Wasdale...

I spent an hour standing on a knoll, with the camera tripod-mounted and locked onto a composition which included Wastwater, Yewbarrow, Great Gable and Kirk Fell. The light was getting worse by the minute, but I felt perfectly content to stand and stare… just me and the herdwicks. I’d done everything I could to get a picture: I was in the right place, with the right gear, and it wasn’t my fault if the light was unfavourable. I may try again tomorrow. 

When I got back to the Romahome, two guys were parked up next to me, also taking photographs. They were French. I communicated in halting French (my French isn’t as good as my Spanish… and my Spanish isn’t much good either). They seemed impressed by the Lakeland scenery, but were staying the night in Haworth, to see where the Brontës lived and wrote. One guy gave me a beautifully printed calendar, featuring his pix…

You can't win a maul...

England were confused by Italy’s tactics in their Six Nations rugby match at the weekend. According to the Guardian, the Azurri resorted to “the rare but legitimate tactic of players refusing to commit to the breakdown after the tackle. This deliberate stand-offishness meant there were no rucks and no offside line”. The referee was no help to Dylan Hartley, the baffled England captain, who asked for clarification of the rules. “I am a referee, not a coach”, he said.

I’ve always had the suspicion that there aren’t actually any rules in Rugby at all; the referee just blows his whistle every thirty seconds to give all the players a chance to catch their breath. At least the game has its own civilities. Only the captains are allowed to addressed the referee (football take note: they even call him “sir”). And a player who bites off another player’s ear must leave the field of play... and cannot return until he’s swallowed it (if you want to keep your ears, you’ve got to tape them to the side of your head).

There's plenty wrong with rugby as a spectator sport. Let’s get rid of the scrum. It usually collapses in a heap of bodies - with all the obvious dangers, for the guys in the front row, of suffering a neck or spinal injury. Anyway, the team that puts the ball in is the team that gets it out, so what’s the point? Rugby is just an attempt to codify a brawl. In no sane game do you reap rewards from booting the ball out of play. Oh, and the ball’s the wrong shape…

Birds...

I heard on the radio this morning that watching birds has been found to be a good antidote for anxiety and depression. The only thing that surprised me is that this was thought to be newsworthy. I started watching birds when I was a little lad, and I’ve been watching ever since (that far-away look in my eye, when you’re talking to be, just means I’m looking over your shoulder at some bird or other).

I’m not a ‘birder’, and I’m definitely not a ‘twitcher’ (twitching is where ornithology meets book-keeping). I don’t even go out to watch birds; the truth is that I’m never not watching birds. As a hobby it’s provided me with sixty years of guileless pleasure. And it’s cheap. I’ve always had a monocular (generally 8x30) and a bird-book to hand, both upgraded fairly recently. The book - Collins Bird Guide - is a wonderfully comprehensive guidebook which concentrates on the business of identifying any bird I’m likely to see. The illustrations, though small, are stunning… and very accurate. For my visits to bird reserves I now have a spotting scope. Nothing fancy (a top of the range scope can run to £1,000 or more), but it does the job.

This time last year I was planning a trip around the bird-haunts of East Anglia, to see (or, more likely, hear) a nightingale. I found my nightingales - plenty of them - at a delightful little reserve in Essex called Fingringhoe Wick. I’d heard my first nightingale in fifty years even before I’d parked the Romahome. I remember walking around the grassy paths on the reseve in a bit of a daze, surrounded by birdsong.

There are a few birds I’d still like to see, if the opportunity arises (like spotting cirl buntings late last year, in one of the very few places in the south-west of England where they can still be found). I’ve never seen a hawfinch or a nighthar, or a lesser spotted woodpecker; maybe I’ll be lucky this year…

Whitehaven...

Waking up in an empty, rain-drenched car park in Egremont, in February, may not be everyone’s idea of the perfect Saturday morning. But, looking on the bright side, I don’t have to watch cheerful celebrities on breakfast TV, there’s no chance of stepping on a Lego brick with bare feet, and I don’t have to go shopping at some hypermarket sited conveniently in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve driven five miles up the coast to Whitehaven, which looks better in the rain than down-at-heel Egremont. The Georgian buildings, painted in pastel colours, have a faded grandeur; it was obviously a very wealthy port in its heyday. Without distractions I’ve written a thousand words already this morning - that’s my minimum quota for rainy, non-photographic days - and now it’s time to take a stroll on the front, by the harbour, and find some breakfast…

Change...

I bought a book in a charity shop yesterday. Just before she pressed a particular button on the cash register, the lady behind the counter looked over her glasses at me and said “Can I take it you’re over 21?”. I said “Could you be any more patronising?” Giving me my change, she happily obliged: “Look”, she said, “shiny coins”.

“He’s a Geordie cunt”, the guy at the bar said. Then, acknowledging the presence of women, he corrected himself: “Sorry, Geordie bastard”. This is what passes for civilised discourse in Egremont. I’m here for the night; I wasn’t thinking straight…

Doris Day...

After the comparative warmth of the last few days, wintry weather is back. With the prospect of gusting winds, courtesy of Storm Doris, I’m staying put today, and getting some writing done…

Roly-poly goalie...

Wayne Shaw, Sutton United’s self-styled “roly-poly goalie”, has been sacked for public pie-eating after a betting company had offered odds of 8-1 against him eating a pie on the bench during the club’s 2-0 defeat by Arsenal in the FA Cup. He’s in the wrong, apparently, though I’d lay the blame fairly and squarely on betting companies who drum up publicity via this kind of ‘novelty bet’.

Punters are no longer limited to betting on the result of a game, or the final score, or the score at half time. They can, for example, bet on something as seemingly insignificant as who gets the first throw-in of the game, and when, which can tempt players to make a few quid (while not jeopardising the final result of the game).

Matthew le Tissier has admitted being part of a scam, back in 1995, when ‘spread betting’ was still a novelty, to win £10,000. “The plan was for us to kick the ball straight into touch at the start of the game and then collect 56 times our stake. Easy money”. It didn’t work. He booted the ball, hoping to make it look like a mis-kick, and another player - not in on the scam - managed to keep the ball in play. There must be many other instances of foul play, though not many players will admit to it.

In the meantime, the roly-poly goalie is sacked in disgrace (though, who knows, Ginsters might sign him up to be the face of their pie and pasty business). It’s wrong to offer bets on something that one single person (not a whole team) can influence. If the betting companies offer the bet, and a pie-loving player obliges by stuffing his face while the TV cameras are on him, who is to blame?

Caravan living (old friend Bryn, from York)...

Itinerary...

Had an unusual feeling in bed last night… something I hadn’t felt since last autumn. I was too warm. So maybe spring isn’t far away. The light is certainly stronger; thanks to the solar panel, a sunny day gives my electrical power quite a boost. I have a lot of pix to take over the next four months, so I’ll have to knuckle down, do some research and work out a viable itinerary…

Steam train Tornado on the Ribblehead Viaduct...

Queueing...

An interesting article in the Guardian today, about queueing…

Light...

Spring’s not here yet, just the first signs. But the days are getting longer, and the light, after so many days of gloom, can be so bright that I have to shade my eyes. My favourite quarter of the year, for photography, is from the day the clocks go forward until the longest day, so I’m looking forward to three busy - and hopefully productive - months…

Cash v credit...

In Wetherspoons this morning, for a bacon sandwich, a mug of tea and dependable wifi. As I made my order I was told “cash only”, because the tills were “stuck” and they couldn’t take card payments. If cash and credit cards had been invented at the same time, I wonder which system would have won favour with the public. With cash the system is never “stuck”. Cash can’t get “hacked”. Cash has no batteries that need recharging. A cashless society? No thanks...

Washing day...

Not a very productive day, but at least I washed clothes and bedding at the launderette, wrote a thousand words, and called in to see nephew Ben and partner Hem to congratulate them (baby due in August)…

Drone...

I never got to Dentdale; I parked, instead, within sight of Ribblehead Viaduct, and joined the phalanx of photographers hoping to get a pic of steam loco Tornado. I got lucky with the light, and took some good pix, with the white smoke contrasting with the gloomy skies. I waited for the train’s return, but kept my camera in the van due to the rain.

I had a chat with a guy from Morecambe who was flying a drone over the viadiuct. He was controlling it via an iPad, which allowed him a drone’s-eye-view. It was very stable in flight, and, if he stopped controlling it, the drone would just stay where it was. He flew the drone along the viaduct and followed the line as far north as Garsdale station. Apparently, even at that distance, the drone was still in his control. Better yet, he said that if the drone went out of range, it was programmed to find its way back to wherever he was. I was impressed (though not envious; it was fun just to watch what the drone would do)…

Dentdale...

I only have one loyalty card in my wallet: for Booths, the ‘acceptable face of supermarkets’, and that’s only because it entitles me to a free pot of tea in the café. Loyalty to a supermarket? I think not. I’m entirely promiscuous in my shopping habits. Having my breakfast in Booths this morning, before heading up to Dentdale - hoping to get a few shots of the steam train crossing Arten Gill viaduct. The weather’s a bit grey, but - who knows - the sun may come out later on. Sometimes you just have to stick to your plan and hope for the best…

Memory Lane...

The sun is out (as are the snowdrops and catkins); that’s two days in a row. If you half close your eyes you can almost imagine that spring is here. I caught up with two old friends in York. I sat in the smallest snug in the Wellington, with Gordon, enjoying the ambience and the fire. It’s not often I share a pint with a man who admits to having cheered when the planes flew into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

This morning I visited Bryn, who lives in a static caravan at the bottom of somebody’s garden (it may not have been static when he first moved in, but it surely is now). It must be twenty years since we last clapped eyes on each other. We had a wander down Memory Lane (or rather, to the transport caff on the A19 for a cheap and cheerful lunch)…

Thirsk...

In Thirsk last night, parked up on rain-drenched cobbles in the Market Square. I sat near an old guy in the pub (Old? He was probably younger than me…). Cradling a phone to his ear, he was having a long and involved conversation with somebody. It was only when the ‘conversation’ ended, and he took his hand away from his bewhiskered cheek, that I realised he didn’t have a phone…

Thirsk has free wifi around the town. In a few years wifi will no doubt be ubiquitous; there’ll be no need to look for it. I woke up this morning, and logged on, to find I’d licenced a pic (good price too)… of Thirsk, taken just a few yards from where I was parked…

Withernsea...

Parking ticket...

A good way to start the day is to go online and check how many pix have been licenced; a bad way to start the day (this morning, for example) is to oversleep and get a parking ticket from an officious traffic warden, then go online to find no pic sales at all…

Beverley...

Ended up in Beverley last night, feeling cold and old. At least it was a good writing day; I feel I’m really cracking on with the book. On gloomy days I’m getting up early, flipping the laptop open and trying to write for an hour or two. It’s the best time of the day for me, when writing seems easy rather than a chore…

Another pub at twilight, in Otley...

Infidel

I don’t often read a book that changes my way of thinking, but then I don’t often read a book like Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Born in Somalia, she had a traditional Muslim childhood, marked by privation, family dislocation, tribal rivalries and civil war. She survived regular beatings, genital mutilation, a forced marriage and the expectations that she would become a dutiful Muslim wife and mother, hidden behind a veil, simply because this was ‘the will of Allah’.

In her adolescent years Ayaan began to question her faith. “If God was merciful”, she writes, “then why did He demand that His creatures be hanged in public? If He was compassionate, why did unbelievers have to go to hell? If Allah was almighty and powerful, why didn’t he just make believers out of the unbelievers and have them all go to Paradise?”

Against all the odds she managed to escape as a refugee to Holland, where, having learned to speak Dutch, she enrolled at university and, a few years later, gained Dutch citizenship. Getting involved in local politics, she began to speak out about Islam and, in particular, the plight of Muslim women. “How could a just God - a God so just that almost every page of the Quran praises His fairness - desire that women be treated so unfairly?”

It took Ayaan a little longer to escape from the ‘mind-forged manacles’ of Islam, but once she’d renounced her faith she embraced the freedom of a secular life, unveiled, in Holland. Having become a member of parliament, she called Islam “a barrier to free-thinking, an obstacle to innovation of all kinds, political, social, intellectual and moral”. Invited to participate in televised debates, she soon found that this kind of talk has violent repercussions, even in a western democracy. Her past was not so easy to escape.

She became a target for Muslim reprisals after she collaborated with Theo Van Gogh, a film-maker, to make a film about Muslim women called Submission. When Van Gogh was murdered in the street by a Muslim extremist, a note left on his body warned that Ayaan would be next. She was forced into hiding, with round-the-clock protection, and now lives in America, where her perceptive views - and books such as Infidel and Heretic - confirm that she has not been silenced. She saw the flaws in a religion that’s locked into a bronze age mindset: “Shouldn’t the places where Allah was worshipped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers’ countries ignorant and poor and at war?”

Considering all the privations of her early life, and the upheavals of moving from one war-ravaged country to another, it’s amazing that she is still alive to tell her story (beautifully written - in an understated, undramatic way - in English, her third language). Her resilience is extraordinary. It takes a lot of courage for an ex-Muslim to speak openly about the religion, because the punishment for apostasy in Muslim countries is death. She has an answer for those who suggest she has a death wish: “Some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice”.

I will think of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, her harsh upbringing and her luminous, almost rancour-free book, whenever some buffoon insists blithely that “Islam is a religion of peace”.

Sanctuary ring on the door of Adel Church...

Spinal Tap...

Respect to The Guardian, for juxtaposing, on its 'front page,' a story about Spinal Tap and Stonehenge...

Pocklington...

Stayed in a campsite near Pocklington yesterday, to charge up the leisure batteries and get up to date with photo editing. I still visit campsites about once a month, though I have yet to find anywhere that rivals Woodnook Campsite, near Grassington, in the Yorkshire Dales. Woodnook has modest ambitions - no swimming pool, bar or café - but it’s got a great location in limestone country, everything just works… and it’s cheap. The electric hook-up allows me to plug in my laptop, Kindle, battery charger, radio, etc - and run the heater - without overloading the circuit. The showers are hot, the wifi is dependable and there’s a washing machine and tumble drier on-site. They could show a few other campsites how to do things properly.

The campsite near Pocklington is pleasant enough; the caravans and motorhomes are parked around a small lake, and it would be a good place to come in summer. But there was barely any wifi signal, no facilities for washing clothes and the floor of the men’s shower cubicle (there’s only one!) was so slippery that I could barely stand up in it. If I ran the heater, I couldn’t plug anything else in without the inverter beeping at me. The campsite was more expensive too. Never mind; I was just happy to find a campsite open for business in February, as most of them close over the winter months… 

Alcester, Warwickshire...

Illusion...

For people who are finding life difficult and uncertain (I’m sure there were some in the audience), Fadel Soliman’s presentation at the Leeds Grand Mosque might have resonated with enough force to convince a few of them to convert to Islam. It’s comforting to imagine a merciful God who will look after us, and maybe intercede on our behalf by answering our prayers. Unfortunately Mr Soliman’s depiction of God was rather at odds with the God of the Koran.

It is stated, on almost every page of the holy book, that God is “forgiving and merciful”. Without this bizarre character reference, the casual reader might come to a rather different conclusion: that the god of the Koran is violent, vengeful, sadistic, coercive, didactic, petty, pedantic, insecure, narcissistic, demanding, arrogant, dogmatic, authoritarian, capricious, insatiably needy, tyrannical, obsessive, paranoid and dictatorial. He rules through fear, threats and promises, and is unforgiving of dissent. Oh, and he demands to be praised… continuously.

From the moment he switched on his microphone to the moment he answered the last question in the Q and A session, Mr Soliman was propagating a life built on illusion. He offered the audience a watered-down version of Islam, and dealt with the problematic areas of the religion by ignoring them altogether. The audience was very polite - no hecklers - and no one asked the most obvious question: Is there even a shred of evidence that anything you have said this evening is true?…

Visit my Mosque...

I’m sitting in a snug of the Bay Horse pub, on one side of the Market Place in Otley, enjoying a quiet pint, listening to Kate Rusby songs and mulling over the events of the day. In the morning I went to Quaker meeting in Roundhay for an hour of shared silence. I chatted with a lady who used to go to a Methodist chapel in Darlington. She was so old that I even wondered if she’d heard my grandfather, the Rev John Morrison, preach at the Greenbank Chapel (she hadn’t). Other people mentioned the ‘Visit my Mosque’ events around Leeds, which is where I was headed later in the day.

I wound up at the Leeds Grand Mosque, an unremarkable building off Burley Road, where I listened to a presentation by Fadel Soliman, who specialises in explaining Islam to non-Muslims. Though his talk was really quite persuasive, I’ve read so much about Islam lately that there was little or nothing that I didn’t know already. What I did notice were the omissions: nothing about hell (just a vague mention of “punishments"), and nothing about apostasy. Muslim women, according to Mr Soliman, are equal to men in every way, which is nonsense, and the idea that “there is no compulsion in religion” is privileging one (early, Meccan) verse in the Koran and ignoring the 100+ verses which require apostates, infidels and unbelievers to be put to death.

The atmosphere was friendly, and I chatted with a few people. The Q & A session, after the presentation, was restrained. No one asked the difficult questions (and nor did I). I have nothing against individual Muslims; it’s faith without evidence that troubles me. Mr Soliman was a plausible propagandist for a religion that, for all his presentation skills, is irredeemably stuck in the dark ages… 

Trump...

The Groper-in-Chief makes a lightning visit to Leeds...

Retro tech...

It’s good to be back in the north, even though it doesn’t feel quite as much like home as it used to. I overheard two women chatting in a charity shop: “Don’t let me buy ‘owt", said one. "I’ve only come out for some fresh air”…

Interesting article in the Guardian today, by Simon Jenkins, prompted by the resurgence of vinyl records, ‘real’ books over e-readers and the re-introduction of Kodak’s Ektachrome film. “References to the internet are now dominated by hackers, viruses, trolls, paedophiles, fake news and cyberwar”, he writes. “I am told most job openings for IT graduates are in gaming, betting and in protecting computers from each other”. He’s also told, by photographers, that “pictures printed from film are superior to digitised ones”, which suggests he hasn’t spoken to enough photographers.

I try to be online once or twice each day - to read and write emails, check picture sales, upload and keyword pix, update this blog, etc. But I’m happy not to have internet access 24/7. It would be very distracting; I wouldn’t get much writing done. I watch people interacting with their phones - rather than each other - and it’s not a pretty sight. I got rid of my smartphone, and don’t miss it. I got fed up with it beeping at me, tugging at my sleeve like some needy child, demanding my attention.

My internet use is limited too: the Guardian for news, BBC for sport, The Onion for humour, Amazon for books to download onto my Kindle (I read ‘printed’ books, but I’m never without my e-reader), Youtube for videos of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, etc, and a handful of other sites I regularly visit. And where would I be, for fact-checking, without Google and Wikipedia?

I don’t know if the current interest in ‘retro’ tech is more than a passing fad, and Simon Jenkins doesn’t know either…

Yorkshire...

Back in Yorkshire, under leaden skies, hoping to see family and friends over the next few days…