Seven

These days I don't listen to music very much - not like I used to. But occasionally songs still pierce my defences and in 2016 I was charmed by this rather quirky number from a Danish pop-soul band called Lukas Graham...I notice that the official music video has now received almost 460 million hits on YouTube... What do you make of this song?

Seven Years 

Once I was seven years old, my mama told me,
"Go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely."
Once I was seven years old

It was a big big world, but we thought we were bigger
Pushing each other to the limits, we were learning quicker
By eleven smoking herb and drinking burning liquor
Never rich so we were out to make that steady figure

Once I was eleven years old, my daddy told me,
"Go get yourself a wife or you'll be lonely."
Once I was eleven years old

I always had that dream, like my daddy before me
So I started writing songs, I started writing stories
Something about that glory just always seemed to bore me
'Cause only those I really love will ever really know me

Once I was twenty years old, my story got told
Before the morning sun, when life was lonely
Once I was twenty years old

(Lukas Graham!)

I only see my goals, I don't believe in failure
'Cause I know the smallest voices, they can make it major
I got my boys with me, at least those in favor
And if we don't meet before I leave, I hope I'll see you later

Once I was twenty years old, my story got told
I was writing about everything I saw before me
Once I was twenty years old

Soon we'll be thirty years old, our songs have been sold
We've traveled around the world and we're still roaming
Soon we'll be thirty years old

I'm still learning about life
My woman brought children for me
So I can sing them all my songs
And I can tell them stories
Most of my boys are with me
Some are still out seeking glory
And some I had to leave behind
My brother, I'm still sorry

Soon I'll be sixty years old, my daddy got sixty-one
Remember life, and then your life becomes a better one
I made a man so happy when I wrote a letter once
I hope my children come and visit once or twice a month

Soon I'll be sixty years old, will I think the world is cold
Or will I have a lot of children who can warm me?
Soon I'll be sixty years old

Soon I'll be sixty years old, will I think the world is cold
Or will I have a lot of children who can warm me?
Soon I'll be sixty years old

Once I was seven years old, my mama told me,
"Go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely."
Once I was seven years old

___________________________________________________

Reminder - Tomorrow ...The Laughing Horse 
Blog Awards for 2016 will be announced. 
The tension mounts...

Widget

Social media is awash with rumours. Countless column inches have been taken up in popular blogging magazines. There have even been items on TV news programmes. Yes folks, it's that time again though it's hard to believe that twelve months have passed by. The whole world is waiting with bated breath to discover who will be successful in this year's Laughing Horse Blog Awards.

The Awards Committee have been in virtual lockdown through the Christmas period, revisiting blogs from around the world, debating the merits of over four hundred nominations.

As you know, winners are always revealed on the last day of the year and now the excitement is building once more. The Awards Committee have asked me to remind the blogosphere of previous winners going way back in time to 2008. This is the roll of honour:-

2008 - Arthur Clewley for  "Arthur Clewley"

2009 - Daphne Franks for "My Dad's A Communist"

2010 - John Gray for "Going Gently"

2011 - Ian Rhodes for "Shooting Parrots"

2012 - Kate Steeds for "The Last Visible Dog"

2013 - Tom Gowans for "A Hippo on the Lawn"

2014 - Meike Riley for "From My Mental Library"

2015 - Lee George for "Kitchen Connection"

Last year's winner, Lee George, speaking on the phone from her luxury mountain cabin in Queensland, Australia said, "Winning the overall blogger of the year award has changed my life. I can't go anywhere now without being stopped for autographs and selfies. Sometimes I have to pinch myself ."

Each year a unique new  awards widget is revealed. They are created by leading designers and after much cogitation I am now authorised to reveal the 2016 widget, presented to The Awards Committee by none other than Fergus Botticelli of the London-based design consultancy "Charge The Earth":-

I am sure you will agree that this is a special design which would certainly enhance even the dullest of blogs but sadly, not everyone can be a winner. The Blogger of The Year and several sub-awards will be announced on Saturday. Watch this space.

Rushup

Unusually for 2016, no famous people died on Boxing Day. Consequently, I thought it would not be too disrespectful to treat myself to a two hour country walk west of Castleton. I  dropped our son Ian off near Hathersage where he had arranged to meet up with an old friend before travelling out of The Hope Valley and along Rushup Edge towards Chapel-en-le-Frith.

Though bright, the day was windy and cold. Fortunately I had brought along my fashionable red thermal hat, fingerless gloves and my Hull City manager's coat. I must have looked a "right div". That's a slang term derived from prison life. Apparently low status prisoners of the past found themselves putting cardboard dividers in boxes so they became "divs" - now used as a term of mild abuse for stupid or stupid looking people.

Anyway, when suitably attired I plodded along a track that leads eventually to a hill called South Head which you can see in the picture below. The light was sharp and beautiful and I snapped more than forty photographs on the walk but I have only picked two to share with you. 

The picture at the top is of Bettfield Farm - an upland sheep farm. On the horizon you can see the head of a railway shaft which ventilates The Cowburn Tunnel. This connects Edale with Chinley and is just over two miles in length. I have travelled through it several times for it is on the most direct rail track between Sheffield and Manchester..

The days remain short and though I would have loved to walk an extra three miles as planned, I decided it was wiser to curtail my route in order to avoid  tramping across sheep pastures in darkness. Never a good idea. Isn't it always best to see where you are going?

Whirlow

An hour's escape from Trevor the Turkey, chestnut stuffing, cranberry sauce and various vegetables. I jumped in the car and drove to Whirlow Brook Park. It's on the south western edge of the city and was once the private estate of a Sheffield steel magnate. It's only five minutes from our house.

The park is dominated by Whirlow Brook Hall, erected in 1906 in a stolid Elizabethan style. Nowadays it is a conference centre and wedding venue but of course it was once a luxurious private residence.

Many's the time I have gone there for a stroll, to read a book or feed the ducks. It's never busy in the park  and so it's a nice place to go whenever you need a little peace. Today the temperature was so mild that I didn't even bother with a coat.

Then it was back home for the Christmas feast with our grown up kids and Frances's boyfriend Stewart and Shirley's sister Carolyn and her oldest son Edward. Crackers and Christmas hats and memories.

Memories of all those other Christmas feasts going back in time - to when our parents were alive, to childhood and black and white television and Nana and Jock and Paul. Christmas is not just a celebration but an annual  marking place in time. Where you measure personal history, look ahead and look back.

Assessment

It is easy to get things out of proportion. You need to halt sometimes and ask yourself - Is it just me? 

I look back over this year and  see a troubled and troubling world out there. Human society has never been perfect but 2016 appears to have taken us several steps closer to the abyss. It's worrying, very worrying. Of course there's Trump and there's Britain's narrow decision to leave the European Union. And there's the unholy mess that Syria has become. We are all aware of these things. We have been bombarded with images and endless words, over and over. It would be almost impossible to ignore it all.

Then there's been lots of other worrying stuff. Mad men driving lorries into crowds of innocent people. Sexual abusers being unmasked week after week. Desperate migrants drowning at sea. Social media trolls inventing false news stories which thousands believe. I could go on and on, moving from world events to the microcosmic details of everyday life.

In Sheffield, council sub-contractors have chopped down dozens of perfectly healthy mature trees, replacing them with scrawny saplings that will take several decades to catch up. Other contractors have been merrily removing traditional green man lighting from pedestrian crossings, replacing it with console screens mounted at waist level above the "Stop" request button.

Train tickets cost the earth. "Smart" motorways have no hard shoulders. Where once we got our energy from British Gas and the local electricity board, now there's a plethora of energy companies competing for our "custom". In America, an estimated 14,000 people will have been shot to death this year - a total that does not include suicide deaths. Big businesses and millionaires bend taxation rules to breaking point. In East Africa, lives continue to be ravaged by AIDS.

And when it comes to the natural world with which we have all been blessed, the carcasses of elephants and rhinos lie rotting in the heat, victims of poachers as starving polar bears  drift away on ice floes. In Russia and Malta, so-called sportsmen shoot down endangered birds just for the thrill of it all. And in  the Amazon basin, swathes of rainforest are obliterated - often containing forms of life that human beings have never recorded - extinct even before we have even seen them.

I know other people who feel the same as me about 2016. A bad, bad year in which the world went rather crazy and many past certainties were shaken to the floor. Are we wrong? Is it just us? Is there any reason why we should look ahead to 2017 with optimism, believing that a corner has been turned and that the year ahead will be better than the one that is about to end? 

Sunlit

The day after the winter solstice, sharp wintry sunlight illuminates this long row of terraced houses in south Sheffield. They rise from the valley of The River Sheaf up the hillside. The name of the street is Woodseats Road. As you can see, these houses don't have front gardens but they are well-built and surprisingly spacious and comfortable inside where the residents are now no doubt ticking off the hours to yet another Christmas. All of the houses have cellars and in front of each one you can still see the tops of  the chutes down which coal men once poured coal. But those days are long gone. Nowadays, the only fuels supplied to these homes are electricity and gas. 

Further up the road on the right I noticed that number 210 is up for sale. It is on the market for £129,500 which is $160,000 (US) or $221,000 (AUS). It would make a nice little holiday hideaway for one of this humble blog's wealthy visitors.

Shortest

At last, here in the northern hemisphere, we have reached the winter solstice and therefore the shortest day of the year. Now we can begin climbing back up again to the light.

On the left there's an image of Queen Jane - otherwise known as Lady Jane Grey. She had the shortest reign in English history - just nine days in July 1553 before fate pointed her in a different direction. She was beheaded in The Tower of London on February 12th 1554. Her death was down to religious warfare as Catholicism struggle to reassert its power in a country that was moving towards Protestantism, rejecting the yoke of Rome.

Below there's Chandra Bahadur Dangi who died last year. He was Nepalese and at just 21.5 inches tall, he was the world's shortest man. To me it is sad that he died far away from home in Samoa and not in the mountain village where he had lived and worked for seventy years before being spotted by a passing tourist. In old age he had opted to join a travelling circus, displayed as a freak, no longer loved and supported by his family and neighbours back in Reemkholi, Nepal.