Report

Flame burst and fans when the players came out at the start

As expected there was a dirty great pole in front of me at last night's match. No, I don't mean a fat plumber from Gdansk or a builder called Wojciech from Wroklaw but an actual constructional pole that supported the stadium roof. I had to keep moving my head like a wary meerkat in order to see the goalmouth action at the far end of the ground.

To my disgust every supporter received a free England flag on a white plastic pole. That's almost forty thousand flags! What a waste of the Earth's resources. One day things like that will no longer happen. There's no need for it. At least it was nice to see that the matchday programme had been  printed on recycled paper.

Billy Bremner statue outside Leeds United's ground

England were all over Costa Rica from the start and we won by two goals to nil. I had a perfect view of Marcus Rashford's opening goal as the ball looped over the flailing hands of Keylor Navas - who by the way also keeps goal for Real Madrid.

Before the game, I stood proudly to sing our national anthem and during the match I joined in with the chant "England! England!" several times but my most raucous participation occurred when a chant of "Yorkshire! Yorkshire!" echoed around - for most supporters present were Yorkshire folk and there were seven Yorkshire players on the pitch including Harry Maguire who left Hull City last summer.

Long before kick-off I also noticed a Hull City banner in the far corner of the ground where the official England supporters band were assembling. My "Sony" bridge camera has an excellent zoom facility.

Silver Clint was left in a terraced street on Beeston Hill, close to Holbeck Cemetery. After the game I unlocked him, put the key in the ignition and was back home in Sheffield before the local pub closed. And yes - I did think of Richard. I am sure he would also have joined in with the defiant, "Yorkshire! Yorkshire!" chant.

Ticket

I have been a football supporter since 1962. Nearly all of that support has been focused upon Hull City A.F.C. - the only professional club in The East Riding of Yorkshire. However, I have also always been a keen follower of the English national team and can remember very clearly watching The World Cup final of 1966 on television when our lads beat West Germany by four goals to two to become World Champions.

Though I have attended hundreds of Hull City matches and have spent hundreds, nay thousands of pounds on match tickets, related travel and programmes, I have never attended a full England international match. All that is going to change today because this evening I am going to watch the national team play Costa Rica at Elland Road in Leeds. 

Upon a sudden whim, I ordered the ticket on Sunday night and it arrived in the post on Tuesday morning. All tickets for this game have now been sold. I was one of the very last purchasers. My seat will have a "restricted view" so no doubt there will be a whacking great pillar in my line of sight but I don't care. I am 64 years old and I am going to see England play live for the first time in my life! The game will be the very last "friendly" match before The 2018 World Cup commences in Russia.

_________________________________________________________

This post is dedicated to my friend and neighbour Richard who died in hospital 

yesterday morning. All that cigarette smoke finally caught up with him. Sweet 

dreams Richard! It was good to know you and I'll think of you at Elland Road.

Encore

Leaving Clint on Shorts Lane

I went for a very familiar walk yesterday afternoon. It involves a short drive out of the city. Once again I parked by the stables at the end of Shorts Lane, donned my boots and set off on my circular route. It takes exactly an hour to do if I keep walking but of course stopping to take pictures lengthens the time involved. See a previous post from March 2015.

It was a lovely, summery afternoon as I set off on the path that leads to Blacka Moor.  Over Blacka Dyke then up Lenny Hill and before too long I am out of the trees and marching in sunshine along Strawberry Lee Lane towards Totley Bents.

I passed two houses at the tiny hamlet of Old Hay that are currently up for sale. I noticed them on "Right Move" last night and the asking price for each of them is £1million (US $1,338,000). Then through the gates to Avenue Farm and along through the meadows to Redcar Brook.

I have never encountered another walker by this stream. There was a sudden flash as a nervous grey heron flapped away. I didn't have my camera out but two minutes later with camera in hand I noticed what at first I thought was a cow on the opposite bank. Biut it wasn't a cow, it was a stag! He was grazing and he hadn't heard me coming. I guess the sound of the babbling water must have  smothered the sound of my footsteps. 

With foliage overhanging it was hard to get a decent picture of this wild beast. I had heard that there were a few red deer up on Blacka Moor but this stag was very close to houses on the edge of Dore village. It was a rare privilege to see him. When he finally noticed me, he ran up the slope and for a brief moment stood at the top like The Monarch of the Glen before darting into the trees.

Soon I am back on Shorts Lane, strolling back to Silver Clint who has been dozing in the shadows having consumed far too much petroleum on his last visit  to the Sainsburys service station. I wish he'd switch to soda water.

Returning to Clint eighty minutes later

Yorkshire

Recently, the BBC News website has been exploring the notion of Englishness. It has also focused upon county loyalties, comparing how the residents of different counties feel about where they live. This was the main conclusion:-

Yorkshire, with its Viking origins and Norman design, inspires the deepest passions of all. 

Three quarters of people from York and the Ridings feel a strong allegiance to their county. Only

 one other county comes close to such levels of belonging - Yorkshire's great rival, Lancashire.

As the title of this blog suggests, I am a Yorkshireman. My father was born in the old North Riding of Yorkshire. my mother was born in the old West Riding and I myself was born in The East Riding of this ancient county. More than this, all of my grandparents and all of my great grandparents  were born in Yorkshire. They all lived here all their lives and they all died here.

When it comes to Yorkshire credentials, I am therefore more  thoroughbred than the cricketer Freddie Trueman, former prime minister Harold Wilson or actress Maureen Lipman. You simply cannot get more Yorkshire than me. Even my Viking surname was once unique to Yorkshire and was originally the name of a small agricultural settlement in Wensleydale.

Like most Yorkshiremen I am proud of my county for several different reasons:-

1) The varied beauty of our natural landscape. From the limestone pavements of Malham in the west to the chalk cliffs of Flamborough in the east. From the boggy uplands of The Dark Peak in the south to the famous  green Yorkshire Dales in the north.

2) History of hard work. When I think of Yorkshire folk I think of workers with their noses to the grindstone - farmers, fishermen, steel workers, engineers, textile workers. Much of Britain's nineteenth century economic power was forged here in Yorkshire though our people didn't always get the credit and financial benefits they deserved.

3) The Yorkshire character. We value common sense and plain speaking. We don't like snobs or pomposity. We say hello to strangers and we don't waste our hard-earned money. We can be blunt but we are loyal and true. We tend not to be loud and self-advertising and our sense of humour is often dry and understated.

4) The Arts. Yorkshire has produced countless renowned painters, writers, actors and musicians. From Emily Bronte to The Arctic Monkeys. From The Kaiser Chiefs to Ted Hughes and Damien Hirst, Andrew Marvell and John Atkinson Grimshaw, Dame Judi Dench and Sir Patrick Stewart, Roger Hargreaves and Joe Cocker, Barbara Hepworth and David Hockney. The list goes on and on.

5) Exploration and invention. In my mind the greatest Yorkshireman of all was the explorer Captain James Cook. He epitomised this Yorkshire characteristic seen also in the lives of the inventor of stainless steel - Harry Brearley, aviator Amy Johnson, horologist John Harrison and scientist Joseph Priestley but there are many others whose names and achievements might be cited here.

6) The Yorkshire pudding. Light and golden. Rising in the oven like Jesus after the crucifixion.

Yes it is nice to be a Yorkshireman and to inhabit a county that fills one's heart with pride. I have travelled the world seeking a better place than Yorkshire but I can confirm that no such place exists. For any readers who do not live here, please accept my sincere sympathies.

Poem

"A study has found that France has lost a third of its songbirds over the past fifteen years..."

- BBC News  18/5/18

To A Woodlark

The last birdsong I ever heard

Was that of a woodlark

Half-hidden by foliage

When I stopped for a tinkle

At a lay-by on the A165

Tremulous and plaintive

Like a cry for help

He sang in solitary shade

Taking me back

To those days of yore

When summer walks

We'll take mo more

Were orchestral with

Incantations intertwining

Mellifluous and sweet

A twittering of tweets

That echoed around

The ancient forests

Of our ancestry

When there were skylarks and robins

Mistle thrush and cawing rook

Warbler and wren

Their melodies mingling

In timeless refrains...

On yes I shall remember that woodlark's song

In this aching quietness that remains

Never to hear another one

Now that the singing is all done.

Ozymandias

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

(1792 - 1822)

Terminology

Back in the fifties and sixties, families employed their own intimate vocabularies for referring to genitalia and certain natural bodily functions. It was as if the real, scientific terminology was somehow taboo and might pollute the minds of innocent sons and daughters.

It is almost eleven years since my dear mother died. She was the number one domestic enforcer when it came to language use in our home. My father took more of a back seat on this. As the headmaster of the village school next door he probably got tired of correcting little boys. Anyway, as I say, eleven years have passed - enough time to spill the beans.

Everybody needs to urinate every day. In my East Yorkshire home you did not urinate or go for a piss, you went for a "tinkle"! And when you needed to defecate you went for a "bobby". You didn't fart, you "popped" or "trumped" and if you were heard making this discordant music you were supposed to say "Pardon me". Many is the time our mother snarled "What do you say?" 

I grew up with three brothers so there was no need to invent an alternative word for "vagina" because as far as we knew vaginas did not even exist. Perhaps if we  had had a sister good alternative names for "vagina" might have been "bajingo" or "doo-dah".

The most embarrassing term we were expected to use? We replaced the word "penis" with "poppy". I kid you not. Poppy! Even now during the run up to Remembrance Sunday I hesitate to look in a poppy seller's tray but naturally I always wear my poppy with pride!

We were of course aware of breasts but they weren't called breasts, they were "bosoms". When I was about nine years old and increasingly inquisitive Mum admitted that females did not have poppies, they had holes that babies came from. One morning in the bathroom as she was dressing I asked to look at her baby hole but  blushingly she refused and was uncharacteristically tongue-tied. I had no idea why.

Raising our own children we were sensitive about language use when it came to genitalia and excretion. No longer was a poppy a poppy, it was a penis once more and the would-be "bajingo" became a vagina again. I wanted to refer to defecation as "shitting" but she insisted on the more widespread "going for a pooh", Similarly, I would have voted for "urinate" but instead we had "wee-wee".

What about the terminology that was used in your childhood home?