Daffodils

Outskirts

Down south in London and thereabouts, most of the inhabitants have little appreciation of The North. They probably think of our great northern cities as sprawling, smoky hives of industry. Places where men wear flatcaps and walk whippets along cobbled streets while women peg washing on clothes lines strung between endless terraces of cramped houses and barefoot children play hopscotch or aimlessly kick balls against walls.

But UpNorth has delicious secrets.

Take this city for example - Sheffield. Once it was the world's biggest producer of steel. In the nineteenth century, its population grew from 46,000 to 350,000 as workers flooded in to work in the foundries, factories and finishing shops. But throughout that expansion the western outskirts of the city remained as beautiful as they are today.

Just a stone's throw away there are farms, babbling brooks, green valleys, drystone walls, wooded hilltops and country lanes that lead to wild moorland where grouse cackle and falcons soar. If you live in Sheffield it's easy to get away from things and be in Nature's soothing company. To reach such countryside would be a major mission for Londoners - involving long car journeys or public transport. But here in Sheffield it's right on our doorstep.

For your interest, here's a list of the city's western districts - Whirlow, Bents Green, Ecclesall, Fulwood, Crosspool, Lodge Moor, Nether Green, Broomhill, Loxley, Stannington and Middlewood. They all lead to the delightful outskirts of the city - sometimes referred to as Sheffield's "golden frame". 

The pictures were taken yesterday by your faithful correspondent on Brown Hills Lane just beyond Fulwood.

Food

My meal at "The Rhubarb Shed"

Almost everybody in the world loves eating. Whenever I hear statements like "I love my food" or "She loves her food", I think - so what? It's hardly worth saying. For almost everyone, eating good or tasty food is simply one of life's great pleasures.

Trip Advisor doesn't only collate hotel reviews, it also encourages independent reviews about restaurants and other eating places. Then, using calculations of ratings received, it ranks these eateries in order of popularity for just about every town or city in the western world and beyond.

On many occasions I have referred to Trip Advisor before visiting restaurants and almost always I have found this guidance both accurate and extremely helpful. If Trip Advisor tells you a place is brilliant then it very probably is and if other reviewers say it's awful then that will also be true.

With regard to the city of Sheffield, Trip Advisor lists 1,196 eating establishments.  Currently, at the very top of the pile comes a humble cafe called "The Rhubarb Shed". It has attracted 147 reviews of which 132 have been "excellent" while the other 13 reviews were "very good". 

Approaching "The Rhubarb Shed"

I had been curious about "The Rhubarb Shed" for a while. It is located in one of the poorer parts of the city known as The Manor Estate but it is also close to the ruins of Sheffield Manor where Mary Queen of Scots spent a large period of her incarceration - from 1570 to 1584. 

Finally, Shirley and I visited "The Rhubarb Shed"  for the first time last Thursday lunchtime. It was very much non-corporate with a friendly, slightly chaotic atmosphere. As the cafe's name suggests, it was once a rhubarb shed where rhubarb was forced. There are seven tables downstairs and seven upstairs in the loft.

Shirley ordered a chicken wrap with salad and chips while I ordered a beef brisket sandwich on toasted ciabatta with salad and chips. It was simple fayre but very delicious, The chips (french fries) were especially yummy. We had a pot of tea with our meal and the final bill was only £15.50 ($19 US).

It was easy to see why so many other "Rhubarb Shed" visitors have submitted five star reviews to Trip Advisor even though this certainly wasn't what you would call fine dining. I think that the place's "rough and ready" character is part of its charm. Shirley and I will be very happy to return in the not too distant future.

Shirley's meal

Labyrinth

Yesterday, on my way to watch Hull City beat Swansea in The Premier League. I made a special detour to the North Lincolnshire village of Alkborough. It is situated on an escarpment overlooking Alkborough Flats and the confluence of the rivers Humber, Ouse and Trent.

The day was rather overcast so I must apologise for the dull quality of the accompanying photographs. One day I hope to return to take better, brighter pictures that do justice to Alkborough.

There has been a settlement at Alkborough since pre-Christian times. I imagine that the escarpment was a fine place for stone age folk to live - overlooking the river valley from hollows carved out of the chalky cliffside.

At some time in Alkborough's long history a strange  circular turf labyrinth or maze was created to the west of the village. The selfsame pattern may also be seen on the floor of the entrance to the village church which is dedicated to  St John the Baptist Church. During my visit, I also noted that the labyrinth design was replicated on the sign of the village's Coronation Club.

Locally, the turf maze is known as Julian's Bower. Legend says that Julius, the son of Aeneas, a Trojan warrior who appears in Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid, brought the idea of turf-cut mazes to Italy from Troy after it was destroyed by the Greeks. 

Some believe that it was The Romans who brought the idea of turf mazes to Britain but other learned observers suggest that they were a medieval invention. Perhaps the labyrinth was connected with penance or possibly it had a leisure-time purpose - some sort of game or puzzle perhaps. No one is quite sure but surely the presence of the geometric design at the church suggests some religious connection.

In past times there were many more turf labyrinths in Britain and other nations of north western Europe. To find out more, go here.

£50

This is a heartwarming tale. Perhaps a happy contrast to yesterday's post about poor Vince the Rhino.

On Wednesday afternoon, after I had hobbled up to the bank with the Oxfam shop's takings for the day, I had to spend a couple of hours on the till. Halfway through this time, a gentleman came through the doorway holding a brown leather belt.

He plonked it on the counter and said that he had bought it on Monday afternoon. For a microsecond, I thought he was going to complain about the belt and ask for his money back. Perhaps it didn't fit. Perhaps the stitching was loose. I noticed that the belt had a little zip along the edge, concealing no doubt - a narrow pocket.

Then, like a magician the man produced something else. It was a neatly folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and explained that he had found it hidden in the belt. It was an old style  £50 note with the first Governor of the Bank of England's ugly mug staring back at me.

The man was giving the £50 note back to Oxfam! Such honesty is unusual these days. I am sure that many people would have simply  viewed that banknote as treasure trove and kept it for themselves. It's worth sixty  American dollars or eighty one Australian dollars. 

Sometimes... people can be so good they surprise you and make you proud to be a human being. Not all of us are rhinoceros killers.

In other news Leonardo da Pudding has completed yet another fox picture. I swear I am becoming a rabid vulpophile. And perhaps these fox paintings are not over yet...

Vince

Vince

What happened to Vince was appalling, unforgivable, heinous, heartbreaking, vile, brutal. cruel  and a dozen other judgemental words. I can only shake my head in disbelief that a bunch of sub-humans broke into Thoiry Zoo near Paris on Monday night and killed Vince. He was a four year old white rhino.

And after killing him, the murderers used a  chainsaw to cut off  Vince's front horn before fleeing with their booty. What is wrong with such people? Have they no compassion? No humanity?

And what is wrong with those who revere rhino horn and treasure its presence in eastern medicines? They must be utterly stupid and in dire need of education for of course rhino horn has no value whatsoever in any medicinal concoctions. Quite simply, it does not work! Why can't they grasp that?

If that message could be driven home in China and Vietnam, demand for rhino horn would gradually disappear and the wicked men who kill rhinos would find that their market had entirely evaporated. Then the rhinos could graze in peace or sleep soundly in their zoo enclosures.

I am so sorry Vince. So very sorry..

Space

Homeless man in Santa Monica, California

Perhaps I am ignorant. Perhaps I lack vision. Perhaps my view of things is narrow and parochial but I don't really care much about outer space or what lies in the vast and endless universe beyond the atmosphere that envelops our world. 

What I care about is here on Planet Earth. I care about our trees and our oceans. I care about our fellow creatures and about my fellow earthlings. I care about the future for those who follow us.

America's space agency NASA currently has an annual budget of $18 billion. Russia spends over $5.6 billion. Europe  spends $4 billion, Japan $2,5 billion,  China $1.5 billion and India $1.2 billion. That's an awful lot of money..

You could do a lot of good with $32 billion dollars a year.  But it's not just about money. If the ingenuity of men and women employed in space programmes was instead directed to earthly matters, it could surely help a lot. 

They could focus upon environmentally friendly transportation, upon stabilising the world's population,, upon eliminating starvation, upon ways of homing the homeless, upon food production, upon providing work and incomes for people in spite of the impact of new technologies, upon caring for the elderly, upon addressing division based on religious differences, upon access to clean water, upon diseases, upon preserving wild places and animals. The list of good things that might be addressed goes on and on.

Starving Somalian child 2017

These are the things that I care about. Not the surface of Mars or the remote possibility that there may be life on distant planets that are impossible to reach, And I don't care about building pioneer communities on The Moon in biomes with hydroponic plants. And just who are these wealthy idiots who are buying tickets for flights into outer space?

I want a home for the man in the picture at the top of this post and food and a future for the starving Somalian child in the second picture. And I want the continual reduction of The Amazon  rain forest to cease and polar bears to have an icy environment in which they can thrive. 

Space - the final frontier?  To infinity and beyond?  No. Stuff that. It's earthly matters that need addressing, not comic book fantasies spawned by science fiction and notions of military dominance. Space programmes may have given the real world a handful of beneficial by-products but  if the focus had been upon what goes on here, the benefits  would have surely been multiplied a hundred times or more.

Well. That's what I think. How about you?

The surface of  Mars