Clare

Born into rural poverty in 1793, John Clare spent all the early years of his life in and around the village of Helpston between Stamford and Peterborough in eastern England. As an adult, he was only five feet tall. It is believed that this small stature was the result of malnutrition. Records of 1818 show that in that year he requested and  received  charitable support - what was known as "parish relief".

He had little formal education but as an agricultural labourer he learnt a great deal about the natural world that surrounded him. He was in tune with it and knew its vocabulary and seasonal rhythms intimately. Sometimes he would scribble down his primitive early verse on tree bark as he couldn't afford to buy paper.

The door to publishing may have been forever closed to him had he not stumbled accidentally upon "Seasons" by the eighteenth century Scottish poet James Thompson. It inspired Clare to show some of his own poems to a book seller in nearby Stamford. Co-incidentally the bookseller's cousin worked in publishing in London.

One thing led to another and in 1820 Clare's collection, "Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery"  was published. It was a massive turning point in his life. You might say that he was in the right place at the right time. Middle class England had developed  an appetite for new literature and as industrial towns and  cities drew in farm workers and other country folk  there was an associated longing for some kind of lost rural idyll.

Clare's poems celebrated the countryside and as the nineteenth century advanced he became a minor national celebrity, The income he received from his pastoral writing allowed him to just about keep his head above water. However, neither he nor his publisher or his many fans had reckoned on Clare's painful descent into mental ill-health. 

He died in an Essex asylum at the age of seventy one, his body being returned for burial to the churchyard in distant Helpston.

John Clare by William Hilton
& below an example of Clare's poetry...

Emmonsail's Heath in Winter

I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing,
An oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread;
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove,
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

By John Clare

N.B 

"awe" - hawthorn berries

"bumbarrels" - long tailed tits

"closen" - small enclosed fields

Artist

What is The Donald drawing in his sketch book? I apologise if you have already seen "Trump Draws". I was alerted to this silly twitter feed by Ian over at Shooting Parrots. It brought a smile to my face and a chuckle up from by belly as I scrolled down. To any Trump supporters offended by this link, tough! I wonder what The Donald will draw next? 

Voices

Recently, I have had to phone an electricity and gas  provider  called Scottish Power on three separate occasions. To begin with, you have to key in your account number followed by the hash key. Then you have to wait and wait, listening to banal music. Sometimes a recorded voice intervenes saying "Your call is important to us", "You are moving to the head of the queue" or "All calls are recorded for training purposes".

Finally, you get through to a human being sitting in a noisy call centre. There's a hubbub of voices in the background. You are asked to give your account number again and other information such as date of birth, email address, the four main blood groups and the capital of Outer Mongolia.

On the first occasion I phoned them, the call centre operative was a woman of Asian descent. I could tell this from her thick Indian accent. It was so pronounced that I could hardly tell what she was saying and I told her so - "I'm sorry. I can't understand a word you are saying. Please slow down and speak more clearly." I hope I wasn't being unwittingly racist. Of course, the background din didn't help.

On the second occasion I phoned them to sort out problems of their making, I got through to a Glaswegian gentleman. His accent was almost as impenetrable as the Indian lady's a few days before. To me it sounded as if Jock had just emerged from "The Sporran and Haggis" after a heavy drinking session and a full packet of "Woodbines". Fortunately, I was at university in Scotland where I gradually gained some understanding of the Glasgow accent. It is rather like a foreign language. After a few "Could you repeat that pleases", I managed to get through the call successfully.

This morning, after the customary long wait, I got through to a Russian call centre operative called Svetlana. I understood her more easily than the other two but it was still hard work. I was worried in case she had been visiting "Yorkshire Pudding" with other Russian and Ukrainian blogosphere observers. After a few minutes of fascinating banter about meter readings, the call reached a natural conclusion and I was able to thank Svetlana for her assistance. In her husky Siberian voice she asked, "Eez there anything else I can... help you with today Mr Pudding?" And for a moment I imagined riding with her on a sled pulled by huskies to an ice cave where we would drink vodka to the plaintive sounds of balalaika music before tossing our fur coats on the floor.

In some aspects of life I can be quite conservative and traditional. Is it wrong of me to expect call centres to employ people who speak English lucidly and intelligibly - preferably people for whom English is their first language? Furthermore, is it wrong of me to expect swift human response whenever I phone a company like Scottish Power? How come my time is so unimportant that they can squander it without apology or recompense?

"Your call is important to us". Yeah, right! 

Silhouetted

Yesterday afternoon,, I made a quick trip to Stanage Edge and caught these two walking companions silhouetted against a spectacular February sky. They are at the old triangulation pillar that was erected here for mapping and survey purposes back in 1938. It's just right of the walkers, peeping above the horizon.

I descended from The Edge at 5pm. A month ago it would have been pitch dark at that time. Ten minutes later I was in the car heading home to cook mashed potato, savoy cabbage  and pork loin chops with gravy and apple sauce before walking up to "The Hammer and Pincers" for the Tuesday evening pub quiz with friends Mick and Mike.

We did not win. One of the questions was "What are the four main human blood groups?" Would you have known? We didn't.

Draft

In 1970, I moved to Beverley Grammar School to begin my A level studies. My subjects were English, Geography and Art. My art teacher was known universally as TAD for those were his initials - Mr T.A.Doyle.

Very early on, he instructed me and my classmates to design and paint a new book cover for "Around the World in Eighty Days". I had the simple idea of a biplane pulling a banner around the globe and on that banner the name of the book would be spelt out.

I worked diligently on my initial painting and after two double lessons proudly presented my effort to Mr Doyle. He looked over the rim of his silver framed spectacles, silently perusing what I had done and then looked up at me saying, "That's a very good rough draft Neil."

For a moment I was flabbergasted. But I took my work back to my bench, rolled up my sleeves and started anew. Rough draft! Rough draft? A week later I had produced a much more careful version of my design and this time Mr Doyle approved of it. His initial judgement had spurred me on to achieve a better standard and this was clear to see when placing the first effort alongside the second attempt.

Last week I made a blogpost about pheasants and two of my American blogging friends - Donna (aka Mama Thyme/Mama Bear/ Big Sis) in Colorado and Jennifer in Florence, South Carolina challenged me to have a go at painting a pheasant picture based on one of my photos. This was the photo I chose:-

Last evening, using a mixture of watercolour crayons and paint, I produced this:-

But it's only a rough draft, not the finished picture. After all, Mr Doyle is still watching me.

Pageviews

Very occasionally, I check out Blogger "stats" in relation to this humble blog. It's always interesting to see where one's "traffic" is coming from. Here you can see the Yorkshire Pudding state of play yesterday evening:-

Unsurprisingly, top of my league table comes Great Britain (i.e. "United Kingdom"), closely followed by The United States in which an adulterated form of English is widely spoken. No surprise there then and for the same reason it's no surprise that Australia and Canada are also in my top ten.

However, look at the countries coming in at three, four and five - France, Russia and Germany. I am especially surprised about France as in that Gallic nation, the French language is the preferred means of communication and this blog is of course almost exclusively written in English. 

Pausing for a moment, it has just dawned on me that French people will read this very post. Being a stickler for good manners, I should like to take this opportunity to say "Bon Jour!" to all my French visitors and "merci beaucoup" for visiting "Pudin de Yorkshire".

Though obviously not as nice as Yorkshire, France is in my view a great country. Your wine is third only to wine from New Zealand and Australia. Your cuisine is pretty good too though personally I prefer a nice Indian curry, fish and chips or a trip to our local carvery. It's also nice to recognise that these days some French people actually have sweet smelling breath - untainted by garlic or "Gauloises".  This is a great improvement upon past times.

Yes it's great to have French visitors in my fold - even though they never leave any comments. As for my equally silent Russian visitors, I just want to say that getting Trump elected was in my view a very sick joke on your behalf. Mind you, your own cartoon leader Vladimir is a bit of a joke himself - baring his chest, riding horseback, invading Ukraine and belting pucks across the ice. Even so, to all my Russian visitors I would still like to say - "Благодарим Вас за посещение йоркширского пудинга!" which I hope means "Thank you for visiting Yorkshire Pudding!"

Whitton

St John the Baptist Church in Whitton

Even if you don't like football, you will have heard of Liverpool FC. They are more than a football club, they are a worldwide brand and a religion. They even have their own theme songs - such as "You'll Never Walk Alone". Over the years, they have often played wonderful football, achieving the dizzy heights enjoyed by all Champions of Europe.

Yesterday afternoon they were in Hull to play my beloved Hull City at the KCOM Stadium. Liverpool began the game in fourth position in The Premier League while my troubled team were rock bottom in  the same division. And yet... and yet we beat them fair and square. Our lads played like real tigers. They were on it through the entire game, harrying, closing down, breaking out of defence.

It was a wonderful spectacle and when in the eighty fourth minute Oumar Niasse ran for their goal with only Liverpool's hapless Mignolet to beat, my heart was filled with unadulterated gladness as he struck the ball through the advancing keeper's legs to put us in an unassailable two-nil lead. Oh joy upon joy! Take that Ken Dodd, Paul McCartney, Lily Savage, Anne Robinson! Our boys gave your lads a helluva beating!

...But earlier in the day, there was a different kind of joy as I wandered by the southern shore of The River Humber. I had driven to the remote and tiny village of Whitton. It is the kind of place that you only go to - nobody passes through it, because it is at the end of a long straight road, surrounded by watery meadows and arable land, originally and skilfully  drained by Dutch engineers in the seventeenth century.

Whitton is very peaceful and there's an old church there that was built with stones and other materials from a nearby Roman fortress. East of the village the land is protected by an eight foot flood embankment to save it whenever the Humber overlaps its shores.

It was a lovely morning for a walk and I was wishing I had set out earlier from home. When I reached the paint peeling silos and barn at Whitton Ings I felt thrilled by the images I saw before me but I must admit - not quite as thrilled as I felt when Niasse's strike hit the back  of the net at 5.40pm. 

At Whitton Ness