Celebration

"Happy birthday, Mr. P. Be sure to tell us how you celebrate." - Steve Reed 8/10/19

Well, how does a stout, curmudgeonly Yorkshire geezer celebrate his 66th birthday?

Let me tell you my friends, there was no party. No jelly and ice cream. No Pass the Parcel and no kids crying when they got hooked out of Musical Chairs. No ten shilling notes to be found inside birthday cards and no magicians making sausage dogs from balloons. No, it's not like that at 66.

After a shower, I was dressed by eight thirty. A mug of morning tea. Open birthday cards and a couple of gifts. A new garden gnome and a pair of walking trousers. Wrong waist size I'm afraid.

Clint agreed to take us up to "The Hidden Gem" for breakfast. It is located behind Bents Green Special School and there are always one or two helpers with special needs. I chose eggs florentine. Two perfectly poached eggs on a bed of toasted muffin, spinach, grilled flat mushroom and hollandaise sauce. As delightful as the last time we visited the place.

At midday, I went to Shorts Lane near Dore, donned my boots and walked for an hour. My regular walk just ten minutes from home. I snapped the picture at the top of this post on my way to Totley Bents.

Back home, Shirley and I were soon on a Number 81 bus heading to The Showroom to watch the 2.20 screening of a British independent film called "Bait". Created last year, this quirky black and white film is set in a Cornish fishing village and reveals dramatic tensions between the established community and holidaying incomers. Very enjoyable.

Back home and soon afterwards two "Moonpig" parcels arrived from The Beloved Daughter. Chocolates and a new mug with "For Fox Sake" written upon it with an image of a fox.

Six thirty and we are sitting in Kia's Pastaria on Abbeydale Road. I have vowed to visit this place for ages as it gets such glowing reports in Trip Advisor. The service was excellent and the pasta dishes we chose were indeed very good but somehow that "wow!" factor I had been expecting was missing.

Nine p.m. and I am up at "The Hammer and Pincers" for the Tuesday night quiz. Team member Mike is away in Sicily so it was just me with Mick. We didn't do too well but we knew - for example - that Rocky Balboa's fighting name was "The Italian Stallion". After drinking two pints of Stone's bitter I started to feel rather queasy. All that pasta - it was like it was swelling up in my belly. 

I caught the 88 bus home where Shirley was watching a documentary about junior doctors. I stayed up to watch "Democracy Now" on our local TV station. More outrageous news about Donald Trump's arrogance and his devilish tricks - crudely designed to thwart justice and transparency. Meantime we now have our own mini-Trump employing similar tactics as he attempts to "Get Brexit Done!"...When we get a pet animal "done" we get it neutered!

So that dear blogpeople was my 66th birthday. And today, if John Lennon hadn't been gunned down in 1980, he would have been 79. I wonder what he would have thought of Trump and Johnson.

66

I have made it to 66 and now I'm on Route 66, heading to heaven via 67. Yes folks, 66 years ago today a beautiful baby boy was born in a school house bedroom in a village in the heart of The East Riding of Yorkshire. Dr Baker, the village G.P., was in attendance - but as I was my mother's third son, it was all a bit like shelling peas.

It is said that she completed a newspaper crossword during the delivery. I weighed in at 10 pounds and 10 ounces and my arrival screams could be heard in Brandesburton. When my father first saw me he said, "Christ! That's a big un!" He may have been referring to my general size.

My parents wondered what to call me and several silly names were suggested - including John, Bob, Steve, Tasker, Graham and Keith. However, not wishing to saddle me with a moniker that would burden me for life, they settled on an unusual yet rather sweet name - Yorkshire Pudding - partly because Dr Baker said I looked like one as I bust his weighing scales.

We have a Route 66 in England too. It is the A66 and it heads over The Pennine Hills - linking Scotch Corner in Yorkshire with the Cumbrian market town of Penrith. So as I travel down the road from 66 to 67, I shall sing:-

It winds from Scotch Corner to Penrith 

More than fifty miles forthwith 

Get your kicks on the A66

Now you go through Bowes, 

Appleby, Westmorland 

And old Brough Town won’t make you frown 

You’ll see Greta Bridge 

Temple Sowerby 

Brougham Castle 

Don’t forget Warcop 

Crackenthorpe, Spital, North Stainmore 

Get your kicks on the A66

Advertisement

Our son Ian and his Bosh! chum Henry have just launched their third book. It is called "How To Live Vegan", This one is not a recipe book: instead it is a kind of manual for vegans and would-be vegans. 

Currently the lads are on a tour of the country giving talks on their new book at various venues including Waterstones bookshops. Shirley and I saw them on Saturday afternoon at The University of Sheffield. They were interviewed by Paulette Edwards from BBC Radio Sheffield in front of a hundred and fifty ticket holders.

Linked with this book launch, the Renault car company have customised the black  bodywork of their  Renault Zoe - an electric car that Renault have loaned to them free of charge since last winter. Who knew that the French could be so generous?

The Bosh! phenomenon rolls on. In Great Britain "How To Live Vegan" is available from Waterstones bookshops and from Amazon UK. I forgot to ask Ian when the book will be available in the good ol' USA. LATER...It will be available in the USA from October 15th. See Amazon USA.

Our Ian is on the left, Henry on the right

Standards

Samuel Smith's brewery is  in Tadcaster, Yorkshire. As well as producing beers, the brewery runs some two hundred pubs - mostly but not exclusively in Yorkshire. The chairman of the brewery is an eccentric old man called  Humphrey Smith and he tries run the pubs as if they were his own personal fiefdom - often disregarding current social mores and indeed employment legislation.

There's a Samuel Smith's pub in the centre of Sheffield. It is called "The Brown Bear" and last week I nipped into the entrance lobby to take these pictures of notices to customers:-

No swearing, no mobile phones or laptops, no vaping or e-cigarettes and in addition I should add that there's no music, no television sets blaring out sports programmes and the bar staff are not allowed to have visible tattoos or piercings. 

What do you think?

Sandsend

Above - the view from the house we stayed in at Sandsend on the North Yorkshire coast. Much of the time the sea roared as its white horses galloped up the shore. Two miles south angry waves destroyed several beach huts at Whitby.

Below - the view from Sandsend to Whitby. You can see the ruins of Whitby Abbey on the headland. That is where Abbess Hilda and the cowherd Caedmon dwelt.  Below to the left there's the entrance to Whitby's harbour. Captain James Cook learnt the most fundamental skills of seafaring right there.

On Thursday we walked along the cliffs to Runswick Bay. There's Jackie and Glyn and Shirley on the left and Tony and Pauline on the right. It was a lovely coastal ramble and the daytime temperature was mild - almost balmy.

We reached the beach at Runswick Bay. Once the village was all about fishing and the sea. Nowadays it's about tourism and holiday cottages. There are no barefoot children any more or weathered old men smoking clay pipes or old women in black shawls fixing broken nets. They have all gone.

We climbed to the main coast road above the village and caught a service bus back to Whitby. Then later we walked along the beach back to Sandsend where we rested before going for dinner in "The Hart Inn".

This morning I woke far too early and went out into the pre-dawn, listening to the pounding of the sea. It was not one of those golden, rosy sunrises but a muffled, pale grey one. I saw a lone telephone box by a bus stop on the coast road. I took several pictures of it but this is the one I have chosen to share with you:-

Three lovely days away with good  friends. Easy talking in a fabulous seaside house. Good food  and the sound of the relentless North Sea beating on the shore.  Maybe I will return to this blogpost in the future, remembering with warmth our splendid October excursion courtesy of Tony and Pauline.

Canal

The Sheffield and Tinsley Canal opened in 1819. For a hundred years it provided a vital transport link - allowing barges to travel right into the heart of the city. It runs parallel to The River Don which only becomes navigable in its lower reaches.

The canal is only four miles long and it is a marvel that it still exists because the working barges that carried coal and iron ore and the products of the steel industry have all gone. Nowadays, the only boats that travel on the canal are leisure craft.

Monday morning brought sunshine and blue sky so rather than wasting the day, I caught a bus into the city centre and then headed to Sheffield Canal Basin. It was not the first time that I have walked the length of the old canal but I doubt that I have walked it on a lovelier morning.

Light show under a bridge courtesy of sunshine and dripping water.

Along the way, I came across a married couple "fishing" with powerful magnets that pull metal products up from the bottom of the canal (See image below). A lot of stuff has been thrown in there over the last two hundred years. Magnet fishing? Mmm...that gives me an idea for Nurse Pudding's Christmas present! Who needs perfume or chocolates?

Below - detail of a narrow boat and its reflection upon the still surface of the canal:-

P.S. We are driving up to the North Yorkshire coast at lunchtime - to stay with friends in a seaside house they have rented for the week. Back on Friday afternoon

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Leopold Street, Sheffield, England - September 30th 2019