Semi

It was March 1930 when Hull City AFC - also known as The Tigers - last appeared in an English FA Cup semi final. At Elland Road, Leeds we squandered a 2-0 lead to draw 2-2 with the mighty Arsenal. Then in the replay at Villa Park, Birmingham on March 26th we lost 1-0. See the rare footage below. By losing the semi-final we missed out on an attractive  Yorkshire derby final with Huddersfield Town.

And so we come to today - FA Cup quarter final day. My team comprehensively suppressed Sunderland to reach our first cup semi-final in eighty four years. The score was 3-0. After the game, the draw for the semi-finals was made and we have been paired with Sheffield United. It's the team I have always supported against one of the two big teams from my adopted city and by the way United's Bramall Lane ground is just a half hour walk from this keyboard.

If we can get past United, the likelihood is that we will play Arsenal in the final on May 17th - the same team that broke our hearts in 1930. If we make it to the final, many things will be different from last time such as the players' outfits, their boots, the maintenance of the pitch, the athleticism of the players, the television coverage and the media interest. And if a player scores he will be mobbed in wild goal celebrations whereas back in 1930, scorers more or less just shook hands with their teammates and carried on.

UP THE TIGERS!

Wordplay

Words will often make us laugh. We chuckle at small children's misuses just as we giggle at the verbal faux pas of the elderly. Puns and malapropisms are the stock in trade of your average comedian. Words can be used like weapons but they can also be great fun. You might chortle at some of the following statements but I am afraid I can't claim to have spawned them. They were passed on to me in an e-mail round robin. Apologies if you have already received it....

• When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.
• A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
• When the smog lifts in Los Angeles U.C.L.A.
• The batteries were given out free of charge.
• A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.
• A will is a dead giveaway.
• With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
• A boiled egg is hard to beat.
• When you've seen one shopping centre you've seen a mall.
• Police were called to a kindergarten where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
• Did you hear about the fellow whose whole left side was cut off?...He's all right now.
• A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
• When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
• The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine is now fully recovered.
• He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
• When she saw her first strands of grey hair she thought she'd dye.
• Acupuncture is a jab well done. That's the point of it.
• Those who get too big for their jeans will be exposed in the end.

Bodger

Arrf! Arrf! My name's Bodger. Today I went for a nice country walk with my owner Sally. We often venture out on the paths west of Sheffield. Recently it has been quite wet and muddy out there but I don't mind. After all, I don't wear clothes. My shaggy dog coat keeps me nice and warm and if I get too muddy Sally or Bob will give me a nice warm bath and allow me to dry by the fire.

When we are out walking, I cover twice as much ground as Sally. I like to run in the woods. Sometimes I chase rabbits or sniff the backsides of other dogs. I sniffed Polly the Labrador again today. Lovely, ripe aroma but she always plays hard to get. I never have much luck with those pedigree bitches and Sally's always yelping, "Bodger! Bodger! Come here!"

To burn off energy, I like to find sticks. When I was a puppy, Sally or Bob would throw me pathetic little sticks and I'd retrieve them. It was a bit boring really. Nowadays, when I am in the woods, I like to find the biggest bloody branch I can carry. You have to get it balanced and clamp down hard with your teeth. I like to imagine it's the postman's leg.

You can see Sally in the top picture - trailing along behind me as usual. In the little car park off Lodge Moor Lane, a fearsome old bloke in a Hull City shirt was taking off his walking boots as I trotted along. He snapped me once and then damn me - he snapped me again as I trotted back. If I hadn't been carrying my log I'd have barked like hell. Arff! Arrf!

Proportion

Ukraine is in the news a lot at the moment. In the pub, someone said it was a massive country - about as big as Australia. I thought  - no way is it that big! And when I got home I began a little research into the different sizes of countries. I cannot think in kilometres so I needed to compare square mileage.

Right, here we go then. Assuming Putin's Ruskies haven't already nicked a big chunk, Ukraine's land area is 233,062 square miles. And as I suspected that is very small in comparison with Australia which is a massive 2,969,907 square miles. That makes Australia twelve times bigger than Ukraine. The fellow in the pub is going to shrivel when I tell him.

Mind you, Australia is small in comparison with Russia which - prior to the requisition of Crimea - comes in at a massive 6,592,800 square miles. It is of course the biggest country in the world but in terms of area is itself small in comparison with the enormous Pacific Ocean - 63,800,000 square miles.

However, as the bishop said to the actress - size isn't everything. So let's look the other way. Angola - now the African homeland of the notorious gangster Tom "Knuckles" Gowans covers an area of 481,354 square miles. Angola is therefore twice as big as France (246,201 square miles). Monsieur Robert Brague inhabits the state of Georgia in America which at 59,425 square miles is over four times smaller than France. The USA is in total 3,794,101 square miles and Shirley and I will be viewing some of those square miles in June when we catch the ferry from Vancouver Island to Port Angeles in Washington state (at 71,300 square miles somewhat bigger than Brague's Georgia).

I always believed that New Zealand and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island were roughly the same size but Katherine de Chevalle and the itinerant GB may be pleased to learn that the Land of the Long White Cloud is in fact bigger at 103,483 square miles. The so-called "UK" (I dislike that appellation) is only 94,060 square miles. Interestingly, though our countries are of a similar size, NZ's population is only 4.5 million compared with the United Kingdom's 64.0 million. That's sixty million more people on less land. We are crawling all over each other!

Suddenly I feel like I am living on a tiny island but it is comforting to point out that this country is much bigger than the teeny weeny Netherlands - only 16,039 square miles. And another European country - San Marino is a laughable 24 square miles making the United Kingdom look like Russia when seen in comparison. It piques me greatly to finally appreciate that France is two and a half times bigger than the "UK". Librarian's Germany is 137,847 sq miles - getting on for half the size of France.

These are facts. Geography lesson over for today.

Faceless

"Faceless" was the brain child of a South African IT professional called Bruce Sutherland. Gradually his irreverent cartooning has replaced IT development as his main source of income. If you'd like to see more, please explore his Faceless website.

Crumbling

Sutton Scarsdale Hall in 1827

One of the ornate reception rooms - around 1918

Visitors to England may delight in our great stately homes - Chatsworth, Castle Howard, Blenheim - to name but three. However, they might be surprised to learn that our landscape has lost many grand country houses. Built mostly in the eighteenth century, they fell into disrepair as the owners' funds dwindled, times changed and the burden of taxation increased.

In a way, I don't bewail the demolition of those monuments to privilege. The prancing aristocrats and wealthy families who built them were experts in exploitation. In their heyday they employed crowds of servants, paying them a pittance while they themselves played pianos,  enjoyed banquets, chased foxes on horseback or competed with other privileged families as they lavished yet more money upon internal decorations and furnishings. It was really quite obscene. "Beautiful" Harewood House near Leeds was one of several grand homes built upon the profits of slavery in the West Indies.

The other day I learnt about a grand country house called Sutton Scarsdale Hall. It is between Chesterfield and Mansfield. It was saved from demolition back in the 1920's by the aristocrat and writer Osbert Sitwell but today it is a crumbling, roofless shell of a building. No more croquet on the lawn, no more carriages arriving for lavish dances in the ballroom, no more footmen hovering like shadows in the baroque dining room with its Italianate plaster mouldings. A sad and yet still beautiful place,  it looks over the Doe Lea Valley and the M1 motorway towards Bolsover Castle.

Sutton Scarsdale Hall was built in the Baroque style on the site of an existing house between 1724 and 1729 for the fourth Earl of Scarsdale. The architect for the new hall was Francis Smith of Warwick, who skilfully incorporated the earlier building of about 1469 within his design. The Italian master craftsmen Arturi and Vasalli carried out the fine plasterwork detailing in the principal rooms, remnants of which can still be seen.The cost of this splendid building and its maintenance left the Scarsdale heirs with depleted funds and they were eventually forced to sell the hall in the 19th century. 

Finally in 1920. many of its finely decorated rooms were sold off as architectural salvage and the house was reduced to a shell. Some rooms still exist: three interiors are displayed at the Museum of Art in Philadelphia. A pine-panelled room is at the Huntington Library, California. It was offered to the Huntington by a Hollywood film producer who had used it as a set for a film, "Kitty", in 1934. He had bought it from William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate and well-known collector.

So yesterday, I parked near that house of grandeur and memories and walked around it, absorbing its atmosphere before striking out across the fields towards Bolsover on a walk that lasted for more than four hours in unseasonally warm March sunshine.

From Sutton Scarsdale Hall you can look across the
valley of the River Doe Lea to Bolsover Castle

Butterscotch

Three butterscotch workers at the Parkinson Sweet Factory, Doncaster
circa 1928. The young woman on the right is Miriam Jackson (born 1910)

Of course, a large number of English words originated in Yorkshire but one of the loveliest sounding words my people ever coined is "butterscotch". This item of confectionery was invented in Doncaster in the middle of the nineteenth century following experimentation at the Parkinson sweet factory. The recipe included butter and brown sugar and a process that involved carefully"scorching" or "scotching" the mixture to give it that distinctive slightly burnt butterscotch flavour.

When Queen Victoria visited the town in 1851 - mainly to attend the St Leger horse racing meet - she was presented with her first butterscotch and was heard to say: "Of all one's dominions around the globe - from Australia to Canada and from Bermuda to Bengal - the finest of them all is Yorkshire and one appreciates one's first delicious taste of this lovely Yorkshire butterscotch".

During her visit she also tried out the revolutionary flushing water closet - developed - but not invented - by Yorkshireman Thomas Crapper. It had been specially installed in her hotel. But it was the butterscotch she remembered best.

In modern times, its flavour has been applied to ice cream and dessert sauces. Where would we be without good old Yorkshire butterscotch?

My thanks to Carol in Cairns, Australia for stimulating this fascinating blogpost. Her reward is a year's supply of "Angel Delight" - butterscotch flavour of course.