Zog

I try to publish a blogpost just about every day but sometimes it just doesn't work out.

This can be for a variety of reasons. First of all  I might be away somewhere without internet access. Secondly, I might be busy at home with something - family occasions etc.. Thirdly, I might simply forget to blog. Fourthly, I might not be able to think of anything to write. Fifthly, I might simply be feeling lazy. Sixthly, I might have been teleported to The Planet Zog by aliens. Fortunately or unfortunately, the last one has not happened...yet.

I may not be quite as prolific as blogging legends Mary Moon, Crozier Magnon, Steve Reed, John Gray or Bob Slatten but I am not far behind. This is my record for the first six years of this decade

2020 - 340 blogposts
2021 - 316 blogposts
2022 - 345 blogposts
2023 - 355 blogposts
2024  - 359 blogposts
2025 - 352 blogposts

These figures are much higher than when I first started blogging. My first full year in the blogosphere was 2006:-

2006 - 125 blogposts
2007 - 110  blogposts
2008 - 115 blogposts
2009 - 132 blogposts
2010 - 196 blogposts

After all these years, I still cannot quite believe that nowadays I find something to blog about almost every day.

Today, I could have bored you with a detailed account of my work up at the vegetable patch.

The weather forecast strongly suggests that we will not experience any more frosts as this Yorkshire  spring turns into summer. Besides, I had a feeling in my bones that today was the day to do my planting out.

I had grown sixteen runner bean plants from seed on a table in our sunny front bedroom along with five courgette plants (American: zucchini) so on this mild Monday afternoon, I was up there getting my hands dirty after filling our wheelbarrow with nutritious and well rotted homemade compost  to give the baby plants the best possible start.  I am just hoping the local wood pigeons do not get them.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to return to the vegetable patch with two filled watering cans. My babies will be thirsty after the trauma of being transplanted.

Innocence

 

Okay, I admit it. I did not compose this blogpost on Saturday May 16th. That proved impossible as we were at a birthday party for seventy year old Trevor. We have known him, his wife Jane and their children for thirty six years. They lived across the road from us here in Banner Cross. 

An additional but delightful obstacle to the usual rhythm of blogging has been grandchildren. Ian is up from London this weekend with little Zachary - our only grandson. He was born just a few days before Margot in the autumn of 2023.

There at the top the two cousins are in their dual control red sports car at Graves Park Animal Farm. Below Phoebe has donned one of my old Hull City shirts and is looking fierce - like a tiger. Hull City are The Tigers. I wore that shirt at The Championship Play Off Final in 2008 when we beat Bristol City to reach The Premier League for the very first time.

Below, the two year old cousins are still zooming down the motorway but not bothering to look at the road ahead.

And I love the next image from yesterday morning with big Phoebe leading the little ones down our street. Little do they know what the world has in store for them as they grow older and discover that it is not all as straightforward and sweet as they had once assumed. Never such innocence again.

Spanner

I know that a lot of you out there in  Blogworld are big football fans just like me.

John Gray in North Wales has "Wrexham" tattooed across his chest while down in Australia, Andrew and Marcellous are big fans of the London club Arsenal. often staying up late to watch live-streaming of their  games. Meike Riley in Ludwigsburg, Germany never misses a Stuttgart FC home match while over in Canada Keith Kline (aka Red) is a bigger fan of Liverpool F.C. than Nurse Pixie in Edmonton. And the only reason Steve Reed moved from America to London was to support his beloved Chelsea. Yes  - so many ardent football fans out there.

On Monday night, my team - Hull City A.F.C. beat Millwall by two goals to nil in the exciting second leg of their Championship Play-Off Semi-Final. That fantastic result meant we had booked a place in the final at Wembley Stadium. Oh joy upon joys! The final is scheduled to take place on Saturday May 23rd.

But something has happened to put a spanner in the works.

Just now the club, the players and the supporters should all be preparing for the big Wembley trip, buying train tickets, securing match tickets and in some cases arranging accommodation in London. There are loyal Hull City fans living in faraway places and some of them will want to attend the final in person.

On Tuesday night, we thought we knew who our opponents would be. In the second semi-final, Southampton beat Middlesbrough by two goals to one. And then news of "Spygate" began to surface.

It seems that before the other semi-final, an agent acting for Southampton visited the Middlesbrough training ground and secretly gathered live footage of some of Boro's training methods, planned set pieces and the like. He was challenged before running away. Southampton do not deny that this happened. According to the Football Association's rules, spying is verboten.

On Wednesday the issue was referred to The English Football Association for deliberation and judgement. As I write this blogpost, no decision has been made. We may have to wait until next Wednesday.

It is possible that Southampton will be barred from competing in the final but we just do not know.

The English Championship Final is one of the richest fixtures in world sport - said to be worth £200 million in extra income for the winners. That's $270 million US so this whole business is devilishly significant.

I have a ticket for the final but will I be going? We will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, let's hear a big ironic cheer for Southampton F.C.. If their final status is confirmed it will go to show that cheating can get you anywhere and if they are fined heavily it will be mere peanuts compared with the lucrative end prize.

None of this uncertainty and F.A. dillydallying is fair on anybody associated with Hull City Association Football Club.  We should be happily  focused on the final without distraction. Thanks Southampton! Thanks for nothing you lowdown cheats!

Tuesday

National Emergency Services Museum in Sheffield

On Tuesday of this week the weather was as  changeable as meteorologists had promised. Showers and sunshine. I decided to head back to The National Emergency Services Museum that we had visited with the grandchildren a month ago. The ticket was still valid and without the little ones  I would be able to take it all in. I even remembered a torch (American: flashlight) so that I could read display boards in  shadowy corners of the museum.

I spent two hours in there and then in the museum shop I encountered a typical meist. She was, she said, a retired teacher and as a regular museum volunteer she pretty much ran the shop. I was looking for little gifts for Phoebe and Margot but the meist woman had other ideas. Me, me, me, my son, my work, my daughter, me, me, me - what I think about this, what I think about that. AAAAARRRGGHHH!

I just wanted to say, "Shut the f*** up! I want to have a look round the shop!" Fortunately, after about ten minutes of the one-sided torture, a young father appeared with his little girl and the meist spotlight turned upon him. I grabbed a small police notebook for Phoebe and a little replica lifeboat that Margot could sail in her bath and then I scarpered before that silver-haired torturer could claw me again. 

World War II gas mask in The National Emergency Services Museum

By the way, it turned out she was never a teacher after all. She was a teaching assistant for a mere four years before she retired and yet that didn't stop her from spouting off about schools and education to a trapped listener who had been an actual teacher for thirty seven years - fifteen of those years as a hardworking Head of English. She did not want to know as this would have stalled her gushing meist narrative.

After leaving. Up through Paradise Square, across Campo Lane and along St James's Row, past the cathedral. I crossed High Street and cut through George Street before catching a Number 88 bus home.

It had been a good way to spend my Tuesday afternoon. I learnt more about the Victorian criminal Charles Peace who shot a man dead just fifty yards from this keyboard. Apparently, he is even referred to in The Beatles' 1964 film, "A Hard Day's Night". Late Victorians viewed him  as a kind of celebrity but he killed a young policeman in  Manchester and an outraged husband here in Banner Cross. Peace was no hero - far from it. Here's his actual mugshot from the 1870s...

Thirties

When my oldest brother Paul died in June 2010, it all seemed so very tragic and unfair. He was only sixty two years old. My father, Philip,  died at the age of sixty five in 1979 and my younger brother, Simon, was sixty six when he faded away in 2022. Three male members of my family gone before they had ticked off their three score years and ten. Gone too soon.

But let me tell you about three deaths that have occurred just this year concerning thirty somethings.

The first was Charlie - short for Charlotte. She was one our daughter Frances's closest friends at The University of Birmingham. Charlie lived a chaotic life but she was creative and interesting and in many ways back then she was still finding herself. She came to recognise that she was gay and married her long time partner in London just last year. She had just directed an avant garde film which I hope to see one day though it will never be watched by a wide audience. It was something she had always wanted to do. And then her body began to send out nasty signals. Fairly quickly she became the victim of aggressive breast cancer. Maybe Charlie had ignored the signals for too long. She died in March at the age of thirty six. Frances attended the funeral down in London.

It was down in London when Frances was working for a company called Source Breaker that a young Lebanese man joined the team. I am afraid I do not know his first name and Frances is not here to ask. He also got married in London and his wife gave birth to two boys. The oldest is five - just like our Phoebe. Apparently, the young man  was fit with no history of serious health issues. He was playing with his boys on the lounge carpet when he had a massive heart attack and was dead before ambulance personnel could reach him. He was thirty five years old. How will his young Lebanese wife cope? How will the boys fare in future years?

And then there's Carla. She was a Spanish pharmacist living in Sheffield. She had married the oldest son of one of Shirley's closest nursing colleagues. Carla was the mother of two young boys and she fought like hell to stay alive but the cancer was spreading everywhere and in the end - just a month ago she could fight no more.  She was thirty eight years old.

Three thirty somethings gone way before the whistle should have been blown on their lives. It makes my own losses - Dad, Paul and Simon seem a little less tragic because they were each granted almost thirty years more upon this field of life.

All of us - reading this blogpost - we have something terribly precious in the palms of our hands. Life itself. Let's live it with as much delight as we can muster in memory of those three thirty somethings and all of the others who departed far too early. They would have given the world for our good fortune

Picture credit © Grejak Dreamstime.com

Meism

The other day, I mistakenly thought I had come up with a wholly novel quasi-religious term and it's "Meism". You have probably encountered members of this cult in your own life. Meists are people who only want to talk about themselves - their families, their achievements, their adventures, their homes, their ailments. They are not much interested in other people's lives. It's all, "Me, me, me, me"...endlessly.

To some extent, we are probably all a bit meist and cynics might argue that blogging is all about self-interest and trumpeting your thoughts and experiences to others who spend time here in Blogworld. Perhaps it's all just a question of degree.

So many times in my life, I have found myself listening to meists as they drone on about themselves and their lives. I am a very good listener and I believe that other  people sense that. I react to what is being said and pose follow up questions but so often I reach a point in my head where I say to myself, "They have not asked me anything" or "They know nothing about me" or "Am I really so uninteresting, so unworthy that they just do not want to know?"

I could have titled this blogpost "Empathy" because I suppose that a lack of it is the foundation on which Meism is built. If you possess empathy you are aware of who you are communicating with. It's another human being whose view of the world may be delightfully different from your own. They are worthy of attention no matter what their station is in life. They could teach you something or give you food for thought.

If you manage to hinder the meist flow and intervene with a point, a memory or an idea of your own, the meist will look slightly irritated as if to say, "Let us get back to the main subject". And the main subject is a combination of what I have done, where I have been, what I  have spent money on, my family, what I have watched on television, my budgerigar, my car - on and on and on. Me-me-me-me.

I am not saying that meists are all bad. Maybe they just cannot help themselves. Perhaps their meism is connected with internal self-doubts - something like that. Maybe they became meists in meist family homes.

Being a meist is rather different from egomania but it's certainly edging in that extreme direction. This is how the dictionary defines egomania:-

...a psychological term for an obsessive, irrational, and excessive preoccupation with one’s own ego, self-importance, or needs. It is characterised by delusions of grandeur, extreme selfishness, and a lack of empathy, often manifesting as an intense, frantic desire for admiration and power. 

Yes, meists are generally not that far gone but I can think of a current world leader who possesses all of those traits aplenty. Know who I mean?

Monday

Over three hours with Barry Hines's brother Richard this afternoon and his lovely wife Jackie. Their son John was also there - up from Brighton where he lives. As usual, the conversation flowed like water in a mountain stream - tumbling over the rocks and down to the valley.

I had lent Richard my copy of "Walking Home" by Simon Armitage and I am pleased to say  that he has very much been enjoying it. So much so that he wanted to keep the book and asked me to sign it. I said it would be an 81st birthday present.

More and more, I discover that there were other parts of Richard in the iconic novel "Kes". Not just the boy who trained a kestrel. There were bits of the book that were lifted directly from Richard's experience of education in a secondary modern  school. Barry himself went to a grammar school after  passing his eleven plus examination.

Because I needed to pee - and I have never been upstairs to the Hines's bathroom - I made my apologies and departed just before five o'clock.

Shirley was down in London today - visiting Buckingham Palace with some other members of her Women's Institute. They had tickets to see an exhibition of our late queen's clothes.

Later I asked if Queen Elizabeth's bra and knickers were on show but apparently not - nor were her suspenders and fishnet stockings. Apparently Prince Philip liked that particular outfit.

Shirley was home by 7.15pm and very soon after that I presented her with a bowl of stir fried chicken with noodles and chopped vegetables which we ate together before I strode out. Down the road to watch the second leg of the Championship play-off semi-final at Frances and Stew's house.

It was an exciting game but Hull City came out on top as the deserved winners by two goals to nil. So beautiful that I am still smiling now. We are on our way to the Wembley final and who knows - who knows - we could end up in The Premier League once again! It's quite incredible really.

I was so happy that when I walked home I called in at "The Dark Horse" micro-pub for a celebratory pint of Aspall's cider. Now all that I need is a match ticket. They will sell like hotcakes. We will be playing either Middlesbrough or Southampton on Saturday May 23rd. Up The Tigers!

Algerian playmaker Mohamed Belloumi scored Hull City's first goal