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...

Face

 

I saw this woman's face on the BBC News website today and I can't fully explain why but it took me aback. There was an involuntary intake of breath. Please do not imagine that I once knew her because I didn't.

It crossed my mind that I could have created a blogpost in which visitors were challenged to offer ideas about the woman. What has been her life story and what, if anything, does she do for a living? However, I decided against that. I will give you the solution soon.

To me there's sadness there, weariness and worry. In its relaxed state that surely does not look like a happy face. Perhaps she has known grief or maybe her hidden state of health is signalled by her demeanour. I guess that some might see a certain toughness in that face, a hard-nosed resistance to frivolity and nonsense. Don't mess with me!

The art of deducing someone's character from their facial appearance is known as physiognomy. I guess that we are all amateur physiognomists. Habitually, we try to read faces. They might be the faces of friends or family members or they might be strangers' faces. Maybe some are better at reading faces than others.

Nonetheless, everybody makes mistakes when reading faces. Grinning expressions may hide inner pain and serious faces might mask comedians. 

Long ago, before we came to this house, I was a regular at "The Closed Shop" public house in Commonside, Sheffield. The landlady was a mature, no-nonsense woman called Sylvia. By chance, late one Friday evening I overheard her talking to another customer about me and to paraphrase what she said, it went something like this...

"I know he comes across as serious - like he's looking right through you but once you get to know him he's okay. Quite funny at times."

And then I continued to sing "The Wild Rover" to the regulars... or was it "On Ilkley Moor" - I can't rightly remember. It was a little pub in which we formed a community. There was Shirley, Colin and Lorraine, Tony who now lives in Beverley,  Roger, The Young Ones, Rowena and Alan and Kirk and others I can hardly remember.

Anyway, getting back to the face, I will not say the woman's name but she is a secondary schoolteacher working with ASN pupils (Additional Support Needs). Now you might better understand how pressure of work has subtly impacted upon her face - probably over many years.

If she had been a singer on a cruise ship or a ballet dancer or a gardener or even a beautician, I doubt that her face would have become like the one we see in the photograph. Essentially, she is not an unattractive woman and she is blessed with good bone structure but in my view the job has obviously taken its toll. She almost looks suicidal - in need of professional counselling, retirement or a long beach holiday.

Fuss

Over there - across The Atlantic Ocean - the rapidly ageing President of the USA  has his own social media channel that he named "Truth Social". Quite an ironic title in my opinion as the "truths" that he tweets out night after night in the manner of a ranting teenager only reflect his "truth" - not any kind of fair-minded or balanced truth coolly based upon proper evidence.

He derides respected TV channels such as CNN and MSNBC, preferring to align himself with the right wing Murdoch-controlled tabloid channel called "Fox News" in which Trump can apparently do no wrong and all Democrats are woke liberals. He has also targeted America's best newspapers.

And then there are the now legendary Epstein Papers that undoubtedly contain painful truths. Trump and his oddball team have used every trick in the book to delay, block and hide those particular truths.

Being what several learned psychiatrists have described as a "malignant narcissist", Trump does not take kindly to any one or any organisation that tells a different truth from his own. He barks them down with playground declarations of "Fake News!" and "Fake Media!" and he misuses the judicial system to pressure media organisations for revenge or compensation.

Here in Great Britain, there is currently a lot of fuss and media noise about how  Trump's January 6th 2021 speech was edited for a BBC "Panorama" documentary called "Trump: A Second Chance?" aired a year ago - several days before the US presidential election. If you didn't know - you might think that somebody had died or that some terrible wrong had been wrought upon the present occupant of The White House. Such has been the fuss.

Even in Russia and China, leaders' speeches need to be selectively edited by TV News channels. It would be unrealistic to broadcast the entire thing. And on January 6th 2021 while seeking to belligerently dispute a fair  and democratic election result, Trump's rabble-rousing speech was fifty eight minutes long! For the purposes of the documentary, the makers just wished to give a flavour of what Trump had actually said.

With hindsight, I would say that it was unfortunate that the programme makers did not flag up that the two small segments of Trump's infamous speech that they had stitched together were, in reality, delivered over fifty minutes apart. It was a small mistake. However, the documentary as a whole was intelligent and pretty well-balanced. There was no sensationalism. It was in character with healthy BBC reportage.

All my life I have known the BBC like a brilliant friend - always there for me, reliable and true. It is a jewel in Great Britain's crown - a wonderful media organisation that has paved the way for other broadcasters in countless respects. Its simple mission is to "inform, educate and entertain" and as a recipient of BBC TV and radio programmes for seventy years, I can confirm that that is what it has always given me.

Of course, any broadcasting organisation will be imperfect when it comes to political reporting - simply because that service is delivered by human beings. Absolute objective neutrality is impossible. To be frank, I have always thought that, if anything, the BBC is biased towards conservatism, London and the educated middle classes so in the fuss about "Trump: A Second Chance?" I have been quite gobsmacked that several right wing voices have implied that the BBC is some sort of woke, leftist entity. I just cannot see that at all.

Trump's vindictiveness has become infamous and I suspect that the BBC will have to cough up a lot of money to appease the litigious old fellow. As I pay my TV licence fee every year, I very much resent the prospect that a tiny portion of my fee will now end up in Trump's bulging bank account. Even a penny will be too much.

God Bless The BBC!

Mounjaro

Over in Yorkshire, England, new Mounjaro user Lord Yorkshire Pudding has reported a miraculous seven pound weight reduction in just one week. We sent our roving reporter Belle Taco to meet him in his quaint medieval castle deep in The Yorkshire Dales.

Pudding said that his wife, Lady Arabella Pudding had given him his first jab last Monday, charging across the kitchen with his lethal new Mounjaro spear pen - shouting "Geronimo!" before fiercely embedding it in his belly just west of the famous fluff-filled navel that has famously featured in several women's magazines.

Asked about his eating regime in the past seven days, Lord Pudding said, "For breakfast each day I have had a banana and an easy-peel orange along with my habitual pint of tea. For lunch, I have eaten - for example - small tins of mackerel in spicy tomato sauce along with a handful of kale cooked in the microwave. Evening meals have been pretty much as normal though I have kept  a sensible eye on my portion sizes. Also, there have been no desserts and the only snacks I have had have been grapes and sugar-free liquorice gums."

He continued, "These are early days yet. I hope to lose around three stones with the assistance of Mounjaro but we will see how it goes."

Asked about how Mounjaro had affected him so far, Lord Pudding replied, "I have felt no ill effects. The drug has definitely reduced my food cravings and I simply have not missed my usual snacks - such as the occasional biscuit or bag of potato crisps. In seven days, I have not had a single slice of bread so it has been an auspicious start but as I say, we will see how it goes. Many other people have reported successful and significant weight loss within six months so I am hoping I can join them."

Lord Pudding was motivated to give much-publicised Mounjaro a try in order to help him in his ongoing battle with high blood pressure and the threat of becoming a Type 2 diabetic. "I am taking five different hypertension reduction pills and to a degree they have worked but losing weight would greatly benefit this campaign ," he smiled.

Meanwhile in the castle kitchen, Lady Arabella was cackling as she prepared his lordship's next dose of Mounjaro - the three inch stiletto needle catching the electric light like a diamond ring.

Leaves

Japanese maple in Whirlowbrook Park

They call it The Fall in North America but here in England we only call it Autumn. Trees draw  in their breaths and summer becomes but a memory. Deciduous trees deprive their leaves of sustenance and many of them change colour as they prepare to fall.

Leaves. That's a funny word when you come to think of it. Leaving is about goodbyes and endings and autumn leaves are also about that. Leaves leave us speechless at times - such is their autumnal beauty. Beauty in death. If only it was always that way.

This lovely autumn, I have frequently walked amongst or upon leaves without a camera, failing to record a lot of the loveliness I have seen - the colours, the patterns, the way that leaves have been blown into beautiful collages - each leaf a little different from the next. No two leaves are ever quite the same.

I came out of this house on Thursday and saw a leaf attached by moisture to the bodywork of my new car - Butch. It was the underside of the leaf I was seeing - paler and far less vivid than the face side. . You might be able to see me and our house reflected in the metallic grey paint...

And when I walked at Lodge Moor last Sunday, this gateway to a path was kind of framed by autumn leaves.

These crinkly leaves were in the grounds of Kenwick Park near Louth during our long weekend break last month...

I think we are past the best of the autumn leaves now - especially as more rain is predicted to  fall in the week ahead. Last week, Shirley and I swept up all of the leaves that had gathered upon the little  block-paved  driveway in front of our house. Out back I tend to gather the leaves up and store them to create nutritious leaf mould  after several months have passed by.

And now, taking a leaf out of your book,  I shall leave you.

Giles

Let's call him Giles - Farmer Giles. That's not his name but Giles will do nicely for the purposes of this blogpost. I saw him today at the football match I attended in Hull. He was sitting on the row in front of me and even after almost fifty years I recognised him straight away.

In the seventies, he was my late brother Simon's best buddy. With a bunch of other kids in their late teens they got into smoking marijuana. They would drive to remote locations in the East Yorkshire countryside to prepare and smoke joints. With cassette music playing, they would get stoned together. It became a kind of exclusive club. 

This regular use of marijuana changed Simon forever. Instead of the free and easy, cheerful lad my family had known, he became sullen with strange imaginings about his ancestors and God. It was a kind of psychosis that scarred his life right up to July 19th 2022 when he died. Simon always knew best. You could not argue with him.

Anyway, following a tip off from a pub landlord one summer, he was arrested in Bridlington. He had been brazenly rolling a joint at the bar and it contained grass that had been grown locally. The police were very interested in it and two members of the drug squad came to my parents' house to see if Simon had been growing it in their garden. Fortunately, Mum and Dad were away in Spain on holiday when the cops conducted their search.

The police found nothing but in Beverley police station, they kept quizzing Simon about the source of  his marijuana.

Soon after the police visit to my parents' home, Farmer Giles appeared at our door seeking Simon. I think he had heard something on the grapevine. I told him about the drug squad visit and his face went deathly white. In a panic, he urged me to accompany him to his family's farm.

In a hidden hollow, near a wood, he had constructed a  greenhouse using wooden framing and strong, opaque polythene. There was a padlock on the door and it puzzles me to this day how other members of Giles's family were not more curious about his secret horticultural project.

Inside were perhaps thirty vigorous marijuana plants - four to eight feet in height with stems as thick as a child's arm. The powerful smell in there took me aback but there was no time for admiration. Giles was desperate to get rid of the plants and to destroy the evidence of his wrongdoing. In those days, I am sure that if the police had visited the hidden greenhouse, Giles would have received a custodial jail sentence.

Together, we  uprooted all those plants and dragged them to a nearby cesspit where we sunk them all.  It was only then that Giles's panic began to recede. Later, I believe that he planted tomatoes in the greenhouse and besides the police never did knock on his door.

Today, I plucked up the courage to talk to Giles at halftime and I was glad to hear that he still lived in the old family farmhouse and that he and his wife of thirty five years had raised two children there - one now a social worker and the other a doctor - training to become an anaesthetist.  Neither of us mentioned the marijuana greenhouse incident but we did talk about Simon's death and Giles said he was sorry he had not attended the funeral. He said he had not heard about it till a couple of weeks later.

Oh and by the way - the result of the football match was Hull City 3 Portsmouth 2. Up The Tigers!

Quadripoint

 

In relation to earlier geographical posts, Bob Slatten and another American visitor informed me that there is a point in The United States where four of those states meet. I was intrigued and went away for a massage google. Indeed, the four states in question are Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.  They meet on Native American lands in a remote, desert-like area.

The Four Corners Monument has become  a tourist attraction in recent years. There are stalls and concessions there plus "restrooms" (English: toilets) and plenty of car parking. See the image above that I snipped from Google Maps.

Above, a father and son have created an aerial image using a selfie stick at the very point where the four states meet and below Google imagery proves that some weird stuff happens out there. Perhaps there's an alien presence for we should remind ourselves of the wise old saying: "The camera never lies":-

The nearby main road is Highway 160 and below you can see the sign just ahead of the side road that eventually leads to Cortez, Colorado (population 9151)...

Another dusty side road off the road to Cortez leads you to the site of The Four Corners Monument - shimmering in a heat haze in the middle of nowhere.

Now that I have researched the location, I would love to go there but I do not suppose I ever will - especially with a deranged right wing tyrant occupying The White House.

By the way, there is also a quadripoint in Canada. It is even more remote than the place mentioned above. The two provinces and two territories that meet in central Canada are  Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North West Territories and Nunavut. 

The location is very hard to access as there are no roads nearby. Back in the 60s, a survey team placed a small aluminium obelisk at the spot. On the top - these words have been imprinted as a warning to Keith Kline, Nurse Pixie, Debra Who Seeks, Jenny O'Hara and other would-be Canadian souvenir hunters: "5 years imprisonment for removal"...

Incubation

 

I have set myself the task of writing a poem about  an escarpment that curls across the moors west of Sheffield. It is a feature that I know very well because I have often walked upon it and taken photographs there. It is called Stanage Edge and in Victorian times it was little visited because it passed through "private" shooting land. Ordinary people did not get to go there.

In the clip above you can see Keira Knightley in "Pride and Prejudice" (2005). She played Elizabeth Bennet and there she is standing precariously on the very edge of Stanage Edge in a state of wistful reverie before visiting Mr Darcy at Pemberley.

As I say, I have taken many pictures of, from and around Stanage Edge as the these old blogposts demonstrate - here, here and here. And here are just four of my Stanage Edge images:-

So yes, I have it in mind to write a poem inspired by Stanage Edge and I am deliberately taking my time about it. Elsewhere, I have written down words and names that I associate with the escarpment and I am letting thoughts and ideas simply stew in my mind.

The poem's direction could be serious or meditative - perhaps peppered with history or it could be light and quite descriptive, celebrating an edge that serves as a getaway playground for walkers, runners, rock climbers and hang glider enthusiasts.

The incubation period will be as long as it takes because  I want to be  personally satisfied with the end result before I publish it here in the blogosphere.  All I know for sure so far is that the title will be "Stanage Edge".

Backtracking

Wood Lane, Legbourne

All that I have got for you today is ten more photographs that I snapped during our family weekend in Lincolnshire two weeks ago with some extra words related to the final picture in this selection.

The beach at Mablethorpe

Sundial at Clayworth. It reads, "Our days on The Earth are as a shadow"

Behind an abandoned house on The Lincolnshire Wolds

Legbourne village scene

Troll in the Land Rover at Legbourne

Legbourne Mill and the mill house

Miscanthus near Little Cawthorpe

Phoebe in the gazebo at Kenwick Park with our lodge behind her

Some words about the last picture. "R.N.L.I" stands for "Royal National Lifeboat Institution". Around the coast of Great Britain there are some 238 lifeboat stations. Staffed by incredible volunteers, their aim is save people's lives when they are in or on the sea and in trouble. One of these stations is at Mablethorpe and there we got to go in to check out their two lifeboats.

I also had a conversation with the leading lifeboatman. One thing that really stands out in my mind about what he said concerned suicide and attempted suicide. It seems that he and his crew have regularly been called out to rescue individuals who have deliberately swum out into the water intent on death.  Quite often those terminal missions are successful and sadly it's dead bodies that the RNLI  retrieve.

In general, the RNLI does not publish figures or details about this aspect of their work for fear of upsetting families or encouraging copycat actions. It is a feature of the service that I had not previously reflected upon. What a sad and tragic way to go!

Flipside

Ross Dependency, Antarctica

Ludwigsburger Meike left this comment after my last blogpost:-

Now where does one get when staying on the same invisible 

line, crossing the South Pole and then heading back towards 

the North Pole on the "back" of our beautiful planet?

From The South Pole, we travel over Antarctica's Ross Dependency which is icy, inhospitable territory overseen by New Zealand. Striking north across The Southern Ocean we are well east of New Zealand and we only skirt outlying islands and reefs of the Fiji Group, before passing between the French dependencies of Wallis and Futuna. In fact, the line of longitude, which is by the way, 178.5 degrees East, does not cross any land until it reaches Great Sitkin in the Aleutian Islands before heading straight over eastern Russia's Chukota Peninsula..

Uninhabited Great Sitkin Island in the Aleutian chain.

Then the line crosses the eastern most tip of Wrangel Island which is also a Russian possession. It is famed for its large polar bear population. It has the largest density of polar bear dens on this planet. The island was also the last known haunt of the woolly mammoth. These legendary beasts became extinct on Wrangel Island around four thousand years ago.

Tusk of a woolly mammoth on Wrangel Island

Though the line on the other side of this planet does not cross much land or places of note, we should remember that it traverses the vastness of The Pacific Ocean which is by far the biggest ocean in the world. It still hides many mysteries including undiscovered creatures, unplumbed depths and unpublished human stories.

If you check out your globe - if indeed you have one - it is possible to position it in a manner whereby The Pacific Ocean appears to take up almost  half of the surface of The Earth. It truly is vast - 168,723,000 square kilometres which is double the size of the next largest ocean - The Atlantic.

From Wrangel, it's north to The North Pole and then back over the other side to the coast of Northumberland once again. From there, it's only ninety miles to Sheffield where I am sitting at my keyboard facing south. North of me, on the same line of longitude, Shirley and Phoebe are in the lounge reading a school book which is not titled "Wallis and Futuna". That is the subject of a future blogpost.

Basilica of St Peter, Futuna

Longitude

The North Pole

When we were in Louth, I spotted a plaque on a wall in the town centre with a steel line reaching to it across the pavement. I was standing on the Prime Meridian line upon which Greenwich Mean Time was devised down in London. It was adopted internationally as recently as 1884.

Anyway, Sheffield is located seventy five miles west of the line. Our longitude position is about 1.5°W. Louth and Greenwich are of course located at 0.0°.

Some regular visitors may recall that I recently painted the word "WEST" on our garden wall. In a follow-up post I tracked the places that sit on the same line of latitude as Sheffield. They included Edmonton, Alberta in Canada - home to blogger Nurse Pixie - the author of "My Life So Far".

So following on from that, using an idea suggested by Tasker Dunham, I wondered what places might sit on our line of longitude. Of course that invisible line begins at The North Pole and heads south across the cold stormy waters of The North Atlantic and The North Sea.

Durham Cathedral

It first crosses land on the English coast of Northumberland before heading to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and down to Durham. Then it enters The People's Republic of Yorkshire, crossing Leeds before Sheffield, then down to Coventry and Oxford with its dreaming spires.

Pamplona, Spain

Over The English Channel and into western France where the only major city that is crossed is Nantes. Then onwards - over The Pyrenees and into Spain - crossing the city of Pamplona. On to The Mediterranean and down to Algeria where our uniting line of longitude passes over the town of Maghnia.

Maghnia, Algeria

Kumasi, Ghana

Down to the Gao region of Mali and into Burkina Faso near Poedogo. Ever southward to Ghana where the line crosses Kumasi. Then leaving the coast of Africa, 1.5°W heads out across The South Atlantic. It does not pass over any islands that I can detect.

The next time the line meets land again is in Antarctica, at an area known as Queen Maud Land which is Norwegian territory. It would surely make a great holiday destination. See below:-

Queen Maud Mountains

Sunday

Rivelin Valley view showing the water treatment works

Well, it was little Margot's second birthday today. She shares November 2nd with the legendary blogger - Steve Reed  - and I guess a few million other people. She wasn't feeling too well as last week ended - perhaps it was COVID - so celebrations were low key. For instance, she did not go out to a fancy  steak restaurant in London's Docklands to spend a king's ransom - like the aforementioned Steve Reed.

For once, it was not down to me to prepare the Sunday dinner. Instead Stew was doing it to mark Margot's birthday. This meant I had some free time and co-incidentally, I needed a good long stroll so I drove over to the Lodge Moor suburb to the west of this illustrious city and parked Butch - the new car.

Path above The Rivelin Valley. It skirts Hallam Golf Course.

I had a circular walk  worked out and the weather was good. It was typically autumn with the leaves of deciduous trees revealing an array of vivid colours that ranged from red to green to burnished gold and bright yellow.

By one path, I watched a small moth secrete itself  amongst beech leaves that were the exact same colour as its wings and I again passed the sad  memorial bench that pays homage Sheffield's only 9/11 fatality - Nigel Bruce Thompson. Then I descended to the woody dell that contains Blackbrook stream where the rebellious Sheffield poet Ebenezer Elliot would often sit and ponder.

Soon I was heading across Hallam Golf Course watching out for flying balls and listening for cries of "Fore!" before  heading down Crimicar Lane. I passed "The Shiny Sheff" pub that was named after the battleship H.M.S. Sheffield. Nearby, I noticed the old gates to a former isolation hospital that closed in 1956. Through walking, one can often notice things like that that you simply miss when driving a car.

Earworm

Every few days, unrequested songs appear in my mental jukebox . Mostly, they come from way back in my life. It's as if I have no control over their re-emergence.

 Regarding the song I shall share with you today, I first heard it one winter in my village primary school. By a big black stove, we clustered around the old walnut wireless clasping our copies of "Singing Together" produced by the BBC.

We didn't just listen, we sang. Those schools programmes were thoughtfully constructed so that we could rehearse each song in chunks. Later, we might sing what we had just learnt without radio accompaniment.

The song is "Bonnie Charlie", more commonly titled, "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" It's a song of Scotland from the middle of the eighteenth  century, written by Carolina Oliphant (Lady Nairne). It refers to the young pretender - Bonnie Prince Charlie and the tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism - including The Jacobite Uprising and its suppression.

But I don't think of it that way. I think of the people that I have lost  and the people that you have lost. Family members and friends and acquaintances. It is a silver thread running through the tapestries of our lives. And though we might often ask "Will ye no come back again?" the answer is silently negative.

Bonnie Charlie's now awa'

Safely owre the friendly main;

Mony a heart will break in twa,

Should he ne’er come back again.

Will ye no come back again?

Will ye no come back again?

Better lo'ed ye canna be,

Will ye no come back again?

Halloween

There are no ghosts or spirits on the loose and Halloween is a load of old bunkum. Witches, skeletons, scary scarecrows, spiders and suchlike - it is all what the Irish might call bollix.

When I was a lad, growing up in the heart of East Yorkshire, Halloween was hardly a thing. After all, just four days later we had Mischief Night to look forward to and on November 5th - one of the most momentous days of the year - Bonfire Night which is sometimes called Guy Fawkes Night. Compared with that, Halloween was a mere blip on the calendar.

When our kids were little, it was with much reluctance that we allowed the Halloween nonsense to seep into our lives. After all, the commercial hype had gradually become unstoppable. There were costumes to buy, parties to attend and scary films to watch. Halloween had got everywhere - rather like COVID19.

The presence of swollen pumpkins in our supermarkets was quite distasteful. Shouldn't farmers grow things we can eat and not orange orbs to be carved for Halloween and then discarded? It didn't seem right so I was a dad who never carved a pumpkin... until yesterday afternoon.

Partly, I carved it for the granddaughters but mostly  for my own creative satisfaction. I had bought the pumpkin from Sainsburys for a mere £1.75 (US $2.30). Bigger ones cost £2.

I wanted to give my pumpkin a happy face. He or she should not be scary. There is enough scariness in the world right now so why should I add to that climate? Besides, as I said at the beginning, there are no ghosts or evil spirits. That is pure poppycock.

I planned the face and used one of Phoebe's water-based felt-tips to mark out the features - knowing that I could later wipe those lines away. Phoebe got on a step to watch the pumpkin artist at work but, annoyingly, she kept leaning on me, threatening to jolt my right hand in which I held a sharp kitchen dagger.

The insides of my very first finished pumpkin's head were thrown out for composting. In that sense I felt rather like a lobotomist. I found a large tea candle in a tin container and lit it just before teatime, placing the head on a table next to the French windows in our dining room. It was already dark by then.

Phoebe and Margot were called to the unlit dining room to see the glowing happy face outside and of course they were as impressed by old grandpa's artistry as  Rembrandt's grandchildren were probably impressed by "The Night Watch".  Happy Halloween everybody - whatever that stupid greeting might mean to you!

Quiztime

It's that time again. Try not to get too excited. Yes! It's QUIZTIME! On this occasion, I am giving you ten random images but can you decipher them accurately enough to win the points? No multiple choice answers this time round. As usual, solutions will be given in the comments section.

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1.

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

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That's all folks! How did you do?