Deano

May I introduce myself? My name is Dean Kenneth Horatio Geovanni Gnome, aka "Deano". On Sunday, I was liberated from the Hull City supporters' store and brought here to the Pudding Towers Estate - home to Lord and Lady Pudding. This sunny May afternoon, as their highnesses were away at work, I thought it was time to do a little exploring.Mmm...what's this the lord and lady are growing up the garden? Looks like butternut squash to me! How pretentious! Why can't they just stick to spuds and turnips?Hello! Hello! What have we got here then? This gnome is as old as the hills. I tried to kick the ball to him but he just stood there like a statue. Cheer up grandad!In the greenhouse I met more gnomes. The old guy on the left is American - says his name is Brague. The other one is Yorkshire from Richmond...called Alfred, Albert or Arthur...one of them daft old-fashioned names they used to have in the nineteen thirties. Grumpy old gits. They've been out in the sun too long. No wonder they're locked up in the greenhouse with the tomato plants.In the house now. Thought I'd check out the washing machine. It was like being inside a space capsule or perhaps a deep sea diving bell. Thank heavens the mistress didn't come in and press the start button.That's me at the front of the house waiting for their worships to reappear in their Roller. Guess I might as well have a kickabout with the locals. Over here son! On me head!

Cheers everybody!

Deano

Drystone

If Daphne up in Leeds can blog about drystone walls then so can I. Actually, I first wrote admiringly about them just over a year ago. The pictures above and below this paragraph were snapped by yours truly on Blacka Moor just south of Sheffield. Here the wall builders of long ago used millstone grit and hard sandstone from the local area. That's how our country's precious network of drystone walls was created - using locally sourced stone. Hence in the Cotswolds the walls are honey-coloured whereas in the White Peak of Derbyshire ash-white limestone was used. Many is the time I have stood in awed silence, admiring long dead wallbuilders' craftsmanship - the way the stones fit so snugly and naturally together even though every single stone used is slightly different from the next. And I love the way, nature embellishes the rustic beauty of these walls - lichens and ferns and creeping plants. They are lovely to behold.

On a recent walk by Blacka Moor, I noticed how a wealthy farmer has had more than fifty yards of brand new drystone walling created at the side of the public right of way. It looks great and must have cost him a pretty penny to have built. Historically, farmers and their hired labourers would simply and patiently create their own walls. That happened quite literally through a thousand years and more of English history. Nowadays it's more likely you'll find a drystone waller in the yellow pages, phone him up and get a hefty estimate when he turns up in his Land Rover.

Below, a rather primitive lava wall near Lake Myvatn in Iceland. Looks like this might have been built by Fred Flintstone and Barney:-

Relief

The Tigers huddle before kick off.

It was May 24th, 2008 - a year ago. Pathetic as this might seem to non-football supporters, it was one of the happiest days of my life - alongside our wedding day, the days on which our children were born, being selected for Hull schoolboys rugby team, seeing Jimi Hendrix live at The Isle of Wight Festival. Yes it was so happy, Hull City's victory in the Championship play off final to join the top flight of English football for the very first time. It was a day I had often dreamt of but never believed would happen and a day when I discovered the meaning of "tears of joy". They were streaming down my cheeks.

So a year has passed. The Tigers began their Premiership adventure so brilliantly, gaining unexpected victories at Arsenal, Newcastle and Tottenham. We drew at Chelsea and Liverpool and lost narrowly to Manchester United in a seven goal thriller. Okay there were bad days at the office - the heavy defeats to Wigan and Manchester City spring to mind - but our lads got up, dusted themselves down and came back fighting against the odds.

Since Christmas we have been in freefall, lady luck deserting us almost entirely. There were games when you shook your head in sheer disbelief wondering how on earth we had again failed to win a point or three. So it all boiled down to the last games of the season. We were playing Manchester United's reserve team and Newcastle were at Aston Villa. This was "Survival Sunday". Rocking like an in-patient in an asylum and muttering "Oh God" over and over I watched in agony as we again managed to go down to an undeserved one-nil home defeat thanks to a superstrike from United's Darron Gibson.

Over in Birmingham, Newcastle's Damien Duff cleverly deflected a long range Villa shot into his own net. Middlesborough didn't manage a miracle at West Ham so they go down with Newcastle and The Tigers live to fight another day. Another season in The Premiership! Amazing! I wouldn't say I was happy yesterday - just mightily relieved and Lord knows our management team will have to pull out all the stops to strengthen the squad this summer. Getting rid of some fringe players would also help. 2008-2009 has been a fantastic roller coaster ride of ups and downs, highs and lows. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. You might say that there are more important things in life than football but I might disagree.

Charismatic Hull manager Brown serenades the crowd - "This is the best trip I've ever been on..." to the tune of "Sloop John B"

Nailbiting

Down at the pub, there was a poster in the window - "Survival Sunday". Are we talking about starving children or the aftermath of the swine flu pandemic, motorway mayhem or widespread flooding? No! It's far more important than that. It's the question of who will be relegated from the English Premiership.

It took my team - Hull City - 105 years to finally get there and earlier this season there seemed to be no chance of us being down at the bottom facing the drop on the final day of the season. But there we are and all we have to do is to win our final game to guarantee safety. Who are we playing? Why none other than that little north west pub team called Manchester United! You may have heard of them. They will be playing Barcelona next Wednesday in the European Champions League final!

May I humbly ask all bloggers out there to keep their fingers, toes, legs and other bodily protuberances firmly crossed between 4pm and 6pm this Sunday evening? Also if you are of a religious persuasion please pray for our lads. We dared to dream, we have lived the dream but we want to live that dream for another year. For Jesus Christ's sake....Amen. COME ON YOU HULL! Managers - Shearer, Southgate, Sir Phil Brown (City) and Sbregia.

Bamboo

On one of my recent weekly shopping trips to "Netto", I was perusing the random phantasmagorical collection of consumer goods in the central aisle when I came across a pack of dish cloths made from bamboo! Yes, bamboo! Obviously they had been processed and woven but they are almost 100% bamboo and they wash our dishes very nicely.

Bamboo is quite an amazing plant. There are many different varieties and you can do lots of things with it. You can, like a panda, eat it. You can make drinking vessels from it and even knives. Musical instruments - drums and flutes. Rafts and poles to punt the rafts along. Fences, woven floor mats, baskets, containers for steaming food in, hula hoops, canes for runner beans, table mats... Its usefulness must surely outdo the very adaptable coconut palm.

In Macau, we saw a Chinese theatre's vast marquee erected near the Maritime Museum. When I pulled back the gaudy canvas and peeped inside - I could hardly believe it. The whole internal framework was constructed entirely of bamboo and this marquee could have easily accommodated five hundred people as well as a full size stage.

In Kowloon, opposite our room in the fantabulous Luxe Manor Hotel, I noticed a high rise building in the process of refurbishment and running up the exterior was a huge intricate network of scaffolding - again made entirely from bamboo. See the picture below. It made me think that long ago, westerners probably got the idea for tubular scaffolding directly from Chinese bamboo technology. Quite amazing:-

Kowloon April 2009

Transmogrification

"No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."- George Orwell, Animal Farm, Ch. 10

The DHSS have paid out many thousands of pounds for a TV ad campaign that has the end slogan "We're Targeting Benefit Fraud". There are dark shadows and slightly threatening music as a spotlight scans our cities, seeking out the cheats and the scroungers. Much as I detest any form of dishonesty, I find this campaign a bit rich in the light of what we now know about busloads of our politicians. Talk about pigs and troughs.

Expenses? Good lord, as a teacher you find that the bureaucracy and form-filling that you are required to do in order to claim legitimate expenses is like an insurmountable barrier so you just don't bother. I drove to Birmingham for a work related course last September and I didn't claim a single penny. Yesterday, a colleague went to a stationery shop in her spare time and bought highlighter pens for her classes with no intention whatsoever of seeking reimbursement.

But our servants in parliament, they have claimed for food bills, shelving units, moat cleaning, designer decoration, mortgages they didn't have, beds, bedding, hanging baskets, first class travel around the world, mock tudor beams, court summonses. The list goes on and on. And greedily they even "flip" first and second homes in order to milk more from the system.

Take our local MP, The Right Dishonourable Nick Clegg, dull as ditch water and leader of the so-called Liberal Democrats. There he is on television, all moralistic and shocked, talking about purging Westminster of its sinners. Yet he is just the same as the rest. Here in Sheffield, at the taxpayers' expense, he hired a gardener to maintain the land around his rarely visited constituency home. £260 a month for four hours work a week. Clegg grunted that he was doing the taxpayer a big favour because it was important for him to maintain the property to a good standard - thereby protecting national interest. What poppycock! Why couldn't he do what the rest of us do - get outside with our lawnmowers, clippers and brushes and if too busy or lazy to do the work then pay for a bloody gardener from your own pocket!

The whole thing is an absolute disgrace. I have voted in every election I could vote in since I turned eighteen... and always Labour - for socialism - or the tantalising idea of socialism - runs through my very bloodstream. But next time? Who is there to vote for? They're all the same. They may begin with good intentions - like the animals of Orwell's farm - but in the end they transmogrify into the very figures they pledged they would never become.

Homage

I was rather taken with this story that appeared on the BBC News website earlier this week:-

"Folk legend Bob Dylan mingled unnoticed with Beatles tourists during a minibus tour to John Lennon's childhood home. The 67-year-old troubadour paid £16 for the public trip to the 1940s semi in Woolton, Liverpool, last week as his European tour called at the city. He

was one of 14 tourists to examine photos

and documents in the National Trust-owned home, where Lennon

grew up with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George."

Of course, Dylan met Lennon in his lifetime and who knows how close they got. I once went on a Beatles Magical Mystery tour in Liverpool myself, seeing the same semi that Dylan saw along with Strawberry Fields and several nondescript houses where Paul Mc Cartney lived. I recall the tour guide announcing, as we passed the Job Cente in Speke... "And that's where Pete Best works..." Of course, he was The Beatles' drummer before Ringo Starr.

Dylan as a tourist and allegedly nobody recognised him but perhaps they were simply being polite to give the guy some well-deserved private space. When I visited Hibbing, Minnesota some years back I had almost given up hope of finding Dylan's childhood home until we stopped at a bar on the way out of town and the barman said he knew. Strange how we can all be so curious about where our musical, artistic and literary heroes once lived.

Above: Dylan with Liverpool children in 1966