who do not publish blogs of their own may not be aware that in the background "Blogger" provides bloggers with surprisingly comprehensive and up-to-date stats about how their blogs are doing. For example, you can find out your league table of visits by country. You can also find out the number of "hits" your top twenty blogposts had in the last twenty four hours.  In addition, you can  see tracking graphs and suchlike.

By the way, most of my visitors during the past six months reside in the USA, far outnumbering both Hong Kong and Great Britain who are second and third respectively on my list.  For several years, Great Britain and the USA were running neck and neck but not any more. In the last thirty days, "Yorkshire Pudding" has attracted 107,000 visits from America alone.

It sometimes bemuses me which blogposts appear in my 24 hour list and after twenty years of regular blogging I find I had totally  forgotten many of those posts. It can almost be like reading the ramblings of a complete stranger. For example this old post received fifty four readers yesterday. I wrote it on March 10th 2020 just before Great Britain went into its first COVID-19 lockdown. I guess it is a little piece of history now.

Every blogpost I have published in the past year has received over two hundred visits. However, some posts have attracted considerably more people. My "Quiztime" posts have been particularly fruitful with some of these receiving four or five hundred visitors. Posts that have been titled "Poem" are much less popular which is somewhat discouraging I must say even though I am well aware that poetry is not everybody's cup of tea.

In the past few days, I have noticed something weird happening with my visitor stats.  My "Malton" post of August 20th has received 1098 visits, my "Slaithwaite" post from Monday night has attracted over seven hundred visits and yesterday's Beatles "Quiztime" has achieved a massive 1418 visitors already.

I am very suspicious of these recent  figures. They are way out of sync with my usual visitor pattern. However, it is pretty much impossible to report such an issue to "Blogger" which seems to have been designed with a well-constructed invisible barrier in place to deter questions, suggestions and complaints from users.

Please don't imagine that I am in any way obsessed with the stats that "Blogger" provides because I am not. It is just that occasionally I like to have a look at them to see what is going on behind the scenes.

Quiztime

Think of England and you think of The Beatles so let us have a fun quiz about them! As usual, the answers will be given in the comments section.

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1) Which song on the "Sergeant Pepper" album is represented by this image?

2) In which Liverpool street was there "a barber showing photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to know"?

3) Who were The Beatles meeting in March 1964?

4) What was John Lennon's middle name?

(a) Barnstaple (b) Leonard (c) Winston (d) Crispin

5) Which Beatles single was the bestseller of all in Great Britain?

(a) "Paperback Writer"  (b) "She Loves You" 

(c) "I Want To Hold Your Hand" (d) "Twist and Shout"

6) Which Beatles single was the bestseller of all in the USA?

(a) "Paperback Writer"  (b) "She Loves You" 

(c) "I Want To Hold Your Hand" (d) "Twist and Shout"

7) Always associated with The Beatles and the original bass player - who is this young man? He died in Hamburg, Germany at the age of 21.

8) From which Beatles song are these words taken?

Life is very short and there's no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend

9) Some visitors are standing outside the gates of a famous former children's home in Liverpool that inspired one of The Beatles' best loved songs but where are they? 

10) Born on February 25th 1943, who was the youngest Beatle?

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That's all folks! How did you do?

Extras

The old Slaithwaite Road

All I have for you today is five more images from my visit to Slaithwaite and its environs. I toyed with the idea of sharing some thoughts about Taylor Swift's engagement to Travis Kelce. Then I considered reflecting on Fatty Trump's vindictive targeting of  Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. Another idea was to have a closer look at Nigel Farage and the eerie rise of The Reform Party here in Great Britain. Perhaps I could write about the day I met Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd or sleeping in a tent on Lindisfarne when it rained heavily all the following day. Possibly another "Quiztime" or how it is when a lovely English summer starts to turn to autumn... But no - just five more pictures from yesterday's adventure - thirty miles north of here...

Laund Farm with Meltham Cop behind

A view of Deer Hill reservoir

An old bank in Slaithwaite - now a restaurant

The Huddersfield Narrow Canal in Slaithwaite

Slaithwaite

The River Colne and a former textiles mill in Slaithwaite

Just the other day, Steve at "Shadows and Light" was reflecting upon  the pronunciation of place names. In response, I mentioned Slaithwaite - a former industrial village in the Colne Valley just west of Huddersfield here in Yorkshire.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that I had never been to Slaithwaite nor rambled in its environs. As the forecasters promised that today (Monday) would be a warm blue sky day, I was keen to take a good long walk and decided to drive up to Slaithwaite. It is over an hour away from our house.

Remote ruin I came across - named "Nathans" on old maps

I parked Butch close to "The Silent Woman" public house and a few minutes later I was sitting in Ashbys cafe on Britannia Road with a sausage and tomato sandwich and a latte - having decided to fuel up before my long walk.

The situation of Slaithwaite (pronounced Slawit) requires a little explaining. It is down in the valley where The River Colne, the Leeds-Manchester  railway, The Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the A62 trunk road from Huddersfield to Oldham all advance from east to west. The valley sides are pretty steep leading to farms, hamlets and short terraces of stone houses  via rising lanes, tracks and paths.

My intention was to walk up onto the moors south of Slaithwaite, taking in two reservoirs - Deer Hill and Blackmoorfoot - before looping back to "The Silent Woman" where I was looking forward to a pint of shandy to mark the end of my little Bank Holiday adventure.

Walkers on the dam - Deer Hill Reservoir

The steep valley side slowed me down and so did the shooting ranges close to Deer Hill Reservoir because I was forced to make a diversion - adding forty minutes to what was already a fairly long walk.

But on such a diamond day,  I thoroughly enjoyed my endless plodding. There's something most satisfying about the exhaustion that such a walk can create - but not quite as satisfying as that lovely pint of cold bitter shandy in the welcome shade  of "The Silent Woman".

"The Silent Woman" with Butch just beyond the cones

婷婷乐游记

 婷婷乐游记 = Tingting's Travels

I came across another Chinese YouTube channel devoted to exploring the Chinese countryside. Again there is a young woman in front of the camera and a young man behind it. In the selected video, they are in the province of Guizhou where their aim is to visit an old  mountaintop temple complex. The walk up there is long but not scary.

The location is so peaceful with natural greenery burgeoning all around as cicadas sing from the undergrowth. This is a different China from the China of bullet trains, industry and big cities. Even the controlling power of state communism seems far distant.

My appreciation of the video was interrupted by occasional ad breaks and if the same happens with you, I apologise. Just click "Skip" whenever you can. 

In this troubled world, it is kind of nice to follow a winding dirt track up a green mountain and see the golden Buddhist statues at the top.

We often hear references to periods of Chinese history known as "dynasties". I don't know about you but for me those references have always been puzzling because my ignorance about Chinese history runs pretty deep.

For the purposes of this blogpost, I discovered that before the arrival of these modern times the last great  imperial Chinese dynasty was the Qing dynasty that lasted from 1644 to 1912. Before that came the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It is sometimes said that there were in total thirteen great Chinese dynasties stretching back two thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ to the Xia dynasty (2070-1600 B.C.)

The name Qing is pronounced "Ching".

See an earlier blogpost which features Qingyunji Xiaoxue - another Chinese countryside explorer who has visited some incredible and occasionally scary places. Go here.

Song

"Landing at Anzac" by Charles Dixon

"And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda"

I first heard this anti-war song in the mid-1970s. It was written by a Scottish-Australian fellow called Eric Bogle. The song tells a story of World War I. In Australia's collective memory, the name Gallipoli spells bitter  tragedy for that is where 8709 young Australian  troops were killed in the winter of 1915-16 and a further 28,150 suffered significant injuries. They were a long way from home fighting a war that arguably had very little to do with them.

Incidentally, whenever I hear the song I think of my brother Paul who played fiddle in a semi-professional band called Dingle Spike. It was on their one and only album - also called Dingle Spike. They should have toured Irish music venues on the east coast of America in 1978 but because Paul had once been a card carrying member of the British Communist Party, the tour had to be cancelled.

"Waltzing Matilda" is of course Australia's unofficial national anthem and it also oozes sorrow. I did not wish to copy and paste all of the lyrics of "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" but here at least are the opening lines followed by the song itself sung meaningfully by Vincent Fottroll in Dublin's fair city:-

When I was a young man I carried me pack

And I lived the free life of the rover

From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback

I waltzed my Matilda all over

Then in 1915 my country said: Son,

It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done

So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun

And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda

When the ship pulled away from the quay

And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers

We sailed off for Gallipoli...

Spitefulness

Does the narrow-minded spitefulness of America's current president know no bounds? Instead of focusing upon his job, world affairs and the future, he seems to spend a lot of his time settling old scores. He is so terribly petty. Anyone who has crossed him becomes a target of his unbridled nastiness.

He abuses his position, calling upon the many powers that presidents possess for purely selfish revenge campaigns. Today, although he denies any involvement, he has sought to crucify John Bolton - using the FBI as hunting dogs. Bolton was in the president's first cabinet as National Security Advisor and has held other high offices of state.

However, like many others before him. he fell out of favour with the current president and later even wrote a book titled "The Room Where It Happened" in which he dared to dig into the reasons why the current president is not fit to lead his country.

Yesterday, I noticed that the 47th president is wearing a new red cap with this legend embroidered upon it: "TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING". The audacity of this is breathtaking. Such arrogance. Such ignorance. And of course the claim is far from being true.

Just as an example - has Mexico yet paid for the southern border wall as he promised? Besides, that southern wall is far from being complete - in fact it will probably never be finished.

And was he right to form a brotherly friendship with the disgraced and now deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein? The current president appears to be doing everything in his power to distract the media and the American people from what went on between him and Epstein. At one point he even claimed that he did not know Jeffrey Epstein.

The blaggard bigs himself up at every opportunity and any humility he very occasionally appears to show is merely theatrical - as hollow as a drum. Though his social media site is called "Truth Social", truth really does not matter to him. 

John Bolton is in his own way a rather despicable character and a warmonger too. In spite of that and just like the current president, he also dodged the draft that should have seen him fighting in the war in Vietnam like his peers. However, I hope that today's invasion of his home by the FBI sees him getting away without charges against him - pouring yet more disgrace upon the so-called Commander in Chief.

Bathtime

We had booked a suite in "The Talbot Hotel", Malton. It was spacious with a massive bed and well-appointed bathroom.

On our second morning, I woke at seven o'clock and decided to have a bath before breakfast. No need to rush and there was a reliable hot water supply too.

Now I must confess that it had been almost sixteen years since I last had a bath. That was in the Hotel Cordon del Plata in Mendoza, Argentina in late October 2009. There, because of overbooking, I had been given the penthouse suite - the best room in the hotel.

It had a sunken jacuzzi bath and I decided to use it - even though by at that stage in my life I had been converted to showering long before. Vaguely, I can still recall lying in that bubbling bath Like Lord Muck - minus the cigar and the bottle of champagne. I clambered out before drying and dressing and heading out into the late spring night for food.

In Malton, I lay there luxuriating in the hot water. I used the products that were provided to cleanse the temple that is my body and the flowing locks that adorn my skull. A young sea otter bobbed in the water.

Then it was time to get up and out. But how? Shirley was in the lounge reading and knitting and I nearly yelled to her for assistance but after a couple of failed attempts, I girded my loins and with a huge amount of willpower managed to stand up without slipping and killing myself. I tell you, it was not easy.

Obviously, I later put in a serious complaint at the hotel reception. Why had no mechanical hoist been provided to lift old codgers like me out of that treacherous bath? Quite outrageous.

When I was a boy I frequently leapt out of baths like a coiled spring. We didn't even have a shower in my childhood home. Even in Mendoza - I have no recollection of finding it difficult to get out of that luxury bath. Sixteen years later, I wonder if I will ever have a bath again. After all, I could be stuck there forever.

Malton

Back from Malton now. It's amazing what memories can be forged in a mere two day break.

Though we saw very little rain, the sky above us was essentially a king-sized light grey quilt, blocking out sunshine and ensuring that the colours of the world around us were rather muted. Driving over The Yorkshire Wolds on back roads from Driffield to Malton would have been pretty exhilarating in bright sunshine - with the vast wheatfields  still being harvested and The Yorkshire Moors brooding in a northerly distance.

On Tuesday, Shirley and I undertook a four mile walk east of The River Derwent. We parked Butch (new car) in the village of Westow and then a mile away, in the hamlet of Firby, we spotted some photogenic cattle which rather saved the day - photographically speaking...

The pilgrimage aspect of this break took me to my father's childhood home in Norton-upon-Derwent which sits directly opposite Malton. In fact, it's really just one big town community separated by the river and the railway track.

I also saw the grave of my paternal grandparents Thomas and Margaret. They are buried in the same plot where their youngest son, my Uncle Jack was interred in 1940 after being killed on active duty with The Royal Air Force. Thomas died at the age of 72 just a month before I was born. I left the three of them potted white chrysanthemums in remembrance.

Co-incidentally, my best friend Tony was also born and raised in Norton and Malton. We visited his childhood home and saw the place where he was born - a grand Edwardian residence in the village of Westow which once boasted a maternity unit. 

I also walked up to Malton Grammar School where my father and Uncle Jack were pupils in the late twenties/early thirties. Tony followed in their footsteps in the early 1970s when he joined the school's sixth form.

On a gable end wall near Malton's historical marketplace,  a  special  recipe has been proudly displayed. Can you see what it is for?