Monday

Las Vegas last night

I watched the 58th Superbowl last night - between San Francisco 49ers and the eventual winners - Kansas City Chiefs. This meant I was very late to bed and it's undoubtedly the reason why I missed my early appointment for an anti-shingles injection. Drat! But never mind, I phoned the health centre to apologise and they re-booked me at eleven forty.

Afterwards, I went round the corner to visit Frances and Baby Margot. Shirley was there too and helping to sort through a mountain of baby clothes which Frances plans to sell on. She was taking pictures of the various items to display online. 

I cuddled Little Miss Peaceful for a while and sung her "Scarborough Fair" as well as the evolving "Margot Song". She rewarded me with some heavenly smiles as she surveyed my face with her sparkling Pacific blue eyes.

Yesterday I made the Sunday dinner again - roasted loin pork with all the trimmings. This time I tried something different with the cauliflower cheese. Taking florets from a large cauliflower I then tossed them in olive oil, seasoning and grated parmesan before roasting for twenty minutes. They browned a little.

My cheese sauce included a little English mustard powder, grated nutmeg, half a spoonful of "Marmite" and a big handful of grated "extra strong"  Cheddar cheese. When the sauce was done, I poured it over the roasted florets and returned my roasting dish to the oven for twenty five minutes. We were all pleased with end result and I will certainly be following that method again.

Today, I note with bitter dismay how Netanyahou has given the go-ahead for further wanton destruction in Gaza. This time, the Israeli army is focusing on the beleaguered town of Rafah   to the south of "the strip".  It's a town that is filled to the brim with internally displaced and desperate refugees.  

Netanyahou disguises his brutal punishment of Gazans by claiming they have to keep rooting out and killing members  and supporters of Hamas. Simply speaking, as The Gaza Strip is such a small piece of land, it is unavoidable that Hamas members and supporters will be present in every surviving neighbourhood but why should that involve such a cruel orgy of collateral damage? 27,000 inhabitants of Gaza have now been killed  with a large proportion of them being children and women. 

It beggars belief. It really does. The Palestinians of Gaza are sealed in a trap from which there is no escape. Where are they supposed to run to now? Netanyahou does not appear to give a damn. And of course Hamas can never be destroyed because it is an idea more than it is a thing.

Back in my little world in Sheffield, far away from Kansas City and The Gaza Strip, the sun is shining and I am just popping into the kitchen to make a small excuse for a lunch - a wedge of Shirley's surviving homemade Christmas cake with a chunk of Cheddar cheese and a mug of coffee.

Rafah today

Pictures

Many is the time I have driven along the B6001  between the villages of Calver and Hassop. Almost every time, I have glanced across fields to the right to see a scenic barn and thought, "I need to photograph that!"

Unfortunately, along that road there is nowhere to park up for a while so I had another thought. Perhaps I could leave Clint in the nearby village of Rowland and then walk along an old lead miners' track upon the ridge and through the woodland behind the barn.

This plan came to fruition  on  Wednesday morning as these two barn pictures show. It is off the beaten track and not by an official public right away so I guess that very few photos if any have ever been taken of this particular barn. You can see the original roof has caved in but at the north end of it the farmer has done a partial re-roofing with steel sheets.

Below, above the village of Rowland, I spotted a flying saucer landing pad. Actually, it's the top cover of a small reservoir that serves that local community.

Today - Saturday - I drove over to Hull once again. My team were playing Swansea City.

I set off early again in order to bag some more Geograph squares. The image below was taken  at the entrance of the now disused Westlands plant nurseries near the village of Ellerker in East Yorkshire.

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The next picture was taken on Norfolk Bank Lane - a single roadway with passing places.. In the distance you can see The Yorkshire Wolds rising above the flat farmland.

Finally, I snapped this picture at remote Sand Bridge looking along Ellerker Drain. The road to the right leads nowhere and is used almost exclusively by farmers with jobs to do upon the land.

Tribute

Sarah Miller of Both Sides Now.

A ten minute walk from our house you reach The Greystones public house. It has a concert room at the rear called, quite imaginatively, "The Backroom".  It holds about 250 and though it doesn't host world famous arena acts, it is a popular venue for what I might call moderately successful mid-range bands and singers. On more than one occasion it has been voted Britain's best small venue for music.

Tonight more by default than design, I was there to witness a concert by a tribute band called "Both Sides Now". The name gives it away for they honour the music and lyricism of Joni Mitchell. They are not trying to be imitators. Those who pay tribute do not have to copy.

The Backroom was packed and my friend Mike had got there long before me. I arrived at 8pm just before the band came on the stage. In the first half I sat on a stool in the aisle but in the second half I managed to sit on the front row for I had earlier spotted an empty space there.

Both Sides Now consists of four skilled musicians - drums, bass, lead guitar and keyboards but the voice of the band comes from Sarah Miller who looks more like Bonnie Tyler than Joni Mitchell.

In my judgement, there were some issues with sound balance - with the guitars threatening to smother Sarah Miller's voice but the second half was better in that regard. It is fifty years since the album, "Court and Spark" was released and several numbers on the playlist came from that album.

My favourite Joni Mitchell album will always be "Blue" and thankfully  the band covered "A Case of You", "Carey", "River" and "California" but the song I enjoyed most was in fact "Both Sides Now". Sarah Miller sang it with only keyboard accompaniment and though I am sure she has sung it many times before, it was fresh and heartfelt finishing to loud applause from the audience. It's a great song and it was good to hear an original interpretation of it.  The video below is quite faithful.

I am glad I went. My ticket became available because Mike's wife Jill has been ill this week. If you're reading this Mike - thanks a lot!

Poem

Polar Bear

Hauled up on

A boulder of floating ice

He fell asleep

And drifted.

Waves rocked him

Till Svalbard was 

Almost out of sight...

Likewise his thoughts sailed

In Arctic dreams

Of  hunting and stars

And the passage of days

Stretching out  to a lost horizon

Where,  in a shroud of fog,

He was heading

Anyway.

⦿

British amateur photographer Nima Sarikhani won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award with his awesome picture of a sleeping young polar bear drifting away from Norway's Svalbard archipelago. See my Longyearbyen post from last October.

Peaceful

 

She is my third grandchild. Little Margot. Born  on November 2nd last year. She hardly ever cries and seems supremely contented. She continues to feed on her mother's milk which must be remarkably nutritious.

Of course I have held her in my arms many times. She is now quite a weight! I look into her sparkly sapphire blue eyes and sometimes sing to her. As well as loving her, I also get the feeling that she is very peaceful. It is the word that comes to my mind each time I see her. I suppose this might change as time carries us forward but at the moment she radiates peacefulness.

I never applied that term to Phoebe, nor to my own two children when they were babies but with Little Margot there is a calm contentment about her, an acceptance of  what life is.

Below, I wonder who placed her in the laundry basket?  And if you think it was me then you're wrong.

Tongatapu

King Tupou VI - the present king of Tonga

As regular visitors to this humble Yorkshire blog may recall, the despotic ruler of this little corner of the blogosphere likes his geography and is curious about other places - be they close to home or faraway. Today, we are off to somewhere this blog has never been before - namely  Tongatapu.

Tongatapu is the main island of the Pacific nation of Tonga - sometimes known as The Friendly Isles of which there are some 150 inhabited islands..  Around 71% of the entire population live on Tongatapu which is the location of the capital city - Nuku'alofa - home to 25,000. In the Tongan language, Nuku'alofa means "abode of love".

Unsurprisingly, Google Streetview has managed to capture some imagery on the island but coverage is quite sketchy. When I checked it out, I had difficulty spotting any human beings. It was as if they were nearly all in hiding. Perhaps small children had raised the alarm, "Hide everybody! The Google Streetview car is approaching!"

I clipped the following six Tongatapu images from Streetview:-

Ancient burial mound at Mua - allegedly a last burial place for monarchs or chiefs

The Free Church in Nuku'alofa -the most important ecclesiastical building  in Tonga

Abandoned house at Hamula

End of the Vuna road

Royal Palace gateway in Nuku'alofa

Where Captain Cook aboard "The Resolution" landed in 1773

A blogpost about Tongatapu would surely not be complete without some traditional Polynesian singing and dancing. The video was shot four years ago at an official reception for The Crown Prince of Norway. The graceful hand movements are everything - telling a story...

Nothing

Well, it is a Tuesday night and I have got nothing to blog about... diddly squat, nought, zero, zilch or as we say in Yorkshire - nowt.  I suspect that COVID has left me with a legacy of  long-lasting laziness so instead of blogging properly I will leave you with a song from The Doors that I first encountered in 1969:-

Jim Morrison died in Paris on July 3rd 1971 when he was just twenty seven years old. He died in his then girlfriend's rented apartment and the circumstances were mysterious but it is almost certain that heroin played a part. It was fifty three years ago. The French authorities did not perform an autopsy and their investigations were rather superficial.

Of this song, Morrison said: "Every time I hear that song, it means something else to me. I really don't know what I was trying to say. It just started out as a simple goodbye song ... Probably just to a girl, but I could see how it could be goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be."

If he had lived, he would have been 81 years old last December.

Jim Morrison's grave in Paris

This is the end, beautiful friend

This is the end, my only friend

The end of our elaborate plans

The end of everything that stands

The end

No safety or surprise

The end

I'll never look into your eyes again