Stuff

Down at the Oxfam shop where I work every Wednesday, you never know what sort of items will be donated. Anything and everything seems to come through our door. Citizens of south west Sheffield can be so generous. It is something that I find very heart-warming.

There's always stuff to sort through from designer clothes to chinaware, from maps to original paintings and from postage stamps to paperback books. Of course, shop volunteers are the first to see new donations. We are allowed to purchase items at exactly the same prices our customers would have to pay. All volunteer purchases have to be carefully logged with counter-signatures in a logbook.

In the two years I have worked in the shop, I have hardly bought anything for myself - just a few paperback books and a DVD of one of my favourite films - "Once Upon a Time in America". Other volunteers seem to buy things quite frequently but I have deliberately striven to curtail that temptation. I am there to work not to buy.

However, yesterday I gave in and bought not one but two items I noticed in the shop last week. One is a large hardback book from The Royal Geographical Society, called simply "Illustrated". It contains many fascinating pictures from the early years of travel photography, including the following picture which shows a tea bearer in Sichuan, China. He is carrying numerous "bricks" of tea from a hilly plantation. The photograph was taken in 1908.

The second item I bought is a plate that commemorates one of South Yorkshire's many coal mines. It existed for well over a hundred years, in a village three miles east of Sheffield. It closed soon after The Great Miners' Strike of 1984-85. Coal mining has a special place in my heart as my maternal grandfather and great-grandfathers were all coal miners. Now there are no mines left in South Yorkshire. No more shall our pit wheels turn or our claxons sound. The plate is a souvenir - to remember all those brave men who went down into the bowels of the earth and to honour the mining communities that were broken. Thank you Oxfam and thank you anonymous donors.

Terri

Theresa May (nee Brasier) with her beloved parents circa 1967

Britain's esteemed political leader, The Right Honourable Theresa Mary May swept to power last year following the departure of Derek Cameron who had shamefully led his people into the great hollow Cave of  Brexit like The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 

Mrs May likes to keep an exceptionally low profile, so low it is almost subterranean. In the run up to the EU referendum, her silence was deafening. 

Downing Street spin doctors and advisers have been urging Saint Theresa to embrace modern technologies in order to enhance her low key public image. Reluctantly, she recently opened a Twitter account and here we find some of her first tweets. Explanatory notes to follow. Please read from the bottom up.

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Explanatory notes:-

Philip - Mrs May's investment banker husband. (She was always attracted to interesting chaps)
Sonning - Village west of London where The Mays have their private abode.
St Andrews Church - Local church in Sonning
"The Bull Inn" - Village pub in Sonning
SamCam - Samantha Cameron - Derek Cameron's wife and previous occupant of 10 Downing Street
"Laura Ashley" - Up-market British fashion and home furnishings business
PM - Prime Minister
"Carlsberg" - Danish lager beer popular in Great Britain
curtains - US drapes
Boris - Boris Johnson Britain's current Foreign Secretary and convenient foil for Mrs May
"Jacobs" - famous English cream cracker makers
"John West "- famous producers of tinned fish
leather trousers - Mrs May is famous for her expensive wardrobe, including a £995 pair of leather trousers by Amanda Wakeley
DC@USA - Washington D.C. - capital of America

Spoofs

Some other inhabitants of Blog World have enjoyed my spoof Trump tweets and have even requested more. Trump supporters please look away now! Unusually, you again need to read these four tweets from the bottom up. The scene is set. It is midnight in the penthouse of Trump Tower on 5th Avenue, Trumpville (previously known as New York City). The President Elect is up late watching "Fox News", drinking beer and tweeting madly on his cellphone as Melodramia puts her endless embroidery project down for the night...

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It is only right that I should give our own beloved British Premier similar satirical  treatment ("Brexit means Brexit") And this will happen in due course. Watch this space. Theresa May but then again she May not!

69

69? No, not my age and certainly not the intimate activity that crossed certain minds.No. 69 is the total number of photographs taken by me in 2016 that were shortlisted in the geograph picture of the week process. Fifty two weeks and sixty nine nominations. That's quite an achievement and I am rather proud of it even though only one of my shortlisted pictures made it to the Number 1 spot:-

Lunchtime drinker in "The Old Red Cow", London
Taken in May.

Every week between 2,000 and 7,000 photographs are submitted to geograph so to make the top fifty 69 times proves that I am getting something right. It adds credence to my belief that I have a good eye for a picture. On my various country rambles with camera slung over shoulder, I am always looking for the perfect shot, the best light, special moments to capture. It is partly what motivates me to walk.

geograph Top 12 nominations list 2016

I realise that some visitors will be puzzled about the term "geograph". It is a British-based photographic and geographical website that invites users to portray the 315,000 square kilometres of our islands with mapped pictures. Within the site there are statistical and competitive elements and it is always interesting to see scenes captured by other contributors. To visit the home page of geograph, go here.

My 69 nominations seem to tell the story of last year - at least my story.  Beginning with some industrial premises off Carlisle Street in Sheffield and ending with The Rawson Spring Container Bar at Hillsborough, the nominations include pictures from The Isle of Man, Spurn Head, London, Liverpool, Huddersfield and of course my beloved Peak District. It's a magnificent mosaic and this is just a sample of it:-

If I was to be pushed to come up with a personal Top Three from my nominations, I might well choose these:-

In Third Place:-

Taken in February at Stanage Edge.

In Second Place:-

Taken in November further along Stanage Edge

In First Place:-

Taken on my birthday under the arches at Borough Market near London Bridge.

Newcomer

Yet new tweets from The President Elect. 

   They should be read from the bottom up   _______________________________________________________

Snippets

Veganuary

This month isn't just January, it's Veganuary. Organisations such as The Vegan Society are encouraging people to enjoy a meat-free month, consuming plant-based dishes and even avoiding eggs, cheese, fish and butter.

Now as some of you may recall, our son Ian became a vegan a couple of years ago. For the past six months he has been working with "Jungle Creations" in London, producing a series of vegan recipes that are displayed on a Facebook page called "Bosh!". Go here.

 

Some of these recipes, revealed in fast-paced video clips, have received well over a million hits. Usually, it's our Ian's hands you see in the video clips. He has invented or adapted all the recipes and it's his drive and creativity that is currently making Bosh! successful. Of course it helps that there is a growing interest in vegan cooking and the attitudes that underpin veganism.

Here in Yorkshire, our local BBC TV  news programme is called "Look North". As well as serious news stories they like to include what you might call magazine features - no doubt to counteract all that gravity. Yesterday, they wanted to do a feature on Veganuary.

Having been interviewed by BBC Radio Sheffield on Monday, Ian was invited to play a leading role in the "Look North" item. He prepared a simple vegan recipe in a friend's spacious modern kitchen and the food was later enjoyed by James Vincent - the BBC reporter. The item also included a cut to Sheffield's Moor Market where two or three older Sheffielders were quizzed about the idea of becoming vegan. Naturally, the idea didn't go down too well with them.

The item included a clip from Bosh! and Ian came across pretty well. It's another feather in his cap as Bosh! advances into the future. There is even talk about a publishing group building a new vegan recipe book on the back of all the interest that Bosh! has engendered. But of course that remains to be seen. So far so good.