Selfie

That was me one night in Ao Nang, Thailand in June 2011. I had bought the mask and snorkel ahead of my little dream trip to the tiny island of Koh Poda in the Andaman Sea near Krabi. I often think of those three days - the peacefulness, the clear blue sea and not one other guest was staying there though a few visitors came from the mainland on day cruises in longtail boats.

Life. It's funny that way isn't it? The majority of days are forgotten almost as soon as we have lived them but some days keep coming back to the surface like snorkellers constantly rising from a clear blue sea.

Longnor

Still catching up. Last Saturday my old friend Tony was over from East Yorkshire. We had been to see The Strawbs at The Greystones the night before but on that sunny Saturday morning we tootled off over the hills to lovely  Longnor in Staffordshire. I had planned a fine ramble in The Manifold Valley and after parking (for free!) in Longnor's cute and historic market place we set off westwards.

Very soon we reached Gauledge Farm where I had to rub my eyes. Imagine my surprise! My Beau and Peep were taking a farm holiday without our knowledge!

Then we carried on our ramble. At Fawside, we held a gate open for a farmer who was leading a herd of milking cows to fresh pasture. We passed the time of day as a miniature traffic jam formed and the cows ambled into their field in bovine slow motion.

Normally I walk alone, at my own pace, stopping whenever I want to do - usually to take pictures. When walking with somebody else it's a bit different. You have to be aware of their natural pace and be conscious of possible irritation that stops and diversions might cause. A couple of times, Tony's map reading skills seemed somewhat insecure. Once he wandered off across a meadow in a north easterly direction when the "path" went to the south east. I found myself standing by the next stile beckoning for him to join me. But this was partly forgivable because the "path" in question was surprisingly untrodden and the lush spring sward had hidden any evidence of it.

Onwards to Bridge End and then along to Ludburn Farm. Back over The River Manifold and northwards past Lower and Over Boothlow towards Longnor and a very late but well-earned  lunch in "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese". In a field east of The Manifold I eyeballed a group of men I recognised from "The Hammer and Pincers" in Sheffield - twenty miles away. They form an opposing quiz team and usually do quite well. I gave them a Yorkshire greeting which is like a grunt - "Oreight?"

More pictures:-

Come back Tony!

In the Manifold Valley

Guard dog in Longnor - but it didn't bark!

Chinley

Paul Evans in Memorial Park, Whaley Bridge

This blog is partly a traditional diary - for my own reference as life moves along. There are a few things I need to catch up on or I will probably forget about  them. Let's go back to last Thursday and the 10.20am train from Dore and Totley Station to Chinley which is on The Dark Side of the hills that split northern England in two. There be dragons!

At first, I was in a carriage with thirty or forty seven and eight year old children. Their teacher was taking them on the short ride to Grindleford which involves passing through The Totley Tunnel. Most of these mainly Asian children had probably never been on a train before and became both excited and agitated when we proceeded through the tunnel. Perhaps they thought there had been a sudden and total eclipse of The Sun! But they made it and left the carriage with their clipboards. The now much quieter train proceeded to Chinley.

A view of Ollerenshaw Hall

It was a delightful, sun-bathed day. From the station I walked to Lidgate and then up to the top of Eccles Pike before descending past Ollerenshaw Hall and Randal Carr Brook to Whaley Bridge. In The Memorial Park I met the park keeper, Paul Evans before ascending to Toddbrook Reservoir.  He was one of those people who would win gold if talking were an Olympic event. Then onwards through the centre of Whaley Bridge to Bugsworth Canal Basin - another monument to the ingenuity and sheer graft of our Victorian forbears. And then a quick march back to Chinley via the  course of the old tramway, in time to catch the 16:23 train home to Yorkshire.

It was another wonderful ramble in unfamiliar territory with so many splendid things to see, Blood coursed through my veins and I felt glad to be alive. Perhaps it is called The Chinley Effect. Some more pictures to share:-

A view of Chinley

In Whaley Bridge

Redundant phone box on Bings Lane, Whaley Bridge

At Bugsworth Canal Basin

Cleaning "The Navigation Inn" sign in Buxworth

Fishlake

Yorkshire is England's Texas and though I know a lot about this green and pleasant county, I openly admit that I don't know everything. It's just so damned big. A Texan once boasted, "Our state is so vast that trains take two days to travel across it!" In reply, the Yorkshireman said, "Aye, we've got slow trains in Yorkshire too lad!"

A week ago, I had never heard of the curiously named Yorkshire village of Fishlake. It is situated some six miles north of Doncaster in a flat landscape just west of the M18 motorway. I must have zoomed by it a thousand times, heading for The East Riding of this nation's  honeyed and milky jewel of a county. And I guess sometimes I must have spotted Fishlake's church tower, not knowing where it was as I travelled by at eighty miles per hour.

In 1086, when the Domesday Book was compiled, the village was referred to Fiscelac - a name derived from Old English. Essentially it meant "fish stream", referring to the abundance of fish that local residents could catch throughout the year but especially when the River Don flooded - something that happened very often in the absence of levees.

I drove into Fishlake in the early evening and mooched around before heading towards the old church. It is called St Cuthbert's and was built in Norman times. The south door is quite magnificent - probably the finest Romanesque church doorway in Yorkshire with stone carvings that are still impressive even after a thousand years of gradual erosion. The church is named after St Cuthbert because his bones once resided here long after his coffin was removed from the holy island of Lindisfarne during the time of Viking invasions.

Many church doors are locked these days but I tried the door of St Cuthbert's and it creaked open. Inside I could hear singing from the vestry - a small choir practising. And they were singing:-

You'll remember me when the west wind moves

Upon the fields of barley

You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

As we walk in fields of gold

Sunlight filtered into the old church and I noticed the very beautiful east window - restored in 2001. Very simple and elegant and designed to frame the trees in the churchyard beyond.

St Cuthbert's is a  peaceful and much loved stone building that speaks of generations of Fishlake villagers - of their hopes and dreams, their weddings, their christenings and their funerals and of the river beside it that made this forgotten place a bustling little inland port in medieval times. In those flatlands by The River Don where water, land and sky converge.

Girlhood

Last week I went to see another film at "The Showroom". It was "Girlhood" directed by Céline Sciamma. The dialogue was all in French so there were subtitles. Actually the French title for the film is "Bande de Filles" which can be best translated as "Gang of Girls" - not "Girlhood" - a title which perhaps deliberately echoes "Boyhood" (2014) directed by  Richard Linklater.

"Girlhood" is set in the suburbs of Paris, in a tough community which is largely of black African origin. In fact, white France is noteworthy because of its absence. The central character is Marieme (Vic) played by  Karidja Touré. She finds friendship with a gang of girls who allow her to forget her troubles and show her how to have fun. They dance. They laugh. They run away. But they also fight. They are tough cookies.

It is a film about the brightness of youth - its aspiration and its energy. Under their tough exteriors, the girls are quite vulnerable and just want to be loved, to be happy. The ending might seem unsatisfactory for there is no neat resolution but to me this was just right. Marieme has had a little cry but she realises that she must not give in to self-pity. She has to accept her lot and simply carry on.

I found it a charming and engaging film. There's laughter and friendship and the sparkling, frenetic vibrancy of youth. I am pleased that I bothered to go. It is not the France I remember from childhood visits there but this entire world is in so many ways very different from how it used to be.

Updates

1) Last evening Fred Fox came to the middle of our lower lawn and seemed delighted to have discovered a bowl of "Fox Food" by Waitrose waiting for him. Instead of gobbling it down with gusto, he crammed as many chunks in his vulpine jaws as he could and ran off to hide them some place. Then he came back for the rest. As you can see, I managed to snap him in the fading light tonight - through our kitchen window.

Mmmm! "Fox Food"! It's delicious!

2) My friend Higgy remains in diagnostic limboland. Didn't Hamlet say "Osteoporosis or bone cancer, that is the question..."? He obliged me to do something I haven't done in twenty seven years when I popped into the "Spar" shop at Hunter's Bar to buy him two packs of "Embassy Number One".  £10.15 per pack makes each cigarette cost over fifty pence. I would have been happier buying him food supplies but Higgy's relationship with food is unusually difficult. The same is not true of his relationships with tobacco, lager and waccy baccy.

3) Sepp Blatter has resigned as President of The FIFA Gravy Train. He is trying desperately to depart with dignity when he knows that the legal wolves have him in his sights and are starting to circle. His deluded daughter Corrine imagines her daddy is being cruelly victimised.

There was an old trickster called Sepp

A pirate just like Johnny Depp

On June the Second

Retirement beckoned 

When he heard The Grim Reaper's quickstep.

Minotaur mosaic at Knossos, Crete

4) We may be off on a Mediterranean holiday in the next two weeks. I am looking at good deals in Crete - opting this time for a "package holiday" rather than the tailored kind of trip I frequently create via the machinations of the internet. Sometimes a package can work out cheaper and I think this will be the case with Crete. But it is still not booked yet.

5) Yesterday Shirley had a "once in a lifetime" experience - attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace in London. This year is the centenary of The Women's Institute and every branch in the country was allowed to send one rep. I believe my mother went to the fiftieth anniversary party, representing my home village's W.I. in 1965. The Queen wasn't hosting yesterday's event - it was instead The Duchess of Cornwall. I bet she didn't have to spend forty five minutes in a lavatory queue! Eight thousand women! If I had been there I would have had a jimmy riddle in the rhododendrons with the corgis.

The Duchess of Cornwall sharing dirty jokes with The Calendar
Girls at yesterday's WI Garden Party. Have you heard the one
about Adrian and the vicar's wife in a camper van?

Chunks

I do the majority of our grocery shopping at "Lidl" and "Aldi" though I notice that a new "Netto" store will be opening on Queens Road this month. It will be like meeting up with an old friend - that Scottie dog with the basket in his mouth. "Netto" is Danish for "value" you know.

Anyway I nipped into the supermarket of the well-heeled and affluent today - "Waitrose" - visited by coiffured women with haughty expressions and corduroy men with Range Rovers. They looked at me askance when I refused to doff my cap. Well, I wasn't wearing a cap but you know what I mean.

I was looking for fox food. And finally I found it in the pet section - massive cans of chunks in gravy with rabbit and turkey. Clever wording I think. Not chunks of rabbit and turkey but "chunks in gravy". Chunks of what I wonder? Tripe?

The can cost me one British pound in spite of the amateurish label design. Why put a picture of  a dog on food intended for foxes? And the writing at the top looks as if a lowly paid supermarket worker had just  picked up a blue felt tip pen. Besides, if I were marketing fox food I'd call it "Reynard" "Vulpine Delight",  "Farmer's Best" , "Ukrainian Village" or "Fox Feast by Jan Blawat". Not "Fox Food". That is so naff.

Anyway, I hope that Fred Fox appreciates my generosity. He is in for a nice surprise tonight.