Here they are again - our lovely girls. We look after Margot every Wednesday. She is sixteen months old now, striding around like a little cowgirl who has just clambered off her horse. What a strong little character she is - often verbalising at full volume.
It is as if she has invented her own unique language and appears puzzled that nobody else quite understands it. She can eat for England - her mouth widening into a circle where she expects food to enter forthwith.
Today it was World Book Day and Margot dressed as Little Miss Sunshine for her day at nursery school. You should have seen her all in yellow. What a little darling!
On Thursdays, we look after Phoebe all day. This morning we took her down to Millhouses Park so she could ride her little bicycle along the flat paths there. She is four years and two months old now and like her little sister, she has a strong, determined character.
After expending energy in the children's playground and upon her bicycle, we took her to the popular park cafe where she enjoyed a "Smarties Pop-Up" ice cream. Later, she went swimming with Shirley and tonight she is having another sleepover with us.
Oh - how we love those little girls and what a privilege it has been both to watch them grow and to play a significant part in their lives. So many laughs. So much joy. Long may it continue.
Sir Keir Starmer, Britain's current prime-minister and the proud leader of our Labour Party was born into a working class family in 1962. Auspiciously, he was named after Keir Hardie, the first parliamentary leader of the Labour Party (1906-1908).
Sir Keir married Victoria Alexander in 2007 and they have two teenage children who have been effectively kept away from the often crazed glare of modern publicity.
The Labour Party were voted back into power last summer. In the three years before that election, Sir Keir had done a great job of remodelling the party - rooting out the excesses of left wing extremism to make the party electable once again.
Once a very successful lawyer, he became our country's Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008. In that role, he had many thorny legal cases to handle - including dealing with terrorists from Northern Ireland and elsewhere. In this job, he proved himself to be a great team leader and a dedicated public servant.
Until quite recently, Keir loved playing football and he has always been a keen Arsenal supporter. His love affair with football goes back to his boyhood whereas most Conservative politicians are only pretend supporters - perhaps thinking incorrectly that this might endear them to the general public.
Football is of course a team game in which every club pulls together - including coaching staff, groundsmen, cleaners and last but not least - the players. Keir recognises that in the way that he does politics. It's not all about him. He can only be a good leader with a good team to lead.
Historically, Labour is really the only political party that has ever consciously tried to improve the lot of ordinary men and women. Whereas Labour is proud of its strong links with trade unions, the ruling class - spearheaded by The Conservative Party - frequently try to use this connection as a weapon to beat Labour with.
Little more than six months have passed since Labour came back into power. Of course from the outset, Conservative-leaning media channels have sought to denigrate Labour's best efforts to get a grip on the nation's economic well-being and future prospects. It has not helped that they have had to address the damage caused by the Conservative-led "Brexit" from The European Union.
Last Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer had the exceedingly difficult task of meeting the new American president without vomiting. On the agenda was the Ukraine war and trading relations between our countries. It is widely agreed that Sir Keir walked that difficult tightrope with diplomatic aplomb. However, the following day he had to watch the Ukraine crisis deepen with the metaphorical mugging of President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
Keir Starmer is a good man, leading this country through troubling times. Unlike the cartoon character known as Boris Johnson, Keir does his homework and seeks to lead us forward with dignity and professionalism. There will be more ruts in the road ahead and more mud-slinging from right wingers and their newspapers but I believe he has the character, resilience and outlook necessary to deal effectively with future political challenges while always keeping an eye on the well-being of ordinary citizens - the very reason he entered politics in the first place.
Over the weekend, you had The Brit Awards at the O2 Arena in London and The Oscars at The Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. In case you were not aware of this, The Brit Awards are concerned with popular music. In a previous post, I wrote about Kendrick Lamar's "best song" award at this year's Grammys. The "best song" at The Brit Awards went to Charli XCX for "Guess" - featuring Billie Eilish.
Here are the opening lyrics of "Guess":-
You wanna guess the color of my underwear
You wanna know what I got going on down there
Is it pretty in pink or all see-through?
Is it showing off my brand new lower back tattoo?
You wanna put 'em in your mouth, pull 'em all down south
You wanna turn this shit out, that's what I'm talking about
Pu-pu-put 'em in your mouth, pull 'em all down south
You wanna turn this shit out, that's what I'm talking about
And here are Charli XCX and Billie Eilish performing this winning song on video.
The Oscars Ceremony was screened live on ITV over here in Great Britain. I didn't have the stamina to watch it all but I stayed up till 2am and saw half the show. The whole event appeared slick and well-choreographed.
I had to wait until this morning when I woke bleary-eyed and discovered that "Anora" was the big winner. It's not a film I have seen and I do not plan to make a special visit to the cinema to watch it. To tell you the truth, the theme does not appeal to me and the fact that the word "fuck" is used 479 times in this film is something that I find distinctly unappealing.
Admittedly, I belong to a generation of Britons that witnessed the condemnation of Alf Garnett's occasional use of "bloody" in the sixties sit-com "Till Death Us Do Part".
Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett
How far we have come since then.
By the way, "Till Death Us Do Part" directly inspired the American TV sitcom, "All in the Family" with narrow-minded Archie Bunker to some extent mimicking the Alf Garnett role.
Finally, today sad news surfaced about the death at 73 of the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano. From humble origins on Scotland's east coast, he came late to Art but gradually developed his own style of painting and made a very good living from it. His exotic surname, Vettriano, was his mother's maiden name. He adopted it long before he became famous.
Please see the personalised weather forecast above - courtesy of the BBC News website. I snipped it this morning to share with you and other blog readers. Oh my-oh-my, it lifts one's spirits to see all those bright sun icons. After all, this is not southern California you know!
To explain the snip... S11 stands for Sheffield 11 - the postal district in which our luxury mansion is located. It is one of the most desirable postal districts in the city. Sheffielders know that and we also know that districts like S6 and S2 are at the other end of the desirability spectrum for different reasons - including poverty and deprivation.
You can also see today's forecasts for Worksop, Tideswell, Penistone and Chesterfield. I requested those locations because they are each about fourteen miles from this house. Tideswell is to the west, Worksop is to the east, Penistone is to the north and Chesterfield is to the south. Knowing what is going on weatherwise in my region has frequently determined my walking plans.
Our little bed of garden daffodils is now blooming. They enjoy a nice sunny and sheltered spot. Each year there is a small amount of proliferation. Their annual awakening tells us that winter is pretty much done though there can always be frosts and snowfalls in March.
The lyrics at the top were adapted from the 1972 song by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood - "It Never Rains in Southern California". It is as if a showbiz aspirant is writing home from Los Angeles and being rather economical with the truth. One of the verses suggests that things might not quite be as good as he had hoped they might be...
Out of work, I'm out of my head
Out of self respect, I'm out of bread
I'm underloved, I'm underfed
I wanna go home
Of course, this also explains "it pours man, it pours" in the chorus. The song reached number 2 in the US billboard charts but number 1 in both Spain and Japan. For your interest or pleasure, here it is...
The term onomamania describes an obsession with names. Though I swear I do not need a straitjacket, I have always been a bit crazy about names.
When I was a boy of nine or ten, I invented a game that I could play on my own involving dice and made-up football teams. With the help of a road atlas, I picked the team names - usually with my eyes closed. Each team in the league required eleven players and to name them required a telephone directory.
Again - with my eyes closed - I would hit upon a random page and use my index finger to find each player's name. Hence "Hunstanton Town" might be represented by:-
Reed (goalkeeper), Barlow, Riley, Wilcox, Moon, Godfrey, Brague, Edwards, Gray, Slatten and Taylor (captain).
The game against "Cleckheaton Rovers" would be played with the aid of the dice and all scores would be recorded in my notebook. Maybe Dunham would score the winner for Cleckheaton. A lot of my pleasure was derived from the initial naming processes.
Moving on, as a teenager, I spent far too long dreaming up names for imaginary pop or rock groups - Miles of Smiles, The Reserves, Red River Panic, Crisis, Suburban Heroes. More recently I came up with Flying Debris which echoes back to those name dreaming days.
When a baby is born, I like to know his or her name and then I will roll it over in my mind and decide whether or not I like it. Will it be suitable? Two years ago, over in Ireland, my nephew Kevin fathered a boy called Finn and that name certainly passed my approval test. So did the names Phoebe, Zachary and Margot - though Margot could have easily been a Poppy. Poppy is a girl's name that irks me even though I think it is fine for dogs, cats and even white mice .
Many first names have sudden bursts of popularity and then slip out of fashion. I witnessed this a lot as a secondary school teacher. Take those two nice men yesterday - Dean and Ashley. Those forenames date them for nowadays hardly anybody names their sons Dean or Ashley. Today's top names for boys in Great Britain are Noah, Oliver, George and Leo with Muhammad coming at the top of the list.
Top girls' names are Amelia, Isla, Lily and Freya with Olivia coming at the top. My mother was called Doreen and my grandmothers were named Phyllis and Margaret. Almost nobody picks such names any more.
Maybe I need expert help or counselling to suppress my onomamania but I guess that there are worse obsessions I could have - like meticulous housekeeping or fashion consciousness for example.
Very often, I don't talk to anybody else on my country walks and explorations but today's adventure began differently.
At Tibshelf Cemetery in eastern Derbyshire, I met the two men shown above. They are Dean and Ashley and they work for Tibshelf Parish Council. As well as maintaining the cemetery, they have several other responsibilities within the parish and often receive instructions from councillors.
Dean has worked for Tibshelf since 2002 and Ashley joined him eleven years ago. I conversed with them for twenty minutes or so . They were both proud of the fact that they had never had a single day off for illness and I was struck by the pride they clearly had in caring for Tibshelf come rain or shine.
After they had driven off in their van, I took the following picture of Nethermoor Cottages and then walked back into the cemetery grounds.
There was only one other person there - a lone man leaning over his car door and looking at a floral display that spelled out the word, "Sister". He raised his hand to me in greeting and said "Hello". He was probably my age or a little older.
Soon we were engaged in a conversation about the death of his wife. Seems like she had complained of a pain in her stomach last September. One thing led to another and she died from stomach cancer on January 11th. Her cremation took place in the first week of February.
"It must all feel so raw", I said to him.
He wanted to talk. He seemed quite lost, still not quite believing that she had gone.
"She was always knitting," he said. "And I miss the clicking of those needles when I am watching the telly. It's so quiet now."
They had been married for forty nine years - not quite making their golden wedding anniversary. He confided in me that she had not been able to bear children but they had been very happy together all the same. They had a touring caravan that they often took to the coast.
"Look after yourself," I said as I left him with his reflections. "Keep going!"
"I'm not sure I can," he replied with a slightly ominous grimace.
Soon I was in Newton, a former mining village that is just half a mile south east of Tibshelf. I spotted the street sign shown above and would love to know for sure why that street acquired such an unusual name - Wire Street. The 1888 map of the area offers no clue.
Above - Newton Methodist Church which would have once enjoyed a congregation of coal miners with their families. Below, an old cottage opposite St John the Baptist Church in Tibshelf. This would certainly have predated the age of coal.
In Great Britain, speed restrictions mean that the maximum speed you can legally travel at on our public roads is seventy miles per hour. Go above that speed and you are liable to receive a hefty fine or points on your licence that may result in a driving ban.
It is not unusual. This is the same in most other countries,
As some of you may recall, my motor vehicle is a silver Hyundai i20 called Clint. When driving him along, I stick strictly to the speed limits in built-up areas. However, when out on the motorways I confess that I will sometimes push Clint's speed up to 80mph. Thousands of drivers do the same. This is also not unusual.
As it happens, a Hyundai i20 is very capable of travelling at 116mph. That is its official top speed even though Clint's speedometer suggests a maximum of 220mph.
Clint is an ordinary, economical car manufactured for the mass market like all of his siblings. However, many car models are souped-up and styled like racing cars. At the top of this page you can see the fastest road car in the world. It is produced in Sweden. It is the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut which has a top speed of 310mph and incidentally will set you back £2.3 million.
310mph is well over four times Britain's maximum speed limit so I simply ask, what the hell is the point of owning such a car? Legally, you will never be able to test the car's capacity for speed.
On the one hand you have governments, the police and road safety organisations urging drivers to stick to the speed limits. On the other hand, you have car makers producing cars that possess the ability to totally smash designated speed restrictions.
What is going on? Surely manufacturers should be warned in no uncertain terms not to make cars that tempt fate with regard to speed. It is very easy to blame drivers but surely car makers are largely to blame for selling cars that encourage drivers to go fast - Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, Porsche, Bugatti. McLaren - but also the mass market producers - Ford, Kia, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Toyota and the rest.
If "they" were really serious about addressing speed on our roads, "they" would ban the production of souped-up racing cars and even common cars like Clint would not have the ability to go beyond 100mph.
There are men and women who go all starry-eyed about speedy motor cars and for some, owning such a vehicle is perhaps their prime goal in life. - their dream. I am not one of those people. Usually, I do not think about cars very much at all and I am not even slightly interested in the Formula One circus nor car programmes like "Top Gear".
To me, cars should be all about getting people efficiently from point A to point B, preferably burning as little fuel as possible, not speeding along like a racing driver. There - I have said my bit. What do you think?
I am sitting in our lounge with my feet up watching "Questiontime". The chairwoman, Fiona Bruce, is refereeing the discussion that follows a question from a member of the audience about the end of the world and America's 47th president. I am sorry but I cannot remember his name.
Anyway, I am suddenly conscious of movement on our staircase and then the closed living room door is slowly pushed open. A moment later and there's our Phoebe in her Bluey pyjamas, holding her cuddlesome friend, Monty the sloth.
We had put Phoebe to bed at 8pm following her bath. I had had to read her two stories though one was the real life tale of the American gymnast - Simone Biles.
"Hello Phoebe!" I say warmly, with my arms open as if to say - come and join me on the sofa!
But Phoebe just stands there in the doorway. I ask if she is all right and then I notice that she is visibly upset. She isn't smiling and her eyes are filling up as though ready to cry.
"Is something wrong?" I ask.
"I want Mummy and Daddy," she manages to communicate with difficulty.
"But you'll see them tomorrow. Grandma and Grandpa love you too you know. You are safe with us darling."
With my arms open again, I invite her over to the sofa. With hesitation, she crosses the divide and comes over to sit with me. I give her a one-armed hug. She asks what it is that I am watching and I tell her that it is just grown-ups talking.
"I'll turn it off if you want. Do you want to watch something else? You can have whatever you want."
"I want Peppa Pig please Grandpa."
And so I find Peppa Pig on YouTube. Then I ask Phoebe if she wants some warm milk which means a two minute trip to the kitchen and a ping of the microwave.
Back in the living room, Peppa and her family are visiting the local swimming pool. They are all in their swimming costumes - her brother George and her parents - Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig. Strangely, in all the Peppa Pig cartoons I have watched, Peppa's parents have never been blessed with first names.
Phoebe has calmed down now, not threatening to cry. She has been such a happy strong-willed girl thus far in life, not liable to tears. We are close together on the sofa now and she is under the fleece throw. We agree that she will only watch one more Peppa Pig episode before going back to bed.
She - Phoebe not Peppa - finishes her warm milk and without complaint she remounts the stairs.
I want to just make up a story when I put her back to bed but she insists that I should read one. With the subdued light in her room, it is hard to follow the writing but I struggle through, give her a kiss and say "Night - night Phoebe".
To me it has seemed like a step in her progress to adulthood. At three years old she would never have sobbed for her parents and it reminds me of a night when I was a child - probably two or three years older than Phoebe. Lying there in my bed, I suddenly wondered what my life would be like if my parents died. I would feel so bereft, so empty and I started to weep so that my pillow became wet with tears. I still remember that moment as if it was yesterday.
The journey from the innocence of childhood to full-blown adulthood is a long one and to be truthful, I think we are all still on it.
__________________________________________
Ballad of the Sad Young Men
Here's another song from Roberta Flack. She partly wrote it herself. It was inspired by the times she played piano and sang in late night bars. When interviewed about it, she said she was thinking of the young, homosexual men she encountered at those venues. Roberta was often thought of as a significant supporter of LGBTQ rights, long before such support became fashionable...
Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again, kiss your dreams goodbye
Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity of wishing farewell to Roberta Cleopatra Flack who died this very day in New York City at the age of 88. She was born on February 10th 1937 and was blessed with the voice of an angel. She could take a song and get lost in it, totally absorbed. I have mentioned her a few times in this blog and five years ago I showcased a video of her singing "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" on the BBC back in 1972. She was thirty five and at her peak, comfortable in her own skin and at one with the lyrics of one of the most plaintive love songs ever written. Here it is. In her memory, please give it a listen.
Secondly, I would like to welcome Arctic Fox back into the blogging fold. He was lost but is found again. I used to joust with him in the early years of my life in blogging but then, in 2012, he disappeared as sometimes happens. However, In Arctic Fox's case, he chose to return just this year after a thirteen year gap - possibly because he had time on his hands after losing his job. He is a Yorkshire lad like me and the way he writes is kind of quirky but genuine too. Why not roll over there and check him out?
Thirdly, one of the other guys who regularly contributes images to the Geograph project is a fellow called Julian Paren who worked for many years with the British Antarctic Survey team. He is retired now. The other day, I stumbled across a video he was commissioned to produce eight years ago by the Gatliff Hebridean Hostels Trust. It looks appreciatively at the island of South Uist in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. I found it peaceful, mesmerising and enticing - taking me away from the continuing worries most of us are having about Ukraine, Gaza & Israel, Putin, The White House and the future of our planet. Maybe you would like to visit South Uist for a little while too, courtesy of Dr Paren's video...
That old man who currently occupies the post of President of the USA is interesting to observe in relation to the language he uses. Remember how in his previous presidential term and during Mr Biden's presidency, he would often bang on about "fake news"? It became something of a catchphrase as he constantly sought to denigrate particular newspapers and television stations. No doubt he was deliberately trying to blur the general public's trust in news organisations. It was all fake, fake, fake - according to the old man when of course it wasn't fake at all.
This time round the "fake news" obsession appears to have melted into the background. His use of the terms "fake" and "fake news" is greatly reduced.
In the run up to last November's election there were a couple of occasions when the current president, pondered over the word "groceries". It was as if he had never heard the word before as he rolled it on his tongue. At the Detroit Economic Club last October he said, “The word grocery. It’s a sort of simple word, but it sort of means everything you eat. The stomach is speaking, it always does." And in December he said, “I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost—you know, who uses the word? I started using the word—the groceries. ... I won an election based on that.”
The truth of the matter is that "grocery" and "groceries" were clearly novel words to the man in question. Most other adults in the English-speaking world were already very familiar with these words. They were hard for us to get excited about.
Another word I should like to focus upon is "asylum". Regarding immigration across the southern border of The United States, the old man has often referred to the incoming people as criminals and drug takers etc. He has also frequently referred to immigrants breaking out of mental hospitals and mental institutions. The current president clearly understands that historically such places were often known as "asylums".
It occurs to me that the present incumbent of The White House really has no idea what "seeking asylum" means. In his confusion he thinks that there are hordes of Central American mental patients seeking asylums in The States. It is as if the idea of looking for sanctuary and safety from all manner of threats is a concept that the old man does not recognise. Maybe nobody ever spelt out for him that there are two different meanings of the word "asylum" in common use.
You might imagine that I am just jesting about his ignorance but I am not.
I am home alone like Kevin McAllister. Shirley went off with a bunch of local women friends yesterday. They have rented a house in a small coastal town called Hornsea which, coincidentally, figured importantly in my teenage years. It is just six miles from the village where I was born and raised.
This morning I rolled over at 7am, pressed the button on our radio alarm clock and drifted back to sleep as the radio churned out news from home and abroad. I finally got up at 9am.
Weatherwise, today was quite nice - bright and dry with temperatures hovering around 12°C. I considered undertaking another long walk somewhere but instead chose to tackle a job in the garden. I didn't even need to don a coat.
Several days ago, I trimmed a little tree that hangs over the path halfway up our long, rectangular garden. This involved standing near the top of an aluminium stepladder six feet above the ground. It also required the use of a saw and secateurs.
All through the winter, I had been noticing how many long shoots had burst from that tree, reaching up to the sky. It had been pruned before but the last time was perhaps three or four years ago. This time I remembered to wear safety glasses to prevent sawdust from getting in my eyes.
In two sessions, I managed to cut away all the troublesome shoots. Some of them were up to twenty feet long. I laid half of them on our lawn and the other half under the apple tree that is next to the stump of our Ian's old horse chestnut tree.
Then some wet days came along so I delayed processing those long, spindly branches. I planned to clip away side growths and finish up with long shoots and thin branches for possible use in a side project that arrived in my imagination a few nights ago. I had the idea of weaving some rustic border edging - only about six inches high. This will require a number of short poles to be hammered in the ground at intervals. Well, we will see if that daydream materialises in the coming weeks.
At half past four, I came back in the house ready to watch a big rugby union international - England versus Scotland in the annual Six Nations Championship. It was a gripping game in which there were various missed opportunities but in the end I am delighted to say that England won by sixteen points to fifteen. To borrow from Scotland's national anthem - we sent them homeward "to think again".
For my late evening meal I had a baked potato, fine green beans, fried onions and mushrooms with a fine rump steak that I had bought in anticipation of this solitary day. To accompany the meal, I treated myself to a glass of "Kinvale" cabernet sauvignon wine from South Australia.
Soon "Match of the Day" will be on BBC 1 as it is every Saturday night during the football season. I haven't spoken to a soul all day - either in person or over the
telephone. Perhaps we could all do with days like this once in a while.
Some words, some names form pleasantly in the mouth and are nice to say. One such name being "Limpopo". It is South Africa's most northerly region and also the name of the thousand mile river that skirts that region in a great arc before heading sluggishly through Mozambique to the Indian Ocean.
To reach Zimbabwe from South Africa you must first cross The Limpopo. It also demarks a long stretch of South Africa's north western border with Botswana.
The Limpopo is a lazy, languid river that is unsuitable for major shipping. In its upper reaches it dries out every year while in its lower reaches it is prone to flooding - the waters spreading out like a vast puddle - bringing sustenance to the land and the creatures that dwell thereupon.
Draining the Limpopo River basin, there are twenty significant tributary rivers that all feed in to the main Limpopo River. They include the Umzingwani River and the Mogalakwena River. Two more names that sound nice upon the tongue.
In the picture above, you can see a zebra group drinking from the Limpopo in their bar code pyjamas. Other creatures that the river supports include elephants, giraffes, hippopotamuses, rhinos and crocodiles. It should also be pointed out that around fourteen million people live in the Limpopo river basin and their lives are also directly connected to the river.
Over the last 150 years there has been a great deal of mining activity in the Limpopo region and that continues to this day - sometimes clashing with the concerns of conservationists and naturalists.
Possibly, like me, you knew almost nothing about The Limpopo this morning when you sprang out of bed singing "Oh What A Beautiful Mornin'" from the 1950s musical - "Oklahoma". But now you know a little something. By the way, I struggled to find a simple map of the river's location in southern Africa so I used the one I found in an academic paper that focused on the survival of baobab trees in a lesser known national park called Skelmwater.
And now to finish this short blogpost about The Limpopo, here's an amateur African YouTuber covering her first visit to the river. I believe she is at South Africa's border with Botswana. Gentlemen should look away as she negotiates the wire fence...
Once upon a time a man called Patrick married a woman called Maria. She was six years younger than him. Eighteen months after the wedding, their first daughter was born. She was named Maria after her mother. Little over a year later, the couple welcomed a second daughter who they called Elizabeth.
Four more children followed in quick succession. The third child, another daughter, was called Charlotte. Next came a son who was christened Branwell for that was his mother's maiden name. A year later Emily arrived and eighteen months after her came another daughter - christened Anne.
They were the Brontë family and in the first half of the nineteenth century they lived together in the Pennine village of Haworth, here in Yorkshire. Patrick Brontë was the local vicar. Mum and Dad with five daughters and a son - how happy and fruitful they should have been.
But then the deaths began to happen. Maria, the mother, was the first to go in 1821 at the age of just thirty eight. Then Maria, the daughter, died at the age of eleven in the late spring of 1825 followed six weeks later by Elizabeth (aged 10).
Twenty three years passed before the family was struck by another tragedy. Branwell died at the age of 31 in September 1848 and later that same year Emily died at the age of thirty.
The very next year Anne died in Scarborough at the age of twenty nine and on the last day of March in 1855, Charlotte died at the age of thirty eight. The final member of the Brontë family to die was The Reverend Patrick Brontë himself who breathed his last breath at the age of eighty four in 1861.
None of the Brontë children had children of their own though Charlotte was pregnant at the time of her passing. Mostly, the Brontës succumbed to diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis though Branwell's alcoholism played a part in his early departure.
Charlotte, Emily and Anne were brilliant young women as the writings they left behind demonstrate. With good health and more decades of life they would have undoubtedly left an even richer literary legacy behind them.
When it was announced in 2013 that the first female literary figure to grace a British banknote would be Jane Austen, I must admit that I felt quite miffed. I wanted it to be Charlotte, Emily and Anne - partly because I find the writing of Jane Austen to be tiresome in its polite reserve, its comfort and curtailment. There is something much freer and forward looking in the works of the three Brontë sisters - or maybe I am a little biased because they were Yorkshire puddings like me.
In this blog, I have been consciously trying to avoid political commentary in recent months but I just cannot overlook what the current American President said yesterday at Mar-a-Lago. Referring to Volodoymir Zelensky and to preliminary endgame talks in Saudi Arabia, The American President said:-
“Today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years ago – you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
The elderly speaker seems to be amazingly and dangerously ill-informed. Of course President Zelensky did not "start it" back in February 2022. His country, Ukraine, was invaded by Russian military forces and ever since it has been under siege. Millions of Ukrainians have fled for their lives. The war was started by Putin and of that there is absolutely no doubt.
What "deal" could Mr Zelensky have possibly made apart from surrendering Ukrainian territory to Russia? What kind of a "deal" is that?
The American President and his minions appear to be on a mission to flush truth away and replace it with falsehood. They cosy up to Putin without admonishing him or suggesting how he might be made to pay for his tyranny. Because of Putin, some 700,000 Russian troops have been killed and some 300,000 Ukrainians have been killed or wounded.
Now The American President is trying to sully Volodoymir Zelensky's legitimacy by pointing out that there hasn't recently been a presidential election in Ukraine. But how could a meaningful election be held in a war zone from which millions have fled and many towns and cities lie in ruins? Besides, the Ukraine president has a higher approval rating than the current American President himself has in the USA.
It's all so topsy-turvy. It is hard to believe what is going on. And you have got Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, saying that it would be "unacceptable" to Russia if European troops formed a peace-keeping force to police Ukraine after the war. Surely, the aggressor's opinion should have no currency and any American president worth his salt should be saying that loud and clear. But of course the current incumbent isn't a real president is he - he remains a greedy real estate developer devoid of wisdom or compassion.
North Lees Hall was once visited by Charlotte Bronte
Haiku or sushi?
Quite the same to me
Feed body and soul
Don't worry! There's going to be a little more to this blogpost than another haiku. Judging from the visitor count for yesterday, I would say that haiku poems are about as popular as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In fact, I have previously found that when my blogpost title is "Poem", visitor numbers dip like limbo dancers. That is why today's title is "Sexy". As a consequence, I expect that this post's view count will rocket. The Russian bots will be panting like racehorses.
If you have got this far, I should inform you that this blogpost will contain no "sexy" revelations whatsoever. If you want "sexy", I suggest that you visit NakedBloggers.com or BloggerOrgy.org.
For February 18th, this was a good day weatherwise. The north of England saw sunshine and blue sky. I was determined to get out for a decent walk and make use of the clement weather.
Roadside wall with Stanage Edge beyond
Not wishing to travel far, I left home just after one o' clock. Twelve minutes later, I parked Clint in a lay-by to the west of Stanage Edge - close to Sheepwash Bank.
With boots on, I set off on a two hour circuitous walk that took in North Lees Hall, Ridgeway Side, Birley Lane and Gatehouse. Though this is a walk I have undertaken several times before, I had never previously noticed a special bench in a sheep field dedicated to Wendy Billing (1962-2020).
It appears that she was a wife, mother and keen orienteer. She lived in the nearby village of Hathersage. Cancer was responsible for shortening her life and stealing her away from her family, her friends and her approaching old age. I understand that Wendy designed the bench herself. It suggests the shape of an apple core and it bears that name - "Apple Core". It is an outdoor art exhibit that looks up to the sky.
