Leonard

What is there left to say but "thank you"?

Leonard Norman Cohen (1934-2016)

Grave

As America prepared to vote Ronald A Chump into The White House, I went walking in the Hood Brook Valley near Hathersage. It was a misty, somewhat overcast autumn day with the sun a blurred milky whiteness behind obstinate clouds. Not the best day for photography in my humble opinion. Above you can see St Michael's Church, Hathersage rising above the trees like a spearhead.

Below two shots inside the old church that was certainly visited by Charlotte Bronte in 1845 when she was in the process of writing "Jane Eyre". She stayed in the adjacent vicarage with her old friend Ellen Nussey and they walked together over the fields to North Lees Hall.

But all of this post is just leading to this fellow:-

It is Robin Hood's trusty lieutenant, Little John. You might think that Nottinghamshire was the chief haunt of Robin Hood and his band of merry men but around this neck of the woods we believe that they mainly operated in South Yorkshire and over the border into Derbyshire. In those long gone days Sherwood Forest was ten times the size is it is today.

And in a corner of Hathersage churchyard you will find Little John's grave under an old yew tree.  It is true that the presence of his remains has not been verified by forensic archaeology but I still like to believe that he lies there dreaming of his past adventures with Robin Hood - stealing from the rich to give to the poor and nobbling the Sheriff of Nottingham's lads with his big stick.

Click to enlarge so you can read the inscription:-

Letter

Anywhere

It was nice to say farewell to Bret yesterday morning. His mother and father were there and various family members plus old friends and new - people who had got to know him in the last two years when he ended up begging outside the "Spar" shop on Ecclesall Road.

The funeral was held at City Road Crematorium - a non-religious service presided over by a humanist preacher. As we followed the coffin into the chapel of rest, that song by Eric Clapton was played over the sound system. You probably know the one I mean - "Tears in Heaven" about his four year old son Conor who, like Bret, plunged to his death from a high balcony.

The exact circumstances of Bret's death remain unclear. It may have been an accident, or suicide or murder. Perhaps we will never know.

Flowers for Bret outside the "Spar" shop

There were allusions to Bret's intelligence, his mathematical ability and how at the ages of eleven and thirteen he might have taken up a scholarship at Mount St Mary's College - but this would have involved boarding during the week and Bret didn't like that idea. There were of course no tales about how, as a young adult,  he got lost in drugs and ended up homeless on Sheffield's not-so-mean streets. A lot of passers-by spoke with him and supported him in small ways.

The service concluded with another modern song - "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman. I recall when I acquired her first album, I would play her songs over and over. She was a great discovery. It's nice to know that Bret liked her too:-

You got a fast car

I want a ticket to anywhere

Maybe we make a deal

Maybe together we can get somewhere

Anyplace is better

Starting from zero got nothing to lose

Maybe we'll make something

Me, myself I got nothing to prove.

Now Bret has got his "ticket to anywhere"...

In City Road Cemetery yesterday lunchtime

November

Bonfire Night 2016. Not like the magical Bonfire Nights of my childhood. Shirley was watching "Strictly Come Dancing" on the television. Not my cup of tea. Outside the noise of fireworks suggested that war was breaking out. I grabbed my camera and went out for a wander round our neighbourhood. Rockets burst starlight silver in the cold November sky. Whooshing and the rat-a-tat-tat of bullets echoed round the houses. 

Long ago, after my village bonfire in 1960 or 61,  I sat in our kitchen with Dad and Dr Baker - the man who delivered me into this world - eating piping hot baked potatoes from our oven. Was it really fifty five years ago? I am far older than they were then. And in the morning inspecting the still smoking remains of the huge bonfire on the school field, finding empty cardboard tubes that still smelt of gunpowder - airbombs, comets, skyrockets and traffic lights. The morning after the party and another endless twelve months before we could watch dancing tongues of flame leaping up to surround another helpless Guy Fawkes.

This year - on the corner of Dobbin Hill and Ford Road, a small bonfire party was in process under the sycamores where a clamour of rooks constructed their rookery. Two miles away in the valley you can see the lights of Sheffield's city centre and look past the M1 towards Rotherham - Sheffield's little brother.

Nobbled

South entrance to the car park - no warning signs but can you see the white notice
on the wall of the building? That's a Private Park warning sign.

They got me. 

This morning I received a letter from a company called Private Park. The letter included photos of my car "Clint"entering and leaving a private car park. I had been there for twenty nine minutes. They are threatening me with a £100 fine or £60 if I pay up within two weeks.

The underused car park in question is on Guernsey Road and now belongs to a fitness centre called "Xercise4Less". Not so long ago it belonged to "Dunelm" which is a homewares and soft furnishings business with retail units all over the country.

Bay where I parked - no warning sign.

I occasionally parked there - either to visit Dunelm or Langtons Antiques which is on the other side of the road. That's where I went on October 24th in order to find a piece of antique coral jewellery to give to my wife on our 35th wedding anniversary.

When I entered the car park, there was no warning sign in view and in the bay where I parked  by the boundary there were no explanatory information  signs. I went back this afternoon to check out the location and to take photographs that might support an appeal.

As longterm visitors to this blog may recall, I have a particularly virulent aversion to parking enforcement and the shady folk who are employed in this irksome zone of human activity. If you add to that the obnoxious modernistic spelling of "Xercise4Less" , you may understand why I will do my damnedest not to pay a penny to Private Park if I can help it.

When I had finished taking my photos, I saw that two men had parked up on the holy ground of "Xercise4Less" - near to the spot where I had parked. Like Robin Hood, I bounded over to warn them that they were risking fines. They jumped in their vehicles and zoomed away.

Let battle commence.

Digging

Digging over our vegetable patch yesterday, I remembered a poem by Seamus Heaney. He came from farming stock in Northern Ireland. In achieving educational success and going on to become an acclaimed poet, Heaney was breaking the family mould. His father and grandfather and other male relatives had all been hard-working, self-sufficient men who tilled the soil and dug turf for the fire.

In "Digging" Heaney shows respect and admiration for these men while admitting that he has no "spade to follow" them. He is a man of letters but just as his forefathers dug the soil with purpose, he will dig for the truth with his "pen". For when all is said and done, isn't that what all meaningful poetry is about? Examining life, dissecting it and "digging" for understanding. I think so.

By the way, my improving left knee survived the spell in the garden but for a while last evening I thought that I might have overdone it as old pains were resurfacing. But today all is well - the shot knee rests/ I'll live with it.

____________________________

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

by Seamus Heaney                     

(1939 - 2013)