Advice

Feeding Advice for Urban Foxes

We urban foxes have numerous possible food sources. Dustbins and wheelie bins are of course a rich traditional source of nutrition for the vulpine community as our human neighbours throw away a lot of perfectly edible food. We can also scavenge behind supermarkets and other food shops where so much tasty stuff is thrown away day after day.

Fresh food is of course highly desirable. I have lost count of the number of chickens I have liberated from wire mesh hen runs. My favourite wild bird is a big fat wood pigeon. Delicious and relatively easy to catch if you are as cunning as I am. You hide in the shadows of a bush and then pounce quickly upon the stupid pigeon from behind. I have also been known to sink my teeth into unsuspecting pet cats but am not fond of fur or their needle-like talons.

Recently I have been developing a new technique in which I have targeted a particular middle aged couple whose cubs have gone. They occupy a semi-detached house in the southern suburbs of Sheffield and have a big rambling garden at the rear. At approximately six o' clock each evening, I lie on their lawn and wait till I see one of them at their kitchen window.

At this point I stand up and look directly at them, tilting my head appealingly  to one side. I make my eyes as soulful as possible and let my tongue loll from my bottom jaw as if to say "Please feed me! I'm starving!" It took a few days for my plan to work but after a while they got my message and they are now well-trained.

The bloke now even buys me dog food from the supermarket! When he opens the kitchen door and steps out into the garden, I pretend that I am a bit nervous and tiptoe behind the bracken. He puts the food on the lawn and returns indoors. Then I step out of my hiding place and gobble up whatever has been left for me. If I have already eaten, I take the food away to my various hiding places. After all, it is always nice to have a midnight supper!

If you are patient and follow my method you will establish a reliable food source that will see you through the hard days of winter. Humans are very gullible and so with just a little foxy behaviour it is easy to manipulate them. However, you must choose the humans you target with extreme care as a few  of them have a peculiar aversion to foxes. They are known as vulpophobics and might charge at you frothing at the mouth with a garden fork clasped in their hands.

Best wishes,

Fred Fox

Departed

Carol in Monaco, 1991

She has gone. I only "knew" her in the online, blogging world but I still feel a genuine sense of loss. I "met" her in February last year but very quickly we "clicked". There was mischief between us.

She was only fifty one years old and she died at the hands of the beast we call Cancer. Her exotic blogging name was Molly Printemps but her real name was Carol Harrison. She lived in the village of South Cave just west of Hull with her husband Roger who she referred to as Roberto in her blog. It was only late last summer that they enjoyed a wonderful Mediterranean cruise together.

The last post she penned included a photo of a Camelia plant flowering in her garden. That was on April 6th. The next post, dated Monday August 3rd is actually by her sister Katy and is titled lovingly "Once upon a time...".  A hearfelt poem follows crafted by a sister who is not naturally one for making poems. Earlier this evening, I left this comment:-

Oh no! Oh no! I am so shocked that Carol has left the stage. I kept coming back to her "Camelia" post and wondering when she would get round to creating another blogpost. Connecting with her through blogging was fun and in a way I am glad that I didn't know she was fighting cancer. That would have impacted on our online mischief.

Katy's poem in memory of her sister is a lovely way of saying goodbye - like carving a love heart on a tree.

Farewell Molly Printemps! Farewell Carol Harrison! I send my sincere condolences to Roger and to Katy and to all who counted Carol as a friend in real life.

Love from
Neil in Sheffield (Yorkshire Pudding)

Later on, just before I began to write this post, Katy responded:-

Thank you YP, You made her laugh....a lot. She did love a bit of mischief and you certainly connected from that point of view. Not being a writer, the poem was pretty tough to do, an emotional nightmare anyway, but I could hear her shouting about my spelling and grammar, which she did to me frequently. I started deliberately misspelling in emails to her a few years ago, which I'm sure drove her nuts at first, but she said nothing and started doing it back to me, so bad that even I new it was misspelled. Thank you for keeping her laughing all the way. Katy x (Roberto Printemp and the rest of the family)

Please visit "The Many Musings of Molly Printemps"

If you are reading this, I bid you a fond farewell Molly Printemps or Carol or maybe simply - Jock! Night-night!

Lesson

Sit down you noisy bloggers and listen up! Adrian, put it away and get down off the window sill! Graham! How many times do I have to tell you, do NOT pull Kate's hair like that! It's cruel!...Oh good heavens John, why can't you leave your damned dogs at home! And Carol! CAROL! Take out your earphones! Helen, Lee and Leisha! This is not a beauty parlour! Put your make up away girls and don't "Oh sir!" me with your come hither eyes! Bob, stop fiddling with your organ and Brian, please speak in English - not in that foreign johnny language that nobody understands! Jan, thank you for the English bantam eggs - I'll have them for tea tonight. Oh Frau Meike - glad you could make it! What? I don't care how long it takes you from Ludwigsburg just get here on time tomorrow! Sit there by the wall next to Jennifer and Hilly and that chatterbox new girl Alphie Soup! Shut up Alphie! We don't want to know any more about making minestrone!

Okay, listen up! Now I know that most of you have already mastered this critical matter but there are a couple of you who haven't so we are all going to have to go over it again... Please don't groan like that!

I am talking about the difference between:-

its and it's

(written on blackboard with screeching chalk)

Right let's look at it's with the apostrophe. It is short for either it is or it has. It is what we masters of grammar call an abbreviation. Here are a couple of examples:-

It's sunny outside. ( Short for - It is sunny outside.)
It's got a strong beak and talons. (Short for - It has got a strong beak and talons.)

The other its - without an apostrophe - is reserved for possession or belonging. Here are a couple of examples:-
The dog ate its scotch egg. (The scotch egg belonging to the dog)
The River Leven burst its banks. (The banks of the river - belonging to it.)

Now take out your exercise books and your "Yorkshire Pudding Grammar Guides" and tackle the it's/its exercises that begin on page 232 and run on to page 274....

What is it Graham?...No you may not go to the toilet lad!...Well write to your M.P. then! Okay settle down and get on with the exercises everybody while I read my "Daily Mirror"... Urrgh Winnie! You disgusting creature! .... It's all over my Harris tweed jacket!...NO GIGGLING!.. Have you brought a spare fanny flannel John?

Doping

You may have heard the latest news about doping in athletics. It seems that hundreds of athletes have been at it and many of them were medal winners in top events - including The Olympics. 

Today's doping practice is usually aimed at increasing the red blood cell count in order to transmit bigger volumes of oxygen to the muscles. This was exactly what the disgraced  American cyclist Lance Armstrong's cunning method successfully achieved. And it is why he won The Tour de France an incredible seven consecutive times.

Doping is about getting ahead of your competitors, stealing a march on them but there are plenty of other ways of gaining advantage and they make me feel a little ambivalent about the current doping scandal.

Let's take genetic inheritance. Some athletes are born into naturally athletic families where good sporting physiques are passed down through the generations. Should we accuse the recipient of such beneficent genes of cheating? Plenty of other athletes compete in their sports in spite of the disadvantageous  physiques they have largely inherited.

The saying - "You are what you eat" has extra resonance in sport. The right diet can make a big difference when competing at the highest level and many top athletes are advised by armies of dieticians. Isn't that a bit like doping - gaining advantage through what you consume?

Good coaches can also make a big difference. They know how to train their athletes for success whereas poor coaches presumably make a lot of basic errors and may set their athletes off on ineffective  training regimes. Having a great coach can surely be like taking a performance enhancing drug. They give special advantage to their charges.

Similar arguments could be made about equipment, training facilities, family wealth and sponsorship. They all confer advantage upon the fortunate recipients putting them a step ahead of their competitors.

These are all reasons why I feel somewhat ambivalent towards doping in sport. Perhaps we should just say - what the heck! Let the games commence and take as many drugs or blood supplements as you need! Then we wouldn't have all these witch hunts and moral guardians preaching from their high horses. Mind you, the Olympic motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger" would suddenly take on extra significance - especially the "Higher" bit.

Astwith

It was last Thursday afternoon when I set off for the tiny Derbyshire village of Astwith. I would be astonished if its population exceeded fifty but it has a postbox, a village noticeboard and a modern phone box that is so rarely used these days that ir is being reclaimed by Mother Nature in the form of creeping ivy. Here it is:-

Boots on and a few minutes out of Astwith there are cows resting in a meadow with the hollow ruins of Hardwick Hall on the ridge beyond Stainsby Plantation:-

Beyond the industrial estate on the edge of the village of Holmewood, I meet The Five Pits Trail. Once a railway track, it connects five villages that used to boast productive coal mines but they are long gone and with each passing year the evidence of their existence becomes more obscure.

By the trail I see sheep grazing near High House Farm:-

 After the village of Pilsley, I pause to compose this summery picture:-

Then I am off again, plodding towards Tibshelf:-

Through Tibshelf, I leave the main road and head for Biggin Farm.  I see the ruin of another, smaller farm beyond a barbed wire fence and spiky hawthorn hedgerows but I can't get there so instead I take this photo of the rolling North-East Derbyshire countryside:-

Two miles further on and I am back at my car in litttle Astwith and it's seven o' clock in the evening. Time to head home. I had never been to Astwith before and it is likely that I shall never return. Close to the M1 motorway, thousands of motor vehicles flash by it every day but the drivers don't even know that Astwith is sleeping there as it has done for well over a thousand years.

Oklahoma!

How do you celebrate the night of Yorkshire Day? Why, you go and see a production of "Oklahoma!" of course. 

It was in Sheffield's beautifully restored "Lyceum" Theatre and we were just four rows from the front. The production was slick, vibrant and thoroughly entertaining and the quality of singing was tremendous. So too were the dance sections. In fact, I didn't spot a single unintended error or flaw in the entire show and the cast truly deserved their standing ovation.

Curly with Jud at The Smoke House in last night's performance of "Oklahoma!"

"Oklahoma!" first opened on Broadway in March, 1943 while the second world war was being waged in Europe and the western Pacific. Perhaps its "feel good" character was a deliberate antidote to war. This musical represented the very first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. It was immediately a huge box office success and seventy years later it still pulls in the crowds.

At one point in Act One, cowboy Will Parker returns from Kansas City having been mightily impressed with the place. And he sings:-

Ev'rythin's up to date in Kansas City
They've gone about as fur as they c'n go!
They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high,
About as high as a buildin' orta grow.
Ev'rythin's like a dream in Kansas City,
It's better than a magic lantern show!
Y' c'n turn the radiator on
Whenever you want some heat.
With ev'ry kind o' comfort
Ev'ry house is all complete.
You c'n walk to privies in the rain
And never wet your feet!
They've gone about as fur as they c'n go,

If only Will had known what the next seventy years would bring!

Theatre writer Thomas Hischak once wrote, "Not only is 'Oklahoma!' the most important of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, it is also the single most influential work in the American musical theatre. ... It is the first fully integrated musical play and its blending of song, character, plot and even dance would serve as the model for Broadway shows for decades."

Gene Nelson as Will Parker in the 1955 film version of "Oklahoma!"

Hurrah!

August 1st is Yorkshire Day!

In celebration, I invite you to watch this 

three minute video:-

It is little wonder that we think of 

Yorkshire as "God's own county"...

The Yorkshire Flag