Wow!

Through the medium of this blog, I felt I had to give a big shout out for another crazy Englishman - namely Mr Russell Cook (aka "Hardest Geezer"). Today he reached the northernmost tip of Africa having run from the continent's most southerly tip down in South Africa. He is the first human in  history to have achieved this remarkable feat.

He has run the equivalent of 360 marathons or 10,000 miles in less than a year on a journey that took him through sixteen countries, several pairs of running shoes and also saw him attacked and robbed and hospitalised. He was supported by a small back-up team run on (please excuse the pun) a shoestring budget.

At the time of writing this blogpost, he has raised £733,000 for his two chosen charities which are Sandblast Ltd and The Running Charity. The first of these supports the Saharawi people of the western Sahara - many thousands of whom currently live in refugee camps.

The Running Charity delivers mental health support and innovative youth work programmes to young people aged 16-25 who are dealing with homelessness or have complex personal needs.

In awe of what Russ Cook has accomplished, I donated to his charity appeal earlier today. You can find a link here at givestar. Leaving the charities aside, one cannot help simply applauding the audacity of the man, his strength, his courage and his single-mindedness. Just - Wow!

Cherub

 

Margot was five months old this past Tuesday. What a little darling she is. We hardly get a peep out of her but on Thursday evening she was lying on her mat experimenting with her voice - seeing what it could do. However, normally she is very quiet with her hypnotic blue eyes surveying the changing scenes and faces in front of her. I think of her as The Baby Buddha for she exudes tranquility mingled with joy. One can learn a lot from a helpless baby - the education is not all one way.

Still reliant on her mother's milk, it won't be long now before she's introduced to more solid foods. Her first tooth has already appeared from her lower gum. Being a chubby dumpling of a baby, the folds of skin around her neck are often reddened though this never seems to trouble her. She is so sweet and very special and her song keeps changing...

Margot, Margot, Margot

The stars are all aglow

Let's play out in the snow

Margot, Margot, Margot

It doesn't make a sound

Settling on the ground

Drifting all around

Margot.

As northern winds they blow

More than you'll ever know

We love to  see grow

Margot.

Poem

 

Days

Days go by
Churning churning
And I can’t stop them
Turning turning.
It’s like riding rapids
Down a precipitous gorge
And I just can’t stop
Going with the flow.

They are sewn together
These ceaseless days -
Fluttering like Tibetan flags
Dancing in the Himalayan wind
Or so it seems to me
As I withstand
Their endless flapping

Signalling messages
I struggle to decipher.
Yearning, yearning
For still waters
In which to pause a while
Discerning
Semaphoric meanings in
The passage
Of days.

Thursday

"Grandpa! Grandpa!" sang my three year old human alarm clock.

Little Phoebe was shouting up from downstairs as I surfaced from sleep.

I donned my stripey dressing gown, stumbled to our landing and looked down the staircase. There she was at the bottom still in her coat and floral wellington boots. It was half past eight this very morning.

"Haven't you got dressed yet?"

"No I haven't! You just woke me up and now I am coming down to see you!"

After a hug and a cuddle, I was soon fulfilling her second breakfast order. She wanted malted wheats with hot milk - just like grandpa who also made his habitual pint of tea in "The Big Mug". Perhaps that is who I am these days - just the big mug.

After the breakfast, our lovely princess wanted me to read "Chicken Licken" with her. It's funny how I never tire of reading that book. You know the one I mean - containing Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey, Cocky Locky and Turkey Lurkey amongst others as well as the cunning Foxy Loxy who just wanted to make a big poultry pie. Phoebe now knows this story so well that she could almost recite it by heart. Funny there's no Trumpy Pumpy or Bibi Wibi (Netanyahu).

I also read a second, longer version of "Chicken Licken" and a book about a little yellow star that fell to earth - specifically into a zoo in which fortuitously the animals did not attack or eat each other. Thank heavens for the ants who through co-operation and teamwork built a tower so tall that they were able to put the little star back in his rightful position  in the heavens above. Take that Lion! Take that Giraffe!

I also read a book called "Peppa's Holiday Cruise" starring the worldwide children's literary superstar - Peppa Pig. What a phenomenon she has become with dozens of books, clothing items, confectionery,  toys, games, jigsaws and of course the endless videos. Peppa Pig's world is always nice and friendly with hardly any upsets and of course no school shooters, drugs or social media trolling. Nothing like that. Life is all hunky dory in Peppa Pig World.

All too soon, it was time for Phoebe to go to Dronfield swimming pool with Grandma. In the meantime Grandpa Pig had a shower, got dressed and drove Clint to the recycling centre at Gleadless Valley. He was already filled with severed planks of old decking wood. I also took some redundant electrical items including our deceased "Sage" kettle and "Dell" monitor.

Back home the swimming party returned at one fifteen. We had some lunch and tired Little Phoebe then wanted to do  some binge watching of Peppa Pig. "Another one! I just want another one!... I promise - last one!" Oh yeah!

Later Grandma Pig took Peppa Pig to Chelsea Park for an hour while Grandpa Pig got on with preparing the evening meal. A homemade chicken bhuna with coconut milk, boiled basmati rice, mini peshwari nans and onion bhajis with mango chutney.

Mummy arrived with the still thriving Baby Margot and Daddy came along at five thirty. He had been working in the city centre office today. Before six thirty the satellite family were ready to leave but Little Phoebe would not give Grandpa his customary big smackeroo of a  goodbye kiss. The glint in her eyes was like that of Foxy Loxy just before the end of "Chicken Licken".

Collateral

John Chapman, James Henderson and James Kirby - three British men who were killed in Gaza on Monday. They were working for The World Central Kitchen (WCK) which has served thousands of meals to the desperately needy and beleaguered citizens of Gaza. They were killed in a targeted Israeli Defence Force (IDF) attack as they travelled in clearly marked white aid vehicles.

"This happens in war", said Israel's compassionate political leader - Benjamin Netanyahu. I guess he meant they were collateral damage.

There has been far too much "collateral damage" in Gaza. 33,000 Palestinians have now died - including 11,000 innocent children and a further 200 aid workers. The IDF seem to see HAMAS in every apartment block, every hospital, every rudimentary refugee shelter, every face. There is a convenient excuse for every  atrocity they commit.

And the truth remains as it was at the start of this brutal revenge, they can never eliminate HAMAS for you simply cannot obliterate an idea. When the IDF went into the Al-Shifa hospital seeking members of HAMAS, how did they interview suspects?  Were they carrying membership cards? Were international observers present to monitor the assassinations? Some of those victims were lying injured in hospital beds.

But shhh! I have probably said too much for there are some out there who still chant - "Israel good! Gaza bad!" and see none of the blurriness between.

I suspect that John Chapman and the two Jameses shown above were not the kind of aid workers we might imagine - saintly people voluntarily risking their lives to give help to the needy. The three men were probably very well paid to give the WCK vital security protection for they each had a lot of military experience. Sadly it did not save them.

The horror goes on.

Herons

We have lived in  this suburban house for thirty five years but never before have we spotted a heron on one of our apple trees. But there the creature was this very evening. Thirty feet off the ground with his/her neck outstretched, looking for something.

Perhaps he or she was looking for another heron or more likely a garden pond from which a nice evening meal might be snatched. Herons are such skilful spear fishers. It is what evolution designed them to do.

I had spotted the bird as I passed through our kitchen so grabbed my camera and hoped it would not fly away - the bird I mean, not the camera! Herons are such skittish birds with a keen sense of possible danger. The photo was taken through the glass of our kitchen door. I knew that if I opened that door, he/she would zoom off.

Below there are two more heron pictures I have taken in past years. The first one was taken at Garlieston Bay in south west Scotland as night was approaching...

This second one was taken by the old mill pond in Bingham Park which is less than half a mile from this keyboard. That's where I expect to see herons - in or by watery places  - not up in a suburban apple tree. I wonder if the heron will ever come back. Somehow I doubt it. It was most likely a once in thirty five year event.

Quiztime

I just might make "Quiztime" a regular feature of this humble Yorkshire blog. My quizzes seem to have gone down pretty well so far. Last night I was up at "The Hammer and Pincers" quiz and brought home my quiz answer sheet intending to adapt it for today's quiz. Instead, I decided to ask ten questions connected with blogging. You could easily use my sidebar to work out the answers but it might be nice to have a go from memory. Good luck!

As usual, the answers will appear in the "Comments" section and also as usual - no peeping!

1. Which well-known female blogger resides in Ludwisburg, Germany?
2. With which Welsh blogger do you most associate the village of Trelawnyd?
3. Name the South Carolinian blogger who is the mastermind behind "Sparrow Tree Journal"?
4. Name a blogger from The Isle of Man who has recently been on holiday to Bermuda?
5. What is the first name of the fellow who produces a  frequently political American blog called "I Should Be Laughing"?
6. Dave on the north side of The Sheep's Head Peninsula in Ireland has created a blog called "Northsider" but what is his all time favourite band?  (a) The Bay City Rollers  (b) Take That  or (c) Kansas
7. Steve Reed in London puts out a blog called "Shadows and Light" but from which Canadian songwriter did he borrow his blog's title?
8. Name the blog that is produced by Mary Moon in the village of Lloyd several miles east of Tallahassee in the state of Florida.
9. Brighton in England and the Perigord region of south west France contain the homes of one particular senior male blogger but what name does he go by?
10. Which blog or blogger won the Yorkshire Pudding Overall Blogger of the Year Award for 2023?