Quizzing

Over the years, I have participated in countless pub quizzes. My head is filled with random bits of knowledge that I can draw upon as the questions are read out. Customarily, my quizzing partners are Mike and Mick. They have their own particular strengths as quizzers. Mick is very good at dates, music, film and anything you might like to ask him about James Bond. Mike is good at history, drama and Oldham Athletic football club. Unfortunately, we have never been asked a single question about Oldham Athletic. I specialise in geography, politics, religion, current affairs, gardening, football, rugby league, cookery, nature, wildlife, the combustion engine etc. etc.. Weekly, we have been quizzing together for over twenty years.

On Thursdays, without my regular companions,  I frequently attend another quiz at "The Banner Cross". This is an interactive quiz which involves pointing remote keypads at the television screens where the multiple choice questions are displayed. There's no time for discussion. You have to click and move on. There are about fifty questions and they include music and picture identification.

Last night I was down at "The Banner". Before the quiz began I had to tolerate a cascade of political invective from my chum Higgy. He doesn't get out much and he lives on his own. Consequently, when he gets to the pub he has a lot of stored up thinking to let out. It's a bit like eating cabbages or beans. If you didn't let the gas out you would explode!

Higgy reads "The Guardian" every day and he bristles with anger and disgust about Britain's European Union referendum result. He is appalled by the posturing of our politicians, the lies they told and continue to tell and their obvious inability to forge a Brexit deal that will be acceptable and helpful to our economic well-being. It is all an utter mess. The British people have been wilfully sold a pig in a poke.

Not only was I having to deal with Higgy's tirade before the keypad quiz, I also had to deal with it as we progressed through the fifty questions. I just wanted to relax and focus on the quiz not to simultaneously engage in an angry discussion about Brexit. He just wouldn't shut up about it. On and on.

The quiz finished. Higgy won it with me second and Steve third. Higgy had a last half pint of lager and grabbing the cushion he carries in an old plastic bag (because of his osteoporosis) he prepared to go home. No, "Nice to see you fellows!" just final thoughts about Brexit as he went out of the door. He must be suffering from Brexomania.

For Steve and I it was a great relief when he left. I mean we both love the guy but you don't come to a pub quiz to endure a one-sided political rant. We could now relax. By the way, Higgy gave me yet another clipping from "The Guardian" about Brexit. I guess it's my homework even though Brexit, like Oldham Athletic, is unlikely to come up in a pub quiz any time soon.

Hungary

Life existed before the internet came along. And before the Berlin Wall came down, life existed behind it.

In the summer of 1989, I volunteered to be a summer school English teacher under the aegis of The British Council. My destination was Hungary. 

The summer school took place by the shore of Lake Balaton, a vast inland lake about fifty miles south west of Budapest. My tutees were all students at The Technical University of Budapest which like many other large Hungarian organisations owned a sort of holiday-cum-conference compound by the lake.

This was the summer before TV showed images of happy Berliners hacking away the concrete. Later that same year and into the early months of 1990 we were to see the historical transformation of those old Iron Curtain states but in August 1989 it was same old same old.

Lake Balaton

The lake was lovely and warm. You could swim in it all day if you wanted to and if you could bear the mysterious muddiness beneath your feet. Half a mile from the university compound I discovered a campsite amidst the pine trees and virtually every vehicle there had come from East Germany. Did communists have camping holidays? Did they barbecue sausages and play volleyball? Did they laugh? Yes dear reader, it seems that they did.

One day, I had a ride in a mustard-coloured Trabant. It was proudly owned by one of my Hungarian teaching colleagues. I was in the back and in spite of myself I had a fit of giggles. The very idea of being crammed n the back of a Trabant as it coughed and spluttered its way along a windy Hungarian lane really tickled me for some reason. But I knew I shouldn't laugh because acquiring any kind of motor vehicle in Hungary in those days was a big deal. Understandably, my colleague was quite proud of his ill-designed East German car. He had waited more than three years to buy it on a paltry salary that made me look like a millionaire.

One day I met two children at a cafe. They were perhaps nine and eleven and surprisingly spoke enough pidgin  English for basic communication between us. Of course this was in the days before paedophilia came along. They took me through the dappled woods to a hidden rock face and there they showed me a little-visited cave that had been cut into the limestone some hundreds of years before. There were sleeping platforms and a fireplace area and tantalising images scratched upon the walls. It was very possible that this cave was prehistoric. I felt privileged to be in such a place.

One night after I had been drinking beer with a bunch of East German students at a lakeside bar,  I was approached by two furtive men. They wanted to know if I had any British or American money they could buy from me. One of them opened his wallet and showed me a huge wad of foreign currency. It was now close to midnight and very few people were around. Suddenly, I had an overwhelming premonition that they were about to mug me. They were just too pushy and besides what was in this shady deal for me? Nothing.

I indicated I needed to use the toilet and as soon as I got round the corner  I ran like the wind along the woodland track that led back to the safety of the lakeside compound. Christ Almighty, I couldn't run like that these days but I should remind myself that twenty eight years have passed by. The wall came down and countries like Hungary became "free" at last - whatever that might mean.

Homeward

In my previous post I showed you The Harley Hotel - the first place in which I ever slept in Sheffield. I continued walking home, Having spent five hours standing at an easel my legs felt like lead so I stopped for a rest outside The Botanical Gardens and ate my apple,

On Brocco Bank, I turned into Wiseton Road where a former large chapel is located - pictured at the top of this post. It was converted into one-bedroom flats forty years ago. In 1980 Shirley and I moved into Flat 1. Previously I had been living in a bedsitter on Harcourt Road. 

We were very happy in Flat 1 and it was behind the window on the left (below) that I asked Shirley to marry me. In the October of 1981  I met her at the altar in St Martin's Church, Owston Ferry in Lincolnshire and as luck would have it everything came together so that we could move into our first house the day after our one night honeymoon in Lincoln.

Continuing homewards, I trudged up Ecclesall Road from Hunters Bar. It is a familiar hill that I have climbed countless times before. Nearly home, I stopped to take a photograph of the newly-refurbished "Banner Cross Hotel" where I have spent a king's ransom over the past twenty eight years. It's my local:- 

 Back home, I picked two pounds of brambles (blackberries) from the bushes at the bottom of our garden and back in the kitchen I made a bramble crumble. The topping is of plain flour, soft butter, demerara sugar and crushed walnuts. I also sprinkled some caster sugar over the deep bramble base. This was our evening dessert with vanilla custard but there was plenty left for the next day. Delicious.

Harley

"The Harley Hotel" and the room we stayed in.

The first time I ever came to Sheffield I was seventeen years old. With a school friend called David Shuttleworth, I had hitchhiked here from East Yorkshire. We came to see a concert in The City Hall. It was November 1971 and the concert featured Buffy Sainte Marie and Loudon Wainwright III.

We had nowhere to stay. Amazingly, that fact didn't occur to us until we were dropped off in the city centre. Outside the town hall, we spoke to the uniformed doorman. He directed us along West Street and we duly secured a room in The Harley Hotel on Glossop Road.

Little did I know that day that towards the end of the decade I would return to the city to live and to work. I have now spent most of my life here.

We had time to kill so we went to Weston Park Museum and saw an art exhibition there. We wrote down the titles of the exhibited paintings and made a poem from them. Then we walked back along West Street to The City Hall.

Both acts were very likeable. At the age of seventeen I was highly receptive to music - especially to singer songwiters. I would listen to my albums over and over - almost obsessively - till I knew every word. In musical terms, I found that familiarity bred appreciation rather than contempt. I loved Buffy Sainte Marie's trilling voice, the anger she felt about the plight of Native Americans and the crazy war in Vietnam:- 

...he looked at the sign that she carried in her hand.

It said "Fuck the war and bring our brothers home"

                                                      ("Moratorium")

She was a personal hero. She wore her heart on her sleeve and she was unlike all the rest.

After the concert, David and I stood on the pavement in Barker's Pool and waited for Buffy and Loudon to leave. They sat in the back of a shiny black car and we waved at them. For a split second, just a smidgeon of a moment, Buffy's eyes connected with mine and then she was gone. 

We drifted back up West Street - perhaps stopping for a pint in "The Mailcoach" or maybe we just went back to the hotel room to finish off our art gallery poem that would later appear in "Fang" - the alternative school newspaper that I helped David and his Lower Sixth pals to develop.

I thought about that time as I walked past "The Harley Hotel" after my art workshop on Saturday. It was forty six years ago when I slept there - my very first night in Sheffield.

Poem

Oils

Still life arrangement from my easel

It's forty six years since I last produced an oil painting. Today I produced three. 

Back in 1971, my art teacher - Mr Doyle - asked me to create a large picture in oils for the school canteen. It was taller than me and about four feel wide. Working with a palette knife I made a picture of a woman hanging up washing on a line that had been strung across a street of terraced houses. It met with general approval.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of that painting and very much doubt that it survived various re-developments at Beverley Grammar School. In fact, I suspect that builders may have used it for mixing cement upon.. When all is said and done, all art is ephemeral.

It was at midnight last night that I clicked the button on this laptop and signed up for today's course at The Art House in the centre of Sheffield - "Introductory Workshop in Oil Painting" with Marcin Szuba. There were nine women and me.

My "sketches"

A few basic techniques were quickly described and then we had to get on with two small "sketches" based upon a still life arrangement that Marcin had set up for us. Using one of these sketches we spent the afternoon making large paintings based on preferred "sketches" from the morning session.

I enjoyed the whole process even though my finished painting is nothing special. It was a learning process. In some ways, I found the oils easier to work with than watercolour. Oil is more forgiving. You can rub it away or paint over it. You can use your fingers or a knife. You can scrape it, thin it, thicken it. 

Now I know what I will be asking for ahead of my umpteenth birthday next month - an artist's smock and one of those jaunty giant berets that were once favoured by old masters.

End result (Marcin to the right behind)
Exclusively available for sale to  Yorkshire Pudding
visitors. Bids open at only $1000 (US)

Gallerie

In France, I snapped far fewer photographs than I would normally do. Nonetheless, I have a bunch of extra images to share with you. Perhaps it is true that every picture tells a story...

View to The Pyrenees from Robin and Suzy's house

Ian, Frances and Stewart at Mirepoix market

On the terrace with Robin at the head of the table

Ski lift and mountain bikers at Ax-les-Thermes

St Lawrence in Mirepoix

In an antiques shop in Mirepoix