Reminiscence

Fourteen years ago I visited Easter Island. It was something I had dreamt of doing for decades. In terms of "dream destinations" this was my ultimate goal. I knew so much about the island and its history. Books about Easter Island were like food to me. I had gobbled them up with a hunger that could never be satisfied until I actually landed there ready to explore.

A flight to Madrid from London was followed by a much longer flight to Santiago, Chile and then after a day or two I continued flying west across The Pacific Ocean for 2500 miles until the legendary  little island appeared in view - The Navel of the World and arguably the most remote inhabited island on our planet.

I know I was there but even now I have to pinch myself to believe it. I even got to blog from Easter Island and this is what I wrote on October 28th 2009:-

"So dear visitors, I made it to Rapa Nui, Isla de Pascua, Easter Island which ever you choose to call it... and I am not disappointed I can tell you.

On Monday I scrambled down inside Ranu Kau crater to a unique microclimate, sheltered from the worst of Pacific gales and from the encroachment of disease and human interference. I felt like Simon in "Lord of The Flies", gasping in the thick green jungle undergrowth and further along the crater lake´s tangled edge I discovered a huge rock inscribed with petroglyphs from long ago.

Back on the crater rim having sweltered in the sunshine on the long climb back, I collapsed in a heap before heading down to the broken "ahu" at Vinapu. So many "moai" were pushed over or broken up perhaps in inter-tribal warfare or because the old certainties of the island were disappearing...but you still sense the echoes of the amazing culture that was developed here in total ignorance of the outer world which lay over two thousand five hundred miles away.

For the first people of Rapa Nui, this was their entire world and I feel privileged, even a little humbled to have this opportunity to witness first hand palpable evidence of those lost and distant times. I´ll tell you more when I am not in an expensive little internet cafe where speed of internet access is clearly not a priority but hey... blogging from Easter Island.... isn´t that just amazing anyway!"

I walked for miles in the week that I was there and saw as much as I could - even hiring a vehicle for a couple of days from the owner of the little lodging house where I stayed - in Hanga Roa which is the island's only settlement. How I would love to go back there and see some more - perhaps join an archaeological expedition - but I guess I never will.  But I have been there and I  will remember it to the end of my life.

Offshore islets

Singing

In his short life, Zach had never before heard a man singing to him in sustained bursts. I went through my entire baby repertoire including "Wind The Bobbin Up", "If You're Happy and You Know It", "I Can Sing A Rainbow", "The Grand Old Duke of York" and of course "Zach and Zill Went Up The Hill". Oh wee Zach was delighted, chortling away with such a happy expression on his face as you can see below:-

Today, I considered sharing pictures of some of the estimated  five thousand children who have been bombed to death in Gaza in the past month. Some are still lying in the rubble and their stories will never be told. Did they really have to die? Did they? How many more must die before the current nightmare ends? And what on earth is the future for those who make it through to the other side... alive?

But we don't want see such pictures or talk about all of that do we? It's not nice. Too upsetting. Better to avert our eyes. Pretend it's not happening. Better to turn inward and blog about ordinary, pleasant domestic stuff like grandfathers singing to newborns...

I wonder if little kids in Gaza will ever sing the Palestinian Arabic version of this song again...

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

If you're happy and you know it and you really want to show it

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

Explanation

Zach at two weeks old

The Yorkshire Pudding blogpost factory was not operating yesterday as we drove down to London to see our little Zach - my only grandson. He was two weeks old today but this was our first meeting with him.

We stayed overnight, not wishing to impose too much upon Ian and Sarah before driving home today. 

Of course we got to cuddle Zachary Roy and twice I sang to him random songs that came in and out of my mind. He was wide awake on those occasions, warm in the crook of my arm and looking up as though mesmerised... but possibly horrified by the galumphing ogre who had briefly  possessed him.

A lovely young midwife called Sensible Sally rang the doorbell at midday in order to conduct Zach's fourteen day NHS health check and to make sure that everything was fine. She weighed him in a cloth sling and ascertained that he has now surpassed his birth weight so he's certainly gaining the nourishment he needs.

Zach being weighed like a turkey

Ian and Sarah will be great parents and it was lovely to observe how loving, confident and "hands on" Ian is with his new son. He's always been good with small children and at the age of eighteen he even worked in a children's nursery which is very unusual for young men - but he loved it. Hell, that was twenty years ago!

It took us three and half hours to get to their house in Fulham from our house in Sheffield but five and a half hours to get back. Admittedly, we stopped for "Burger King" lunches at the London Gateway Services on the M1 - but that must have taken less than half an hour. The main hold-up was twenty miles south of Sheffield. At times, the traffic was stationary. We believe there had been an accident up ahead involving two big lorries (American: trucks). Clint was not amused.

We'll be heading back to London later this month - partly to see a show at The Royal Albert Hall but also to support  Sarah while Ian is in The Netherlands for three nights on a work-related trip.  Furthermore, I just found out that BOSH! will also be in Sydney, Australia in February of next year. Ian will really miss his boy.

Proud parents and son earlier today

Revisiting

I guess that if you keep blogging long enough, you will eventually return to places and topics you have covered before. 

Thirteen years ago, I visited Sheffield's Cholera Monument and blogged about it here. Erected in 1835 in memory of recent cholera victims, the rocket-like  stone monument overlooks the very heart of Sheffield. I went up there again today in lovely autumn sunshine. Sitting on a park bench beneath the monument I captured the image shown  above of jumbled modern buildings west of the city's main railway station.

Below, the restored monument on a ridge east of the city centre. It was funded through public subscriptions:-

Leaving the little  park where the monument is located, I walked along leafy Norfolk Road to its corner with Fitzwalter Road - shown below. Both street names are associated with sixteenth century English history and Sheffield's special links with Mary Queen of Scots. She was incarcerated here for several years,

On the way home, I stopped at Berkeley Precinct  off Ecclesall Road to take  this photograph of a newly-finished mural that celebrates the city's proud historical  position in the history of football. The player in that red and black kit is wearing the colours of the oldest football team in the world - Sheffield F.C. - formed in 1857.

Sue-Ellen

Sue-Ellen with J.R. in "Dallas"

Back in the seventies, London resident, Uma Fernandes, was a big fan of the American soap opera "Dallas". In 1980, she gave birth to a girl and decided to name her Sue-Ellen after the famous "Dallas" character Sue-Ellen Ewing. It was a way in which Uma could declare her devotion to the show.

Somewhere along the track that daughter slightly altered her first name and Sue-Ellen Fernandes is now known as Suella Braverman - Britain's current Home Secretary. She belongs to the right wing of The Conservative Party and has said some pretty outrageous things in the last year or two about immigration, education, asylum seekers, pro-Palestinian rallies and The Labour Party.

Braverman

I remember her sitting at The Conservative Party conference this autumn. She was meant to be listening loyally to her leader's keynote speech but her body language said something else. It said, "I am not really interested" and "Look at me for it is my firm ambition to become the next Tory party leader". It was crystal clear.

Today she decided to target homeless people. Apparently, she has hatched vague plans to clear tents from our city streets. Some homeless people use them simply to shelter from the elements but Sue-Ellen thinks they are messy symbols of the fecklessness of homeless people. She described homelessness as, and I quote - "a lifestyle choice".

This is quite outrageous because it is obvious that the rise in homelessness over the last decade has directly grown out of the callous neglect of the Tory government in which she is now a key minister.

Referring to Sue-Ellen's speech, Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy said: “Even by this government’s standards, this is disgraceful. Imagine looking at the housing and homelessness crisis you’ve presided over and thinking, ‘let’s take away their tents’.”

Sue-Ellen doesn't seem to be the sharpest pencil in the box even though she read law at Queen's College, Cambridge. There's an innate brutishness about her and in this she seems to revel. She doesn't mind stirring up hornets' nests and in many ways her political playbook seems to owe much to  the worst of  Trumpish Republicanism in modern day America.

It is just plain cruel and ignorant to pour scorn upon the homeless and threaten to take away their tents just as it was cruel and ignorant to threaten to send asylum-seekers and other immigrants to Rwanda. I would rather have Sue-Ellen Ewing in charge of this country's home affairs than Sue-Ellen Braverman even though the former was just a fictional character in a soap opera.

Homecoming

Highway Rat

Last night I hit the hay at around one thirty. As I have said before in this blog, I have always been a night owl. Less than three hours later, I was woken by a small voice in the darkness. It was Little Phoebe... "Grandma? Grandma!". Not in distress and certainly not at full volume.

I went to the bathroom  to urinate, intending to look in on Phoebe but two minutes later she wasn't making a sound so I crept back to bed. Ten minutes later, the voice in the dark became louder and more insistent delivered in a happy singsong style - "Grandma! Grandma!". It was 4.30 in the morning.

Shirley got up and went into Phoebe's room and for a little while it seemed that she might go back to sleep. But no such luck. At 5am, she was ready for the day ahead with Grandma as her bleary-eyed  but faithful chaperone. They went downstairs. 

I put the radio on as news about war always has the effect of sending me back to sleep. And I returned to The Land of Nod but at seven o'clock Shirley's smartphone went off - alarming me at first because I didn't know what it was. I don't know how to answer smartphones and once again failed miserably to take the call. I found out later that it was Shirley's sister Carolyn, phoning to say she wasn't feeling very well.

So shaken was I from my slumbers that this time there was no chance of me returning to what Shakespeare called "Nature's soft nurse" - sleep. So I stumbled downstairs with less than five hours of unconsciousness behind me though I am used to eight hours.

Little Phoebe had been watching episodes of "Peppa Pig" but now she was on "Highway Rat" - closely based on one of  Julia Donaldson's brilliant story books. I watched it with Phoebe while Shirley took the opportunity to have a shower and get dressed.

We didn't know just how long we'd be looking after Phoebe today. It all depended on when Frances was allowed to leave the maternity hospital. In the event, she was let out at 5pm and Stewart drove her home with Baby Margot.

After an evening meal of steak pie, homemade chips and garden peas with gravy, we took Phoebe home to meet her little sister for the first time. It was a beautiful encounter. Margot was lying in her crib just snuffling around as newborns are wont to do. The smile on Phoebe's face was priceless as she touched her sister for the very first time. Of course Phoebe clarified that Margot had come out of Mummy's tummy and remarked on how small she appeared. She gave her a cuddly penguin that she had, with her daddy, picked from a shop that has a few shelves laden with cuddly creatures.

And for Shirley and I, it was naturally a most lovely thing to hold Margot in our arms for the first time. I sang "Scarborough Fair" to her and she seemed to look up at me feeling comforted. Shirley said she loved the smell of her - the unique smell of a newborn child and I touched the remarkable softness of her cheeks. As I click the "Publish" button, Margot is thirty two and a half hours old.

I hope and expect to get my full allotment of sleep tonight.

Margot

 

Margot Pudding

Born in Sheffield this afternoon

November 2nd 2023

This darling little girl arrived today - a second daughter for Frances and Stewart and a sister for Phoebe. For Shirley and I, she is our third grandchild and is of course another cousin for Zach down in London. The two babies could have arrived on the same day but Little Margot decided to keep us all waiting - arriving  nine days after Zach and eleven days after her "due date".

There were no complications. Margot's birth weight was 9lb 14oz which is pretty big in modern times but it means that she arrived fully developed and healthy and began nuzzling her mother's milk minutes after her birth.

She is supposed to have a middle name but there was a last minute change of heart about that. It was going to be Isabella but her parents are holding fire on that choice.

Dear Margot,

Perhaps we could have made a more peaceful world for you to enter with more harmony between nations, more respect for the natural environment, less killing and less poverty. But it's not all bad. Not by any means. You will discover sunrises, awesome sunsets and music and beaches where waves break and forests where birds sing. And you will laugh and make friends and you will love and  be loved.

Your life will stretch far beyond my time but in the years that I am part of your life, I pledge to be the best grandfather that I can be. We will feed ducks in ponds and I will push you on swings and if you ask me questions, I will answer them with honesty.

Be good. Be proud. Be kind. Understand that every human has their own story to tell. Laugh. Listen. Love. You only get one crack at life and your voyage began this very day. As they used to say to mariners Margot - God speed!

With love,

Grandpa Pudding

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