Eggsplanation

What is that sitting on the kitchen worktop at Pudding Towers? Lord Pudding just popped into "The Banner Crust" to buy it. Is it a ginger coated chocolate bonbon? Is it a battered cricket ball? Is it a red kangaroo turd? Or is it a castrated camel's left testicle?

No my friends it is a superb example of a scotch egg. It cost his lordship ninety nice pence and he consumed it yesterday lunchtime.

It is sometimes said that the scotch egg was invented in a posh London grocery store called "Fortnum and Mason" in 1738 but long before then, in the cuisine of the Moghul Empire, there was a strikingly similar food item called narcissus kofta. It consisted of a hard boiled egg encased in a meat kofta shell. By 1738, the tentacles (not testicles) of the mighty British Empire had certainly reached far into the old Asian territories of the Moghuls so it is very possible that the idea was brought back to the motherland.

Various readers of this blogpost will be aware that scotch eggs can be highly addictive. Over in the exclusive retirement village of Trelawnyd, North Wales one particular resident is regularly seen stumbling from door to door with a baying pack of guide dogs, his eyes bloodshot, his swollen tongue hanging out, desperately pleading "Have you got a spare scotch egg?" Once a respected member of the nursing profession this poor trembly fellow, whose name has been withheld for legal reasons, is now a shadow of his former self.

Dressed in vomit stained cargo trousers with a great split in the crotch, old Homer Simpson carpet slippers and a stained "Walking Dead" T-shirt, he is a sorry sight to behold. He hasn't shaved in years, his eyesight is going and his lank hair is dishevelled. That is what happens with scotch egg addiction. First your money goes and then your self-respect.

Being of tough Yorkshire stock, I am determined to keep my fondness for scotch eggs in check. A weak character can easily lead users down the path to dependency as in the case cited above and I am well aware of that danger. However, scotch eggs have well-proven aphrodisiacal qualities and can bring other health benefits  too such as extra walking stamina, improved memory and improved memory. On balance, I calculate it is a risk worth taking.

Here's that same scotch egg cut in half. Notice how in this example there is no gap between the egg and the sausage meat casing for such a gap is characteristic of an inferior product - such as scotch eggs sold at petrol stations or at shops across Lancashire:-

Shed

Some people take pictures of golden sunrises over palm-fringed beaches. Others take spectacular pictures of panoramas from mountain tops. Some prefer images of pouting models strolling down cat walks while others prefer pictures of toothless toddlers on tartan rugs. Wildlife  photography? Mucky Highland Terriers rolling around in Scottish snow or cute thatched cottages in Dorset?  A grand palace in Ludwigsburg, Germany or a crazy grandson in Alabamistan? The possibilities are endless.

But I prefer pictures of tumbledown sheds like the one featured in this blogpost. I snapped them yesterday while testing out the new boots. It is an old railway freight carriage - minus the wheels. It has stood in a field on the western outskirts of Sheffield for all of the thirty seven years I have lived here. Once used as a stable by a horsey teenage girl who must now be in her forties or fifties, its only current functions are as a shelter for sheep and as a subject for arty farty photographers in new boots.

It is a windswept place in the heart of Britain. Beyond the shed you can see the suburb of Lodge Moor and beyond that, over on the horizon The Bradfield Moors. Having talked to the landowner, I can now reveal that this rustic holiday home will soon be available exclusively to foreign readers of "Yorkshire Pudding" for a knock down price of £315 a week, rising to £543 in the summer. Sleeps six, well-ventilated, this charming country cottage enjoys spectacular views over The Rivelin Valley and is a short drive from Stonehenge and Shakespeare's birthplace. Contact "Yorkshire Pudding Holiday Cottages Ltd" to check availability.

Boots

Above: my trusty walking boots. We have travelled many miles together, up hill and down dale, in all seasons, over countless stiles, across wintry streams, through pine forests and snowdrifts and last Friday along a farm track that was knee-deep in mud and cow dung. Lovely! You will be pleased to learn that I washed them in the kitchen sink and then slowly  dried them on a radiator. It was in that process that I realised the rubber soles were so worn down that little useful grip was left behind. It was time for a new pair of boots!

Now two and a half years ago, I won £230 by betting that my football team (Hull City) would win promotion to the Premier League. That money was simply languishing in an online account so I decided to liberate it and spend a chunk of it on some new boots.

I bought them in Rotherham on Sunday afternoon and they are pictured below. Size 12 Scarpa Cyclone GTX boots  costing £90. They may look little different from the old boots but they cost  twice as much. I wore them all day yesterday just to try and bed them in. I even wore them at the pub quiz in "The Rising Sun". Men were looking at me whispering, "He's wearing Cyclone GTX! He must be made of money!"  The Gore-Tex  fabric on the uppers will keep my feet nice and dry and the rubber tread will see me sticking to slippery surfaces like a gecko. Hopefully, these two boots and I have as many miles ahead of us as I covered in my faithful old pair. Scary to say but it is very possible that they will be the last boots I ever buy....

Anniversary

I have been working at our local Oxfam shop for exactly a year now. Every Wednesday, just after 1pm, I set off walking down the hill to Hunter's Bar. Over the pedestrian crossings and along Ecclesall Road then into the shop.

Out of a possible fifty two Wednesday afternoon shifts I have worked all but one and that was because we were on holiday in Crete. This fact reminds me that I must do more travelling in 2016. One place I would very much like to go is The Isle of Man and I know that Shirley is keen to go there too. We will see. I guess there will also be a significant foreign trip.

At Oxfam, my duties involve working on the till which I am now rather more comfortable with, sorting book donations in the book room upstairs, pricing books and putting them out on the shelves downstairs, cashing up, filling in the appropriate paper work and visiting the NatWest Bank at Hunter's Bar with the day's takings.

Each shift lasts for four hours so I have worked 204 hours for Oxfam in the last twelve months - not much in the grand scheme of things but as they say - every little helps. Oxfam does so much good work around the world. Remember the terrible earthquakes in Nepal for example? For every pound raised by Oxfam, eighty pence goes directly to development work or to emergency relief.

I get sick and tired of doubting Thomases who sagely churn out myths about how charities like Oxfam squander donated money. It just isn't true and it is an insult to regular donors and the thousands of people who work hard to raise funds.

As an aside, one of the things I like about working for Oxfam is the fact that I set off and return home at the same times each week. In this way, I have marked the seasons passing and watched the light changing with each passing week. I can only remember one afternoon when I was rained upon and had to wear my hooded raincoat. England isn't as rainy as people sometimes think even though it is of course always raining in Manchester.

I know that most bloggers are  extremely wealthy and very generous people who are always keen to help others, so please consider donating a tiny portion of your enormous wealth to Oxfam. Go to DONATE.

Amundsen

On yesterday's country walk to the east of Matlock, Derbyshire I needed to get from the tiny village of Wheatcroft to Lindway Lane. It looked very straightforward on my Ordnance Survey map sheet. There was a track leading north from Beech Farm which would, after a hundred yards, become a path, descending  to Lindway Brook. Easy peasy.

Roald Amundsen
1872-1928

But what my map didn't reveal was that the track from Beech Farm is exceedingly muddy, regularly churned up by a herd of vindictive milking cows and fed by a couple of hillside rivulets engorged by recent heavy rainfall. At first I edged along the side of this morass, gripping to the fence and putting my boots on the tiny clods of verge that the bovine army had not managed to turn to brown soil porridge, supplemented by extra large dollops of cow shit.

Halfway along the track, I realised that there was nothing else for it but to step into the mud and hope for the best. If a film crew had captured this scene, they would have recorded a cursing Yorkshire Pudding trying in vain to keep his boots dry, hoping that the next footstep would not see him sinking knee deep into the chocolately brown gunge. However, that was exactly what happened. Both feet almost knee deep in mud.

One boot seemed stuck - as if in quick drying concrete - and for a moment I feared that I might die there - either through sinking into the mixture and suffocating or simply through not being able to extricate my feet. If I had shouted "Help!", no one would have heard me - just the damned cows. Fortunately, I didn't fall over and with superhuman muscular exertion lunged to the side of the track where the mooing beasts' hooves had at least left some solidity. 

Ahead of me the track veered to the left as the grassy green public footpath descended to the right. I could see a group of cows in the adjacent field and they appeared to be laughing at me like "Laughing Cow" cheese cows. "B******s!" I yelled. And then like Roald Amundsen arriving at The South Pole on December 11th 1911, I made it out of the mud and onto the relatively dry, firm path that would lead me onwards to Lindway Lane, to the ruins of Trinity Chapel, to Coldharbour Lane, to the hamlet of Butterley and then back to Tansley where I had parked my car.

My lined walking trousers are now in the washing basket but the boots are still in the car, reeking of congealed mud and cow dung. I should get them out and clean them...or perhaps it's time for a new pair of boots? It is with enormous relief that I am able to share this tale of survival with you... Folk often say that there's nothing like a nice, long walk in the countryside to ease one's troubled soul - communing with nature, listening to the music of native birds and wading through a sea of mud like the monster of the deep.

Four pictures from yesterday....

December tree by the path from Lea to Wakebridge

Holy Trinity Chapel, Brackenfield
A sixteenth century church, long abandoned in the woods.

In Wheatcoft... before the mud.

Riders on Cunnery Lane.
The woman on the right said, "We're not used to the paparazzi!"

Singing

Turn the clock back to the early nineteen sixties, back to my village primary school. There's a big black-leaded cast iron fireplace in the corner and we have just returned to the classroom after playtime. Miss Readhead gives out copies of "Singing Together". She turns on the retro wireless in its polished mahogany casing and we wait for instructions from our virtual singing teacher - Mr William Appleby who speaks with a reassuring Yorkshire accent. One of us.

All around the country in thousands of other classrooms, countless children are huddling just like us - ready to sing. There are old British folk songs, Christmas carols and a few songs from afar such as "Waltzing Matilda" and "Yellow Bird". 

I enjoyed those "Singing Together" mornings and usually sang my heart out. The programmes were intelligently constructed - allowing for demonstration and repetition, breaking the songs up into small sections before putting them back together again. Some of those timeless songs remain imprinted in my memory like musical tattoos - "The Minstrel Boy", "Lillibulero", "Green Grow the Rushes-O" and "The Skye Boat Song" for example.

For several years there was a parallel programme with accompanying songbook called "Rhythm and Melody" but for some reason it was far less popular than "Singing Together" which very many people of my generation remember with much affection. It was the best of school - gathered round the fireplace with classmates. It linked us with our capital city and brought us lovely songs with history and meaning. And it wasn't dry and technical as many music lessons in secondary school would later be. "Singing Together" was exactly what the title suggested it would be - people singing together and hopefully, like me, enjoying the experience.

Link to a BBC magazine article with an audio clip that peels back the years.

Salutations

How do you feel about salutations? I prefer friends and former work colleagues to address me by my first name. However, my son and daughter never use my first name. They call me Dad. I have come across some families in which the kids are on first name terms with their parents but that practice irks me. It seems so unnatural.

When being served in a shop or eating establishment, I do not want to be "buddy", "mate" or "pal". Instead, I want to be "sir" and that is indeed how I address male customers when I am at the till in the Oxfam charity shop where I work every Wednesday afternoon. It has been the tradition in England for donkey's years and I am happy to play the expected subservient role for I believe that this shows appropriate respect towards customers who are in the process of parting with their hard-earned money.

Nowadays, all of us receive occasional e-mail messages from companies to which we have subscribed including banks, insurance organisations and utility companies. Increasingly, I have noticed how some of these companies are now taking liberties with the salutation. They seem to think that it is perfectly okay to use first names when addressing customers. Maybe I am an old fuddy duddy but I want distance between me and these companies. They are not my friends and I have never given them permission to call me by my first name. They just assumed it would be okay.

Our gas and electricity provider is a growing company called "Ovo". Recently, I sent them this message:-

Dear Ovo,

This is a matter that I have felt like airing before but now I have finally got round to it. I feel most uncomfortable when businesses address me by my first name. In fact I disapprove of this informal, chummy salutation. In my opinion, businesses should still address customers in the more formal, traditional manner - for example - Dear Mr Pudding. I expect family, friends and work colleagues to use my first name but not businesses - including energy suppliers. Please could you ensure that this preference is respected in future correspondence.

Yours truly,

Yorkshire Pudding

Ovo have now replied and basically they say that their computer system is set up to address customers by their first names. They say they want to appear "friendly and approachable". They apologise that it is more or less impossible to alter the computer configuration with regard to salutations. (This despite the fact that naming in several cultures does not correspond with the western habit of first name followed by family name!)

My reply to this lingered on the old truism - "Where there's a will there's a way". I also reflected on the "friendly and approachable" claim, asking what is the point of trying to appear "friendly and approachable" if in the end you ride over perfectly reasonable customer requests? Besides, the "friendly and approachable" style is simply a corporate illusion because at its core Ovo, like other utility companies, is in the ruthless business of making profits. They don't really care as long as they get their money. I doubt that they have ever received a similar response.

Perhaps you think I am being picky or precious over this matter but I think - why should I go with the flow? If nobody makes a stand, the disapproving message will never get through to them. As in many areas of unease and disapproval, it is attractively easy to simply submit, like sheep in a flock. Protesting is surely harder.