Oops!

Every so often an old friend phones me up - usually at inconvenient moments - for a long chat. The subjects are repetitive and on every occasion we end up on his favourite topic - money. He thinks a lot about money - from various angles - personal, national and international. I guess that line from "Cabaret" is a true one - "Money makes the world go round" but I have always found money to be a deeply uninteresting subject.

Anyway, let's call the old friend Big Doug. Rather cruelly, some mutual acquaintances have described Doug as looking like an inflated version of Uncle Fester from "The Addams Family". He is socially awkward and intellectually he operates somewhere upon the autistic spectrum. That's why I have always tolerated his differences. He has been a good friend to me through the years and has only ever wished me well.

As well as being a little obsessed with money matters, his brain seems well-equipped for making big leaps of understanding that average folk never make. For Big Doug there are none of the usual  barriers. He collects tidbits of information and is then able to prognosticate or predict the future often with vivid certainty.

Big Doug and I have been out for many curry meals together. You might say that it has been a kind of culinary safari - seeking out the best or the most obscure curry houses in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire.

A few years back, around this time of year, we arranged to go to a Bangla Deshi curry house in nearby Dronfield. First we had a pint in a Dronfield pub abd then drove up to the restaurant.

When we got inside, we were surprised to see that there were flowers and candles on every table. It looked very nice. Much better than the last time we had visited that place. The Bangla Deshi waiters seemed most attentive but I swore that a couple of them smirked at each other when we walked in.

The penny had not dropped with either myself or Big Doug but when it did drop, it dropped with an almighty resounding  clang. This wasn't just any mdweek night. It was Valentine's Night and already other couples were appearing at the curry house for romantic Valentines' meals! I found myself mumbling defensively to the smirking waiters that they had arrived at entirely the wrong conclusion.

The other diners looked across to see the most unlikely romantic  "couple" ever - Uncle Fester's doppelganger and Johnny Weissemuller's body double - your friendly blogging  correspondent Yorkshire Pudding. My laughing daughter reminded me of that Valentine's faux-pas when she phoned up yesterday evening. She knows how to press my buttons.

Lullaby

"Golden Slumbers" first appeared on The Beatles' "Abbey Road" album back in 1969. It was resurrected by the band Elbow just before Christmas last year for another iconic  John Lewis T.V. commercial. By the way, John Lewis is the name of a chain of top quality British department stores. 

I don't know why but this morning I woke up with "Golden Slumbers" playing in my head. Sometimes modern artists can pick up old songs and breathe new life into them - arguably surpassing the original version. I think that that's how it is with Elbow's version of this lovely, simple song:-

Cryotherapy

Not much to report today. Just two things.

Firstly, last Wednesday I visited the dermatology department at The Royal Hallamshire Hospital. The earlier biopsy had produced the unsurprising conclusion that the red thing on  my back is/was a basal cell skin cancer. There were two ways in which I could proceed. Either have special cream applied to the area every night for six weeks or go for something called cryotherapy. As I can't even reach the red thing, I couldn't have applied the cancer killing cream myself.

Logically, I picked the cryotherapy option whereupon the beautiful Asian doctor targeted my back with two long blasts of liquid nitrogen from a stainless steel canister. It was a little uncomfortable but not at all painful for a rough tough Yorkshireman like me. Did I have any questions? Yes. I wanted to know if the wound would bleed. She assured me it wouldn't.

Plenty of zoom to get this long distance view of the city centre

However, the wound has indeed leaked as I feared - a mixture of blood and clear plasma as my body attempts its natural healing process. Shirts and sheets have been sullied by the leakage but I think it's gradually getting better. Sorry there are no photographs of the staining to share! I have to return to the hospital in May to check that all is well.

Secondly, I managed to get out into the nearby countryside for a short walk yesterday afternoon before watching England thrash Italy in the Six Nations rugby international via our television set. Are you reading this post Maria in Verona? The pictures that accompany this post were all taken on the walk - just a five minute drive from this luxury mansion... castle, hovel.

Influence

I was fourteen when I first heard "Both Sides Now" on an early evening TV chat show hosted by the late Simon Dee. The song was not sung by its brilliant composer - Joni Mitchell but by a folk singer from Seattle - Judy Collins. Before that Saturday night I had never heard of her.

I was awestruck. It wasn't just Judy's intimate and plaintive delivery but the song itself. In its simplicity it spoke to me about the private frustrations of individual human beings - just like me. It suggested that we may have aspirations and a hunger for understanding but when all is said and done perhaps we might all say "I really don't know clouds at all" or "I really don't know love at all" or "I really don't know life at all".

In my journey from adolescence to adulthood that song was very special to me. The following week I went into Sydney Scarborough's record shop under Hull City Hall and I bought the single which I played over and over till I knew every word by heart. Soon I learnt to play it on my guitar and it kind of freed me up to write my own songs that are now mostly buried in the mists of my memory and of course the song led me to discover the amazing genius of Joni Mitchell.

Fifty years later, I continue to look at life from "both sides now" but confess I really don't know life at all. Judy Collins in seventy eight years old and still performing while Joni Mitchell is seventy four and lives a largely reclusive life beset by health problems. Perhaps sometimes she still looks out of her  window in the Los Angeles hills and hums:-

I've looked at life from both sides now 

From win and lose and still somehow 

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

Conclusion

Concluding the account of our family holiday in 2005:-

Big Sur

We headed south to Salinas. There I gave myself an hour to explore the excellent John Steinbeck Museum with its various tableaux that represented different literary works. There was even the original camper van that the great author had driven across America in 1960 with his dog Charley - hence, "Travels With Charley".

John Steinbeck's house in Salinas

Picture of John Steinbeck and Charley in The Steinbeck Museum, Salinas

We crossed the rich black earth of The Salinas Valley on our way towards Monterey but sadly there was no time to tarry there. We had to press on. At Carmel we met Highway 1, the famous Big Sur road that clings to the Pacific coast as it weaves its way southwards. It was a lovely scenic drive, all the way down to San Simeon where we stopped to take in the elephant seal rookery. There they were grunting and basking on the shore like politicians in parliament or lugging themselves awkwardly into the ocean waves. 

Young seals at San Simeon

Then on to Morro Bay, turning inland to San Luis Obispo. By now it was perhaps 5pm and we needed somewhere to stay the night. I had been hoping we would find a motel in the town of Guadalupe but the woman in the petrol station said there were no hotel rooms there. Besides, it seemed a down-at-heel agricultural town with teams of exhausted Mexican farm workers in beaten up pick up trucks. They seemed such a long way from "The American Dream".

We headed a few miles inland to Santa Maria where something very newsworthy was happening - the ongoing trial of pop singer Michael Jackson for alleged child molestation. In spite of this, we were able to get a family room at what is now called The Colonial Motel though back then I think it was called The Rose Inn or something like that.

After an evening meal at Denny's we walked up to the court house where Jackson spent almost fourteen weeks on trial. It was dark and no one else was around when out of the shadows a torchlight beam appeared. It was being shone by a night security guard specially hired for the duration of the trial. He was very happy to have some regular work and didn't care a hoot about Michael Jackson or the adoring fans who gathered there in the daytime. Mischievously, I asked him if he was a Michael Jackson fan and he retorted, "No, I'm a Me fan!" It made me laugh.

The next morning we got up and packed the faithful black jeep one last time. It was our final day in California and I felt an enormous sense of frustration. There was so much more I would have loved to have seen and done. Nonetheless, when I look back I know I gave my family a super taste of west coast America. Every day was filled with interest and the plans I had made came to fruition without any significant hiccups. As we headed south on the highway bound for LAX, we played Frances's road trip CD:-

Driving down the 101

California here we come

Right back where we started from

But there was one final jewel in the crown of our holiday memories. When we disembarked our Virgin Transatlantic flight at Heathrow we heard the bleeping of a golf buggy behind us. as we walked along the link corridor. It was two lazy first class passengers. They left the annoying vehicle at some security bollards just as we also reached them and they had to walk down to the luggage carousel area shoulder to shoulder with us. It was Barbara Bach and her tiny husband - Ringo Starr. You might have heard of him.

The last morning - in Santa Maria

Japan

For some reason, "Yorkshire Pudding" has recently attracted a lot of visitors from Japan. They never leave comments but I know that they are there. My "Stats" say so. As usual top of last month's "pageviews" table came The United Kingdom, followed closely by The USA but in third place came Japan. Once again I had no visitors from Burkina Faso.

Now I have never been to Japan but from what I know of it, it sounds like a wonderful country that combines ancient beliefs with modernity and enterprise. I also realise that there is much natural beauty in Japan's 6852 islands.

Being a hospitable kind of fellow I would like to extend a  special welcome to all Japanese visitors:-

日本からのすべての訪問者へようこそ

from ヨークシャー・プディング

If any wealthy Japanese people are reading this post, I have a proposition for you. If you pay for my return flight to Japan, I will be happy to stay in your house and allow you to give me a taste of your amazing country. In return, I promise to create several blogposts about my Japanese experience. This will no doubt help to improve western understanding of Japan and boost tourism. I know that it is an offer too good to refuse so I await competing replies from which I shall select the overall winner.

Fan

All of us have random objects that seem to travel with us through life like silent companions.

Back in 1973, I left the South Pacific island of Rotuma with an armful of gifts. One of these was a fan made by a grandmother who lived in the same village as me - Motusa. It was made from palm leaf strands and for a little while I watched as she deftly wove the thing into shape. No doubt she was employing techniques that she had learnt from a previous generation.

As tourists never visited Rotuma in those far off days, palm fans were purely functional - for everyday use and not for sale to cruise passengers or passing beachcombers seeking paradise. As well as creating draughts of cool air, the fans were useful for batting away flies - from sleeping babies or from little foot wounds acquired on fishing expeditions to the coral  reef.

Nowadays the fan sits on a picture shelf in our hallway. Most days I don't even see it but today I took it down and admired the simplicity of the design - testament to the craftsmanship of western Polynesia. The woman who made it must be long dead but a little part of her persists on the other side of the planet  - here in the suburbs of  one of England's great northern cities.

When I notice it I can recall the coconut palms fringing Mofmanu beach, the aroma of roasting copra, the blue Pacific surf crashing on the reef and those sweet village voices joined in harmony rising up to the rafters of the meeting house. It was long ago and far from here.