Absence

I am heading down to London this morning with my nurse - Mrs Pudding. We won't be back till Sunday evening. The main purpose of the visit is to spend time with  our grandson Zach... and his parents of course! I will also be burgling Steve Reed's apartment in West Hampstead. He is away in South America at the moment so this should be the perfect opportunity to riffle through his belongings and get what I want.

Keir Starmer invited me over to 10 Downing Street to celebrate Labour's recent election victory but I declined as that meeting would have clashed with our Sunday  lunch booking at "The Brown Cow" in Fulham. 

I should of course be back home in time to watch the European Nations Cup Final  on Sunday night - beamed live from Berlin. 

Come On England!

"Putin"

Half an hour ago, I was watching the conclusion of the NATO summit meeting live from  Washinton D.C.. President Biden had summed things up with the aid of an auto-cue and was  about to hand over to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.

Joe Biden introduced him as "President Putin"! Breathtaking really. I mean, it's like introducing Winston Churchill as Adolf Hitler or Salavadore Allende  as Augusto Pinochet. This was the gaffe of gaffes. I mean - Putin has effectively killed thousands of Ukrainians and in Mr Zelensky's eyes he must seem like the devil incarnate.

We all make slip-ups or mis-speak but in my opinion the time has come to stop making excuses for Mr Biden. Enough is enough.  What will his mental state  be like in 2028 when he is eighty six years old?

I have no doubt that he is a good man and that if he were ten years younger he would have made a truly great president, bringing dignity and wisdom back to The Oval Office after the crazy and disturbing  years of Trump's first presidency. However, the immediate future of The United States is infinitely more important than  the  stubbornness of an old man  whose faculties are clearly in serious decline.

It is time for him to go and the pressure behind the scenes is becoming inexorable. I wish that he would resign on his own terms - jumping before he is pushed. His wife and family should be assisting with that decision - even though up to now their apparent  motto seems to have been, "whatever Joe wants".

As I come to the end of this blogpost, Joe Biden is  soon to be quizzed in a solo press conference in which  he will not be able to rely upon the crutch of an auto-cue. He will be exposed and there will be more scrutiny of his performance than the answers he gives with regard to NATO.

Especially if you are an American citizen, you might be wondering why a limey like me should even be commenting on this matter. The truth of it is that who leads America is critical to the rest of the western world. We do not want to see a narcissistic, ill-informed, lazy, draft-dodging  bully boy back in The White House. One term was quite enough. A second term would be disastrous - not just for America.

Dortmund

Dortmund is a big German city. It is situated just east of The Netherlands and has a population of around 580,000 - just like Sheffield. After World War II, Dortmund was redeveloped and is now a thrusting modern city built upon industry. It is also the home of the German National Football Museum.

At this point in the blogpost, I should own up and admit  that I  simply wanted to draw you in for past statistics have proven that any posts I have written about football  have been relatively unpopular. My opening paragraph was just a cunning ruse for tonight's post is about football! Ha-ha! Gotcha!

Earlier on this evening, a big football match was played in Dortmund. It was the second semi-final of the European Nations Cup. England were playing The Netherlands and you know what? We won!

In the first half England were dominant even though The Netherlands took the lead with a great strike from Xavi Simons. A few minutes later our captain, Harry Kane smashed home a dubious penalty. In the second half, the pace of the game diminished and became very cagey - sometimes proceeding at walking pace.

As full-time approached. our manager, Gareth Southgate, took off Kane and Phil Foden - replacing them with Aston Villa's Ollie Watkins and Chelsea's Cole Palmer and in the 91st minute, Palmer threaded the ball to Watkins in the penalty area. He swivelled and smashed the ball into the net from a tight angle in spite of the close attentions of a Dutch defender. GOOOOOAL!

Now we will play Spain in the final which will take place in Berlin on Sunday evening. Spain have played brilliantly in the tournament  so England are the underdogs - but you never know!  Sometimes the underdogs are victorious. COME ON ENGLAND!

Poem

Convolvulus

That summer…

That summer

When Harold Swann scored twelve sixes
Against Cherry Burton,
We cycled west
Where no one ever went -
Out beyond Hall Garth and St Faith’s churchyard
By hedgerows heavy with bramble blossom
And trumpeting convolvulus
All pink and pillow white like the candyfloss
At Hull Fair.
And we didn’t stop till we reached the river
Also named Hull - languid amid the reeds
As ginger cows and Friesians grazed lazily on
The other bank near Aike.
Supine under a Wedgwood blue sky,
We watched African birds cavorting,
Feasting on invisible insects.
Four miles distant

As the famed crow flies,

Beverley Minster’s towers
Wobbled  in a jellied haze.
Later, in that long ago and honeyed afternoon,
We headed back across the carr land -
Me on my maroon Hercules
You on your green Raleigh -
Reaching Goosenook Lane
Under a still sizzling five o’clock sun
That seemed to beam kindly on everyone.

Those surely were the days my friend -

In truth, we thought they'd never end.

Potato

I make our evening meals. For tonight's menu I prepared Lincolnshire sausages, a simple salad and homemade oven chips (American: fries). Nothing too fancy.

I got the sausages in  the oven and then went to find the bag of  baking potatoes that I bought in our local "Lidl" store last week. Casually, I ripped through the polythene and to my surprise discovered this very big potato inside (see above). It is possibly the biggest regular potato I have ever handled. I decided to weigh it and it came in at just over two pounds and just under one kilogram. Bloody massive it was.

I only needed that one potato for our chips and in fact I didn't use it all. Imagine asking a guest or family member if they wanted a baked potato and then presenting them with that monster!

Out of curiosity I decide to find out if my potato's size was anywhere near record-breaking. Naturally, I expected it to pale into insignificance compared with the really big boys. Indeed, there have been many much bigger potatoes. The current record holder was grown in the village of Halam, Nottinghamshire by a gentleman called Peter Glazebrook back in 2011.

His whopper weighed in at 4.99 kilograms - or just under eleven pounds in old money. In other words, it was five times bigger than ours. But to me it seems something of an aberration - quite freakish with its various nobbly bits. At least our spud was a normal-looking complete tuber.

Peter Glazebrook's record breaker (2011)

Quiztime

Hello there jolly quizzers! Today's quiz questions are all based upon the first six July 2024 blogposts here at Yorkshire Pudding. To find the answers, all you have to do is look back through the past week. As usual, you will find the answers in the comments section.

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1. When was our granddaughter Phoebe born?

2. Name the fellow who is holding a baby in the picture at the head of Tuesday's blogpost. He is now Britain's new prime minister.

3. Which ragamuffin became Britain's PM on December 13th 2019?

(a) Wurzel Gummidge (b) Freddie Flintoff

(c) Boris Johnson (d) Stan Laurel

4. Which bush in Yorkshire Pudding's garden is a useful indicator of recent rainfall or lack of it? (Clue in header picture)

5. What percentage of garden slugs are normally doing their thing underground?

6. Which national team did England beat last night to go through to the European Nations semi-finals?

(a) Mexico (b) Narnia

(c) Switzerland (d) Liechtenstein

7. Who scored England's equalising goal in normal time?

8. What is Limacus Flavus?

(a) the name of a Roman general (b) a skin disease 

(c) a South American flower (d) a yellow slug

9. What is the average temperature predicted for tomorrow, July 8th,  in this neck of the woods? (N.B. S11 is the Sheffield 11 postal district)

10. Who was the very first Labour prime minister here in Great Britain?

(a) Nobby Stiles (b) Ramsay MacDonald

(c) Ebeneezer Scrooge (d) Jethro Tull

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How did you do?

Distraction

Bukayo Saka scored England's equaliser in normal time

This evening, courtesy of live television, I watched the England men's football team beat Switzerland to reach the semi-finals of The European Nations Cup. It was an enthralling, closely fought match in which the teams were level at 1-1 after half an hour of extra time. Consequently, the game had to be decided on penalty kicks. Here England came out on top - scoring all of their five penalties while Manuel Akanji of Switzerland saw his kick saved.

Now we will be playing The Netherlands on Wednesday evening in Dortmund to decide which team will advance to the final in Berlin on Sunday 14th July. There the other finalists will be either France or Spain.

It's all very exciting and sometimes nerve-wracking.

Professional sports have become part of the entertainment industry. Many millions of people find much distraction and indeed joy through watching their chosen sports. Top players are paid a king's ransom and  for many onlookers how their team performs means much more to them than any form of religious belief.

Societies put successful sportsmen and sportswomen on pedestals but when all is said and done, sport is not really all that important. It rides upon the back of real life like all other forms of entertainment. Real life is about survival, keeping a roof over your head and putting food on the table. In real life it's all about your particular version of "the daily grind". You get up and go to work day after day, year after year. We can only dream of standing in the spotlight, entertaining our fellow citizens.

Sport has given me plenty of pleasure through the years - along with plenty of heartache. Nonetheless,  I recognise that it has all been a kind of distraction from things that really matter. Still, I will be cheering England on right to the end of The European Nations tournament and hoping that this time our team can rise to the top like cream in a milk jug. COME ON ENGLAND!