Parenting

Frances and Ian on holiday in France in 1997

No sense of anticipation can ever match the feelings connected with a desired pregnacy. I knew it four times but two of those possible children were ectopic - affixing themselves within my wife's two fallopian tubes a few years apart. And then they were gone - almost as soon as they had announced their presence. They were unnamed and unseen and therefore their passing remains harder to mourn. They had little substance - it was really just the idea of human lives that had departed.

Fortunately, we had two normal children - whatever "normal" night mean. They were not disabled in any way. Their development was "normal" and they both  had happy childhoods in a loving family, growing into happy citizens with minds of their own and a keen sense of right and wrong. 

It was a privilege to watch them grow, to tick off the passing months and years, to witness them becoming fully fledged adult human beings. There were no problems to speak of - no problems with mental or physical health - no problems with schooling, the police, drugs or angry behaviour in the home. We were blessed and we still are.

But now I get to the main point of this post. I want to spare a thought for all those parents who find themselves raising children who have serious challenges to face. We hear about these kids all the time.

Children who are mentally impaired - who cannot speak and will never develop beyond the level of a two year old. Children who cannot walk. Children who have suffered amputations because of meningitis. Deaf, dumb and blind children. Children with cystic fibrosis. Children with severe epilepsy. Children who will never leave home to live independently.

I raise my hat to the parents of these children. Mothers and fathers who discover inner resources that they never imagined they possessed. Parents who fight for their children in spite of their disabilities and their prospects. Parents with patience and huge hearts who keep battling to beat the obstacles they meet even though the son or daughter they continue to support is unlike the child they had dreamt of.

There are so many special parents like that and to me they are absolute heroes. I am not confident that if I had been in their shoes I would have been able to do likewise. Perhaps one of those special parents is reading this blogpost. Kudos to you my friend. You deserve our respect and our admiration.

Haxey

Haxey St Nicholas Church - seen across The Hood Field

Haxey is a large village in the middle of The Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire. Clint whisked me over there yesterday morning to meet up with my old friend Tony for a long country walk. Tony lives in my homeland - The East Riding of Yorkshire.

As it happens, The Isle of Axholme is where my lovely wife grew up. It isn't really an island but prior to the seventeenth century it was a very watery world bounded by rivers with a few villages situated on higher ground. Villages like Epworth, Belton, Crowle, High Burnham and Haxey. By the way if there are any Methodists reading this, The Isle of Axholme was the cradle of your religion. John and Charles Wesley were born and raised in Epworth.

With boots on, we left the car park attached to St Nicholas's Church in Haxey and set off along an old railway bed to Epworth. We ate sandwiches in the delightful grounds of the main methodist church and considered the course of Britain's response to the pandemic. We agreed that our current prime minister has done nothing to dispel the conclusion that he is an egotistical buffoon. Someone who wanted the spotlight but is weak on detail and judgement. During these critical times, we needed a better-informed, wiser political leader. Plenty of glaring and indeed fatal mistakes have been made since the British lockdown began.

The best picture I took yesterday - road to Epworth Turbary

Anyway, after lunch we wandered west from Epworth to discover a new word - "turbary". It is contained in the names Epworth Turbary and Haxey Turbary. These locations were just two miles apart. One dictionary says this "turbary - the ground where turf or peat may be dug especially for fuel". The word relates to ancient land rights that were largely ignored when The Isle of Axholme was tamed by Dutch drainage experts.three hundred and fifty years ago.

Rising ground brought us through a field of maize seedlings to Westwoodside. You could see for miles. Then we passed the field where the famous "Haxey Hood" is played out each January - with teams of men from different pubs battling to bring the "hood" home. To learn more go here.

It was good to meet up with Tony. He walks at the same pace as me - in more ways than one. Weather permitting we plan to reconvene for another walk next week. However, as I sit here typing out this account, my right foot is giving me so much gyp that I had to limp downstairs this morning. Funny that. When the walk finished I felt no discomfort whatsoever. Hope it's back to normal by next week. After all, Clint loves to spend quality downtime with Tony's female car - Elsie!

Skyers Farm near Haxey

Cabaret

Life is a Cabaret

(by John Kander & Fred Ebb)

What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come, hear the music play.
Life is a cabaret, old chum.
Come to the cabaret.
Put down that knitting, the book and the broom;
Time for a holiday.
Life is a cabaret, old chum.
Come to the cabaret.

Come taste the wine. Come hear the band.
Come blow your horn, start celebrating,
Right this way, your table's waiting.
No use permitting some prophet of doom to
Wipe every smile away.
Life is a cabaret, old chum.
So come to the cabaret!

I used to have this girl friend known as Elsie
With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea.
She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact she rented by the hour.
The day she died the neighbours came to snicker
Well, that's what comes of too much pills and liquor.
But when I saw her laid out like a queen
She was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen.
I think of Elsie to this very day.
I remember how she'd turn to me and say:

"What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a cabaret, old chum.
Come to the cabaret.
And as for me, ha!
And as for me,
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I goooooooooooooooo,
I'm going like Elsie.

Start by admitting from cradle to tomb
There isn't that long a stay
Life is a Cabaret, old chum
It's only a Cabaret old chum
And I love a Cabaret!

Heroism

Two black British heroes have emerged in the past week - during a time when many old questions about racism are being revisited. After all, black lives really do matter.

In the picture above you can see Patrick Hutchinson carrying an injured white demonstrator away from trouble at a heated political demonstration in London on Saturday. Naturally, Mr Hutchinson is a supporter of "Black Lives Matter" but the fellow he was rescuing is a right wing counter-demonstrator who was in Parliament Square to turn up the heat with like-minded thugs who confronted the police with violent intent.

Mr Hutchinson said, “His life was under threat so I just scooped him up on to my shoulders and started marching towards the police with him. It was scary. But you don’t think about it at the time, you do what you’ve got to do.”

Even more of a hero to me is 22 year old Marcus Rashford - the Manchester United and England footballer. It would be so easy for a young fellow like that to pull down the shutters on the world outside his window, to check his bulging bank account and investments, order a new Italian sports car on a whim and forget where he came from.

But he hasn't done that. He has remembered his origins - growing up in a deprived district of Manchester in a one parent family, often not knowing where the next meal was coming from.

Even before yesterday he had raised £20,000,000 during the pandemic to support food banks and address child poverty. He is a shy, quietly-spoken young man but yesterday he graced our TV screens to urge the government to continue its food voucher scheme for poor families throughout the school summer holidays and this morning he has tweeted these challenges for everyone to read:-

____________________________________________________________

1. When you wake up this morning and run your shower, take a second to think about parents who have had their water turned off during lockdown. 

2. When you turn on your kettle to make a cup of tea or coffee think of those parents who have had to default on electricity bill payments just to make ends meet having lost their jobs during the pandemic.

3. And when you head to the fridge to grab the milk, stop and recognise that parents of at least 200,000 children across the country this morning are waking up to empty shelving 

4. Recognise children around the country are this morning innocently questioning ‘why?’ 9 out of 30 children in any given classroom are today asking ‘why?’ ‘Why does our future not matter?’ 

____________________________________________________________

Marcus's pleas for a U-turn on government policy will be debated in The House of Commons today. Kudos to him for sticking his head above the parapet in the cause of social justice in order to simply put food in children's bellies. He isn't carrying  a  right wing demonstrator away from a good kicking, he is doing something much more important and arguably more brave than that. After all of her struggles, his mother must be so very proud of him this morning.

Saola

What is there to do on a Sunday night when there is nothing of interest on the television and you are in the fourth month of a pandemic lockdown? Of course, you google around until you find a list of the word's most critically endangered animals.

Most of the beautiful and unique creatures on that list are pretty well-known -  The Sumatran rhino, the orangutan, the hawksbill turtle, The Eastern Lowland gorilla etcetera. But there was one creature on that list that I admit I had never heard of before - the saola.

This member of the antelope and bovine families was not recorded by zoologists until May 1992. It was discovered in the forests of north and central Vietnam. Think of that... all the time The Vietnam War was being played out, shy saolas were grazing nervously in the shadows - even as helicopters whirred overhead and agent orange was raining down in the name of freedom.

There are not many decent photographs of saolas - probably because they are so rare. In December of last year it was estimated that there are only between seventy and 750 left in the wild. Even as I write this blogpost they may all be gone but I hope not. I hope that there are sections of virgin forest where they still feed and reproduce in peace.

In neighbouring Laos the creature is called the saht-supahp which means "the polite animal" - probably because of its quiet behaviour.

Saolas are herbivores. They seem to give birth to single calves. They have twin horns that sprout from the skull very close together and undoubtedly that is why they are sometimes known as "The Asian unicorn".

Like several other critically endangered animals, the saola's chief threats come from humankind. Forest habitats have been reduced or invaded by loggers and local hunters have killed them for their meat. It's the same old story. 

Bless the saola.

Answered

God came through for me yesterday. Soon after pleading with him to lift the big grey cloud, it was gone. Praise The Lord! Praise him! He poured his blessings and his munificence upon me. What is more, everybody else in Sheffield's western suburbs reaped the benefits too.

Lunch was bacon sandwiches with mugs of tea. Then I saddled up Clint and we galloped off to Common Lane on the edge of the city. I tethered him there in spite of his whinnying and donned my walking boots.

I wasn't far from home but I found a couple of public footpaths that I have never walked along before and that's after living in this house for thirty one years. The sun shone and the blue firmament appeared through large holes in nonthreatening clouds that sailed by like stately galleons of yore.

Wild foxgloves were everywhere, sheltering and supported by drystone walls. Other Sheffielders were out and about, walking like me or jogging or cycling - none of us far from home. Some of them said "hello" as our paths crossed and some looked away. I always smile and say "hello" in a friendly manner whenever I pass strangers. It's the least I can do.

Soon after passing by Whirlow Hall Farm I encountered a fellow I have know for twenty five years or more. We always have a good old chinwag whenever we meet.

He's called Paul and it turns out that back in April he was in hospital for five days with COVID. His brother and sister-in-law also had it. Paul reckons that the infection occurred when he went to The Northern General Hospital upon request to pick up his aged mother. They had to transfer her to a residential home though she herself had not contracted the virus.

Paul didn't have to be attached to a ventilator but it was touch and go as he gulped breaths of pure oxygen through a mask. I made sure that I maintained a two metre distance when talking with him but even so it was nice to catch up.

By Thryft House Lane I spotted four separate rainbow stones that had clearly been painted by a child. I took photos of each one of them and joined them up for the image at the top of this page.

Thank you Almighty Father for giving me a nice afternoon that felt more like summer again. It's nice to have one's prayers answered so efficiently. More kind acts like this Lord and you will surely go to Heaven.

Sheffield's green western suburbs with Whiteley Wood Hall ahead

Plea

What happened to the English summer? Who stole it?

I woke this morning to a Novembery kind of mist. You could hardly see the houses beyond our back garden. A lone crow was pecking at the stale bread I scattered on the lawn last evening.

Yesterday was bloody miserable with dribbly grey rain most of the day but lashing down  like bullets around two in the afternoon. No long country walks for me - I was trapped indoors, procrastinating like a procrastinating donkey. I watched far too much television including "Tipping Point", "The Chase" and "Celebrity Gogglebox" - interspersed with visits to my "go to" news channel - The BBC World News service. 

Tuesday June 2nd was the last lovely day we had. I was in  shorts and T-shirt up at the woodland car park at Ringinglow - just beyond the alpaca farm. In fact the other lads and I have started calling our outdoor pub "The Alpaca Arms" just for fun - but we didn't go there this past Tuesday afternoon - it was far too autumnal and wet with a thick grey blanket of cloud overhead.

Of course our gardens are loving this weather after our exceptionally dry and sunny springtime. Rain water was needed so desperately but now Almighty God we have had enough my friend. Please get your angels to unbutton the sky and let summer sunlight stream down once more from sapphire blue skies.

This is meant to be "flaming June" but since the second day of the month it has been flaming awful. Don't you think we have got enough to cope with Oh Great Jehovah? First you make BoJo The Clown our prime minister, next you dump COVID  upon us and stand back while George Floyd is cruelly murdered  by a racist policeman, then you take our blue skies away! It's not fair Lord. Please rethink your strategy sir.

Give us back our summer!

Location of "The Alpaca Arms" - courtesy of Google Streetview

Silliness

What's the silliest thing you have ever done? I guess you will only reveal what you want to reveal. Maybe there are even sillier things that you wish to keep secret! Silly things can be accidental or deliberate.

Years ago, after a ferry journey from Ireland and a long drive across southern Wales, we ended up at my brother Robin's house in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. I was pretty tired and it was quite late so we decided to have takeaway fish and chips for our evening meal.

There we were round the table. Our children were still very young and for a treat they were drinking squat little bottles of cola. Those bottles were very similar in size and shape to the vinegar bottle. You guessed it already. I reached out for the vinegar and ended up pouring cola all over my lovely golden cod and chips.

Everybody laughed and the moment was so deeply etched in my little daughter's mind that for years afterwards she would remind me: "You put coke on your chips!" What a silly billy I had been!

In late 1978 there was a Christmas disco party in the lower school of Dinnington Comprehensive in the heart of South Yorkshire's coalfield. It was agreed that attending staff members would don fancy dress just for fun. This was in the days before paedophilia became newsworthy.

I decided to go as a dirty old man. For some reason, I already owned a rubber mask complete with hair, a bulbous nose, warts, bushy eyebrows and wrinkles. At a charity shop I bought an old brown Macintosh coat that was grubby and a size too big for me. I put a flatcap on that my mother had previously created on her sewing machine and I stapled a rolled back cover of an old "Playboy" magazine into my coat pocket. It was a simple disguise but I really looked the part - a proper dirty old man. 

Other teachers laughed and so did the schoolchildren but as the Christmas party progressed, I noticed something weird. The kids were getting closer to me. Some started pulling at my coat and getting physical. One ripped the "Playboy" cover from my pocket. They were laughing but it was as if they forgot that there was a teacher behind the mask. I had become the dirty old man I was imitating. They had bought into the illusion.

I took the mask off and they all stepped back. I was "sir" again. Then with the mask back on the prodding and pushing restarted. I felt like Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". 

It was something but at the same time it was nothing. I have always remembered that experience from my days at Dinnington. Perhaps I should have played safe and gone to the disco party  as  Robin Hood or Hamlet or a massive banana.

Soldier

During World War One, thousands of young men came to the moors west of Sheffield in order to train for trench warfare. They must have had a jolly time before being transported to Flanders fields and the horrible realities of warfare. Of course, many did not return.

The training centred around a long abandoned stone quarry near the reservoirs at Redmires. If you walked by there today  you probably would not realise that stone quarrying ever happened on that raised ground or that just over a hundred years ago young men in khaki uniforms dug trenches and played war games there - where curlews cry and meadow pipits now swoop..

It has been a long time since I last investigated that hummocky ground but yesterday I was up there again. To my surprise there was a new addition to the landscape - a clever tubular shape depicting a soldier with a bowed head, a heavy pack on his back and a rifle in his hands. On the plinth he stood upon were these enigmatic words; "There But Not There".

Upon my travels to find the heart of England, I have seen figures like this before. All the same - standing in silence with bowed heads. Back home on the computer, I discovered that they belong to a commemorative art project called "There But Not There" - set up to mark the centenary of the end of that so-called "Great War". I am surprised that I did not know about this before.

Sadly or symbolically, the soldier I saw yesterday had lost his bayonet and the end of his rifle. He won't be killing anybody else in a hurry.

______________________________________________________________

There But Not There

There but not there

Once here but not here

Men's voices on the wind

Where curlews now cry

Above your head

Sorry for the loss

Of innocence

And a toll of death

That made no sense

Listen - for their agonies

Are everywhere

Still

There but not there

The glorious dead.

Conflicted

Regarding the current debate about historical links to the slave trade, I find myself somewhat conflicted.

On the one hand, my heart was lifted when I watched moving images of the toppling of Edward Colston's statue in the city of Bristol last Sunday. To see him being roughly rolled down the street before being tossed into the dock seemed to me like poetic justice. It was from that very dock that his ships had sailed to pick up cargoes of slaves from West Africa before shipping them across The Atlantic.

Colston's statue tossed into the water like a dead African slave

On the other hand, I think to myself: Where will this end? Where do you draw the line? At what point do you say - that is the past, let us leave it sleeping?

Of the first twelve American presidents only two did not own slaves - John Adams and John Quincy Adams. All the other ten owned different numbers of slaves - most of them whilst in office. For example, Thomas Jefferson owned over six hundred slaves and it is believed that he fathered several children with slave women so he was most likely a rapist as well as a slave owner.

The father of the nation - George Washington himself was also a slave owner. At his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, agricultural and domestic labour was undertaken by an army of 317 slaves. Attempts have been made to ameliorate Washington's reputation with regard to slavery but the bottom line is that he was a slave owner. Slaves who broke the rules were often whipped mercilessly at Mount Vernon. 

Bristolians brought down the statue of Edward Colston so should Americans now pull down statues of George Washington? Should the state of Washington be renamed? Should Washington D.C. become Martin Luther King D.C.? Should the one dollar bill be reprinted with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it instead of the first president?

In a sense, there's not much difference between Colston and Washington. They both became wealthy through slavery.

We could go further back in time. Should we pull down The Great Pyramid at Giza and The Parthenon in Athens? Both were built by slaves - many of whom would have died during the construction of these great monuments to "civilisation".

I rest my case - still conflicted.

Curlew

Though their numbers are in worrying decline, curlews are often seen in summertime on the moors west of Sheffield. Their plaintive calls are as distinctive as their elegantly curved bills - designed for investigating mud flats or prising worms from the earth.

Yesterday, I took a short walk from Redmires to the small reservoir at Oaking Clough. I heard and then spotted a curlew in the scrubland above Rivelin Brook. My camera possesses a good zoom facility so I was able to achieve these shots quite easily. As you can see, it was not a bright, sunny day but even so I am pretty happy with these two images.

And for your interest, here's a short video of curlews complete with call sounds. I found it on the website of the R.S.P.B. (Royal Society for The Protection of Birds). Enjoy!

Leadership

All that I have for you today is pictures of two of the world's great leaders - D.J.Trump and Kim Jong-un. On a daily basis, these intellectual giants demonstrate the qualities of great leadership in a changing world.

For example, they have each handled the COVID19 epidemic with intelligence and foresight - happily taking on board the learned advice of epidemiologists and other well-informed academics. They realise that one of the vital traits of leadership is the ability to just listen.

As thousands of families have been wracked by grief, they have offered comfort and support, demonstrating another of the prime qualities of effective leadership - compassion.

Of course, leaders must be decisive and that decisiveness has been very apparent in the actions of both Donald Jong-un and Kim Trump in recent times. In no better sphere than defence is this exemplified. One marvels at the careful planning that has underpinned the building of the "beautiful wall" along America's southern border and at the testing of nuclear weapons above the waters to the west and east of North Korea. Pure genius in the name of World Peace.

As the great Iowan thinker, Leroy Eims said, "A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see." Do you see?

Quiz

Another Sunday means another lockdown quiz via Zoom. For this particular quiz, each team has to prepare five questions. It's a family quiz so there tends to be an hour of chitter chatter before the quiz actually gets going. The whole thing can last up to three hours. As Little Richard might have said: "Good golly Miss Molly!"

With a little assistance from the wife, I have prepared five visual questions for later on. I am still in my dressing gown so for the millionth time the upstairs shower is calling along with the shampoo, shaving foam and soap. Talk about "Groundhog Day". But before I scale those treacherous stairs, here are today's questions. See how you do.

To American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Russian and Ukrainian visitors, I apologise in advance for the obvious British bias:-

A

Who is this and in which Yorkshire city was he born?

B

Who is the famous British woman on the left?

C

Here are The Seven Dwarfs. Name them.

D

Who is this as a young boy?

E

Who released the album "Joanne" in 2016?

Floyd

George Perry Floyd Jr

Born October 14th 1973. Died May 25th 2020.

We shall overcome

We shall overcome

We shall overcome, some day

Oh, deep in my heart

I do believe

We shall overcome, some day

We'll walk hand in hand

We'll walk hand in hand

We'll walk hand in hand, some day

Oh, deep in my heart

I do believe

We shall overcome, some day

We shall live in peace

We shall live in peace

We shall live in peace, some day

Oh, deep in my heart

I do believe

We shall overcome, some day

We are not afraid

We are not afraid

We are not afraid, TODAY

Oh, deep in my heart

I do believe

We shall overcome, some day

The whole wide world around

The whole wide world around

The whole wide world around some day

Oh, deep in my heart

I do believe

We shall overcome, some day

Numbers

Regular visitors to this corner of the blogosphere know that from time to time I like to consider numbers.  Some of you are possibly yawning already - "Oh no! Here he goes again!"

Okay. I don't wish to detain you for very long so let's go.

First of all - the population of our planet. Back on February 4th the total population was 7,762,009,632. Today, four months later, the world's population has risen to 7,789,122,032. This means that in just 120 days there are now 27,112,400 extra people. That is more than the entire population of Australia in such a short span of time. By the way, the current population of Australia is 25,499,884.

Turning now to COVID19. So far, worldwide, it has killed 389,995 people and 6,641,078 have actually contracted the disease. 

As you can see, these numbers seem quite small compared with what is happening with regard to population growth.

Just before I go, here's another number to think about: 4,772,583. That's the number of people on the planet who have died of hunger this year. As Fats Domino sang, "Ain't That A Shame?" He was probably understating things.

Zoom

Until COVID 19 seeped into our lives, I had not heard of "Zoom". In the past, I had occasionally used "Skype" and I was aware of "Facetime" but "Zoom" was new to me.

My relationship with "Zoom" has been quite fractious over the last three months. To begin with it was very hard to access - partly because Lady Pudding had made an abortive attempt to sign up to it and had forgotten the password she used. 

We had agreed to join three weekly quizzes that brought a few households together locally or from across the country. Once or twice we couldn't participate as the links we were sent didn't appear to work. But gradually we got the hang of things and the link problems dissipated.

I have been participating in pub quizzes for years and possess an enormous amount of general knowledge. I am naturally inquisitive and want to know things whereas many of my fellow human beings don't seem to value general knowledge very much at all.  In all that multitude of pub quizzes, I never once had to look at myself on a screen while quizzing and in "Zoom" I have found this to be quite off-putting. Incidentally, Lady Pudding will sometimes apply lipstick and a little eye makeup before we enter a "Zoom" quiz. No comment.

Within "Zoom" there is a mute facility and sometimes people have the mike on when they shouldn't or off when they should have it on. This has caused no end of problems or accidentally you hear participants blurting out answers. Sometimes you miss the actual questions because of other people's remarks or laughter and often you can't tell who is talking.

Lady Pudding does not share my hunger for general knowledge. Let's suppose a question has been posed, such as "What is the capital of Portugal?" Immediately I write down Lisbon and Lady Pudding might say "Are you sure it's Lisbon? Isn't it Madrid?" and as she's saying that the quizmaster or quizmistress is reading out the next question so I miss it as well as having to explain to my dear spouse that Madrid is in fact the capital of Spain.

Then a health question might crop up such as "How long does it take for the average human body to expel one unit of alcohol?" and I will turn to her and she'll say "How should I know?" and I'll say, "But you're a nurse, can't you have a guess at least?" But she won't so I have to guess instead

And you get other participants making philistinic remarks after an Art question - "Art's not my thing!" or after a simple question about the world's oceans - "How are we supposed to know that?" And you get situations where the quiz leader hasn't thought through the allocation of marks - deciding on the hoof how points will be awarded.

Yes. I have found "Zoom" stressful. We have won several of the quizzes. The dubious reward has often been to prepare the next quiz. I try to strike a nice balance. You don't want the quiz to be too hard or too easy and you need to remember that it is all meant to be fun.

With "Zoom" it is nice when you can show on-screen images during the quiz though this requires the "host" to allow screen sharing which has again been problematic on occasions. In one quiz I presented several flags which typically invited another load of unmuted grumblings - "I don't like flags...", "I have never really looked at flags" etc.. Jesus God!

Here's three of them... Please test yourself before searching Google Images:-

  

If I never have to join a "Zoom" quiz again I will not be complaining. In fact,  it's one reason I want this bloody virus gone sooner rather than later. Let it zoom off into the distance and never be seen again.

Trent

A bend in The Trent near Cottam Power Station

The River Trent is Britain's third longest river - after The Thames and The River Severn. My wife and all of her family grew up on the west bank of the Trent just north of Gainsborough. In fact they had a special verb round there. "To trent" something meant you were chucking it in the river as generations before had done. Mostly we are talking about organic matter - leaves, grass cuttings etcetera.

I drove out to The Trent on Monday - another gorgeous day. Clint deposited me in the village of Dunham-on-Trent, close to the toll bridge on the A57 that eventually takes travellers to the city of Lincoln.

A family of swans on Trent Pool near Torksey

The etymology of the name "trent" suggests that it means something like  "strongly flooding" and indeed in past times the river would flood each winter. But large embankments now ensure that flooding in the lower reaches of The Trent has become a fairly rare phenomenon. Foe example, my late father-in-law's farm near Owston Ferry was last flooded in the winter of 1947.

Unusual sign at Church Laneham

Under a blue sky upon which wisps of cotton wool clouds had been painted, I walked to Church Laneham then on to Cottam Power Station with its huge concrete cooling towers that can be seen from miles around. I paused to watch a family of swans in Trent Pool and then carried on down Torksey Ferry Road - all the way to Rampton.

Cottages and the church in Rampton

I sat in the porch of All Saints Church for ten minutes to rest, drink water and devour a banana before carrying on to Laneham and then it was back across the fields to Dunham. 

Beech Farm, Laneham

This was another wonderful sunny  day on which it simply felt good to be alive and mobile. As usual, I saw many lovely sights - even those monumental cooling towers. Clint was snoring when I got back to the car park opposite what was once a pub but is now the "Maharaj" Indian restaurant and takeaway. As Kurt Vonnegut Jr said in "Slaughter House Five"... "So it goes".

The same cooling towers reflected in Trent Pool

Message

"Please Believe These Days Will Pass" is a nationwide art project created by a British artist called March Titchner. Posters have appeared in ten British cities - sending out a message of hope in these trying times. Throughout the pandemic, on my weekly trip to our local "Lidl" supermarket, I have passed an advertising display board with six of Mark Titchner's posters on it. Each time I have driven down Broadfield Road I have thought - "Next time I will remember to bring my camera".

This week I remembered the camera though it was late when I parked Clint at the kerbside. and the light was fading.

But anyway here it is. That message of unity and hope. Given what has been happening in America since the killing of George Floyd, it is a a message that might as easily be applied to the hurt, despair and anger that decent American citizens are now feeling. Not just for COVID 19.

Revisiting

Moorland pool shrinking in the drought

Two or three weeks ago I headed out to walk the northern end of Stanage Edge. Stupidly, I left my faithful "Sony" bridge camera at the bottom of our stairs. Yesterday, I retraced my steps with camera in hand after parking close to Moscar Lodge on the A57.

As it happens, Saturday was a much better day for photography than on the last visit though I did not hear that plaintive cuckoo. The sky was as clear as crystal and Aegean blue. Meadow pipts bobbed about the bone dry heather and bog cotton as  two sheep in their woolly jumpers sought green sustenance under the sun's glare. Again I disturbed a couple of red grouse and a mountain hare.

Blobs of bog cotton dancing in the breeze

This time I was not alone. An Asian family snaked up the track to the rocks at Stanage End and a group of lithe rock climbers pitted their wits against Crows Chin - a mighty block of millstone grit that looks out over Moscar Moor towards Hordron Edge and the upper valley of The River Derwent.

"...lithe rock climbers pitted their wits against Crows Chin"

A young woman with a red face, desperately grasping a plastic water bottle, plodded after her errant boyfriend saying, "Are you sure it's this way Shane? Can't we have a sit down?" She was terribly overweight but at least she was out in the sunshine, getting some exercise. 

Ruin of a grouse shooters' cabin near Stanage End

For me it was four miles maximum. I saw water reflecting sunshine two hundred yards away and went over to photograph that moorland pool - now shrinking in the drought and I pottered about the remains of long disused stone quarries at Stanage End.

It felt good to be alive - my bootsteps transporting me smoothly over the rough landscape and my heart feeling light and carefree. Maybe one day - if I get to be a really old man - I will look back upon such rambles, smiling with fond remembrance: how it was in those bygone days.

Approaching Stanage End

Stuff

The peregrine chicks yesterday evening.
You can also see their perching father's shadow.

For several years, peregrine falcons have raised young on the tower of St George's Church in the centre of Sheffield. I have blogged about this before. Bird lovers from around the world can watch the nest activity from the comfort of their own homes. Go here.

This year there are two hungry chicks and they are gradually  losing their downy feathers, reaching the point where they will fledge and leave their lofty nest. Let us hope that they do not end up living on local grouse moors where covertly, landowners have encouraged the shooting of raptors that might affect the highly questionable "joy" of grouse shooting expeditions.

When I returned to Clint, high at the top of Shatton Lane, i finished reading "Yorkshire - A Lyrical History of England's Greatest County" by Richard K. Morris. Of course, being a proud Yorkshireman I had really looked forward to reading this book but I found it kind of fragmented. Good in parts but hard going in others.

Born on the same day as me but six years earlier, Morris is by profession and academic enquiry an archaeologist. That historical background is very evident in the book. By the way, it is worth noting that he is not a Yorkshireman but someone who has lived here most of his adult life having married a Yorkshirewoman to whom the book is dedicated.

Topics it swerves round include the Viking invasion, The City of Sheffield and the manufacturing of steel products, William Wilberforce the great anti-slavery campaigner, land ownership and grand houses, football, cricket, The Yorkshire Dales and popular music. It's as if Morris dipped his hand in the Yorkshire bran tub and came out with twelve parcels, leaving various others behind.

However, to give the book its credit it revealed to me many things I did not know about my home county and some passages were absorbing - including illuminating tales of wartime conscientious objectors and how the legends of Robin Hood are connected with the county's Barnsdale region between Doncaster and Pontefract. I also learnt about Inclesmoor to the south of The Humber - a large watery settlement of the middle ages of which there is virtually no trace left behind.

Yesterday, I planted out four healthy courgette plants and sowed three rows of seeds - white radishes, lollo rosso lettuce and purple sprouting broccoli. I gave everything a good soaking with my hose...no, not that one! After three months with very little rain, Yorkshire Water are already warning households to be sensible about water usage as our reservoirs are now only 70% full. Maybe we should all do a raindance.

Finally, R.I.P. George Floyd - cruelly killed by a policeman in Minneapolis on May 25th 2020. No wonder fires are now burning. The rage is always there - just waiting to be ignited.