More

More. More walking. More sweat dribbling into my eyes. More of the Peak District. Today I drove up narrow Shatton Lane to Shatton Moor and parked up near the TV relay mast that's up there. Then I walked for three hours solid - not an Olympic event - but I was pleased to be out there in the August sunshine taking in sights I had never seen before:-

Ruins of a farm near Offerton, Hope Valley

Siney Sitch on Smelting Hill

Abney seen from Abney Moor

The eyesore that is Hope Cement Works

The ford on Townfield Lane, Shatton

Bellmouth

Yesterday afternoon, I escaped from our Olympic sofa and drove westwards into the Peak District again. I parked near Cutthroat Bridge on the A57 and followed a track under Hordron Edge. My mapwork had told me there's an ancient stone circle on the plateau above Hordron Edge. I battled through lush bracken to the top and there it was, protected by a handful of sheep and rarely visited. Who knows what happened here? Did those Bronze Age people dance under the stars? Did they come to trade or to observe the shadows? And what did they know of the world beyond those moors?

At the stone circle above Hordron Edge

Half a mile to the north is Stanage End - the westernmost point of rugged Stanage Edge - a millstone grit escarpment that curls for four miles along the old border between Yorkshire and Derbyshire.  I tramped through marshy ground and vigorous bracken fronds, over rocks and down hollows until this sight appeared. If you click on the picture you'll see climbers to the left of the outcrop:-

Further along the edge at Crow Chin, I spotted this old grouse basin - Basin Number 20. It was hollowed out over a hundred years ago to allow breeding grouse access to fresh rainwater rather than acidic moorland pools:-

A lovely view from Crow Chin westwards to the Derwent Valley:-

Much later after tramping from Bole Hill, past Bamford Clough and along New Road, I descended to "The Yorkshire Bridge Inn" where I guzzled a refreshing pint of orange cordial and soda water before standing on the dam wall at Ladybower Reservoir. When full, it holds over six billion gallons of water. Below you can see a device called a "bellmouth" which drains away excess water when the reservoir is overfull. That's one hole I wouldn't want to fall down. AIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!   Plop!

Brownlees

Alistair Brownlee - Olympic men's triathlon gold medallist London 2012 and his younger brother Jonathan - brave bronze medallist in the same gruelling event. And where do these tough, talented and generally admirable young men come from? Can you guess? Why - Yorkshire of course! Our Yorkshire nation is currently ahead of both Australia and New Zealand in the medals table and without all the magnificent Yorkshire medallists, Great Britain would probably be down near the bottom of the medals list with Uzbekistan and the Solomon Islands!

I watched nearly all of this morning's triathlon from the idle comfort of our sofa. Don't you also detect a certain irony in the contrast between couch potatoes munching snacks and Olympians busting their guts on the television screen? It's like obese kids playing computer games in which they control physically active cartoon heroes smashing through walls and leaping between buildings as mum sticks another pizza in the microwave and yells "Do you want Coke or Tizer?"

The strapline of the London Olympics is "Inspire a generation" - but although I enjoyed the Brownlee lads' performance this morning, there's no way I'm going to be taking up triathlons. I'd still be swimming around the Serpentine in Hyde Park long after the Brownlees had travelled back to their Yorkshire homeland and I don't think the wetsuit and green swimming cap would suit me either.

On behalf of Yorkshiremen everywhere - huge congratulations to Alistair and Jonathan! You have done our White Rose nation proud as these magnificent Olympic Games continue. My instinctive fears about a terrorist outrage appear to have been ill-founded and I just hope that this week continues in an untroubled fashion  -allowing yet more Yorkshiremen and Yorkshirewomen to add to Great Britain's amazing medal haul. 

The Brownlee brothers in Yorkshire

Jessica

She's Yorkshire. She's Sheffield. She's an Olympic champion. She's our own Jessica Ennis! The evening of August 4th 2012 was surely the finest in British sport since England won the football World Cup back in the summer of 1966. And the thing about Jessica is that she is so pleasant, so cheerful and unassuming. In spite of all the hype and the media pressure - she managed to deliver. Her parents live a stone's throw from this house. Arise Dame Jessica - heptathlon gold medal winner - there ain't nothing like a dame!

Painting

I apologise for blogstipation this week. I have been scrabbling around on the floor of a terraced house in the Highfields area of Sheffield, close to Sheffield United''s Bramall Lane football ground. Scrabbling on the floor and working a paint roller on the ceiling.

In addition, I have masked windows, unscrewed curtain poles. Wallpapered over an unsightly area under the window. Unscrewed shelving and later screwed it all back into position. Covered furniture with dust sheets, washed out brushes, visited B&Q three or four times, scoured drips away with white spirit, washed windows, checked for areas that needed retouching and worked on second and third coats before reassembling the room. Then finally, by 7pm on Friday, it was all done and I could walk away, pleased with our efforts.

The house is where our son, Ian, used to live. With our help, he bought it in 2007 and paid the mortgage month after month with the assistance of two friendly lodgers, He's been working with me on the front room re-decoration and it has been good to spend time with him this week - working together on a practical task. He is such a lovely young man, with a happy heart and an appetite for life but he has recently made a momentous decision. Like Dick Whittington, he's heading for London.

His girlfriend Ruby is already there having graduated from St Andrew's University earlier in the summer. She secured a media internship with a leading cosmetics company. Very quickly, Ian and Ruby managed to find a little flat near Shepherd's Bush Green and now he's going down to The Smoke to join her. He has no job to go to but I am confident that he will quickly find something - gain a foothold in that awesome antheap - probably in men's fashion.

Sometimes in life, you have to be ready to follow your heart - declining the safe and sensible path. Shirley and I are right behind him and we will do what we can to help him and Ruby to establish themselves in the Olympic City. On Sunday, I shall be driving a hire van down to the metropolis with the few worldly possessions they need to begin their London life. Perhaps we will stop at a motorway services so that I can take a leak and perhaps  write another poem...

Poem

Song of the Middle Ages 

Let us grow old together
Let us rock synchronically
On this verandah
Looking westwards
To the setting of the sun
Where memories of the lives we've lived
Troop by like soldiers
On a passing out parade.

I recall, I recall
The sweetness of your lips
In our salad days.
We seemed so green then -
Our eyes so bright
And our hopes so plentiful
And all of our tomorrows
Were but banquets to devour.

Let us absorb what happened
Let us count our blessings
In this wilderness
Looking eastwards
To the rising of the sun
Where futures we shan't see
Sing like lamentations
On a long-forgotten scratched  L.P..

Twitter

Rileyy_69

I don't know much about the "Twitter" phenomenon but instinctively I don't like it. Of course, I'm excluded from twittering because I'm proud to say I don't own a mobile phone and I have never sent a text message. But I scorn the idea of laboriously tapping out grammatically suspect lines that are usually all about self-obsession. To pare interpersonal communication down to tiny, electronic soundbites is in my book an abuse of the English language.

Yesterday, Britain's diving golden boy - Tom Daley failed to achieve an Olympic medal with his less glamorous partner - Pete Waterfield. It seems that yesterday evening Daley received an unpleasant twitter message in which a seventeen year old boy from Weymouth said Tom had let his deceased father down. Daley reported this to the police and the seventeen year old lad was arrested by the police.

It was a nasty message to send but the perpetrator had not threatened to burn Daley's house down or shoot him in the street. In my view, it's the inventors of "Twitter" who should be arrested for creating a vehicle which allows nasty young men to send out nasty "tweets" from their smelly bedrooms in anonymous streets. Another obvious point here is that if Daley doesn't wish to receive nasty "tweets" he should simply unsubscribe from the service.

My son Ian tells me that the seventeen year old youth (Rileyy_69) had previously sent a string of vicious messages to other non-famous people in which he had threatened injury with knives etc. but those earlier tweets did not attract any police action. It's only when a golden media boy gets a message that the police step in.

People have been given "Twitter". We didn't ask for it. It's an egotistical ,corporate money-making venture that did not set out with built-in barriers to prevent abuse. If I met Rileyy_69 I am sure I wouldn't like him - a socially incompetent little oik with a chip on his shoulder - but I fail to see why he has been arrested. What a waste of police time and money when there are real crimes out there that desperately need attention!.. .So that everybody was - not my first tweet but a great big bloody squawk!