Update

It is over a year since I got rid of that lorry load of parking enforcement officers - or as I prefer to call them - Nazis! How time flies! For those who may not recall, through the summer of 2010 I was busily kidnapping Nazis and accommodating them in the underhouse/workshop area beneath Pudding Towers. Stupidly, I had not planned what to do with them after capturing these odious creatures but was saved by a brilliant brainwave. Ultimately, they were transported to Afghanistan in the back of a "Buxton Mineral Water" lorry.

Truck driver Terry handed them over to the Taliban in the city of Kandahar. After suffering some initial physical abuse, the parking enforcement officers were assigned to a secret training camp on the mountainous border with Pakistan. There they lived in dank caves feeding on small portions of rice and little rodents that inhabited the adjacent undergrowth. Huddling together in the Asian darkness, they sang some of their favourite songs to stave off cold and hunger - such as "I Should Be So Lucky" by Kylie Minogue and "Happiness" by Ken Dodd. The hills of Helmand echoed with their caterwauling tunelessness.

The recent picture at the top of this post shows some of the Sheffield parking enforcement officers in full Taliban disguise going on a cross country run along precipitous paths. And as they run, they sing this yomping song:-

We are Nazis, we don't care

We'll put tickets anywhere

Now we're in Afghanistan

Fighting for the Taliban!

The photo was e-mailed out of the country by Randy and Peggy-Sue Lieberwiener from Canton, Georgia, USA who are currently on a hiking holiday in scenic Waziristan and the surrounding area. In a recent message home, Peggy-Sue said "...there are literally no other tourists around. It's so cool mom. The people are soooo friendly. Today we were given a present to bring home to Canton. The awesome tribal leader who gave us it insisted that we shouldn't open it till we get home. I think it's something electrical as there's a little red wire poking out! Sorry to hear that Mr Brague was arrested last week. He seemed like such a nice guy. Anyway - must go - we're exploring some bat caves today..."

Meanwhile, it seems the parking enforcement officer insurgents will soon be infiltrating NATO defences, placing bright yellow notices on NATO tanks and gun emplacements to raise much needed funds for the Taliban cause which includes these key political aims: (a) to get Simon Cowell to turn on the Christmas lights in downtown Kandahar (b) to ensure that Afghanistan retains its medieval culture and (c) to upgrade Afghan mens' fashion from this:-

To this:-

If I hear any more about the Nazis, I mean the parking enforcement officers, I'll let you know.

Mushrooms

On Friday morning I parked in lovely Whirlowdale Park on the south western edge of Sheffield - before you get to Dore and the nearby moors of the Peak District. I was there to join a foraging expedition led by Dr Patrick Harding - arguably the country's leading authority on mushrooms and toadstools. A genuine mycologist.

There were about twenty people in the group. I had expected we would be wandering through the nearby woodland but really, in the allotted two hours, we just did a short circle of the park, stopping occasionally as the entertaining Dr Harding talked knowledgeably about the various mushrooms we encountered. At the age of sixty eight, his passion for mushrooms remains as excitable as it must have been when he was a boy. It was infectious - as if every mushroom we came across was a precious jewel in Nature's crown.

He spoke about the famous "fly agaric" which he insisted is not poisonous. It is an hallucinogenic mushroom that Scandinavians, especially Lapps, used like alcohol to escape briefly from everyday reality. It gave the effect of flying and may have helped to spawn some parts of our Santa Claus mythology.

At the end of the walk, Dr Harding had books for sale. I bought one called "Mushroom Miscellany" which is an informative personal account of the world of mushrooms, including, legends, stories, myths and rumours. Early on in the book, Dr Harding tells us that there are some 2000 known wild flowering plants in the British Isles but some 14,000 known species of fungi.

At this time of year, mushrooms are nosing through the soil all over the place. Once again we have Earthtongue under our rotary washing line and on recent country walks I came across these fine mushroom specimens:-

Here's Patrick Harding looking like a hippy Father Christmas in his thirties:-

And here he is today - a distinguished scientist - still enthralled by his subject:-

Dr Harding isn't only passionate and knowledgeable about mushrooms - he also knows a great deal about trees and country plants. He is aware of many past uses of plants in cooking and medicine and is clearly cynical about the homogenised, corporate and plastic-packaged world we seem to have inherited. He is amused and appalled by the fact that most people couldn't tell the difference between a beech tree and a larch or a sycamore and an oak. By the way, he stressed that woodland mushrooms are associated with particular trees so that what you find beneath a beech for example will generally be different from what you might find beneath an oak. Fascinating. And if you ever read this Patrick - thank you! A breath of fresh air.

Stanedge

Like thousands of others visitors to Stanage Edge, I have often noticed a large windswept building about half a mile due east of the edge on a vast tract of open moorland - a good distance from any public footpaths. I referred to it earlier this week. It is Stanedge Lodge. The private moors around it make ideal grouse shooting country and it's clear that past occupants of the lodge were intent on enjoying that upper class "sport". There are several grouse "butts" and more than a hundred large flat stones were specially hollowed to allow rainwater to gather for the grouse. Apparently, the birds find the acidic water that gathers naturally in peaty hollows undrinkable.

Yorkshire has enjoyed some fantastic weather this October but Thursday was an unsettled day with cloud and rain so I toddled off to the local studies room of the city's Central Library - intent on finding out more about Stanedge Lodge. I was there for two hours but came away little wiser than before. It's almost as if the history of the place is concealed behind a veil of secrecy.

I studied an ordnance survey map of the area dated 1931. Then the large pine plantation due east of the lodge didn't exist so the property would have been even more exposed although the nearby small deciduous Broadshaw plantation was mapped.

In "Sheffield Topic" (August 1982) - a magazine that is no longer published - I discovered that the lodge had been up for sale for £50,000 and that it boasted seven bedrooms and seven acres of land but had no mains electricity. The article claimed that the lodge used to be called Lumley Hall and part of the building dated from the eighteenth century. There was also this remark - "the history of the property seems somewhat patchy".

"Westside" is a free magazine that is only distributed within Sheffield's wealthiest suburbs. In the December 1990 edition, there were a few black and white interior pictures of the lodge showing its new entrepreneurial owner a Mr Hardy in the snooker room. It seems he had been in the process of setting up an exclusive clay pigeon shooting facility called The Redmires Sporting Club and there were plans to turn the lodge into a country hotel. There were tantalising references to "visiting royalty" and antique graffiti and the reporter called the place an "18th century shooting lodge".

If the lodge was built in the eighteenth century, the building process would have been as monumentally difficult as erecting a small pyramid and just getting up to that isolated location on horseback, in carriages or on foot would have made for an extremely long and arduous journey.

So, as I say, I am not much wiser about Stanedge Lodge. I will keep my eyes and ears open to discover more and perhaps I'll make a more determined visit to the local studies library or pose a couple of questions in the online Sheffield History Forum. Funny how such questions can get under your skin and gnaw away at you like ticks. This was Stanedge Lodge on the horizon - viewed from a remote moorland reservoir yesterday afternoon:-

Population

As we all know, the world's population is increasing at an alarming rate. I came across an interesting tool on the BBC website that enables you to discover what position you came in the living human race on the day you were born.

For instance, on the day my father was born in August 1914 he became the 1,794, 229, 969th person on the planet. There were far less than two billion people on Earth at that time. I was born around forty years later but I was the 2,687,150,676th person - way past two and a half billion people then. In 1984 our son Ian came into the world and he became the 4,788,241,610th living person on the planet. You can see that in thirty years, the world's population had grown by a massive two billion.

Find out your position in the human race on the day you were born. I hope the link works - click on the crowd below to, hopefully, go to the BBC's calculator:-

Another thing I have found out is that when my dad was born 42 million people were living in Great Britain. When I was born there were 50 million and when our Ian was born there were 58 million. Now we are well on track for 70 million in the early 2020's. What I'd like to know is what is causing all these extra babies to be born? It's mystifying.

Stanage

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Stanage Edge:-

Stanage Edge, or simply Stanage (from "stone edge") is a gritstone escarpment in the English Peak District, famous as a location for climbing. The northern part of the edge forms the border between the High Peak of Derbyshire and Sheffield in South Yorkshire. Its highest point is High Neb at 458 metres (1,503 ft) above sea level. Areas of Stanage were quarried in the past to produce grindstones, and some can still be seen on the hillside—carved, but never removed.

Today - October 26th - was again a really beautiful autumnal day. Visibility was marvellous. I tried - but ultimately failed - to find a neolithic stone circle on Bamford Moor about eight miles west of our house. But in the meantime I took several photos of the landscape.

Here's Overstones Farm, nestling beneath the millstone edge:-

And here's an ancient cairn - some thousands of years old - on Bamford Moor - looking west to Stanage:-

Yesterday, I was behaving like a fugitive on the run as I found my way through a pine plantation immediately east of Stanage Edge to take this picture of windswept Stanedge Lodge. It was a private hunting lodge, built in the mid nineteenth century and it is the highest inhabited dwelling within Sheffield's city boundaries. There seem to be very few photos of this substantial building and because I can find so little information about it on the internet, I plan to discover more at the city library in the next few days. I have discovered that one or two incongruous businesses now list Stanedge Lodge as their "office" address. Very peculiar -especially when you remember its isolation and its rough access track that leads through the pine woods up on to inhospitable heather moorland.

Oughtibridge

The sign on the building above is not as you might think an instruction, it is in fact a pub sign. Yes this is another Sheffield pub - situated in the outlying suburb of Oughtibridge. There are various stories about how, historically, the pub got its unusual name but mostly they are to do with a lascivious nineteenth century landlady called Nora Bone who had a novel way of getting outstanding bills settled. Apparently, the village lamplighter often heard her yelling those words from an upstairs room.

Nowadays the pub's name figures naturally in everyday conversation in Oughtibridge. Here are some overheard snippets:-

• "I stopped off at The Cock for a quick one."
• "The Cock was full to overflowing on Bank Holiday Monday!"
• "She worked at The Cock for years!"
• "Oh look! There's a seagull on top of The Cock!"
• "Have you ever been round the back of The Cock?"
• "The Cock needs a new cleaner"

What's in a name? This uncharacteristic post was written by my alter ego - the controversial and exceedingly vulgar Yorkshire comedian - Royston Vasey - otherwise known as Roy "Chubby" Brown:-

Pearls

On October 24th 1981, Shirley and I were married at St Martin's Church, Owston Ferry in Lincolnshire. Where those thirty years went I cannot say. That day was so very happy. A simple wedding in the countryside surrounded by our families and friends. Some of those dear people have left us but others have arrived - most notably our two wonderful children. Life goes on.

This evening we had a lovely meal in a new Thai restaurant on Ecclesall Road called "Patoo" but before our delicious platter of mixed starters arrived, I gave Shirley this necklace made from iridescent "black" pearls on our Pearl Anniversary. She wasn't expecting it but fortunately she was delighted with it and, though I say it myself, it suits her very well:-