Sunshine

Seems it never rains in southern Yorkshire

Seems I've often heard that kind of talk before

It never rains in old South Yorkshire

But girl, don't they warn ya?

It pours, man, it pours

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...

Onomamania

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.