Backtracking

Today I was going to post Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?" but when I checked  back I found I had already done that - see here.

So then I thought I would post about our old cat Boris - the one that never came home - but upon looking back I found that I had already done that too - see here.

What could be my blogpost for today? I thought I might write a poem about one of Antony Gormley's iron men, standing on the beach at Crosby near Liverpool but again backtracking proved that I had already done that  - see here.

Perhaps I could post about my feelings upon retirement from teaching, But once again, I discovered that I had already done that - see here.

In fact, as I came up with several more "new" blogpost ideas I found that they had also already been addressed. There was nothing "new" about them at all. They were already done. Consequently, instead of publishing a fresh post today, I decided to just guide visitors back to four earlier posts. See above.

I have travelled a long way with my alter ego - Yorkshire Pudding - covering so many topics, sharing so many images, writing so many things. 3045 blogposts and counting.. I wonder if the reservoir has finally dried up. We will see what tomorrow brings for as Scarlett O'Hara correctly said, "Tomorrow is another day".

Nothing

My father-in-law Charlie was a lovely, gentle man. Born the son of a farmer, he spent his entire life working hard upon the land west of The River Trent in an area of Lincolnshire known as The Isle of Axholme.

It was a two hundred acre arable farm upon which he grew barley, potatoes, leeks, turnips, sugar beet, cabbages and broad beans in rotation. Mostly he worked on his own - ploughing, sowing, spraying, harrowing, mending and finally harvesting. He spent countless hours out in those flat fields - alone under the wide Lincolnshire skies with only an Alsatian dog for company.

It was a simple life of seasons passing and the rise and fall of agricultural prices. In his fifties, he built his own modern bungalow to replace the tumbledown farmhouse where my wife grew up. And when I say "built it", I mean he built it with his own hands unlike Sir Christopher Wren or Frank Lloyd Wright.

In his early seventies, Charlie contracted prostate cancer which ate away at his body and after a short battle with that beast he died in Scunthorpe Hospital. This was back in 2000. He should have enjoyed more years but at least he got to see and love his grandchildren - unlike my father who was dead at sixty five.

Long after Charlie died, we discovered that he had kept a diary for many years. As a farmer, he recorded plantings, harvests, prices and weather matters. He always kept a close eye on the weather - measuring rainfall and temperatures.This was more than a hobby for his livelihood partly depended on fluctuations in the weather.

But when he retired at the age of sixty eight, he continued his diary entries and I remember one of them very vividly - "Nothing happened. Nobody came. Nothing on TV. A very boring day.". And there were similar entries about nothingness and dull, empty days.

Maybe the reason I remembered this is that I believe we all have days like that. The blogosphere, celebrity news and social media driven lives seem to fill us with expectations that something should be happening all the time. There should be a buzz, things to write about, maybe even boast about. Excitement, events, phone calls, friends. But the reality is that some days are quite empty. Not much happening. Nothing to say.

That's a part of life that some people struggle to accept.

Bluebells

Early May means bluebells. In Sheffield's southern suburbs we have a tranche of ancient woodland known as Ecclesall Woods. That's where you will find the city's best bluebell glades. I must have taken "Yorkshire Pudding" visitors there before.

Yesterday afternoon, I was back in the woods and sure enough our lovely wild English bluebells were out in all of their subtle glory. Experience has taught me that they are difficult to capture with a camera. That dappled light, the shadows of trees, sunlight piercing the canopy. It's tricky.

A jay on a log in Ecclesall Woods yesterday

But I keep trying. There's something magical and other worldly about a haze of bluebells carpeting a woodland floor. They arrive from history and myth, marking the passing of years like a solstice. In spite of climate change, these bluebells will surely crowd the woods  and ring silently in countless Maytimes beyond my life.

Two years ago, I wrote this poem after a similar bluebell walk. I was pleased to revisit  it and make a couple of tiny changes. I hope you won't mind me sharing it again:-

_______________________________________________________

In Bluebell Time

They came back.
A haze of indigo, purple and violet blue
Swirling across that secret glade
Like morning mist 

Drifting the mottled shadows
Under gnarled and timeless trees
Where invisible thrushes carolled
In the heart of those fairy woods.
And it was lovely and it was blue.
Tumbling down to the brook
And all along the margins of the path.
I bent and held a single stem against my palm
Silently pledged no hurt nor harm
To see them dangling like drops of rain
To see the blueness once again.
Yet they made no ringing or jingling sound

As they reclaimed their ancient ground.
What joy and truth was thereby found
To see the bluebells all around.

_______________________________________________________

And five years ago, I wrote this bluebell poem after walking in Ecclesall Woods. I imagined a young man strolling with his sweetheart before going off to France to play his part in what is sometimes laughably known as "The Great War". Cannock Chase was a military training site in Staffordshire where thousands of Yorkshire recruits spent a few days before heading out to the horrors that lay ahead of them:-

_______________________________________________________

1916

I left you in the bluebell time
Afore that summer's foliage
Carpeted those paths we walked
In shadow.
I clasped you by a gnarled beech tree
And felt your urgent heart
Against my chest -
And the lovely bluebells
Hung like mist
And life seemed like a story
Of hope and yes, of love...
But I left you in the bluebell time
For Cannock Chase
And khaki games of war
No bluebell kisses
And no words to say
Those awful things we saw.

Variance

Two things to report from yesterday. One good. One bad. Do you want the good news first or  the bad news?

Oh. Okay. I can hear you. Please don't shout! The good news...

Regular visitors to this humble Yorkshire blog may recall that several days ago I painted a peacock. No. I didn't grab a living peacock from a zoo and slap some magnolia emulsion paint on the screaming creature - I mean that I painted a peacock on a canvas to echo the wallpaper design in our "master" bedroom. You may remember that I wanted to have a go at a very different painting of a peacock and yesterday I managed it.

I based my painting on an image I had found on the internet. Before beginning my peacock I studied the photograph carefully. Rather than tackling the whole peacock, I decided to just paint a picture of its head. I had to remind myself that I was creating a piece of Art and not a replica of the photo image.

When I was eighteen, one of my three A level subjects was Art but the only oil painting I ever created at that time was an extra large image of a woman hanging up washing in a northern alleyway. They hung that picture in the school canteen. Painting with oils is very different from watercolour painting. Different techniques are required and different expectations. It is also a more costly process and more messy too.

However, I am pretty happy with how my second peacock turned out:-

Now to the bad news. 

Emerging from an awkward road junction that Clint has negotiated a thousand times before, he managed to bash into the side of a taxi. The damage caused to Clint's frontage and the side of the taxi appeared more or less cosmetic for it was a very low speed accident. However, knowing how expensive car bodywork repairs can be, this is an event that I have had to report to my insurance company. If only our lives had rewind buttons so that we could backtrack and erase unpleasant happenings before they happen. I admit that I was probably daydreaming about peacocks. It was my fault entirely.

Letter

Finally, I have got round to sharing this splendid letter with you. It was sent out from a local primary school in March of last year when school was cancelled for the day because of heavy snow:-

In a world where children are faced with far more don't's than do's, it was most uplifting to find a headteacher asking children to go out and enjoy the snow. Perhaps he was remembering his own childhood and the fun he had in wintertime. There's affection and a real understanding of what it means to be a child in that letter.

It is easy to imagine a different school warning children about the hazards of playing in the snow. Advising them in a curmudgeonly way to stay safe and to complete homework tasks designed to fill an unexpected day off. 

I wonder what OFSTED - the government's school inspection department - would make of Mr Stewart's letter. Their bristling condemnation would probably explode like Chernobyl.

Charlotte

That's our Frances on the right and there's her friend Charlotte on the left. They are having a little girl dinner in our garden. How many years ago was that? I guess that they are about eight years old in the picture so it would have been around twenty two years ago.

They have been friends since they were three years old and they are still friends now. They enjoy a special bond. They attended the same play group, the same primary school and the same secondary school before going on to the same university - The University of Birmingham.

Later, like Frances, Charlotte gravitated to London for work and after some romantic disappointments she met James her handsome husband-to-be. She is going to marry him on Wednesday of next week in Sheffield Town Hall. And on the Saturday afterwards there will be a proper wedding party at Whirlow Farm with food and music and dancing and beer and wine and flowers. Frances will be the maid of honour.

I have been asked to take photographs at the Town Hall civil ceremony that will probably only have half a dozen people in attendance. That is an honour for me but I hope it is a nice day with good light to illuminate those special moments.

Like our Frances, Charlotte has always had a proud, independent spirit. She is thoughtful, intelligent  and funny. It's quite splendid that both young women are getting married in the same calendar year and of course Charlotte will be the maid of honour at Frances's wedding.

I wish I had a friend like that - someone who has been very close for an entire  lifetime. But I left my East Yorkshire village long ago and I have no one like Charlotte. It must be lovely and rather comforting to have friend like her. A fellow traveller. Someone you will still be close to even when you grow old.

Drained

Home alone and feeling drained. Shirley has flown off to Lisbon, Portugal for a long weekend away with the other nurses from her health centre.

Yesterday, I spent fifteen hours working as a poll clerk for the local elections. I was up at five thirty and at my assigned polling station by six fifteen. I didn't leave there until ten fifteen at night. The pay for this work is terrible but it is interesting to be part of the basic democratic process. 

There was a list of the seven hundred and fifty electors who live in the electoral ward. Mostly the names were Anglo Saxon with a just a smattering of names from other cultures. There were a lot of things you could read into the list. There were houses of multiple occupancy inhabited by university students. There were widows and divorcees, nuclear families, affluent families and even a lord of the realm who had hurried back from London by train. The three hundred people who bothered to vote were generally polite and friendly and I got on very well with the other poll clerk - a chap called Andy. That made the day much more bearable.

He shared something awful. Sixteen years ago this month, his sixteen year old daughter was killed in a car accident. That has got to be an awful memory to live with. I guess it never really goes away.

Anyway, it was a very long day so perhaps it is no great surprise that I have felt washed out today. I have also got a sore throat and have had another attack of  laptopitis - otherwise known as computer failure. This time I have had a new hard drive fitted for £90 so hopefully we will get far more than a week's extra service from the thing. I am typing on it right now.

I don't feel like going out. I might have a big glass of  New Zealand wine while watching The World Snooker Championship semi-finals  courtesy of the BBC. The event takes place each year at The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield but in all the years I have lived here, I have never ventured down there to watch a live game. Maybe next year.