Absence

We are driving down to Wiltshire this morning. We have been invited to a wedding down there. Consequently, there won't be any new blogposts till next week - possibly Tuesday night. Now I must go and get a shower.

Godfrey

I'm a dingle, dangle scarecrow

With a flippy, floppy hat.

I can shake my hands like this,

I can shake my feet like that.

My mother, Doreen, died in September 2007. Apart from anything else she was a gifted craftswoman. It was as if she could turn her hand to anything - especially when it involved fabrics. In fact, when I was a lad she was often absent on weekday evenings teaching mixed crafts  in various locations in East Yorkshire. She called these weekly appointments "evening classes".

She specialised in lampshade making, glove making and basket weaving but she was also a prolific knitter and could knit jumpers swiftly while watching television. Can you imagine her knitting four identical red jumpers for her four sons? And then four navy blue jumpers too? She had so much energy.

Like me. mum was a night owl. As a teenager, many was the time I kept her company when the rest of the family was in bed. I can see her now with the sidelight above her chair as she beavered away at yet another project, sometimes with her electric sewing machine whirring in front of her.

Today, Shirley was up in our attic sorting out suitcases when she came across the happy scarecrow you can see in the pictures that accompany this blogpost. He is a little moth-eaten now but I remember Mum knitting him for our Frances in the early nineties. Can you see how the knitting has kind of burst open below his neck? Shirley says she is going to try to repair him.

Let's call him Godfrey - a name you don't hear very often these days. He went for a walk in our garden. Godfrey had a little rest close to Foxy Loxy's hiding place. Godfrey also went to pay homage to The Lord Buddha. 

It's nice that something of Mum remains, fifteen years after she left us. She was a force of nature and in her  own way, unforgettable. She would have been heartbroken to observe the situation my brother Simon is in now for though he caused her a lot of grief, she still loved him with all her heart.

More

 More Monkey Laundering.... Okay, okay, I know he's a chimp which of course makes him an ape and not a monkey...

I wonder if references to "breeders" should have been "keepers" instead?

Today's only other offerings  from The Yorkshire Pudding Blogpost Factory are three more photographs from my walk in East Yorkshire last Thursday and another of White Cross Cottage which is near the village of my birth.

You always knew you were nearly home when you saw White Cross. The "cross" in question is the stone pillar in front of the cottage. Historians generally agree that it marked one of the boundaries of Meaux Abbey's estate.  You can read about Meaux Abbey here if you wish.

In Londesbrough, the old telephone box is now used as 

a book exchange called The Wendy House..

In Londesbrough Park on The Yorkshire Wolds Way

Two miles farther - approaching Goodmanham

At White Cross with some Platinum Jubilee bunting

Definition

 Monkey Laundering

Monke Bath Monkey GIFfrom Monke Bath GIFs

Cartoons

As far as I can see, there are essentially three types of cartoon. There's the illustrative cartoon that is there to assist understanding of text. Then there's the funny cartoon  which is intended just to raise laughs - sometimes in the form of cartoon strips. Finally, there's the political cartoon - the purpose of which is to say something of note about the state of the world, current affairs or internal national politics.

There have been many brilliant political cartoonists through the decades. Here in Britain, our cartoonists must have seen Boris Johnson  as a gift from heaven when he became prime minister in 2019. To begin with, he has a very recognisable  appearance that already looks cartoonish before a drawing pen is lifted.

As his term in office has proceeded, his behaviour,  bumbling manner and the political controversies he has stoked have all simply added to his appeal as a subject for cartoonists.

Here he is claiming he will not be booted out of office as travellers experience delays and difficulties at airports. In the background, an asylum seeker is about to be flown to Rwanda. Johnson's bags are filled with booze - a reference to illegal lockdown parties in  Downing Street..

Here he is as a pig on a spit roast. The woman turning him is presumably Sue Gray, a senior government  officer who investigated the illegal parties held in Downing Street during Johnson's watch...

Here he is commenting on Putin's war in Ukraine...

And finally, here's a cartoon by Steve Bell from  this very morning's papers as Johnson awaits a vote of no-confidence from his own  Conservative Party. It took a while to develop the figure of Johnson in Steve Bell's imagination. You can see that our PM has simply become an arse with a thatch of straw blonde hair. Perfectly recognisable. By the way it's unlikely that those who want Johnson out will gather enough votes to trigger his well-deserved  ejection from office this evening... but you never know!

Visitors

 

See above. We had special visitors this weekend  - our lovely son Ian and his equally lovely girlfriend Sarah. They came up to Sheffield from London to attend a wedding. Here they are in their glad-rags just before I ferried them to the town hall in Clint. The official part of the proceedings happened in the city's registry office.

Today, Sunday, meat was of course off the menu for Sunday dinner so I had the bright idea of making a vegan pie. It had to be big enough to serve six adults and a baby of sixteen months.

The pie contained sliced leeks, small florets of broccoli, fried onions, courgette slices, flat leaf parsley and a cheese sauce that I made from vegan milk, cornflour and grated mature vegan cheese. It  turned out well and the vegan chef was duly impressed.

We ate it with roasted potatoes, Scottish baby potatoes, roasted carrots and leeks and garden peas with vegan gravy. It was well worth the effort. 

Dessert was a "Bosh!" vegan carrot cake from Sainsburys along with sliced English strawberries.

Here is my massive pie, with its delicious vegan filling hidden from view. You will just have to imagine it. I didn't follow a recipe. Just used my noddle...

Dream

I am not a big one for dreaming - well at least not for remembering dreams. They float away and disintegrate like smoke. I just cannot hang onto them. However, this morning as wakefulness approached, a disturbing dream happened and some of it has remained with me. 

I was sitting in the corner of a sunlit cafe with some other people. I don't know who they were. Then who should walk into the cafe but the legendary Welsh blogger , John Gray.

He was a slightly younger version of his present self. His beard was neatly trimmed and he smelt of scented shower cream and shampoo. His skin gleamed as if it had recently been oiled.

This was the first time that I had ever met him and I reached out my right hand for a manly handshake, saying, "John, how lovely to meet you!"

But he ignored my gesture and silently swooped down to kiss my cheek. It would have been my lips but I managed to shift the target at the last moment when I realised what was happening.

He seemed affronted when he sat at the table and I was so shocked that I didn't know what to say. This was, after all, the first time in my adult life that I had ever been kissed by a man.

I suppose it wasn't really a dream. It was veering towards nightmare territory. I hope that readers of this blogpost will not read stuff into it by suggesting murky psychological undercurrents.

Anyway it shook me out of my slumbers and I came downstairs for a pint of tea and a bowl of honey nut cornflakes with slices of banana to watch recorded images of the amazing Platinum Jubilee concert from Buckingham Palace on our television set. Even so, the dream refused to disappear entirely.