Card

Unfortunately, I don't  know the home addresses of the majority of blog visitors so I haven't been able to send you Christmas cards. Instead, I have designed this special card for you. Please print it off  - in colour of course - carefully cut it out and stick it to a suitable piece of card:-

Next write inside your preferred name followed by "Season's Greetings" and then "Love from Yorkshire Pudding". When the card is finished, place it proudly on your mantelpiece for family and Christmas visitors to admire.

The idea for posting a Christmas card for blog visitors came from John Gray @ "Going Gently" and the legend, "Merry Christmas Everybody" came from the Romanian "Big Issue" seller on Stamford's high street. The photograph came from The Hope Valley - I snapped it myself a few days ago.

Stamford

We returned from "Strictly Come Dancing" via The Great North Road - otherwise known as the A1. Until the M1 motorway was constructed in the late nineteen fifties, the A1 was England's premier north-south arterial road. The journey home was swift and untroubled - so different from Friday afternoon's tortuous trip.

We decided to make a short detour to a Lincolnshire town we had never visited before - Stamford, And what a lovely place it seemed to us with its many limestone buildings, its riverside setting and its various churches. 

After parking "Clint", we wandered around and noticed how many independent shops there were in the town centre. It seemed affluent and confident - not dog-eared or sadly reflective of better times. A soprano carol singer stood in front of a gift shop, gathering change for her chosen charity.

Outside W.H.Smiths, a cheerful Romanian "Big Issue" seller maintained her happy refrain of "Merry Christmas Everybody! Have a nice day everybody!" I tried to snap her with my camera from across the street but she spotted me and raised her Christmas edition of the homeless magazine to hide her face. I suspect that Stamford is a rather nice town to be homeless in. In 2013 it was adjudged, in all of England,  to  be the best place to live by "The Sunday Times".

There's a lot of history in Stamford and it is a shame we had so little time there. In the old Sheep Market there was a tall spire made of limestone and bronze. Researching it later, I discovered that it had been erected in 2008 to commemorate the fact that Stamford was once home to one of the twelve Queen Eleanor crosses.

They were erected under the instructions of King Edward I after his late wife's embalmed body was, in 1290,  moved from Lincoln to London in twelve stages. The twelve crosses signified the nightly stopping places of the funeral procession with the last one being Charing Cross in London.

Noticing a parking enforcement officer snooping around Stamford's riverside car park, we unlocked "Clint" and sped off  back towards The Great North Road, pausing only at the gate to Burghley House to take off our coats.

Fog

Ridge Farm and the old phone box in Ridge

Yesterday, Borehamwood was my oyster as Shirley attended the "Strictly Come Dancing" final. I had planned a country walk but had not anticipated fog. What the hell - I donned my boots anyway.

On this country walk, I found myself chatting with three people I met.There was a seventy something farmer at Summerswood Farm. We talked about country paths, dairy farming, horses. and the volume of traffic on the A1 which bisects his acres.

In the village of Ridge, in "The Old Guinea" I met a tattooed Serbian barman who supports Tottenham Hotspur. We talked about football and Serbia and the village of Ridge. The pub's current character is very different from how it must have been in the past. It has transmogrified into an Italian eating house, specialising in stone-baked pizzas. No longer farmers in mucky wellies and tradesmen propping up the bar and chewing the cud over a pint or two.

"The Old Guinea" in Ridge

The third person I met was a tall woman with blonde dreadlocks and a gold stud in her nose. She was called Debbie and she was dog walking for an elderly couple. It turns out that she was born within six weeks of my birth in 1953. In some respects we have seen the same world unfolding as we grew up and grew older. She said several things - amongst them - "Isn't Hertfordshire a brilliant county for walking in?"

Diplomatically, I retorted, "All English counties are great for walking in."

She had a sunny disposition in spite of arthritic joints. She summarised our parallel lives with this - "Don't you think we are damned lucky to  live in England? It's a bloody brilliant country." 

And of course I agreed before bidding her farewell and carrying on with my foggy Hertfordshire ramble. It may be a great county for rambling in - when you can actually see it!

M1

Once more unto the breach! The M1 motorway is the spinal cord of England's road system. When it opened in the late nineteen fifties, families would occasionally get out of their cars and picnic on the road's grassy embankments. That was in a time of innocence when traffic was very light.

Nowadays, convoys of monstrous lorries trundle up and down the lanes sandwiching endless shoals of cars and vans. Some of us are going south and some are going north. There are endless roadworks, variable speed cameras, accidents, mysterious traffic jams caused by congestion, sirens and idiot drivers on mobile phones. It is not a pleasant way to spend your time - especially on dark December nights with the windscreen wipers swishing.

We went up and down the M1 last weekend and we're doing it again this weekend. Shirley is taking her pair of golden tickets for the "Strictly Come Dancing" final down to Elstree Studios in Borehamwood. We are going to stay in the nearby Ibis Hotel and she will join the ticket validation queue at five o' clock in the morning with her deckchair, blanket and flask. What a crazy and extremely unkind process!

Let's hope she is successful. The Princess Frances will arrive in Borehamwood later in the day as I set off to watch Borehamwood F.C. take on Barrow in the English National League - not a military skirmish but a football match.

And then on Sunday, it's back up the M1 again. The road is usually quieter on a Sunday with fewer big lorries but you still have to have your wits about you and at the end of the tension-packed journey you have to prise your white knuckles from the steering wheel. Someone should write a song about it "...and I was only twenty four minutes from Luton, a half  hour away from your heart..."

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M1 TRAFFIC UPDATE

We set off from Sheffield at 2.40 in the afternoon and arrived at our hotel at 8.15 in the evening. Five an a half hours for what should have been a two and a half hour drive. Motorway signs advised us that the motorway was closed because of an "incident" between junctions 25 and 26, not far from Trowell Services. Like everybody else we had to leave the motorway and work out a detour, through Eastwood, Heanor, Ilkeston and the western suburbs of Nottingham. It seems a mad man had been on the loose. He killed his wife and then went on a driving rampage along the motorway which resulted in his death. The full details are still emerging.

"STRICTLY" UPDATE

It is half past midnight. Shirley is sound asleep. I have just been over to the TV studios' rear entrance where four brave souls are already camped out for the night - more than eight hours before the ticket validation process begins.

Victory

In human history there have been many great battles - from the jungles of Vietnam to the isles of Greece and from the poppy fields of Flanders to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. But surely, through the centuries, no battle can compare with the bloody conflict fought between the mighty forces of Premier Park and Brave Sir Yorkshire Pudding - alone, like Daniel in the lions' den. His path was illuminated by the flickering beacon of justice and words were his only weapons.

To learn more about the background to this bitter conflict go here. 

The Evil Premier Park's only goal in life is to squeeze money from motorists. They show no mercy and believe that they always have right on their side. They try to bully their victims into paying parking charges by warning that if you don't pay now you'll pay much more later. Many motorists cough up and put it all down to experience as Premier Park go laughing to the bank, their pockets filled with booty.

In England there is an organisation called POPLA which stands for Parking on Private Land Appeals. It is legalistic, with several hoops for accusers and appellants to jump through over a period of a month or more. I submitted written and photographic evidence and later challenged some keypoints contained in the arguments of Premier Park. I thought I had a convincing case but suspected that POPLA would be in league with private parking companies, paying mere lip service to the notion of appeal.

However, yesterday I learnt that my appeal had been successful! Ring the bells! Go dancing in the street! This is a mighty blow for the common man. Goliath has been brought to his knees. Premier Park must skulk away to the dank caves of abject defeat as Sir Yorkshire Pudding, astride his great white charger, waves to the cheering crowds. Let me borrow these words from Winston Churchill, "I say that in the long years to come not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we've done and they will say 'do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straightforward and die if need be-unconquered.'

In conclusion, the POPLA assessor said this : "From the operator’s evidence, I can see that the signage at the site is located on the walls of the building. I am not satisfied that this is sufficient to inform motorists of the terms and conditions of the site as they are not easy to see and I cannot determine that the appellant has had the opportunity to see, read and understand them. As I am unable to determine that the appellant has had the opportunity to see the signage within the car park, I can only conclude that the operator has issued the PCN (parking charge notice) incorrectly. Accordingly, I must allow this appeal."

Vacillation

Some days, you just don't know what to blog about. Memories flutter across your mindscreen and you wonder whether or not you should pick one and run with it. You think about recent photographs and consider posting  a few more with linking commentary. What about your method of cooking meaty rissoles? You could share that recipe. 

You think about that idea you had for a poem called "Stuff" and the way people gather things around them for comfort and defence. Ornaments, gifts, pictures, objects imbued with memories, books and natural things like shells and pine cones. But you're not in the mood for such a task today - all that careful chiselling and smoothing. Word choices, line changes, echoes, half-rhymes.

You think you might say something about Aleppo or Yemen. All that horror - man's inhumanity to man - and the way The United Nations have appeared impotent, impassive, hopeless - allowing the slaughter to continue. You see those highly paid UN folk flying first class to New York year after year, staying in the best hotels, eating in the best restaurants, sitting in the assembly hall, looking important. And you see images of children blown to bits. What the hell are they doing? Why does the UN even exist if not to act?

Perhaps you could blog about your parking appeal process or the rip-off central heating chap or the cost of postage stamps for Christmas cards or The Great Western Express music weekend at Bardney Lincolnshire in 1972 - The Beach Boys, Slade, Roxy Music, Wishbone Ash, Joe Cocker, The Incredible String Band and Don McLean. And all that straw we threw in the air just for fun.

Yes, there are some days when you just don't know what to blog about. Days like this one. Meanwhile, time for a shower methinks. I will be heading down to the Oxfam shop in an hour and a half. Business is brisk in the days before Christmas. 

Reappearance

Sitting in a traffic jam on the M1 motorway. An ambulance with blue lights flashing and siren blaring wove in and out of the lanes. It was pitch dark and we were on our way to Rugby. Sunday night in the heart of England. 

A glowing little petrol pump symbol appeared on the dashboard and as the stop-start progress of that slow motion traffic jam inched us forward, we began to imagine how much fun it would be to run out of petrol there. Not. No hard shoulder to pull onto because of ongoing roadworks and a ten mile tailback behind us. How would the recovery vehicle get through? Nightmare scenario.

After forty painful minutes, the jam almost magically unravelled itself and we made it to Watford Gap service station under our own steam. It was a relief, I can tell you.We hardly spared a thought for the unfortunate travellers whose vehicles had apparently collided and we saw no evidence of the accident.

Onwards to Dunchurch just south of Rugby. We had a room reserved in "The Dun Cow" and we were just in time for dinner. In this village - once an important stopping point for stagecoaches - Guy Fawkes and some of his fellow gunpowder plotters holed up here in 1605. They were in a pub called "The Lion Inn" but nowadays it is a private residence known as "The Guy Fawkes House".

Sunday in London was bright and beautiful. We walked over Wandsworth Common with dozens of dog walkers. Seabirds sat in a line on a wooden platform by one of the ponds as footballers competed for a leather orb, hoping to drive it into the opposition's net. 

We carried on to Clapham Common, passing humble terraced houses that now sell for over a million pounds apiece. Then down the back streets to Balham. We bought French onion soup and fresh rolls for lunch, having feasted the night before on delightful Nepalese dishes -  Momo Cha, Pokhareli Lamb, Bhuteko Bhat and fresh Nepali bread from a tandoori oven. Excellent.

Earlier today we walked around a rather gloomy Rugby. But at least it wasn't raining. We visited the new Rugby Hall of Fame above the town's library and we also  strolled by Rugby School, observing the statue of William Webb-Ellis and a massive bronze rugby ball embedded in the sports ground close to the spot where Webb-Ellis allegedly picked up the ball and ran (see first picture).

Visiting Rugby - as I said earlier to the dog lady in Dunchurch graveyard - it was indeed a once in a lifetime experience.

London on Sunday.....