Haiti

Of Haiti's current horror, what can one say? What can one do? I would love to fly out there to the rubble of Port au Prince, find one devastated family and bring them back to our house, look after them, feed them, keep them warm until returning seemed safe and sensible. But the authorities would never allow such a thing.

Those collapsed shanty towns. Those people digging desperately with their bare hands. Those poor Haitians with their desperate history and their broken economy. Those neighbours lost. Those uncles and cousins, sons and sisters, mothers and grandmothers wrapped in tattered blankets and left on the kerb for collection vehicles. Those mysterious ways of that heartless "God".

Like millions of others I will donate money to the Haitian earthquake appeal and hope it does just a little good. Meanwhile, we live with our minuscule worries, our holiday plans, our New Year's resolutions, our bills, our appointments, our quarrels, our ideas for tonight's dinner. It's all nothing - meaningless compared with what has happened in Haiti.

I urge fellow bloggers to give generously. We are all earthlings.

Hedley

Fancy a wing Hedley?

Once upon a time, there was a young hedgehog called Hedley. He was an independent fellow who knew how to look after himself. As winter arrived, he found himself a snug place to enjoy a much-deserved semi-hibernation close to the vent of a central heating boiler under somebody's wooden decking. His instincts told him he'd be safe there and would only need to stir from his slumbers once in a while for food - preferably delicious pink and juicy earthworms tunnelling temptingly through the chocolaty soil.

On January 12th, Hedley's empty stomach drew him out of his state of suspended animation. He sniffed the air. It smelled different somehow, as if the usual odours of nature were suppressed by something. Although Hedley's hearing and sight were unexceptional, his sense of smell was acute and he could pretty much tell what was going on for many yards around simply by drawing air in sharply through his nostrils. His parents - Daphne and Robert had taught him well, before they met their inevitable pancake-like end on the nearby main road - a stretch of tarmac that Hedley had vowed never to cross. After that, he had been raised by his Nana Sofia in the village of Grenoside. She hugged Hedley so hard that her prickles hurt him.

He squeezed out from under the decking to see an ocean of whiteness - the like of which he had never seen before though his Uncle Ian, who later emigrated to Florida, had once told him a terrifying story about a snow queen who inhabited an ice castle in a white world covered with, what was it Uncle Ian said, snow - yes that was it - snow.

Hedley snuffled beneath some fallen bracken only to find that the soil was frozen solid. It was like iron. "Oh dear," he moaned to himself. "I will never find any worms in this soil. I shall starve to death!"

Two tiny hedgehog tears trickled from his shiny little black eyes but then very faintly he smelt something a couple of yards away. What was it? It seemed to be coming from beneath the white stuff. It wasn't worms or grubs or those bulbous caterpillars he loved to gorge on in the summer but it was certainly meaty. He just had to investigate.

Poking around under the snow with his pointy nose and his little front feet with their tiny digging claws, he discovered a turkey's wing bone. There were some strands of icy meat clinging to it though it already seemed to have been gnawed by another creature - perhaps Basil the Fox who sometimes called in this garden when doing his nightly rounds. "Oh dear!" said Hedley, "I'm so hungry!" so he began to peck away at the bone, knowing that he needed nourishment to help him sleep through January's remaining bittercold nights.

Hedley didn't notice when a big human creature tiptoed slowly over the snow-covered decking to snap photographs of him and he also didn't notice when the same big man snuck up behind him with a tin of Somerfield chicken and tuna cat food which he placed quietly next to a terracotta plant pot. Moments later, Hedley smelt something mouthwateringly scrumptious in the air and was magnetised towards the cat food like a stage hypnotist's victim. "Mmmm!" Hedley growled contentedly. He would sleep so well after this.

Slow down Hedley!

Signs

Years ago - when I was at university - perhaps unsurprisingly, I mostly concentrated on the two subjects which would form my joint honours degree - English Literature and Education. However, I also took some subsidiary courses in my first two years - Swedish, Religious Studies and Sociology. It was in the last subject that I was guided to learned articles and research evidence surrounding non-verbal communication.

Of course, all of us read non-verbal signals. It's part of everyday communication. At the most basic level - at least in the western world - a nod of the head signals "yes" and a shake signals "no", a smile suggests pleasure or contentment whilst a frown suggests displeasure or anxiety. Moving onwards and upwards from that base level, it is possible to read a whole range of much less obvious non-verbal signals. It is a fascinating area of study both for lay people in everyday life and for social psychologists seeking better academic understanding.

On Saturday night, Shirley and I broke out of the igloo, tied tennis racquets to our frostbitten feet and trudged down to the local pub. It was warmer in there than at home. Across the room we noticed a group of respectable thirty somethings, conversing while they drank their favourite tipples. A man, sitting perhaps nine inches from a blonde woman had his hand behind her seat and was persistently fingering and feeling her hair. His other hand sat upon his crotch and only moved from there to lift his glass. The woman's head tended to incline away from her boyfriend. The two of them made virtually no eye contact in the five minutes that we observed them. Meanwhile another man had his elbows on the pub table but his right hand, always hidden from his companions under his left elbow, fidgeted incessantly.

What was going on? It was unexceptional and undramatic behaviour but was the hair fiddling some kind of subconscious sexual foreplay? Was it threatening - as if to say - I really want to take this mane of hair and drag you back to my cave. Was it harking back to the man's realtionship with his mother or was it simply a statement such as - I want to care for you and look after you. The simultaneous crotch touching probably suggested a sexual undertone and the coquettish turning away of the woman's head may have suggested that though he was the pursuer, she was the final arbiter.

The man with the hidden but ever-moving fingers was clearly displaying a posture that he hoped would spell out comfort, ease and relaxation but the fingers were surely telling another story of frustration and feeling ill at ease.

We all have our own non-verbal foibles. When deep in conversation, my eyes will sometimes glance away from the person I am speaking to to focus on thin air or whatever uninteresting inanimate object is nearby. This seems to help me to concentrate on the words I am forming, giving respite from the eyes and face of my conversational partner. So often when I do this, the other person will look away in the direction of my gaze and many times I have had to explain that I am simply concentrating on what I am about to say. It is a type of non-verbal behaviour that could so easily be mis-read.

Although I was never a fan of "Big Brother", occasionally there'd be an expert commenting on the housemates' body language and so often that commentary made perfect sense. In a recent episode of "Airline" an Easyjet manager at Luton found himself being confronted by an angry passenger. The passenger was wide-eyed and demanding, even though he had missed his plane through his own stupidity. He moved into the duty manager's personal space so that their noses were less than six inches apart. It was at this point the unfortunate manager said politely "Please get out of my face!" before walking away - having I think correctly read the signs that physical aggression would be the next step.

That spell at university taught me that non-verbal communication, body language and gesture provide a wide range of information that can be read either with ease as in the case of the headshake or with much difficulty when the signs are more subtle and driven by subconscious memory, prioritisation and urging. At one level you might say that all of us spend our entire lives trying to read the signs that may or may not accompany spoken words.

Lennon

There has just got to be more to life than ice and snow. Any moment soon, I am expecting a big woolly mammoth to come lurching down our road, tossing Corsas and Fiestas onto the snowy verge with his monstrous tusks. Anyway, today I decided to break out of our igloo and journey into Sheffield's city centre - always known as "town" by the local eskimos. I was going to The Showroom which is our city's only independent cinema.

I sat in the dark and soon the film came on - "Nowhere Boy" directed by Sam Taylor-Wood and only released at the tail end of last year. It's about John Lennon's life between 1955 and 1961 and is eminently watchable.

Only Japanese pilots still hiding in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo will not know at least some fragments of John Lennon's story - how he grew up with his Aunt Mimi in a fairly affluent part of Liverpool not far from Strawberry Field, how his unreliable mother Julia died young, how he met Paul McCartney, how he formed a band called The Quarrymen and how he became captivated by the newly emerging rock and roll music of middle America.

Above - scene from the film - Lennon and Julia at Blackpool. Below - A young John Lennon with the real Julia - his mother.

The film brings it all alive rather tenderly. Aunt Mimi is portrayed as a staid, emotionally repressed, snobbish and yet dependable figure in Lennon's life while Julia ably played by Anne-Marie Duff comes across as fun-loving but vulnerable. The actor who played Lennon, Aaron Johnson, bears only a slight physical resemblance to him but he convincingly conveys some of the torment and anger that coloured Lennon's youth.

Do you remember when the great white shark first rose from the sea in "Jaws"? The whole cinema jumped. There was a similar moment in this film when quite unexpectedly Julia is killed by a car. I listened to myself gasp with horror even though I knew that such a moment would occur somewhere in the film.

The movie's backdrop is nineteen fifties England with its austere postwar climate but also with a growing sense of emergent youth cultures such as the teddy boys. Young people are starting to define themselves in new terms and The Beatles are in the right place at the right time - ready to provide their restless generation with anthems to rally around.

I guess it was in the early eighties when my friend Tony and I travelled from Sheffield on a "Beatles Magical Mystery" coach excursion. We saw Aunt Mimi's house, some of the places where Paul McCartney's family had lived, the grand house with its surrounding trees known as Strawberry Field, the site of The Cavern Club, the bus shelter at the top of Penny Lane, Liverpool Art College where John and Stuart Sutcliffe were students and the job centre in Speke where, at the time, rejected Beatles drummer Pete Best was working. Not only did "Nowhere Boy" bring memories of that great day out back to mind but it also successfully showed the family circumstances which were fundamental in shaping Lennon's ambitions and his talent.

Surprisingly, songs and music never overwhelm the dramatic human story in this film but I would have liked it to end with Lennon's plaintive song to his late mother who meant so very much to him even though she had let him down so badly...

Half of what I say is meaningless
But I say it just to reach you
Julia Julia Julia
Ocean child
Calls me
So I sing a song of love
Julia Julia
Seashell eyes
Windy smile
So I sing a song of love
Julia Julia

Snowbound

Do you remember "Deano" - our friendly garden gnome in his smart Hull City kit? Well today he seemed to have the weight of the world upon his little gnomish head and was threatening to turn into a snowman after five inches of snow had fallen upon Pudding Towers within three hours. Here he is:-Global warming? The entire Pudding estate is clogged with snow so tonight's masked ball has had to be postponed and tomorrow's pheasant shoot is also off. Birds that inhabit the estate are having much trouble finding titbits of food. However, earlier today I watched in horror as a sparrowhawk plunged from a high branch to take a young blackbird for his lunch. It was so quick. All that was left was a mess of black feathers fluttering in the snow. I felt bad because the unfortunate creature had been nibbling at the old Christmas pudding I had scattered in the centre of the lawn. It was as if I had unwittingly laid a trap.

Actually I am also feeling trapped. No vehicles are moving up or down our street. The buses are off. Manchester Airport was closed just twenty four hours after Frances had flown back to The States.

As the kitchen staff were unable to get in, I was forced to make some turkey soup myself - pearl barley, swede, courgette and dumplings added. It was ready and piping hot when Shirley walked in at two o'clock after completing a half day at the medical centre. In the midst of all this snow, we decided to book a February weekend break at Ely in Cambridgeshire - somewhere we have never been and something to look forward to. More pictures of the snowbound estate:-

The red Christmas light rope should come down today - twelfth night.

No barbecues in the near future

Earlier

How short the days seem at this time of year. Roll over in your warm bed and before you know it it's close to midday with daylight already beginning to fade. Earlier, I took a walk around our neighbourhood, through Chelsea Park and along Psalter Lane....

Sunlight bounced from leaded windows

Chelsea Park with sledgers

Psalter Lane leads into Ecclesall Road

Our snowbound street with my elongated shadow

And then the evening came. After Sunday dinner, it was time to take Frances to the railway station. On that snowbound slope, I had it all on to prevent our car from sliding into a parked vehicle. We hugged Frances on Platform 6a and waved her off to Manchester Airport knowing that we won't see her in the flesh again until mid June at the earliest. I guess the snow will be gone by then.

Hiatus

In the supermarket, they are selling off the last remnants of Christmas 2009. Pork pies, shiny Christmas crackers, biscuits for cheese, little string bags of chocolate coins, selection boxes, tubs of brandy butter. It's well and truly over. All that feasting. That drinking. That consolidation of family ties. For many of those fortunate or unfortunate enough to be in work, the return date is Monday January 4th - Black Monday. There'll be thousands of glum faces that morning.

I should have been getting up early to drive our daughter Frances over the Pennines to Manchester Airport for her return flight to Alabama via Atlanta but with the Snake Pass being closed and the prospect of more icy weather, we are not taking any chances. I have booked her a hotel at the airport ready for an early morning start on Monday. I doubt that Mr U.F.Abdulmutallah, languishing in a Michigan cellblock, will be even vaguely aware of the inconvenience his unforgiveable actions are causing to legitimate air travellers. What a shame that his unsuccessful chemistry may have blown away his gonads!

Our lawn remains frozen. Habitually I am out there every morning spreading birdseed and leftovers, pouring hot water into the birdbath etc.. The plump carcass of our Christmas turkey is now no more than a thin avian skeleton. It has been pecked at and chomped on by a variety of garden birds, a couple of neighbourhood cats and Basil, our friendly local urban fox.

I never want to go away at Christmastime. We have dwelt in this house for more than twenty years. There are echoes of previous Christmases when we had parents of our own and when our children were little. Perhaps it was in 1990 when I woke very early on Christmas morning and heard the quiet rustling of bed clothes from our son's room, then a little more rustling and movement before a sleepy voice whispered "He's been" which grew into increasingly sharper more excited declarations - "He's been! He's been!" I went into Ian's room and saw the brightness in his eyes. I let him take just one parcel from his bulging pillowcase and unwrap it before I kissed him and tucked him in again.

This Christmas he brought his pretty girlfriend Ruby for Christmas dinner. He's twenty five now but something of that old Christmas sparkle remains. For the one and only time last year he stayed over in his family home on Christmas Eve and in the morning we all had champagne and bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon for breakfast.

On New Year's Eve we just went down to "The Banner" - our local pub. Ian and Ruby were there too with Ian's "boys" - young men he has known since schooldays. The pub was merry and friendly and I knew half the people there - such a comforting feeling. Hugging and hand shaking and kisses - wishing each other a happy new year and all aware that happiness is a precious but fragile state that can so easily be shattered.

On New Year's Day my younger brother came over from East Yorkshire for another seasonal feast - another turkey with all the trimmings. A roll-up smoking bachelor, he still lives in our mother's house and works as a hotel maintenance man on low wages - griping and grumbling about each and every aspect of his job. Nothing's ever right. There's a lot of bitterness in him - partly born out of the realisation that the bright potential of his youth stopped shining long ago and cannot be relit.

Hull City lost woefully to Wigan in the cup today and our street is once again being feathered with snow as I write these words. It has been great having our lovely daughter home again and I know she has enjoyed the rest, the food and simply being looked after. With her gone, these dark plains of winter will seem even broader as birds peck at the monochrome lawn and we ask ourselves - will springtime never come?