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 sugar beet

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?

Lodger

 

For several days I had been noticing a small creature in our upstairs bathroom. Every time I had a shower it seemed to be sitting somewhere different. I thought it was just an unusual fly. In its resting position its wings are always extended left and right forming a "T" shape.

With its wings extended, the insect only measures  one centimetre across. I tried to take my own picture of our tiny lodger but my effort was not worthy of posting so I found a picture on the internet instead. It is an exact magnified version of how our little fellow looks.

It took me a while to find it via Google but in the end I was able to declare with confidence that it is a plume moth. Yes - a moth! Apparently, it unfurls its wings when flying but when stationary it rolls them up - as shown in the picture. Quite remarkable!

And here's another amazing fact about plume moths. There are over 1580 species of plume moth - all a little different from each other in terms of appearance and feeding habits. It is very likely that not all species of plume moth (Pterophoridae) have yet been discovered by entomologists. 

I guess that the same could be said of other small creatures on our planet. We do not know everything there is to know about them and probably never will. Some will certainly become extinct before we even discover them.

Did you know there are over 150,000 different known species of fly on this planet and over 160,000 different species of moth with many sub-species just like the plume moth. 

I hope that I see our plume moth when I am standing in the shower tomorrow morning but I further hope that he or she is not holding a tiny camera aimed in my direction! This temple is for members only.

Contrast

Yesterday, I met two women of a similar age. I have already mentioned Christine who welcomed me as I stepped into The Church of  St Mary the Virgin. Not only did she give me a free mug of coffee, she also told me a little about the history of the church. She had a positive outlook and I learnt about her love of singing - she even invited me to two forthcoming Christmas concerts in which her choir will be participating. In addition, I heard about her family.

Then there was Joyce - sitting at the Crystal Peaks tram stop with me for three trams that never came. Good heavens - that woman could talk but most of what came out of her mouth was negative, gloomy and accusatory. Don't get me wrong - I am not saying that she was a bad or despicable person but the way she looked at life was corrosive.

The local council was wrong about everything, the government was wrong about everything and so were the young, along with her neighbours, the police and the homeless. I tried to butt in with my more positive view of the world and the people who are in it but Joyce simply did not want to know.

You find that with some strangers don't you? Well, I do anyway. You listen to their life stories and their philosophies and they want to know nothing about you - no questions, no curiosity. For half an hour, I was in Joyceworld and Puddingworld had been plunged into  nothingness.

Joyce pulled out her smartphone and showed me pictures of her family. She brightened and even smiled with love and pride before berating maternity services with regard to her baby granddaughter and the crises she had suffered before getting out of hospital. Then there was her grown up granddaughter who joined the police service in Manchester and now brings back to her nan deliciously grim tales about the criminal activity she encounters.

In Joyceworld, those police stories seemed to simply confirm that the world has already gone to hell in a handcart.

I prefer the Christines of this world whose kindness and positivity  surrounded her like an aura. She also showed interest in me - a complete stranger - asking me several friendly questions. In contrast, and I used to find this in teaching, persistent grumblers like Joyce can infect you, bringing you down. 

We should probably all try to be more Christine and less Joyce.

St Mary the Virgin in Beighton

Adventure

This morning Madame Pudding had the bright idea of heading out to the far south east of the city to visit the Crystal Peaks shopping centre. She was keen to use her senior travel card on the city's "Supertram" system. We would travel by bus into the city centre   then near Fitzalan Square we would catch a blue line tram all the way to Crystal Peaks. Neither of us had been there in years.

Hastily, I hatched a supplementary plan which would see me spurning the retail delights of  the shopping centre in order to walk in a big circle - out to Rother Valley Country Park, round the lakes and then back again to Beighton and onward to Crystal Peaks - some six miles in total.

Soon after setting off on the walk I found myself in the Church of St Mary the Virgin. Inside, a small number of senior parishoners happened to be decorating the church ready for Christmas. They were most welcoming and a silver-haired lady called Christine asked if I would like a hot drink. It seemed to me to be a very Christian thing to do so I asked for a coffee and she even brought it to me as I was photographing the statuette of Mary that stands in a stone apse and happened to be caught delightfully in sunshine.

Then off I plodded, climbing two railway footbridges and a stone bridge over The River Rother. The path led me on to Rother Valley Country Park which sits on the site of what was once a large opencast coal mine. Its dirty, industrial past is almost impossible to detect these days. The years have softened it and thoughtful authorities have planted and developed the 750 acre leisure area wisely.

Onward I plodded feeling slightly giddy - probably because I do not eat much in the morning these days - just a banana and a handful of grapes today. The sun continued to shine. Three men were feeding wildfowl at the water's edge  and a few other people were out walking like me. A couple of joggers dashed by and a daft lad on a motorbike who knew for sure that motorcycles are banned in the park.

On the way home there was an unexpected and unheralded  hold-up with the trams so after waiting for forty minutes, I caught the number 120 bus back into the city centre.  All in all it had been another grand day out with good exercise and not what I was anticipating when I was woken up this morning by a scam telephone call that instantly made my blood boil: "YOU JUST  WOKE ME UP!"Then I placed  a hex on the call centre responsible.

89

It's my old friend Bert's 89th birthday today. I went off to see him yesterday lunchtime.

For the past few months he has been living in his ex-wife's little terraced house in a different part of the city - about four miles away. It's a two-bedroomed house and their youngest son - Philip - usually sleeps in one of those bedrooms. Bizarrely, Bert and Pat sleep in the double bedroom - top to tail. They separated thirty years ago.

All three of them were glad to see me. I brought Bert a birthday card I had made myself. It included the top picture I took of him a few years ago - before he broke his hip and before dementia began to creep into his brain like a white rot fungus. I also gave him two cans of Bacardi and Coca Cola which was often his tipple of choice after a hearty pub session in "The Banner Cross Hotel". In addition, I gave Pat a bunch of flowers I had just picked up from a nearby supermarket.

It was snug and warm in the little house but quite spartan too with few pictures or adornments - just some framed family photos. And it was quite untidy and grubby with stuff piled up here and there. This was not a home to accommodate visitors or incidentally show off one's worldly wealth or tastes in decor. In the corner, a forty two inch television screen resided like an idol to be worshipped. Fortunately, the volume had been turned right down.

I wish I could have videoed or tape recorded the visit. It would have made a great basis for an existential TV drama.

At one point, I was trying to participate in three different but simultaneous conversations that seemed to have no connection with each other. Pat was talking about how much she despises Donald Trump and her vaginal bleed. Bert was talking about climate change as some Antarctic imagery had appeared on the silent TV screen. Philip was talking about yellow label bargains he had picked up in supermarkets and a band called The Cardiacs that I had never heard of.

Perhaps I had unwittingly entered a miniature asylum. Maybe I would get sucked into it and never leave but after ninety minutes and with some tactical difficulty I managed to extricate myself.

At one point, as Pat was making me a cup of coffee in the kitchen, I said to Bert, "How old are you tomorrow?"

"Eighty. Seventy something. Ninety - what's it?... November 24th 1936. Pat! Pat! How old am I tomorrow?"

"You're eighty nine Bert! Eighty nine!"

Africa

Africa? War, giraffes, corruption, gorillas, AIDS, lions, malaria, crocodiles, poverty, The Great Pyramid of Giza,  infant mortality, Mount Kilimanjaro, mass kidnapping of schoolchildren, The Victoria Falls ... but who would automatically think of the joy of dancing, happily moving your body to the music, lost in that music and laughing for that too is Africa...Here we go...

Rajneeshpuram

 

Three weeks ago, I wanted to watch something on our television set - something that would hold my attention and would entertain or inform me. Given the number of options out there in the ether, you might think that such an itch would be very easy to scratch but not so. There's so much rubbish piled up on accessible channels - stuff that I would never want to see.

Flicking through Netflix, I found a documentary series that I thought might be just the ticket - all about a commune that evolved in the state of Oregon during the nineteen eighties. The series is titled "Wild Wild Country" and it focuses upon a cult that was centred around an Indian fellow who had become a kind of mystic -  a guru if you will. His name was   Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho. That's him in the header picture.

Back in 1981, he and his immediate followers purchased a  valley in north central Oregon. It had previously been the site of The Big Muddy Ranch It was about twenty miles south east of the town of Antelope and pretty remote.

Citizens of Rajneeshpuram greeting their spiritual leader  in 1983

Rajneesh's followers became known as Rajneeshees. They came from all over the world but mostly they were Americans. Some of them were pretty wealthy, influential people. Together they turned the valley into a small city known as Rajneeshpuram. It had lots of good accommodation, a large meeting hall and even its own airstrip. They built a reservoir and a sewage reclamation plant. There was a police station, a fire department, cafes and restaurants and a health facility. It is estimated that at its height over 7,000 people lived there including a large number of down-and-out homeless people from various American cities.

Downtown Rajneeshpuram in its heyday

Although I watched all six episodes of the documentary, by the end I remained very unclear about what if anything Rajneesh had been preaching. What was his message and why did he attract so many devotees? I mean he looked like a guru with his customary smile and his long white beard and his mystical robes but what was he actually saying?

Anyway, by 1988 it had all fallen apart  for mixed reasons. Local citizens were distrustful, politicians and lawmakers were quite hostile and within the cult itself cracks began to appear with various accusations and wrong turns. The dream was over as the authorities began to circle like hawks.

Today the former site of Rajneeshpuram is occupied by a Christian youth organisation called Young Life . It's like a giant summer camp and retreat - operating within the remit of The Washington Family Ranch. I checked out their website and could find no reference at all to  Rajneeshpuram. It's almost like it was never there - a kind of fiction - which I suppose it was.

Washington Family Ranch

Black

Ram with a black nose and mouth at Silkstone Common

Black Friday today. I donned my black Hull City manager's coat and my black walking boots along with my fashionable black beanie hat. Incidentally, I had remembered to put on some black Marks and Spencers underpants (Large) and black socks.

It was damned cold out there today but sunny too. When singing "Up on the Roof" yesterday as I worked on our almost flat roof, I promised myself another long country ramble today. Silkstone Common was my destination - by train - and in my backpack was a map of the circular walk I had planned.

Track on the edge of High Field Plantation

Last weekend a bloke I know told me that Black Friday was all about celebrating the role that black people have played and continue to play in British society. A noble reason it seemed to me and as I sat on the 10.33 train at Sheffield railway station, a young black man climbed aboard and sat in the seat opposite me. Immediately I grabbed his hand and wished him a "Happy Black Friday".

He looked bemused and I was taken aback when he said, "Let go of my hand man! I should warn you that I am a black belt in karate!"

Well, I could not understand his reaction and of course apologised most profusely.  When I offered him a black liquorice gum, he went to sit somewhere else. Charming!

Across the aisle a fellow passenger was reading a free "Metro" paper and I noticed the headline: "Black Friday Week Begins". More puzzlement for me. How could there be a week of "Black Fridays"? After all there's only one Friday each week. Even so, I thought to myself - a full week of celebrating black heritage and treating our black brothers and sisters extra nicely - that can't be bad!

Monument to the twenty six children

It was a lovely walk in an area I had not visited in quite a while. Returning to Silkstone Common, I paused at the woodland memorial to the twenty six children  who died in the Huskar Pit Disaster of 1838. However, I was back at the railway station in good time for the 15.49 train back to Sheffield.

When I got home in the blackness of nighttime in a black taxi, the missus gave me a black look and asked, "Where the hell have you been? I want my tea!".

I got cracking. We were having black bean stew in black squid ink with a grating of black truffle on top followed by a black chocolate mousse with black cherry sauce. As I was preparing it, I listened to appropriate songs for Black Friday on my music player such as "Black Night" by Deep Purple, "Back to Black" by Amy Winehouse, "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones and of course "Black and Proud" by James Brown.

Tonight I shall sink a pint of Guinness. One of that company's past advertising slogans was "Black Is Beautiful but the World Is Often Not". Thank heavens for Black Friday!

Courage

Your intrepid correspondent bravely scaled a ladder this morning. Then with the assistance of  two rectangles of thick foam to kneel upon, he courageously climbed onto the flat roof of our extension.

When we first moved into this house in 1989, a long thin garage connected our property to Tony and Jill's house next door. The house was built in 1925 but I expect that the garage was added during the 1970s.

In 1998, we decided to convert the garage into extra living accommodation. The builder we engaged was a very pleasant and competent fellow called Paul who knew what he was doing and cared about his clients. He was able to extend our kitchen by nine feet while also creating a  ground floor shower room and a study as well as a little corridor connecting the three rooms. He did a grand job.

I say that the roof of this extension is flat but actually it enjoys a small gradient meaning that rainwater never settles upon it. It always flows into the gutter. 

Mostly, we have no problems with that roof. Months, even years can pass with no ingress of water but two weekends ago, during a long spell of rain, we suffered a leak in the kitchen and had to use towels and a couple of buckets to collect the unwelcome visitor.

Because of the rain, I could not get up on the roof to take remedial action and I needed to wait for a couple of dry days to check out the situation.

As expected, there were no obvious signs of where the water had got in. The roof was unblemished but I know that water cunningly finds its ways and the sources of leaks are invariably hard to find. The problem had to be with the joint between our almost flat roof and next door's side wall. The joint runs for twenty two feet.

When I think about temperature variations that have occurred in our city this year, they have ranged between -5°C  and +36°C.  Flat roofing material and joints will expand and contract and over time weak points like connecting joints will often be affected. It should come as no great surprise.

I bought the Thompson's "10 Year Roof Seal" pictured at the top and painted the entire roof joint - being generous with the overlapping sealant. It was bloody cold up there today - not the best drying conditions. Of course I do not know yet if my "fix" has worked. That can only be confirmed during another spell of sustained heavy rain.

At lunchtime, Mr Brave swung his legs back onto the ladder, his trepidation eased by the presence of his helpful female assistant whose was holding the ladder with  her on the bottom rung.

Job done...for now!

Reviews

In the past, you could buy things without having to trawl through previous customers' reviews. Now, it seems, just about everything is reviewed and sellers kind of expect it. In fact many businesses send out customer surveys straight after a sale has been made.

For at least twenty five years I  had no idea how much I weighed - quite simply because I never weighed myself. We had an old mechanical set of scales in our bathroom but I never stood on them until very recently when I began having weight loss reduction injections. Some might say that previously I was "in denial". Maybe I was.

The old scales were a wedding present forty four years ago and it had become hard to read the little plastic dial behind a now clouded, slightly yellowing plastic window. Wanting to track my gradual weight loss pretty accurately, I decided to treat ourselves to a new set of scales.

In 1981 there were no digital scales on the market but now in 2025 most available scales are digital and some have extra features to do with body mass  index calculation etc.. There are even scales that talk to you or give you printed read-offs.

I did not want any of that. I just wanted a reliable set of scales and in Great Britain the brand that people immediately think of  is Salter. That company has been around since the eighteenth century.

So I go online to look at what is available and that is when I enter a reviews minefield. Eventually, I decided to purchase a Salter Max electronic scale but as for pretty much all other scales, some customer reviews suggest that they do not weigh accurately or consistently. I needed to remind myself that 89% of buyers were very happy with their purchase. It was only a measly 6% who gave the product a one star rating.

Here's a typical five star review followed by one of the one star reviews:-

I am delighted with my purchase of the Salter bathroom scales for several reasons, firstly the weight is displayed in large figures which are easy to read, secondly the scales are digital giving a more accurate reading and thirdly the figures remain on screen for a few seconds when the scales are dismounted.Brilliant.

Very disappointed with this purchase that we have returned for a refund. The scales were showing about 6lbs more than a known weight. Salter should hang their heads in shame for producing such an inaccurate item. Now looking for an alternative make.

Anyway, fingers-crossed our new scales will be just fine. I just wish that I had bought them before my weight loss journey started.

Finally, the old scales are here, captured in a photograph before they are binned. In forty three years they witnessed a hell of a lot of bathroom activity. Goodbye old but oft-neglected friend...

Referendum

 

Neighbour

 

Teenage magazine cover in March 1982

The hard-working city of Sheffield in Yorkshire is not like The Holywood Hills you know. It's not even like Chelsea or West Hampstead down in London. Here, famous celebrities are very thin on the ground. Most Sheffielders are like me - unheralded nobodies who do not appear in magazines, films or TV shows. We are the shadow people.

However, a few famous people do live here and one of them is the musician, singer and record producer - Phil Oakey. He gained fame with a band called The Human League at the start of the 1980s. They had a massive worldwide hit with a song that Phil had written himself - "Don't You Want Me?" As a reminder, listen to the YouTube video at the bottom of this blogpost.

Nowadays, he still lives in Sheffield just a stone's throw from this keyboard -  and I mean that quite literally. I just looked out of the window between the houses across the street and behind them is the large pre-war house called "Orchardlea" which Phil Oakey made his home over thirty years ago. I snapped a picture of it today...

Phil Oakey celebrated his seventieth birthday last month. Still making music and occasionally touring with his band, he looks very different from the televisual fashionista of 1982 with that eyeliner and trademark lopsided hairstyle. Now he just looks like a regular bloke. He sometimes goes shopping in our local "Co-op" without shoppers or staff realising who he is but I have spotted him there a few times. 

Funny how he has never asked for my autograph - nor for a selfie with him. I expect he just wants to respect my personal space as they say.

Epstein

Extracts from The Unexpurgated Files that 
I recently discovered on The Dark Web...

Entry in Epstein's Journal - Little Saint Jeff  April 17th 2000

Great party last night. I had flown in a planeload of ripe Victoria's Secret models on Tuesday. This morning by the pool DJT had three girls round his sunbed. They were massaging him and feeding him grapes. He looked like The Emperor of Rome. Me and him we are on the same wavelength when it comes to young girls. As DJT often says, "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." It's like his mantra man.

e-mail dated  25th June 2000

Thanks for the invite to Merry Mar-a-Lago buddy. Will there be fresh meat on the menu? You know I dig lamb better than sheep and chickens better than old hens. We came from the same pod you old dog but I don't want any of your leftovers like last time I visited Donlandia. What was her name? Cherry or Sherry? Anyway, who cares about their names?
Your "Loving" bro,
Jeffie

US Virgin Islands Police Service Transcript (Extract) from an interview with Ms Celestine Barbosa (CB) - former member of the housekeeping team on Little St James Island - May 2001

OFFICER So you say the guy who grabbed you was American. Can you describe him?

CB He was orange and fat and smelt so bad.

OFFICER Where did he grab you?

CB It's too embarrassing to say ma'am.

OFFICER You mean your genital area?

CB  Err. Yes.

OFFICER Do you remember anything else about him?

CB Well. He kept boasting. Same as the other times he came to the island.

OFFICER What kind of things?

CB He said he had a big IQ score. Bigger than anybody ever before. And he won a medal in Vietnam. Medal of Honor I think. Said he single-handedly destroyed a Vietcong gun emplacement. I was just trying to vacuum his suite when he grabbed me. I had a job to do.

OFFICER You further say that he pushed you back on the bed. Did he say anything at the time?

CB He said that it would only take a minute or two.

OFFICER How did you react?

CB I pushed him off and yelled at him, "I am a respectable woman with children to feed! I am going to tell Mr Epstein on you you fat pig!" Then I ran out of the room.

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I came across other salacious, incriminatory  material on The Dark Web but this is a wholesome family blog and so I hesitate to publish some of the other stuff I discovered in "The Epstein Files". Now I understand why the current US administration are doing everything in their power to keep the lid on this thing.

Quiztime

The creation of this particular quiz is down to a hefty nudge delivered by Frances from Harpenden, England. There's no theme this week.  Like the business of living, stardom or romance, it's just pot luck. As usual, answers will be given in the comments section. Good pot luck! (You'll need it!)

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1. Which character from Shakespeare do you think this is? (I am referring to the fellow on the left).

2. Name that year.  Zimbabwe officially became independent.  The second "Star Wars" film - "The Empire Strikes Back" was released in cinemas. Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the US Presidential election and John Lennon was assassinated in New York.

3.  Which European car company uses this insignia?

4. Who is the youngest of the four Kardashian siblings? Kourtney, Knloe, Kim or Rob?

5. What was the title of Pink Floyd's first album?

a) "Atom Heart Mother" b) "Ummagumma" 

c) "The Piper at The Gates of Dawn" d)  "A Momentary Lapse of Reason"

6. Born in 1959, who is this famous British film actress?

(Clue: She lives near blogger Steve Reed in West London)

7. Of which South American country is this an outline?

8. What breed of dog was the TV and film star - "Lassie"?

a) rough collie b) bearded collie c) border collie d) scotch collie

9. What does this Latin phrase mean?

10. Science-related, may I introduce you to... 

...Dmitri Mendeleev. What did he create in 1869 that is still widely used all over the world?

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That's all folks. How did you do?

Cousins

In the autumn of 2023, our youngest grandchildren - Zachary and Margot were born just nine days apart. They were due on the same date but these so-called "due dates" never seem to work out do they?

Today, Shirley and I had the pleasure of looking after both of them together for several hours. Ian had come up from London to attend the funeral of  the mother of one of his best friends. She was only sixty three. Meantime, our daughter, Frances, was down in London to attend a reunion of former work colleagues and to visit her friend Kira who recently gave birth to a second baby girl.

For us, it was a double whammy. Two two year old grandchildren for the price of one.

Physically, they are pretty different. Zach is a slender, copper-haired livewire who can play endlessly with little toy cars and diggers - whereas Margot is a sturdy blue-eyed cherub who, without encouragement, has shown an affection for dolls. Perhaps it is a nascent maternal urge. When it comes to physical development charts for two year olds, she is most definitely in the very top percentile. She is a couple of inches taller than Zach and much heavier too.

With Zach living down in London, the two little cousins have not met up very often so today was quite special. At the top of this blogpost, you can see them sitting on my computer chair watching yet another YouTube version of "The Wheels on the Bus". They also enjoyed versions of "Old Macdonald had a Farm" and "Incy Wincy Spider".

Later, Shirley had the two of them on her lap in her easy chair in the dining room. They are enjoying a book together. Grandma is probably their favourite human and it is a role that she thoroughly enjoys...

Crash!

To the right of our garden by the privet hedge there grew a spindly staghorn sumac tree. I think that it had self-seeded there. A strange tree really with large pinnately compound leaves that turned bright red or orange in the autumn. And in the summer it produced big furry dark red seed pods  - the velvety texture of which might remind anyone of stags' antlers.

Anyway, I digress. About eight years ago this little tree effectively died . No buds, no new leaves. I decided to use it as a bird feeding station on which we could hang seed or suet ball containers. A few of the outermost branches were sawn off.

Then one day, I had the bright idea of painting the dead tree white with some leftover masonry paint. Forty minutes later it was done. 

Over the next six years I repainted the tree twice. It was an odd sight really but it seemed popular with various bird species as they came to feast on the bird food that was hanging there like regulars at a branch (!)  of McDonalds.

Then on Monday of this week, Shirley was working by our little greenhouse when suddenly she heard a crash. It was a still afternoon but the staghorn sumac tree had chosen that particular moment to keel over.

The next day I went out to inspect the scene, expecting to have to saw the upper part of the tree from its trunk.However, there was no need for that. I was easily able to yank the tree from the ground. The base was pretty rotten. I left it in the middle of our lawn - like a strange avant garde sculpture or something. 

Then on Wednesday I noticed that the early birds - mostly magpies and crows had removed much of the white paint from the thickest part of the trunk. They had really had a go at it - probably seeking wood feeding insects and larvae. They might have cleaned up after themselves!

In other exciting Yorkshire Pudding news... Today I gathered up five wheelbarrow loads of fallen leaves. Then I put them in a big builders' sack which I covered over and I will leave them there to rot down into nutritious leaf mould which will be "cooked" in about a year's time.

Finally, this interesting "Big Boy" sign was spotted somewhere in America, but I don't know where...