Art

In the centre of this Yorkshire city you will find The Winter Gardens and connected with that large, modern glasshouse you soon find yourself in The Millennium Galleries. I had heard that there was a new exhibition there based upon "Football Art Prize" entries so I went there to check it out.

This is what the gallery blurb said by way of explanation:-

The Football Art Prize makes a welcome return to Sheffield to celebrate the passion, drama and unity the beautiful game inspires around the globe.

Coinciding with the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Prize showcases the work of over 60 UK and international artists. See the heartfelt highs and lows on the pitch, the players that give it their all, and the dedication of the loyal fans who follow them, captured through a striking array of painting, drawing, photography, film and video.

I love football and I love art so what a great combination for me. Some of the exhibits were just so-so and I didn't think much of the overall winning piece - a video on a loop showing an Asian woman doing "keep-uppies" with a football.

My favourite exhibit by far was the picture of the French international midfielder N'Golo Kante shown at the top of this blogpost. It is not a photograph. It is a charcoal drawing by self-taught Kanmi Olukanni who said that the picture was inspired by Kante's man-of-the-match performance for Chelsea in The UEFA Champions League Cup Final of 2021. The picture has glass protection so I am sorry about the reflections. I tried my best.

Here are four more exhibits that caught my eye:-

From the top... the first one is a photograph of some boys playing football on a huge landfill site  in  Sylhet, Bangladesh. It is where they work, making tiny amounts of money from recycling other people's waste. The lad in the middle of the group is wearing an Argentina shirt.

The second item is an oil painting of a night game at Upton Park in London - the former home of West Ham United. Shirley and I once saw Hull City play The Hammers there. The painting is called, "Upton Park Days". It reminded me of standing on the Bunker's Hill Terrace at Hull City's old ground - Boothferry Park.

The third item is another photograph. It shows an artificial football pitch in a remote coastal location to the north east of Greenland. The photographer found the contrast between harsh terrain and a familiar field design appealing. By the way, has Trump grabbed Greenland yet as he once threatened to do?

Lastly it's an acrylic painting of the tough Irish midfielder - Roy Keane. It's after his football career has finished. The painter, Kyle King-Jagger has put him in a sandwich shop and titled the painting, "Roy's Rolls". Roy appears to be selling prawn sandwiches which he once derided as the halftime food choice of football club board members.

After visiting the exhibition, I sat in Tudor Square for half an hour and drank cold water from my flask while reading the book I am grinding my way through at present. I will tell you about when I'm done. Then I bought two T-shirts from "Blacks" on The Moor before catching a bus home. 

Earlier I had walked all the way into the city centre. That takes forty five minutes from our house. But the weather was fine and I had the time so why not?

Inside Sheffield's Winter Gardens earlier today

Bossyboots

Yesterday afternoon,we looked after Little Miss Bossyboots while Phoebe and her parents went to see "Toy Story 5" at the cinema. When two year old Margot heard that they were on their way back to our house, she insisted on waiting for them in the street. She even took out her little green chair and Shirley had to sit with her for half an hour. Lord knows why Phoebe & Co took so long. Meanwhile, I was busy cooking our Sunday dinner.

They said that "Toy Story 5" had been quite brilliant  and so I pledged to see it myself.

After another great Sunday dinner prepared by Yorkshire's answer to Gordon Ramsey, we ate a lovely, light strawberry vanilla cheesecake that Shirley had prepared from scratch. That also went down a treat. Stewart's mother Cheryl was with us but she doesn't eat desserts apart from fresh fruit so we gave her strawberries and raspberries.

When they had gone home, I caught the 88 bus up to Bents Green for  "The Hammer and Pincers" pub quiz with my chums - Mick and Mike. We did not win and couldn't even get the anagram question - "Which is the only word in the English language that is an anagram of CARTHORSE?"*

For our quizzes, Mick always brings scrap paper on which we can work out anagrams etc.. The lads are very used to me doodling on those pieces of paper. I have done it for years while talking with them or dealing with quiz questions. I normally draw faces and I used to do it in teachers' meetings too. I find that the act of doodling helps me to think.

Over the years, I must have doodled hundreds of faces. Mostly those doodles are thrown away but last night I thought I would save my idle doodles for you to see and maybe psycho-analyse...

These pictures are available for sale as I hope to raise funds for a deserving charity. Please put in your bids. The charity is The Yorkshire Pudding Holiday Fund.

Oh - and by the way- today was cloudy and a lot cooler so I caught a bus into the city centre. I was there to watch the lunchtime screening of "Toy Story 5". It was very good but the consummation of friendship between the two little girls - Bonnie and Blaze seemed to take forever. Still the animation was as stupendous as in the four previous "Toy Story" films and I am glad that I bothered. It was great that a key feature of the plot involved weighing up the alienating and isolating effects of "tech" - including tablets and other devices in comparison with more traditional toys that encourage imaginative play and social connection.

*= ORCHESTRA

Yomping

This past week, most days have been so hot here in sub-tropical Yorkshire that long walks in the countryside would have been foolhardy. However, by Saturday, a change in the weather seemed to be occurring with slightly reduced heat and a welcome buffeting breeze to clear the air.

Shirley was doing her regular volunteer shift at the "Age Concern" charity shop  so after a light lunch of boiled eggs and baked beans I decided to go out for a walk west of this northern city.  Sensibly, I guzzled a pint of water before driving away from home.

I parked Butch at Redmires Reservoirs and then headed out to one of my favourite places in the entire world - tiny Oaking Clough Reservoir with its curious stone building. See the top picture. I have blogged about it before. Go here and here.

When I got there, I noticed a few things. First, a rotund hiker had just arrived from the opposite direction. He was standing looking at his smartphone and we were the only two people in that landscape at that moment in time. When I came up to him, I said "Hello" which seemed to startle him and he mumbled something unintelligible. Perhaps he was slightly annoyed that I had disturbed his Facebooking or whatever it is that people do on those blasted devices.

Secondly, I noticed a family of Canada geese. They seemed alarmed by my sudden appearance - which I can well understand. They had just been chilling out by the water's edge. Not many humans ever visit Oaking Clough. Incidentally,  may I say to any Canadians reading this blogpost - why can't you keep your ruddy geese in your own country?  We have got enough of our own geese over here

Thirdly on the boarded up window on one side of the little stone window I saw this odd message:-

Needless to say, I won't be phoning. But while I was there - checking out both sides of the abandoned building - and not for the first time - I revisited the idea of sleeping out there one night. Maybe I am slightly mad because I wish I could expunge that niggling notion from my mind. After all, the tiny lodge is probably haunted by the ghosts of water workers or grouse shooters. No Mr Pudding - do NOT go there!

Soon it was time to strike out west from Oaking Clough. There are no footpaths in that tranche of moorland and that is why I had brought my compass with me. West for a mile and a half would bring me to the rim of Stanage Edge.

Bog cotton

The terrain was difficult - with bogs and heather and bracken and occasionally ruined vegetation - previously burnt by agents of the grouse shooting fraternity. It was exhausting but, after longer than I anticipated, I made it to the very edge of Yorkshire and what was once the edge of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. 

In need of rest, I sat upon an ancient millstone grit boulder and looked over to Win Hill and down the valley to Hathersage as a gentle wind fitfully cooled me. There was hardly anybody else around.

After five minutes, I was up and off, treading that familiar path, passing High Neb and on to The Long Causeway that Roman soldiers walked as they traversed The North in centuries further back than the evolution of Northumbria and Mercia.

It was later than I had planned so I kept marching past Stanage Pole and along the edge of Broadshaw  Plantation before dropping down to the reservoirs at Redmires which happen to be the source of our domestic water supply.

It had been a damned good workout but I had more work to do - making our evening meal - ahead of another nervy England football match. Fortunately justice was done - we beat Panama by two goals to nil. 

Onward now to the Congo Democratic Republic. Is it truly "Democratic"? Who knows?

The only stile on Stanage Edge

Identification

When it comes to garden plants, I don't pay them a lot of attention - unless they are vegetables or bear edible fruit. Otherwise, I like plants that fill spaces and look after themselves - often competing for pre-eminence - as in wild Nature.

I cannot remember when we planted two spiky plants in one of our borders - nor where we acquired them. They have just been there, managing to survive in spite of the shade and the competition.But a week ago I noticed that one of those plants was starting to push out some kind of flowering spike. It had never happened before.

That flowering spike is quite large - around five feet. And so I became curious. What on earth is this plant that dares to create such a display? 

I could be wrong and plant experts like Steve Reed or Poppy Patchwork could easily correct me but I think the plant is a yukka filamentosa - sometimes known as Adam's Needle. It is, I believe, native to the south-eastern states of America.

Recently we have been having some very hot weather here in Yorkshire and I wonder if that is what has encouraged the plant to bloom for the first time. Meanwhile the sister plant is looking on with no sign of a similar flowering spike pushing skywards.

But I will keep an eye on her. You never know, she might have  got the message too.

Background

I am well aware that when "Poem" is the title of one of my blogposts, viewing figures will plunge. A lot of people - though thankfully not all - have an antipathy towards poetry. But to me she is a familiar bedfellow, by my side for well over six decades.

As a teacher of English, I often had to grapple with the habitual and obstinate grumble, "I don't like poetry!" It was a prejudice that ignored the delight that most people find in song lyrics or that small children find in nursery rhymes or when people choose epitaphs. The retort also niggled me because I simply could not understand it. It seemed so sadly misguided.

There's a notion out there in the world that poetry is somehow snobbish, highfalutin and cast down from ivory towers but I think of it as a vehicle for getting to the very core of things. Every word should matter and there should be no excess. Poetry should speak truly but sometimes mysteriously too.

When I was seven years old, I was up in my bedroom writing in an exercise book. Something clicked and I made my own, original poem about a hero venturing out to do battle against the forces of evil. I wish I still had that poem but I don't.

Mum was calling my family to the tea table and I came downstairs with my exercise book. I asked them to listen to my poem and I stood in the doorway that led to the stairs then rather proudly I read that poem out aloud. And you know what? There was no applause - just an astonished pause followed immediately by hearty familial laughter.

It was not a funny poem but I guess that there is something rather funny about a seven year old boy in short trousers reciting a self-penned poem to his family. It was not the sort of thing that happened in the heart of East Yorkshire. Seven year old boys climbed trees, played football or picked caterpillars off cabbage leaves. They did not write poems about knights of yore on white horses.

And so we come to yesterday's poem - "Nileometer". It was conceived yesterday morning and quickly went through three drafts. It was finished by teatime but I didn't read it aloud to Shirley and Phoebe - fearing mirth perhaps.

Inspiration was drawn from the idea of a cruise boat passing a succession of random scenes along the Nile - just gliding by. And I thought of the Nileometer on Elephantine Island where ancient Egyptians measured water levels and it seemed that that is what my poem was doing - measuring, taking stock...

And here's something else that features in the poem. It's the pyramid-like hill that overlooks The Valley of the Kings which may be the very reason that later pharaohs chose that location for their tombs. I did not know about the hill until I went there...

To make a poem you have to have an idea for one. That seems pretty obvious. Not exactly a detailed recipe but some kind of inspiration. And when you have got your first draft down you need to look at what you have written -  tweaking it, picking away at words, editing, replacing, questioning yourself. You become like a French polisher, addressing small faults, applying wax and buffing up. I don't think you are ever fully satisfied.

Yesterday, I was very pleased with myself. There was no hanging about, no prevarication. I just got on with it, riding the wave of my idea and there the poem was - done. Like a loaf of bread fresh from the oven.

So different from my currently shelved poem, "Stanage Edge". I embarked on that one in November and thought it would be helpful to take my time for once, let it ferment like wine in a barrel but I haven't gone back to it in many weeks. Maybe my changed method choice was wrong but I will return to it soon and there will be another "Poem" blogpost. Readers will no doubt scurry for shelter. After all, too much exposure to poetry could damage your health.

Poem

 

Nileometer
"I'll march beneath your banner while fortune it do smile,
And we'll comfort one another on the banks of the Nile." - Traditional

Always drifting north
My very name an anagram of Nile.
Up on deck I watch
That storied world sail by
Linked to Ancient Egypt
By filigree threads thinner than spider silk.

Baladi cows stumble through meadows
Eager to drink at the riverside
As a lone fisherman
In a cream galabiya
Casts his net where his forebears stood.
Exactly.
Before stars appeared
In the cool of early evening.

Verdurous palms and papyrus stands skirt the shore
Where brown children splash in Abyssinian waves,
Now that the crocodiles have gone -
Only their stuffed corpses at Kom Ombo
Sprawled behind glass gathering dust.
And beyond this green gullet of life
Lies a forbidden land
Of shortbread coloured crags
And scorched sand
Where scorpions hide and there is no water.
Just a biblical wilderness
Fit only for wandering prophets with delusions
And griffon vultures on thermals.

It was there in those fabled tunnels west of Luxor
In the lee of a pyramidal hill that
I thought I saw my life
Chiselled out in hieroglyphs
Flowing north like The Nile itself
But I could only surmise the meaning
For I had no code...
Nile…Line…Lien…Neil.

Where is the measure?
Who truly knows?

Then

Back then you addressed adults quite formally. Mr Assert was the school caretaker. Mrs Rosling ran the post office. Mrs Austwick had the sweet shop and Mr Peers was the proprietor of the village's general store. Next door was a widow from Northern Ireland. She was Mrs Varley and she was a pillar of the church. She sang to the rafters when nobody else seemed to be raising their voices in praise of "The Lord".

The village policeman was Sergeant Pepys. He had two daughters - Diane and Vicky and sometimes we played in what was once a rural court room - still part of their mid-Victorian police house.

Our village employed a street sweeper. He was Mr Grubham and he was small in stature. Looking back, it is possible that he had learning difficulties. You would see him with his brushes and his bin on wheels, forever sweeping the roads and footpaths and titivating the verges. He never said much but he did his job and people were kind to him.

Miss Spicer sometimes babysat us and Mum paid her for a couple of hours of cleaning every Friday morning. She polished the brasses and swept out the fires and I can still remember the musty odour of her body as she worked. Then she kept breaking things and Mum had to say it was the end.  I can still remember the tension and the tears for she had been like part of our family.

Back then we ate simply. There was no pizza, no spaghetti, no takeaway curries or Chinese meals. Once a month we might have fish and chips wrapped in newspaper from the village chip shop. That was a special treat. And we never "ate out" because pubs were very much for adults to drink and socialise in. Children were not allowed over the threshold. Besides, back then the majority of pubs did not offer food.

Back then, there were only two channels on our little black and white television - BBC and ITV. As I recall, programmes did not commence until about four thirty and they finished at midnight with The National Anthem - though I hardly ever saw that because I was tucked up in bed in my striped pyjamas. Sometimes I heard that familiar tune seeping up through the floorboards.

Back then, everybody was white apart from Steven Nicholson whose father was an American airman though Steven had never even met him. There was also an Irish family in the village but they were so well-assimilated that there was no hint of an Irish accent. And of course there was Mrs Varley too but she came from The North.

On summer weekends and holidays we were free to wander away from home - we biked along quiet lanes to outlying farms and sometimes we picked potatoes or peas. That was backbreaking work for little pecuniary reward. Sometimes we ventured by the canal which strikes west three miles to The River Hull.

Weeks had their rhythms and so did the years. Bonfire Nights were eagerly anticipated and around 1966, the village  took to creating a massive community bonfire on the school field. Guy Fawkes sat up there and the primrose coloured flames that destroyed him were like the tongues of cackling demons. Rockets burst in  the sky and Catherine wheels rotated crazily in the darkness. We ate toffee apples and baked potatoes.

Back then, it was all so simple, so uncomplicated. We were not bombarded with news or opinions or social media. We just got on with things. Just lived.

And what I have said here was merely the surface of "Then". There's so much more that I could say because "Then" is woven into my very being like the arteries that crisscross inside my body, carrying blood to every extremity or like the veins that take it back. And I am sure Dear Reader that you have your own "Then" that never really leaves you. Close your eyes and you return.

Cemeteries

In the Catholic cemetery

Not many people know Sheffield and its environs better than me. I have wandered pretty much everywhere - walking, exploring and taking pictures. However, I had never before explored the cemeteries on Walkley Bank.

Walkley Bank is a plunging, wooded hillside that descends to the valley of The River Rivelin. Many times I had driven past the gates to St Michael's Catholic Cemetery but had never ventured inside. And that was my goal today but when I checked the city map, I noticed that there are in fact three connected cemeteries on that hillside. 

Off Waller Road at the top there's the big general cemetery that was principally for Church of England and Methodist burials. Next to it is a small Jewish cemetery. From there it's a long way down to the Catholic cemetery.

Having just carefully repotted two large cacti, I  drove over to Walkley Bank on a hot summer's afternoon. T-shirt and shorts weather and of course I took my camera to give you blogmates a sense of  the three cemeteries that each suffer different degrees of neglect - but I kind of like that wildness, that sense of Nature returning.

I was enthralled with what I saw. So many stories. So much tangible evidence of lives passing. Once here, laughing and working and loving and raising families - now gone and pretty much forgotten. That is very likely what will happen to you and to me. A hundred years from now we will just be smudged names on our family trees.

I was particularly intrigued by the Jewish cemetery. Most of the  gravestones bore Hebrew carving and death dates were frequently provided according to the Hebrew calendar. Apparently there is a Jewish tradition in which years are measured from the imagined day on which Earth was created so that what we would normally think of as the year 1928 becomes  5688. By the way, we are currently in the year 5786. Yes folks - it's only 5786 years since our world was created so forget about the other stuff you may have heard about - you know - geology, dinosaurs, evolution - that kind of thing.

At the bottom of Rachel Rosenhead's tombstone are these letters - "C.P.H.D.S.I.P.". What on earth could that mean? I had never seen these initials on a grave before so I had to do a little research when I got home. It means "Come Perish Here, Departed Souls In Peace" and it is apparently quite a common addition to Jewish gravestones.

I could have easily spent a day exploring those three cemeteries but it was hot and I needed to get home to make our evening meal and to prepare to watch England play Ghana in Boston. 

It was a frustrating, nervy game and no goals were scored. Next in line is Panama on Saturday.

Military graves in Walkley Bank Cemetery. Both of these "private" soldiers died in 1921.

Men

No - not men in general - just two men. And they are Sir Keir Starmer and my son Ian. As Keir was resigning as Britain's prime minister this morning, Ian was flying back to London from The Netherlands after participating in the Ironman event in Hoorn.

I liked and respected Keir Starmer. As this country's political leader he was intelligent, hard-working, caring and clean as a whistle. He gathered good Labour people around him and was making a real mark on the international stage. Keir managed to bring Labour back from the edge of oblivion. Under Jeremy Corbyn, we seemed to be heading for extinction but Keir turned the party around.

During debates before the Brexit referendum in 2016, Keir was vehemently against leaving The European Union so I think it is tragically ironic that the repercussions of that dumb choice have been like thorns in his side throughout his premiership. We have gained nothing of note from Brexit.

Also from day one, Britain's right wing media campaigned against him, carping and haranguing - never giving credit where credit was due. It was like a concerted campaign to "Get Labour!" and "Get Keir!" and it was so vitriolic that it even caused many of of those who had voted Labour into office to question themselves as well as Keir's worthiness. That besmirching campaign was as unpatriotic as it was contrived but in the end, sad to say, it worked.

Keir left office with his head held high, in a thoughtful, dignified and honest manner. His emotions threatened to get the better of him when he referred to the support that his wife and children had given him but he managed to hold himself together. Perhaps this great country did not deserve a decent man like him at the helm. Here he was this very morning in Downing Street - I hope you will be able to see this BBC clip in foreign lands...

And the other man - my son Ian. Born in August 1984, he has only recently taken up marathon running but to test himself further, he signed up for a big Ironman event in The Netherlands. This involved swimming 1.2 miles in open water, a 56 mile bike ride and a 13 mile run. Ian completed this feat in just under seven hours and I am, of course, immensely proud of him. It's just a shame that Shirley and I could not be there to cheer him on. Oh - and what a great ambassador he is for veganism...

Mona

 

They killed Mona Khalil in southern Lebanon. She had become a passionate advocate for both green and loggerhead turtles that for countless centuries have laid their eggs on beaches near the city of Tyre. She made a home on that coast so that she could better undertake her conservation work. She was 76 years old when she died of her injuries on Friday. Her home had been hit during a bombing raid. 

But for heaven's sake, surely Mona should have realised that her turtles were running a Hezbollah command and control centre down on the beach. A military spokesman for the bombers who hail from an unnamed nearby country said that they would undertake a thorough investigation into what happened but quietly added that no one would ever see the results of that "investigation".

On behalf of green turtles and right thinking humans everywhere, I say a big thank you to Mona for your work and a big sorry that your life had to end that way. Hopefully, other conservationists will pick up your baton and run with it.

Green turtle in the sea off Lebanon

Wellies

Instead of travelling to Hoorn north of Amsterdam, I went down to our local post office to order a replacement passport. The postmaster assured me that my new passport would be with me in about two weeks which is quite reassuring as we are bound for a family holiday in Majorca next month - as soon as Phoebe's school term ends.

I was Mr Sleepyhead yesterday as I had only managed a couple of hours of fretful sleep on Friday night. Shirley had managed to requisition most of the duvet and I kept playing the passport movie in my head, moaning silently with self-recrimination.

Around midday, it was time to head out to the local primary school's summer fayre. Its purpose was to raise extra money for playground equipment and maintenance.

Naturally, I headed straight for the tombola stall which seemed to be being run by a bunch of incompetents. The queue moved slower than a Costa Rican sloth up a tree. Anyway, after about fourteen hours I managed to reach the front of that line and won a pack of "Frozen" cards, two bottles of flavoured oil, a used cuddly pig and  a "Paint Your Own Garden Wellies" set - no doubt an unwanted gift. (American visitors should note that in Britain we call gum boots wellingtons or "wellies" for short).

Phoebe had some glitter applied to her face and had her hair inexpertly sprayed pink and purple. I  bought a disappointing carton of vegetable biryani from a stall run by a small bunch of Muslim women.

Soon it was time to head home and Phoebe wanted to come with us. I played swingball with her for a while and then she wanted to see the little row of radishes that she sowed five weeks ago. The radish bulbs are now forming and so she picked her first ever radish.

There she is at our kitchen door holding up said radish. I love the shadow of it on on the door panel - like some kind of cartoon monster. And see how Phoebe has grown. Far from a baby these days. She has become a proper little girl now but we love her more than ever. Filled with character and questions and a joy to be around - just like Little Margot who went to Buxton yesterday with her mama to see a theatrical performance - "In The Night Garden" with Iggle Piggle, Makka Pakka and Upsy Daisy. They missed the summer fayre.

Calamity

Calamity - there's no better word to describe it. We should be flying to The Netherlands right now but we are still in Sheffield  and I am afraid that our Ian will have to complete his Ironman event without his two most ardent supporters - his parents.

What went wrong?

Simply - I lost/mislaid/dropped/suffered pick-pocketing of/misplaced my passport! I can still hardly believe it. We searched high and low and in the end had to give up. I feel as miserable as sin about this.

We were all set to go and then - when I began to check in online - I discovered that my passport was missing from our little "Travel" drawer where our passports and foreign money etc. are always stored. I feel dumb. I feel stupid and above all I feel sorry to both Shirley and Ian. She was so much looking forward to the whirlwind trip to Hoorn. It was going to be an adventure.

I offered to take Shirley to Humberside Airport so that she could travel to The Netherlands on her own but she declined. In past travel adventures, I have always been "the leader" when it comes to making arrangements and simply leading the way in foreign places. She would be extremely anxious on her own.

Let my passport calamity serve as a lesson to all you blogmates out there. Be doubly careful with important travel documents.  Zip up. Pat. Check and double check. I wouldn't want to wish this problem on anybody. I suspect that the only saving grace in this is that nobody died, nobody was injured and in the grand scheme of things it is just a happening that you have to shrug your shoulders about and move on.

Remember the last blogpost and those daunting tower blocks where some people have to live? I was in an impoverished part of Stannington which is a western suburb of Sheffield. I had gone there to visit a designated "Pay Point" shop in order to purchase an international driving permit.

The general purpose shop is cramped and filled with stuff and the area around the till is especially tight. I might be entirely wrong about this but I suspect that I was pick-pocketed. As I was completing my transaction and talking to the friendly shopkeeper, two men came up behind me - invading my personal space. One of them had a dog on a lead. I think this could have been when one of the men put his hand in my deep coat pocket and pulled out my passport. If I am wrong I apologise most sincerely to those two gentlemen who both looked as though they had seen troubles in their lives.

Anyway - just in case - I have reported this matter to the police. There is CCTV footage of my visit but I have only seen the first part of it - not the part where the two men come up behind me with the dog and get too close. No doubt if the police do ask to see the video footage at some undetermined time in the future, the tape will have been wiped by then. That's how these things usually go.

I couldn't sleep last night. I felt so stupid and so guilty and this morning it's pretty much the same. In my sleepy-headed state maybe the pick-pocketing is a figment of my imagination. Anyway, now I've got to get myself a replacement passport before we next travel abroad - in exactly a month's time!

Oh woe is me!

Pondering

Cliffe tower block in Stannington on Tuesday morning

I have noticed that a few of my favourite bloggers have been taking  a rest from blogging. Maybe I should do the same.

I have got some things on my mind tonight. Something unpleasant happened today and it has got under my skin. I need a little time to process it and think about how to respond, hoping that the unpleasantness goes no further. I may tell you about it soon.

In other Yorkshire Pudding news, Shirley and I are heading to Amsterdam on Friday morning - thence to a town north of Amsterdam called Hoorn. We will be flying from Humberside Airport - the flight is only an hour long - across The North Sea.

I confess I am a bit anxious about driving a hire car out of busy Schipol Airport but no doubt I will manage it.

We are only staying for two nights. Back on Monday evening. I may tell you the reason for this little expedition tomorrow. 

Now back to my glass of red wine and more pondering about what happened.

Woodland tower block in Stannington on Tuesday morning

Heart

Presently, I am waiting rather nervously for England's World Cup match with Croatia to commence. Kick off in Dallas is at 9pm British Summertime. We have some brilliant players and if they stay fit and gel together my country could go far in this tournament. But this is something that optimistic England fans have said on plenty of previous occasions. Disappointment sometimes seems inevitable but you never know, maybe 2026 will be different. Come on England!

⦿

Okay, partly to get my mind off what lies ahead this evening, I will change my focus now to a novel I have just finished reading - "The Heart of It" by Barry Hines. It was first published in 1994 so I have arrived at it thirty two years later.

I found it very readable. One of those novels you want to get back to when matters of everyday life get in the way. I finished it in seven days.

I spotted it in a charity shop and of course it had a particular appeal  because in the last six months I have been in regular contact with Barry Hines's younger brother - Richard.

Barry Hines was not an especially prolific writer. He only wrote nine novels and "The Heart of It" was the only novel he published in the 1990s. I noticed the dedication: "For My Mother and Father".

Set in South Yorkshire the novel sees a prodigal son called Cal returning to his roots. His father, who was once a coal miner and ardent trade unionist, has suffered a debilitating stroke and his ageing mother Maisie is charged with looking after him. Cal's only sibling, Joe, had left the former mining village to find work in Manchester.

Cal himself lives in southern France with his French filmstar girlfriend. He is essentially a scriptwriter and has links with Hollywood. He has made  plenty of money and in that sense has been rather successful but he is shallow and rather devious. His father Harry, urges him to write something of value, something meaningful.

Cal's trip back to his roots and his South Yorkshire homeland begins to stir something in him. The Coal Strike of 1984-85 is still fresh in people's minds along with the way in  which Thatcher harnessed the police and the military to crush Britain's miners  and destroy the coal industry.  These hardworking people were undoubtedly the salt of the earth and certainly not "the enemy within" as Thatcher described them.

Sadly Harry dies and Cal finds himself drawn away from the Hollywood tinsel and all those dreadfully superficial films. He is at last ready to write about things that mattered in his community..."The Heart of It":-

The houses had been demolished. A peeling hoarding 

advertised "FACTORY UNITS TO LET", but Karl 

remembered the people who used to live there...

⦿

It's 11.15pm now and the match is over. England convincingly beat Croatia by four goals to two. What a relief! Time for a cold bottle of beer. Now on to Ghana and Panama. God Save The King! God Save Harry Kane!

IMHO

 

"Put your phone down, look with both eyes" - David Hockney

Although he was eighty eight when he died, David Hockney did not customarily shun modern technology. In many ways he embraced it and seriously explored the potential of i-pads and art software. He pushed boundaries proving that he was not some old fuddy duddy stuck in his old ways.

And yet like many of us he noted with some disdain how slavishly many people seemed glued to the little screens on their smartphones. He wanted them to look up and see the world around them - perhaps drink in different lights, different shades and the endlessly changing scenes around them. If you are forever looking at your little screen you miss so much.

Today as I was coming back from the hospital, I saw a young father pushing his baby son along Ecclesall Road. The little lad was sitting upright in his buggy, taking in the world around him. In contrast, his father was pushing the pushchair with one hand. In the other hand was his active smartphone and very sadly it appeared that whatever he was looking at on that phone seemed infinitely more interesting than the baby boy who surely deserved his father's undivided attention.

I see this kind of thing very often and as I am walking along I will often stare at these parents who are usually so absorbed in their phone's hypnotic magic that they don't even see me staring in my well-practised condemnatory fashion - using non-verbal signals that shout loud and clear, "That is wrong! Get off your bloody phone!"

Loving a small child requires full commitment. Your smiles and subtle messaging show that you are fully alert to what your youngster is doing. You are meant to be together - parent and child - so please - no Facebook scrolling, no Snapchat, no "X" posts. See your child and be with him or her - in the moment.

Constant smartphone diversion means you are sending out this message to your child: "I do kind of love you but you are rather boring and somewhat irrelevant compared with what is on my phone". In the long run thoughtless phone use when in charge of children could easily cause psychological harm.

Of course the tech companies who developed smartphones and interconnected app and software developers cynically designed their systems to be addictive, to hook users in a manner that has  many parallels with actual drug addiction. So in some respects I have sympathy with users. It is not entirely their fault but they need to be bigger, more self-critical and exercise better control over their phone habits.

In short, I am in full agreement with David Hockney: "Put down your phone and see with both eyes!" IMHO* it is a good message.

* In my honest opinion - pub quiz question at "The Hammer and Pincers" on Sunday night.

Tragedy

On the night of December 3rd 2025, an eighteen year old student at Southampton University was stabbed to death in the street by a member of the Sikh community. He is Vickrum Singh Digwa. His victim was Henry Nowak. You may have heard or read about this case because it became very newsworthy - not just in England but around the world.

Right wingers and thugs jumped on the story. They didn't care a damn about Henry Nowak or his grieving family's wishes. They wished to push a warped idea that somehow this case proved that British police favour ethnic minorities above the host white community. It was all utter twaddle.

Trump's right-hand man - the odious James David Vance said of this case:-

"Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes 

he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still 

be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European 

elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the 

mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the 

people who love it."

You would think that a senior American politician, trained in the law would have wished to know the facts and would also have  diplomatically kept his nose out of another country's internal affairs. Maybe he would have been better advised to come out and condemn the ICE killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis. But no, he wished to make right wing capital out of a tragedy, never stopping to note that the killer was born and raised in Great Britain. He was not an immigrant and besides, Britain's generally peace-loving Sikh community is long-established on this island. Sikhs contribute a great deal to our society in various spheres.

Ironically, Vickrum Singh Digwa is as British as Usha Bala Chilukuri is American - the aforementioned person being Vance's own wife!

What happened in Southampton that fateful night was tragic and I really feel for the young police officers involved. It was an exceedingly difficult scenario to deal with. It seemed at first that Henry had been the aggressor and it was not clear that he had been stabbed. Vikrum's lies added to the confusion and Henry Nowak was briefly handcuffed.

I had a close look at the judge's sentencing remarks and have picked out three sections to share. They help to clarify the awful events, what really happened. For example it is clear that by filming the situation on his phone, Henry somewhat naively riled Vickrum Singh Digwa. Not a justification by any means but something of an explanation...

HIS HONOUR JUDGE WILLIAM MOUSLEY K.C. HONORARY 

RECORDER OF SOUTHAMPTON AND RESIDENT JUDGE 

THE KING -v- VICKRUM SINGH DIGWA 

SENTENCING REMARKS 1/6/2026

13. In Belmont Road, you and Henry passed each other. You claimed he deliberately barged into you. I am sure that was one of the many lies you have told and repeated since it happened. However, there was an interaction between you both. Henry, perhaps cheekily, made a comment, asking if you were a “bad man.” He was filming you on his phone when he said it. The tone of his voice was not aggressive or threatening but, as it turned out, a tragic error of judgment. It is a reasonable conclusion that the comment was because he had seen the large, sheathed dagger. That would have been a very unusual thing for an 18-year-old student and non-Sikh to see.

14. You moved towards him and, confidently, told him that you were “a bad man.” This was the response, I believe, of someone who thought they were being disrespected, made worse by the perceived intrusion of being filmed. You were not frightened or concerned and grabbed his phone, removing it from him. The exact events which immediately followed were only witnessed by Henry and you. However, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that Henry would have wanted his phone back, believing it had been stolen from him or that he had been robbed. That may have led to a physical struggle between you and him. In that situation, there was every need for self-restraint and control on your part. As someone who was born and raised in the UK, that should have been your focus rather than any distorted view of your religious traditions. Strong words, even a verbal threat, might have been justified but no more.

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27. Another consequence of those lies is that the attending police officers honestly believed that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Henry had committed an offence and arrested him with the consequence he was handcuffed for about a minute before his condition further deteriorated and the arresting officer began CPR. The police were given a convincing but wholly false narrative of the incident. It was dark and Henry was wearing a dark top. The entry damage caused by the knife through it, would not have been obvious. Whilst there was visible blood on Henry, it would not have clearly been seen coming from that wound and the clearly visible facial wound was not life-threatening. Henry was complaining that he had been stabbed and was struggling to breathe but that would not have necessarily told the officers how serious the situation had become. It is the experience of the criminal courts that sometimes, someone arrested and handcuffed will feign injury in the hope they may be released. These police officers were faced with having to make quick decisions in pressurised circumstances about the best way to act. The genuine shock to the particular police officer, when he realised that he had been giving CPR to Henry when he had a serious chest wound tends to show that he was doing his best in a very difficult situation.

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But for right wing thugs and for prize idiots like James David Vance and Nigel Paul Farage - why let the facts divert you from your fascistic theorising and your shoot now/ask questions later modus operandi?