Promotion

It was my 69th birthday last weekend. On Saturday, Shirley and I drove out to "The Fox House" for brunch. Then in the afternoon we attended the wedding party of two old friends of ours - Ian and Linda. They had been engaged for over twenty years but finally they decided they had had enough of living in sin. It was a lovely occasion in the function room above our local pub. Shirley and I left around seven o'clock. The best part was where Linda's grown up children said that Ian had been the only real father they had ever known.

Sunday after Sunday I prepare roast dinners at home but last Sunday we went out to The Dore Moor Inn to celebrate my birthday. The meal was  delightful and Little Phoebe was a very good girl - especially when you consider that we were in there for two hours and fifteen minutes. When the time came to pay the bill, I realised straight afterwards that we had been undercharged so I went back inside and told our waitress that our bottle of wine had been left off the bill. After a bit of humming and ahhing she decided it would be too much bother to amend things and so we could have the wine on the house! I certainly wasn't complaining about that.

I received a few welcome gifts including two T-shirts which have not yet been ironed so I'm sorry about the creases. Apparently, they are from a new line of apparel designed to promote this humble Yorkshire blog. They are available via Amazon.uk and elsewhere if you would like to hunt around. What could be better than strolling down the street wearing a stylish Yorkshire Pudding T-shirt?

Puffins

On Puffin Island, the little puffins all go to nursery school.

This is Peter Puffin. He's a nice little puffin.

And this is Penelope Puffin who can be a wee bit naughty but underneath it all, she's also a nice little puffin.

Below these words there's a picture of Donald Puffin in his birthday hat and scarf. He's a nasty little seabird - always telling tales and saying bad things about the other puffins. 

Donald used to be considered the naughtiest and sneakiest little puffin in Puffin Island Nursery School, until...

 Vladimir Puffin arrived:

...which may lead to

The End

Sauntering

Lone tree on Longstone Moor

Three hours of sauntering this afternoon in lovely autumnal weather. I didn't even bother with my jacket. The only stops I made were to take photographs or to take a breath. Otherwise, I just kept plodding along. Down Black Harry Lane to Black Harry Gate and on to Longstone Edge. 

It's an area that has known a lot of quarrying and mining  both for lead and limestone. If you know how to look, the evidence is everywhere. By the way, I have no idea who Black Harry was but I wouldn't have wished to encounter him on a dark night in bygone days. What would he have done with my plastic debit card?

I skirted the edge of Black Plantation climbing up, up to Watersaw Rake and on to Longstone Moor. In the wide saucer-like valley beyond I could see Wardlow Mires where Frances and Stewart had their wedding reception three years ago. Before COVID, before Mad Brexit, before Johnson was disgraced,  before Hapless Truss and Kwarteng  and before Little Phoebe came to join us in a sheet carried gently by a stork.

I drove home via Stoney Middleton down in the valley. An information board claimed that that village's high street was once reputed to be the steepest high street in the British Isles. I guess they had never been to Staithes or Clovelly or Runswick Bay or several other coastal villages I could mention.

Back home after half past four ready to start preparing meatballs in a nice tomato sauce with red pepper, onions and mushrooms - served with wholewheat spaghetti. Shirley was heading out for a Women's Institute meeting so our evening meal had to be quite early.

And now I am popping down to the local to see Bert and to slake my thirst. See you later. I will add the photos then.

View to Wardlow Mires beyond a drystone wall

Poem

Ukraine October 12th 2022

Cue music and let's get back to the game

Whining of missiles and roaring of flame

From Lyviv in the west to Kremenchuk
If death has occurred, why must you look?
“There are no threats to the civilian population”.

He sits in his high backed leather chair

Pressing the buttons devil may care

Fuming  about the damaged Kirch Bridge

And assaults on  his proud Russian heritage

“There are no threats to the civilian population”.

Summer is over and Winter's ahead

Speak silently of our glorious dead

The champion gamer has just made his mark

Where a bomb crater's yawning in Shevchenko Park

“There are no threats to the civilian population”.

Blogkeeping

Acer tree foliage in Whirlow Brook Park this afternoon

In blogging, people come and people go. Favourite "go to" bloggers may fade away. Perhaps they got bored with blogging or found something better to do with their time.

For a few years, I had almost daily blogworld meetings with Jan Blawat in Sloughhouse, California. Her blog was called "Cosumne Gal" but she hasn't added any more blogposts in five and a half years so I think that it is nigh time to  remove her blog link from my "Blogorama" list in the sidebar. I shall replace "Cosumne Gal" with "Drifting Through Life"  by River out of Adelaide, South Australia.

Another blog that has been mothballed is called "The Autumn of My Life" by Donna out of Colorado, USA. We were very much on the same wavelength and at times she was like the big sister I never had. I know that she still calls by "Yorkshire Pudding" from time to time and so our connection will never be entirely severed. I will replace Donna with Bruce from Prescott Valley, Arizona. He is the mastermind behind "Oddball Observations" and his pen name is Catalyst.

Whirlow Brook Hall this afternoon

I keep visiting both River and Catalyst's blogs without the convenience of  sidebar links but tonight that is going to change. 

There are one or two other blogs not listed in "Blogorama" that I keep visiting and  my blog management committee are considering adding them to the side list too.

Nothing lasts forever does it? When I look back, there a number of bloggers who have departed the scene and whose presence was once meaningful to me. But time marches on and everything changes. 

Welcome to River and to Catalyst! 

North American trees on the edge of Whirlow Brook Park today.

Judgement

After winning the Week 38 Geograph photo competition with my image of a beached jellyfish, it was my honour to pick the Week 39 winner from a shortlist of fifty photographs taken by Geograph contributors.

In third place I picked this image from Paul Harrop - taken at the point where The River Hull meets The River Humber in East Yorkshire:-

In second place I chose this picture of two mute swans on The River Exe in Tavistock, Devon by Lewis Clarke. It is an eye-catching composition but I felt that it lacked certain degrees of sharpness and illumination. That slightly dull quality brought it down from its potential top spot in my judgement:-

And so we come to the winner - "Stichill Linn" by Walter Baxter. It was taken near Kelso in the Scottish Borders when Walter was standing in Eden Water in his wellingtons (American: gumboots). I think it is a fabulous composition with the way the early autumn light is filtering through the leaves and the way the waterfall has become a subtle element in the picture instead of the glaring centre of it. When one is the judge, one can decide. It all boils down to a matter of personal taste and I am happy with my choice:-

Parcel

Yesterday morning this brown cardboard box arrived at our house - all the way from Arizona.

It was not unexpected as the sender had forewarned me. His name is Bruce and he  lives in Prescott Valley, Arizona with a woman he calls SWMBO - his wife Judy. Bruce is the brains behind a blog called "Oddball Observations". This is how much it cost to send the mystery box:-

Bruce did not know that it was my birthday today. However, his box was the first thing I opened this morning. It was expertly packed so I had to get out our kitchen scissors:-

Inside I found this package. What could it be? Perhaps a brick of cocaine or compressed marijuana.

After much cursing and excited cutting, I finally reached the contents. It is a cache of coins from different countries - mostly gathered during Bruce and Judy's royal tour of Europe in 1985:-

Bruce had included a typed note. You can read an extract from it here:-

Here are the coins on our coffee table:-

I sorted through them. There were coins from Mexico, Austria, Italy, France, Canada, Great Britain, India, Belgium and Germany as well as two silver U.S. dollars. After researching the value of these four rare coins I cleaned them up ready for sale on The Dark Web. The rare 1936 penny is worth approximately US$2000. The 1943 threepenny bit should fetch  US$500 and the two Indian coins ought to make US$250 each.

I would publicly like to thank Bruce and Judy for their generosity and wish  them all the best as they settle into their new luxury apartment in Prescott Valley.

Blogging can do things like this - nice human things.