Reflections

At Dale Dyke Reservoir on Saturday, the surface of the water was unusually still. This, along with the sharpness of the light, ensured that any reflections were mirror-like and true. I took several photos.

Above, where small trees have been inundated by a surfeit of water from the surrounding hills, it is hard to see where the trees meet their reflections. Although I took the picture, I also struggle to differentiate between the two. Even when enlarged to full capacity, the image remains a visual brainteaser.

Reflections... Isn't the English language itself a puzzle? We think of reflections in mirrors or water surfaces but of course  there are other kinds of reflection, including: "careful thought about something " which mostly happens within the secret confines of our brains.

Humans devote a lot of time to reflection, mulling things over - sometimes wondering how we might have spoken or acted differently. Reflection often happens upon the pillow at night or in the morning when we wake. It accompanies walks and runs and journeys and unless we are wholly brutish, reflection is impossible to dodge.

I  suppose that I am not unusual in that I tend to reflect much more  upon my mistakes and my failings than upon my achievements and successes. When Edith Piaf sang, "Non, je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing) she was totally out of synch with humanity in  general. To regret nothing is in truth just a wistful notion, a pipe-dream.

Though we cannot change the past, we can certainly kick ourselves for things that we said or did and wish that we could press a rewind button as on an old videotape player. The important thing is not to allow those self-recriminations to overwhelm us, obscuring  our victories and our better traits.

With these thoughts, I find myself reflecting once again. To be alive is a ceaseless puzzle, like the picture at the top of this blogpost.

Bulls

 

Let me introduce you to Tony and Joy Bull.  Last week they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary - seventy five years of wedlock and not a cross word between them  They have lived all their lives in North Yorkshire but now their place of residence is a care home for the elderly . Tony is 95 and Joy is 94.

I know all of this because they appeared in  a feelgood item on "BBC Look North" - our regional television news programme. Local news services like to cover that kind of story don't they?

Of course the couple were asked about  the recipe for a long and lasting marriage. Tony said, "Two people's chemistry is different everywhere but most of all you've got to be totally unselfish, give and take. It worked for us."

And here we come to the point of this blogpost. Shirley and I both laughed out loud when Tony, looking adoringly at his wife, added, "There's only one thing that can compare with a pedigree, prize-winning Hereford bull and that's a well-dressed woman!"

What a co-incidence that Tony should make such a politically incorrect remark when his surname is Bull!

My apologies to any well-dressed women readers who feel offended both by this blogpost and by Tony's declaration. After all there are other things that can compare favourably with a healthy Hereford bull such as a prizewinning Aberdeen Angus bull or the overall winner at the Cruft's dog show in 2025 - a four year old  Italian whippet called Miuccia.

And as for well-dressed women, maybe Tony had Melania Trump in mind rather than his wife Joy who never said anything to camera because dementia is eating away at who she  once was.

Walk

The promised Saturday weather came true. Blue skies and sunshine with the February air as clear as crystal. But where should I walk to take advantage of such a day?

I went somewhere I had not been in a good, long while - Dale Dyke Reservoir to the north west of the city. It takes about twenty minutes to drive out there. The last three miles are narrow lanes where meeting vehicles need to slow right down to get past each other.

The unremarkable reservoir sits peacefully in the cleft of a valley but once its name was infamous across the kingdom.

Not long after its initial construction and following heavy rains, the massive earth and clay dam sprang a leak which turned into a cleft that was soon split apart by the weight of water behind it. It is estimated that 700 million gallons of water were released. I previously blogged about this terrible event  back in 2010. Go here.

The torrent  thundered to the nearby village of Low Bradfield before surging down The Loxley Valley towards Hillsborough and The Wicker in Sheffield city centre. Along the way, 600 homes were destroyed, fifteen bridges and several work places. More than 240 people were killed, many through drowning.

The Great Sheffield Flood was the biggest civilian disaster of the Victorian period in Great Britain. It occurred on the night of March 11th 1864. In its aftermath, many changes to reservoir and dam construction occurred. Important lessons had been learnt.

Nowadays, The Sheffield Flood is a mere footnote in history and even within this city, many Sheffielders have never heard of the disaster. That unremembering simply adds to the tragedy.

Victorian pump house close to Dale Dyke Reservoir

Today, with boots on, I circled Dale Dyke Reservoir. In places the perimeter path was muddy as hell and I had to pick my way carefully through those sections. However, it was a delight to walk beneath a blue sky once again.

Lots of other people were out and about, taking advantage of a diamond day after what has seemed like weeks of gloomy skies. They are set to return in the week ahead but today we were reminded that there can be light and colour and sunshine - combining to make a special healing remedy for needy humans.

A view of Boots Folly above Strines Reservoir

Pissed

It was late one Saturday night. We had just returned to our red cabin deep in the woods of Ohio, in the countryside east of Cleveland, beyond Shaker Heights.

"God, I'm pissed!" I announced as I crawled into my bed.

Chris said nothing as he also hit the hay.

I had arrived at the summer camp just two days before. Somehow Chris and I had requisitioned a cabin all to ourselves, even though there would have been room for two other male counsellors.

We had been to "Skip & Ray's" bar by Route 87 - just a mile away and there we had consumed a couple of large glass pitchers of blonde American beer. That is why I was drunk or as English people will commonly say - "pissed". It doesn't mean that we are angry about anything. It just means we are inebriated.

If we are annoyed, irritated or angry about something we often  describe that state as being "pissed off". Adding the "off" is key to the changed meaning.

In the early summer of 1976, I had no idea that our colonial cousins in the USA used the term "pissed" differently. At some point during the week that followed, Chris and I laughed when we realised our linguistic misunderstanding.

Previously, I alluded to this same tale when I wrote a bunch of memoir blogposts concerning the two summers I spent as a camp counsellor in Ohio. Go here. Many of you will have never read that sequence.

Let me move on to the business of being "pissed off". I am writing the day after Mad Trump announced that he would be reversing Obama-era scientific rulings that underpin all federal actions on curbing planet-warming gases.

This is utterly crazy and flies in the face of solid scientific findings. It gives other hesitant governments the green light to rip up climate change legislation and carry on as ignorantly as before we truly realised the damage that mankind had done to this beautiful planet by burning fossil fuels. Yes I am definitely pissed off about this latest move by Orange Ignoramus but I guess it may have been just another card played as a way of deflecting continuing interest in  what we should start calling the Trump-Epstein Files. His farty name appears in those files over a million times.

As I am reflecting on the verb "to piss", I wish to report that it is still pissing it down here in South Yorkshire (i.e. it's raining) but tomorrow the weather people are predicting a day of blessed relief between meteorological systems. The sun will shine down upon St Valentine's Day and all will be well with the world as the intrepid Yorkshire Pudding walks out somewhere...anywhere to see Earth's colours revealed once more...

"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain" - William Shakespeare 

"Venus and Adonis" (1593)

"Velcro"

Who the hell is that? I suspect you will never have heard of him. It's George De Mestral. Born in Switzerland in 1907, he died there in 1990. He was an electrical engineer but as you probably already guessed from this blogpost's title, De Mestral was also the inventor of "Velcro". That was the brand name of the inspired hook and loop fastening device that he developed through the 1940s and into the early 1950s.

One day, during World War II, De Mestral was out hunting with his dog. Upon returning home, he noticed that once again his dog had numerous burdock burs on its fur. It was irritating but why was it happening? How did the burdock burs cling to the animal's fur?

He investigated with the aid of a microscope and eventually concluded that the outer perimeter of the dying burdock bloom was covered with tiny hooks that could latch on to anything with a loop  - such as wool for example.

He pondered this for years until he began to see the possible applications there might be for humans. If he could somehow manufacture a fastening product that used the hook and loop concept, he might be on to a winner.

Original "Velcro" logo

After a lot of trial and error, he came up with a nylon product that consisted of hundreds of tiny hooks that could marry with loop-based strips. Just like the "Velcro" we see in modern life today.

"Velcro" is very useful as a shoe and coat fastener and it is also used in hospitals, various  industries, wall fastenings and  car interiors. It has also featured in spacesuits since manned space flights began.

Unlike many other inventors of great things, De Mestral's "Velcro" made him fabulously rich in his lifetime.

A few minutes ago, our little Phoebe got changed ready to go to her after-school "Tumble" class. The last thing she did before jumping in Grandma's car was to put her training shoes back on. This was easy to do because they have "Velcro" straps thanks to George De Mestral's brainwave and his dogged persistence in bringing that truly brilliant  idea to fruition.

Honesty

Shirley spotted a nail in one of our beautiful new car's front tyres. I didn't want to yank it out myself in case that caused instant deflation. Instead, I immediately booked Butch into the Halfords Autocentre on Savile Street over in the Don Valley.

Having battled through unexpected traffic, I arrived at Halfords bang on time. The fellow on the front desk asked me to return within an hour and hopefully the problem would have been sorted out by then. So off I went for a mosey around the massive Tesco Extra store just down the road. I also had a cup of coffee in their cafe as I read the first few pages of the novel I bought from a charity shop to see me through the rest of February: "The Dirt Road" by James Kelman.

When I returned to the autocentre, the same young man on the reception desk told me that my appointment had been cancelled and I would be getting my pre-payment back. I was puzzled but then he explained that it had been a very short nail  and it had not in fact entered the tyre's inflated cavity. Of course I could not have known that myself and he agreed.

I thanked him for his honesty and we agreed that some tyre businesses would have simply kept the dosh. A brownie point goes to Halfords for doing the right thing.

It was like this

In other Yorkshire Pudding news, today I finally got round to doing something I had been meaning to do for ages. I parcelled up a brass thermometer and posted it to a certain school in York.

In fact, I was returning it to its rightful owners having stolen it from that school one Saturday afternoon when I was thirteen years old - fifty nine years ago by my reckoning.

That morning I had arrived in York aboard a school coach ready to play a game of competitive  rugby union. In those days, after games, it was the custom for home schools to provide refreshment for visiting teams. 

Following lunch, with three or four teammates, we went on a bit of a rampage around the host school seeking stuff we could thieve. That is how I ended up with the brass thermometer. It was in a science lab drawer.

As I wrote in my explanatory letter to the present headteacher of the York school, seeing that brass thermometer through the decades had always been tinged with shame and regret. As an adult and as a father, a husband, a neighbour and a friend I have always sought to live a very honest life - adhering to the motto, "Honesty is the best policy". And yet there was the brass thermometer - reminding me that I was not as entirely honest as I claimed to be.

Well now the thermometer has gone back where it belongs with sincere apologies. It now feels as if the load I carry around with me is slightly lighter this evening. I should have sent the stolen  booty back years ago.

"Kes"

How long is it since I first saw the iconic British film "Kes"? It must have been around fifty seven years ago.

Anyway, I watched it again this evening having found it on Amazon Prime. I do not believe that it has been available there for very long so I was delighted to locate it.

Of course I have been thinking about "Kes" a lot recently and in my conversations with Richard Hines and his wife Jackie, "Kes" has naturally featured as an on-going topic. Richard's more famous brother - Barry Hines - was the author of "A Kestrel for a Knave" upon which the film was based. However, it was  Richard himself who inspired the idea that the central character would be a school write-off who trained a kestrel because that is exactly what he had done.

A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to learn from Richard that Barry's principal motivation for the book had not really been to tell the story of a working class nobody who trained a kestrel but to "shake up the education system" in this country.

This evening, I re-engaged with what is one of my very favourite scenes in the film. In an English classroom, the teacher, Mr Farthing, is encouraging the class to grasp the difference between fact and fiction. Billy Casper, the main character, is urged to stand up and talk about his "hawk". Reluctant at first, he becomes more engaged and the rest of the class - including Mr Farthing listen with wrapt attention.

There are many different versions of what is England and indeed what is Yorkshire. "Kes" speaks for the downtrodden with kindness and anger as well as northern grittiness. This is testament to the team that made it - principally Barry Hines, the director Ken Loach and the producer Tony Garnett. Together, in spite of a very limited budget, they created a kind of magic.

"Kes" is admired to this day as a cinematic and cultural milestone. Just this morning, I listened to Mark Kermode and Jarvis Cocker discussing the film on BBC Radio 4. It means a lot to both of them just as it means a lot to me. 

And who was the unseen falconry expert during the filming - never seen but just off camera? Why none other than Richard Hines himself. Those six weeks in the summer of 1968 changed Richard's life forever.

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Blue

 

White Nancy above Bollington, Cheshire

What a grey old time we have been experiencing in The People's Republic of Yorkshire in recent weeks. Not only have we suffered biblical rains, the sky above us has been a thick light grey canopy that mutes all colours and seems to drain away the landscape's very lifeblood. Fifty shades of grey.

In periods like the current one, you start to crave the colours and the brightness that you know Nature is capable of providing. The hues of spring and summer. I looked into my extensive library of summertime images for blue skies. All of the pictures that accompany this text were taken in the month of June.

The photos are, I think, a nice reminder that colour will, in the course of time, return and the enveloping grey blanket will be turned back far beyond the horizons that surround us.

Yesterday, under the grey above, I drove over to Hull to see my beloved Tigers beaten by Bristol City. This only added to the gloom. However it was nice to have a passenger - Karl from Wickersley near Rotherham. We conversed throughout the one hour journey and all the way back like bona fide chatterboxes.

Karl is only 62 but he has been battling kidney cancer for which he is receiving immunotherapy. He has had one kidney removed but the battle for life is still very much on. It was great that he felt fit enough to make it to the football. Shame the lads out there on the pitch couldn't send him home with a happier result.

As arranged, we also met my old friend Tony in the stadium. Years ago Karl and Tony were nursing colleagues in Sheffield's Weston Park  Hospital. Perhaps ironically, it specialises in cancer treatment.

Limestone field barn near Monyash, Derbyshire

House in Chinley, Derbyshire

King of The Llamas near Tissington, Derbyshire

Dead tree on Low Moor, just west of Sheffield

"Melania"

Have you been thinking of going to see the new blockbuster documentary film, "Melania"? Perhaps you need the help of a widely respected British film critic giving his honest views on the film  after sitting through all 104 minutes of a production that cost  $40 million to make and was mostly funded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

Hyped up in some quarters and derided in others, it's hard to know what to think but here Mark Kermode provides his expert independent view of "Melania". It should help you to decide:-

Housekeeping

Nothing stays the same except impermanence. 

Here at "Yorkshire Pudding" I have seen bloggers come and go. Once favoured blog buddies suddenly dry up and you wonder where they have gone when their once regular outputs shrink to nothing - often without explanation. Maybe they just get bored with the whole blogging show. It can happen.

Over at Geograph, I have been contributing images of the fabulous British Isles for over sixteen years. On that marvellous site, I have witnessed several unexplained departures. Members who contributed pictures just about every week suddenly ceased and we heard no more from them. I know that death has been the reason in several instances but often the disappearances have been unexplained.

It's just the same.

I know that it might sound ridiculous to non-bloggers but in the blogosphere you build up affection for and loyalty to other bloggers. They become like real friends but without the face-to-face familiarity or physical presence.

Here I regularly corresponded with  bloggers that you might never have heard of... Daphne Franks in Leeds, Alkelda the Gleeful and Brad the Gorilla in Seattle and the troubled authoress of "Friday's Web" in North Carolina. They were special people but then they went away. I am sure that other long term bloggers have witnessed similar departures.

Now on to the present day and I look at my blog sidebar where thirty two other blogs are listed. But not all of them are active and  it gets tiresome clicking on the links to discover that nothing has changed.  These blogs are effectively frozen in time. And I often worry about the authors. Are they okay?

Sometimes the silent blogs will spark up again - but usually not for long. In the meantime, previously unseen blogs may  have caught my interest  without yet gaining a coveted place in the Yorkshire Pudding sidebar.

Anyway, today is the day for some blog housekeeping to happen. Though it saddens me to say this, I shall later remove:-

"A Yorkshire Memoir" - Tasker Dunham has not blogged since January 1st and this may be down to his challenging health battles. If you are reading this Tasker, I wish you all the best my friend.

"Arctic Fox" - Jason has not blogged since December 20th. Previously he had a ten year absence.

"Crafty Cats Corner"  - Sweet Briony has not blogged since November 3rd.

"The Last Visible Dog" -  Lovely Kate Steeds in New Zealand has not published since March of last year.

And the only blogs I intend to add to the sidebar today are:-

"To Baldly Go" - created by Kirt in another part of Sheffield - though we have never met.

"House Dust and Wander Lust" - from Diaday in Dayton, Ohio. This is a blog that I have only recently started to get into.

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To Tasker, Jason, Briony and Kate - can I just say that if you decide to return to the blogging fold, please give me a nod so that I can reinstate you.

Starvation

Never before in my life have I had a day without food. I have been thinking about doing it for a while - just to see how it might be, how my body and brain might react. Of course, I realised that being on "Mounjaro" might somehow cushion cravings on this  (perhaps) once-in-lifetime day.

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09.00  After six and a half hours sleep, I came downstairs to sit at this computer. I have a glass of warm water in front of me. Shirley has already gone out to the gym where she is a frequent attendee. Lying in bed, I thought to myself that sitting around in the house would not be a good way of suppressing food cravings so I am going to have a shower very soon and then go out to the retail park at Norton to hopefully purchase an umbrella for Phoebe and a replacement large coffee cup for me. Shirley accidentally smashed the old one that I have been using for the past sixteen years, Frances brought it back from Birmingham Southern College in Alabama. It was an Alpha Omicron Pi  sorority mug. So far, I am happy with the warm water and feel calm about the unusual day ahead.

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01.30  Back from the retail park at Norton where I bought two new mugs, replacement kitchen tongs and an umbrella for Phoebe so that if we again have to pick her up from school on a rainy day she will stay drier than before.

I have just sat down with a glass of warm water. Nothing to eat yet and no particular cravings either. My tummy is not rumbling and I do not have a headache. So far so good. I will see how I am feeling at around 18.00 when we usually have our evening meal.

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19.00  I have been doing some sorting out in this study, wondering why the hell am I so bad at throwing stuff away.

Still no food has passed my lips. Shirley had her evening meal half an hour ago though I did not prepare it as I usually do. 

Thoughts about food have crossed my mind but no urgent cravings. I am okay. I keep drinking glasses of warm water. Is my face a little flushed? I think it is. Perhaps not eating has weirdly pushed up my blood pressure. I will test it in a little while.

Taking my evening anti-hypertension medication was something I hadn't really thought about before. Does it count as food? I am supposed to swallow those particular pills in the evening at mealtime - Atorvastatin, Ramipril and Lercanidipine hydrochloride. Surely, one day won't matter.

I think I have been a little hyperactive this afternoon. I changed the cartridges on our "Canon" printer and reformatted three pieces of memoir writing from this blog that I plan to give to Richard and Jackie when I see them on Friday. He asked me to do this.

I have also riffled through some old papers and keepsakes that I had not looked at in years. Why do I keep them?

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23.45 Still no food all day. Just warm water. I have been trying to avoid the news fallout from the horrible Epstein business over here in Great Britain. In my judgement, our prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer will sadly have to leave office very soon. It's hard to imagine him carrying on even though he never even met Epstein. But in order to curry favour with Trump, he asked Peter Mandelson to become the new British ambassador to the USA. This is widely being seen now as an act of bad judgement, inflated by political opponents and right wing newspapers. 

I like Keir Starmer. In my opinion, he is a decent, intelligent democrat who has worked hard for this country in difficult circumstances but the wolves are out to get him. He will have to go. Shame we can't say that same about America's current political leader who was Epstein's best friend and no doubt still holds on to a lot of significant information that could benefit the victims' cause.

About my day of starvation - or brief fast if you like - I have noticed one visible result. You may not like to hear this but the urine I am passing has become the same colourless, crystal-clear hue as the warm water I have been drinking.

I could eat something before going to bed having just about passed the twenty four hour target but I am not going to. I will sleep on an empty stomach and eat a bowl of porridge in the morning. 

It has been a lot easier than I imagined it might be.

Film

Weeks can go by without me noticing any films that I might like to see in the only Sheffield cinema I ever visit these days - "The Showroom". However, this week I walked into the city centre specially to see "H is for Hawk" which is based on the book of the same name by Helen MacDonald. I finished reading that book by our hotel pool in Sicily a couple of years ago and reviewed it here.

The book and the film tell the true story of Helen Macdonald's grief upon the death of her much loved father and of her relationship with a goshawk that she trained. She was a Cambridge academic - quite highly strung and disorganised but happy - until the day her father died. 

In a way, the goshawk became her remedy for the pain of losing her father but the relationship she forged with this wild creature became a kind of torment that threatened to drive her to the edge of madness.

Helen's central role in the film was given to the English actress Claire Foy who I believe starred in "The Crown" - though I never saw one moment of that yukky nonsense. Claire Foy was brilliant in "H is for Hawk", acting with sensitivity, reserve and full commitment to what was a very challenging role. So very different from back in 2014 when she played  Janet Shearon, wife of American astronaut Neil Armstrong, in the  biopic "First Man".

I understand that Claire Foy put in many hours familiarising herself with goshawks so that when it's just her and the bird on screen, the relationship appears very believable.

One film critic that I greatly respect is Mark Kermode and I was pleased to see that he rated "H is for Hawk" very highly. He commented warmly on the musical score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch and how it had enhanced the drama - especially in the scenes where Mabel, the goshawk, is flying or hunting.

So yeah, yesterday's forty five minute walk to the cinema was well worth it.

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Tomorrow's blogpost will be titled "Starvation". Read it here exclusively on "Yorkshire Pudding"... the blog they tried to ban!

Quiztime

Well, it has been a while since I last concocted a quiz for your entertainment or disgruntlement. It's way past time for another one. As you know, some famous people are mononymous - like the Glaswegian singer Lulu for example. Her real first name was always Marie. What were the birth forenames of these ten people? As usual you will find the answers in the the comments section that follows.

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1. Sting (leader of The Police)

(a) Stephen (b) Roger (c) Gordon (d) Humphrey

2. Cher (once Sonny Bono's partner)

(a) Jennifer (b) Cheryl  (c) Mary-Beth (d) Cherry-Pie

3. Eminem (now 53 years old)

(a) Malcolm  (b) Maxwell (c) Maurice (d) Marshall

4. Pelé (legendary Brazilian footballer)

(a) Umberto (b) Edson (c) Ricardo (d) Wayne

5. Twiggy (iconic English fashion model of the 60s)

(a) Lucy (b) Laura (c) Lillibet (d) Lesley

6. Caravaggio (Italian artist 1571-1610)

(a) Michelangelo  (b) Antonio (c) Roger  (d) Leonardo

7. Bono (frontman of the band U2)

(a) Winston (b) Donald (c) Paul (d) Patrick

8. Rasputin (close friend of the Russian royal family)

(a) Vladimir  (b) Grigori  (c) Leon (d) Josef

9. Rihanna (recording star from Barbados)

(a) Minnie  (b) Rowena (c) Melody (d) Robyn

10. Versace (Italian fashion guru)

(a) Gianni (b) Giuseppe (c) Giovanni (d) Elon

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That's all folks! How did you do?

Grammys

Last night the Grammy annual awards evening happened in Los Angeles. Though not quite as prestigious as The Laughing Horse  Blogging Awards, the Grammies nevertheless have their place, recognising talent and achievement in the field of popular music.

One of the most prestigious awards goes to the artist who has delivered the "song of the year". Who would take that coveted prize this year? Would it be Bad Bunny for "DtMF" or maybe Doechii for "Anxiety"? In the end, the award went to Billie Eilish for "Wildflower".

I had never heard it before so the least I could do would be to give it a listen and that's what I did.  Did it merit the award? I listened to it twice.

Co-written with her brother Finneas, "Wildflower" sees Billie Eilish consoling her friend after a breakup only to later begin dating the friend's ex-boyfriend, and experiencing the guilt she felt as a result.

"Wildflower" isn't bad. In fact it is quite good. At least it is a proper human song, delivered without frills or  very much technical enhancement. I don't know much about twenty four year old Billie Eilish but I think she is widely considered to be an authentic artist who is genuinely passionate about music and mostly writes her own stuff. But "Song of the Year"? I'm not sure.  What do you think? 

Here's the official video version followed by the lyrics:-

Things fall apart, and time breaks your heart
I wasn't there, but I know
She was your girl, you showed her the world
You fell out of love, and you both let go
She was cryin' on my shoulder, all I could do was hold her
Only made us closer until July
And I know that you love me, you don't need to remind me
I should put it all behind me, shouldn't I?
But I see her in the back of my mind
All the time
Like a fever, like I'm burning alive
Like a sign
Did I cross the line?
Mm, hm
Well, good things don't last (good things don't last)
And life moves so fast (life moves so fast)
I'd never ask who was better (I'd never ask who was better)
'Cause she couldn't be (she couldn't be)
More different from me (more different from me)
Happy and free (happy and free) in leather
And I know that you love me (you love me)
You don't need to remind me (remind me)
Wanna put it all behind me, but, baby
I see her in the back of my mind (back of my mind)
All the time (all the time)
Feels like a fever (like a fever), like I'm burning alive (burning alive)
Like a sign
Did I cross the line?
You say no one knows you so well (so)
But every time you touch me, I just wonder how she felt
Valentine's Day, crying in the hotel
I know you didn't mean to hurt me, so I kept it to myself (oh)
And I wonder
Do you see her in the back of your mind?
In my eyes?
You say no one knows you so well
But every time you touch me, I just wonder how she felt
Valentine's Day, crying in the hotel
I know you didn't mean to hurt me, so I kept it to myself

⦿

Later, as I heard this song twice more I began to think - Yes. It is kind of haunting. It is a damned good, worthy song in my humble opinion. Very human. And though I might like to put my old curmudgeon hat on and snarl, "Rubbish!" I will not do that. "Wildflower" is more than all right.

Local

"The Closed Shop", Commonside. Like a drama setting from a different life.

Shirley and I first went into that little pub in the weeks before our wedding. We were both in our twenties and had received the keys to our property just a month before the great day. This was in the same year that Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. But our wedding was in October, not July  and there were no television cameras or horse-drawn carriages.

The end terraced house on Leamington Street cost £15,250 or $20,884 in US dollars. It had been upgraded by a local builder but there was still plenty to do to make it habitable. We needed carpets and curtain rails and of course furniture.

Nearly everything we got was secondhand - including the carpets - but at least Shirley's parents bought us a new bed as a wedding gift. I fitted all of the carpets myself and my brother Simon bought us a Victorian kitchen table that I had to sand down and  varnish before we could use it. We have still got that table today. I found an old wooden chair in a skip (American: dumpster) and I treated it with paint stripper as I laboriously scrubbed off the smallest evidence of gloss paint.

Yes, it was a rush to get the house ready and of course we both had full-time jobs. Shirley was a nurse in the Accident and Emergency Department of The Royal Hallamshire Hospital and I was working at Rowlinson School on the southern edge of the city.

After a weekend or a long evening of working on the house, we felt we deserved alcoholic refreshment in our local hostlery so we walked down Hands Lane to "The Closed Shop" before heading back to our rented flat on Wiseton Road.

And so visiting "The Closed Shop" became a habit. After three years, Shirley became pregnant with Ian and following his birth our visits to the pub were reduced. Occasionally we had a babysitter - like my old friend Tony - but very often Shirley would say, "It's okay. I don't mind if you go down there for a pint or two."

I became a regular as did good friends from our neighbourhood - including Tony, Colin and Lorraine, Kirk and Alan and Rowena and "The Young Ones" who rented a crumbling old house nearby. I also got to know other, older regulars till "The Closed Shop" became like an extra living room but with Tetley's bitter on tap. How many of my hard-earned pounds did I  pass over that bar?

I always felt at ease in that back street pub and before chucking out time on a Friday or Saturday,  I would occasionally sing upon request.. "The Wild Rover", "Summertime Blues",  or perhaps the Yorkshire anthem, "On Ikley Moor Bah Tat". I have always possessed the ability to sing in tune and especially in those years of youth and vigour  I could fill that pub's recesses with my voice, frequently turned up to full volume. Occasionally, other inebriated regulars would join in.

The landlord and landlady were called Harold and Sylvia. They had three sons but only one lived with them on the pub's upper floor. He was called John. The whole family were into horse racing. Both absent sons worked at racing stables in North Yorkshire and both Harold and John were failed jockeys but they were still passionate about a sport that has never appealed to me.

Sylvia was like a wartime sergeant major but she developed a soft spot for me. One night, even as I was singing, I overheard her talking about me  to a man I had seen in the pub only a couple of times before .

"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."

I'll take that.

Blake

After Shirley and I got married in October 1981, we lived in a terraced house in the Crookesmoor district of the city between Crookes and Upperthorpe. It's only two and a half miles from this house but these days I rarely go back to our old stomping ground. We lived there for eight years and it is where we began to raise our two children.

For whatever reason, I felt an urge to go back over there this morning - specifically to walk up Blake Street and to take a few photos of it. Blake Street was built in 1854 and was named after John Blake who was the city's Master Cutler in 1831. It is also the steepest residential street in Sheffield and one of the five steepest streets in England. The very steepest is Vale Street in Bristol.

On one side of the road there are railings to aid pedestrians and I noticed that the paving stones are specially textured - presumably to inhibit falls. At the top of the street, "The Blake Hotel" is still open for business. I believe it is still thriving  - unlike my old local at Crookesmoor which is due to close for good very soon. We had some great times in that little pub. It was called "The Closed Shop" though I wish I did not have to apply a past tense.

The top of Blake Street

The bottom of Blake Street

Who would choose to live on a road like Blake Street? Certainly not me. The residents of Blake Street must all have bulging calf muscles. Going to work or paying a visit to the shops would be a daily challenge and on wintry days that road would be as treacherous as a ski slope.

Sheffield is officially Great Britain's hilliest city. Those hills provide vistas that you just do not get in flat cities. However, I am very glad that not all of our streets are as steep as Blake Street.