Special

Who

Tension

The 2012 award widget, specially
designed by Danny Boyle - architect
of the London Olympics' opening
and closing ceremonies.

The prestigious "Laughing Horse Blog Awards" are being held this very evening at the exclusive Whitley Hall Hotel in the northern outskirts of Sheffield. For those who are unaware of "Laughing Horse" and what it represents, let us just say that it is probably the most coveted award for anyone currently working in the blogging industry.

Previous overall winners have included:

My Dad's a Communist  by Daphne (2009)

Going Gently by Earl Gray(2010)

Shooting Parrots by Ian  (2011)

But every year there are subsidiary awards which are of course also gleefully treasured.

Bloggers have been arriving in Sheffield from every corner of the world, all eager to learn if their services to blogging willl be acknowledged by the Laughing Horse Awards Committee. Notable arrivals have included the eskimo blogger known as "Pole A Bear" and the Salt Lake City blogger "Baseball Mitt" who seems much greyer since he lost the US presidential election to the Chicago-based blogger "Don't Barrack Me Suckers!" 

Perhaps it was the jetlag that did it but after downing a couple of pints of Tetley's at the hotel bar Mitt found himself in a contretemps with Captain T. Gowans from Angola ("Hippo on the Lawn"). Gowans gripped the poor old bloke round the gullet and gruffly warned him - "Don't you EVER say that about Africans you ninny!" Naturally, Mr R.Henry Brague was the peacemaker and had to physically force himself between the warring pair.

Bathed in afternoon light, sitting in the alcove of the bar's bay window, several lady bloggers exchanged knitting patterns and cake recipes while simultaneously humming lullabies and darning their menfolk's holey socks. Multitasking as usual. But then brash Californian rancher Janice Blawat spoilt it all by passing round graphic roadkill pictures - squashed skunks, possums and endangered raccoons. Yet even she was trumped when New Zealander Katherine de Shovel arrived with a frightened brush tailed possum that had been squeezed into a plastic carry basket meant for cats or small dogs. She said its name was Art and when Helen from "Helsie's Happenings" and theatrical impressario Daphne Franks realised it was still alive, they screamed like hysterical schoolgirls. 

Elizabeth was on a bar stool sipping pina coladas while simultaneously admiring the cocktail shaking skills of Olaf the hotel's buff Swedish bartender. Then who should arrive but Colonel I. Hutson from "The Owl Wood". He shuffled up to Elizabeth with a military glint in his eye and ordered a small egg nog.

Impoverished Economically challenged bloggers have had to bunk up in the basement rooms of Whitley Hall Hotel. These are very basic airless rooms normally used by chambermaids and porters. Jenny from Wrexham (currently dressed in a silver body stocking) is with Shooting Parrots and Libby from "D-Scribes" is in with the lascivious and aforementioned Captain Gowans. Brian Cutts (currently dressed in a Spanish matador's outfit) and The Arctic Fox-Pimpernel are literally on bunkbeds. Meanwhile upstairs, the Regal Room with its Jacobean four poster bed is occupied by Earl John Gray and his professorial consort Sir Christopher Brainbox O.M.G.., author of  "A Brief History of The Trelawnyd Flower Show" in five volumes.

So the guests and nominees are gathered. In a few hours the results for 2012 will be known...

Altogether

Dad behind the wheel. Mum in the front passenger seat. The kids in the back. "Are we nearly there yet?" Driving over to Hull between Xmas and New Year. It reminded me of all those other half-remembered drives. To France. To Italy. To the shops. To see Mum in the old folks' home. To cottage holidays in Shropshire. To London. To Las Vegas from L.A...

Will there ever be another day like today? Ian is twenty eight and Frances is twenty four. They're not at home any any more - just for Christmas. And we're going  to see Hull City at the K.C. Stadium against Yorkshire rivals - Leeds United. Murky spray on the motorway. We're later than we wanted to be. We park up on Great Thornton Street and march swiftly to our "theatre of dreams". 

The players are already out. Leeds in their virginal white strips and City in their black and amber - unhappily sponsored by despicable "Cash Converters". We take control of the game, We spurn chance after chance. Leeds look statuesque  We are Hull. "Take my hand, take my whole life too! For I can't help falling in love with you!" We are so much on top that our goalkeeper's left to visit the barbershop but incredibly, amazingly at half-time it's still 0-0.

Second half you wonder. Is it going to be one of those games where the best team doesn't win? But after fifty three minutes and finally, finally, Corry Evans sweeps the leather ball past Paddy Kenny's outstretched arms into the net. "Who are ya? Who are ya?" we chant at Leeds's army of travelling supporters. And four minutes later Meyler rises to a well-directed corner and like a cannonball heads the plastic-coated sphere  into the bulging net. Effectively, it's all over there and then. We have suppressed the mighty Leeds - doing the double over them for the first time in my life. As beautiful as a dew-sparkled cobweb on a summer's dawn.

Tea and Xmas cake at Tony and Fiona's mansion in Swanland before the 80 mph motorway run back to Sheffield. M62 to M18 to M1. My little family. The people I love the most. Contented that we gave Leeds a real footballing lesson. Maybe never to be repeated. Up The Tigers!

Pi

Yesterday afternoon, Shirley, Frances and I went to see the 3D version of "Life of Pi" directed by Ang Lee and starring Suraj Sharma as "Pi" Patel. Shirley had read the novel  by Yann Martel  some time ago but Frances and I didn't know quite what to expect.

The middle hour of the film has "Pi" out at sea in the company of a Bengal tiger called, rather bizarrely,  Richard Parker. This hour was quite sublime - both visually and in terms of the surreal experience it created. The 3D effects did not enslave the director's intentions, as arguably happened with "Avatar", but instead served or enhanced the cinematographic fantasy. Some of it was quite stunning and I found myself lost in the spectacle.

Did Pi dream it all? Was it truth or illusion? In the end it doesn't really matter. There was something vaguely spiritual about it all but if there was a religious message it certainly wasn't shoved roughly down your throat. At times there's a lightness, a deliberate silliness about "Life of Pi" and it is very likely the best film I have seen this year. It was breaking boundaries and Shirley said it truly did justice to a novel she had very much enjoyed. All three of us walked out of the cinema feeling we had just watched something rather special and uplifting.

Doodle

I came across this old doodle the other day. It reminded me of past times - when I was a member of my old school's Senior Leadership Team. It was created - if that is the right word - on June 29th 2009 at yet another SLT meeting, less than a month before I was to take my leave of a place that had eaten up twenty two years of my life. Towards the end, I felt quite distant from those meetings in which the players made moves as if in some educational X Factor competition though the atmosphere was usually and rather oddly reverential. Missionary zeal and all that. 

Doodling is something I have almost always done. Like walking in the countryside, it can help some of us to focus and organise thoughts. Not everyone's brain is scientifically bullet-pointed into neat checklists and action plans. I'm very glad I took early retirement when I did, leaving those interminable meetings behind and the endless spreadsheets, the observation programmes, glossy government ring binders, the targets and all the other stuff that got in the way of the simple business of teaching kids. It's taken a while but three and a half years down the line I feel I have cleared away most of that psychological debris.

On the whole, the football supporters in my old doodle look rather glum don't you think? Hopefully Hull City fans won't look that way after the Leeds United game on Saturday! We'll be grinning from ear to ear, won't we?...And it's a little hard to believe that a week today I'll be high above the clouds, flying back to Thailand. 

Dore

After Christmas comes Boxing Day. Yesterday's feasting had made me feel like a lethargic Mr Blobby so I drove a couple of miles south of Pudding Towers, past the Sheffield Tigers rugby ground on Dore Moor and then down Whitelow Lane, turning to the riding stables at the end of Shorts Lane. It's somewhere I have often parked in order to begin a familiar one hour circular walk - burn some calories, get the blood pumping and the lungs gasping fresh air.

I put on the walking gaiters that Shirley had bought me for Christmas. It's the first pair I have ever owned but many times in recent months  freshly laundered trews have been muddied by country walks so this seemed a good way to protect my trouser bottoms. It was a bit of a struggle getting them on because the straps that go under the boots were difficult to adjust. But finally I was able to set off.

As well as providing good physical exercise, I find that walking is also psychologically therapeutic. As you walk, you think. You're processing memories and the issues that life throws up. Sometimes you're solving problems or conceiving creative notions. In my humble opinion, many of the difficulties caused by modern living would be massively reduced if people would only get out walking. Depression? Forget the pills and the counselling and get out for a long walk. Obesity? Walk it off ounce by ounce. In mourning? Unemployed? Unhappy? Just get walking.

After the walk, I drove up to Dore Village where I snapped a few pictures as is my wont. Above you see two foraging hens on the verge by "The Hare and Hounds" and below a stone that commemorates the first unification of England which happened when King Ecgbert of Wessex accepted the submission of King Eanred of Northumbria at Dore in 829 A.D. to become, for a few shorts months, what The Anglo Saxon Chronicle called "The Ruler of Britain". He predated Aethelstan - often thought of as the first true King of England by a hundred years.