Brockhole...

Young love... at Brockhole, with a view across Windermere to the Langdale Pikes...

Howden Minster...

Another local pic, licensed today: one of the modern artworks (© John Maine RA) in the grounds of the minster in Howden...

Bell & Crown...

Always fun to read an article and find one of my pictures illustrating it. Especially when it's about a pub: the Bell & Crown in Snaith, about ten miles from Asselby...

Shoulder to shoulder...

With the loosening of the regulations, the government is trying to encourage a mood of cautious optimist. However, and unfortunately, this has coincided with raves, ’Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations, Liverpool winning the Premier League and a mini heatwave: offering rather too many excuses for crowding together in solidarity, celebration or seaside sunshine. People seem to be forgetting that the virus is just as contagious as it was back in March. I expect a second wave of infections and a return to lockdown… if not nationally, then locally. When the pubs re-open, a week today, the situation will probably get worse, with the combination of beer and hot weather.

Licensed yesterday: the River Welland in Spalding, Lincolnshire...

Coffee in Trinity Square...

Maybe this is my Edward Hopper period...

There and back again...

In 1789 the reverend Gilbert White wrote The Natural History of Selborne. Through close observation of live animals and birds in their habitat (rather than the study of dead specimens), White could be thought of as England’s first ecologist. However, some of his observations proved to be wayward. When the swallows disappeared at summer’s end, he thought they ‘hibernated’ in the mud at the bottom of the village pond. The idea that even the young swallows could fly to sub-Saharan Africa seemed, at the time, unfeasible.

White later quoted Linnaus: “If any experienced naturalist were to make observations of birds in the far south of Spain, when they come and go southwards and northwards, that is to say by keeping a record of the days, months and species, this matter [the migration of birds], at present obscure, would in a short time be fully elucidated”. But, at the time of his death, in 1793, White was still looking for the lair where his beloved hirundines over-wintered.

The secrets of bird migration were subsequently unlocked, mostly by the fastidious record-keeping which Linnaus had recommended. Bird-ringing and satellite tracking (by fitting individual birds with tiny radio backpacks) revealed some miraculous journeys. The latest findings reveal that a male cuckoo has flown 16,000 miles from his breeding grounds in the rolling hills of the Khurkh valley in Mongolia, across the borders of 27 countries, to Kenya in Southern Africa… all in search of caterpillars! The bird subsequently returned to the Khurkh valley to breed. Gilbert White would be amazed (especially as the cuckoo is not usually considered to be a strong flier)!

The Land of Green Ginger...

The street in Hull known as the Land of Green Ginger...

Buy me a beer...

I’m very happy that pubs are to re-open on July 4. Well, some of them. I can’t see how the micropub in Howden, for example, will be able to keep trading… unless it can put tables and chairs on the pavement, French-style. Other pubs will see July 4 come and go, because they’ll never open again. I have no plans to visit any pub that day; the ambience might be rather febrile. Maybe a quiet pub, mid-week, with a capacious beer garden. We have to keep reminding ourselves that coronavirus is as contagious today as it was back in March. My main concern is that, once they become uninhibited after a few pints, people will forget about keeping their distance…

Licensed today: the view from Dunwich Heath, across the reedbeds of Minsmere nature reserve...

The Bell at Stilton...

Licensed today: a proper old coaching inn... the Bell at Stilton...

Acorn Bank...

A CD from Amazon just arrived through the letterbox. A few seconds later an email arrived… to tell me what I already know: that the CD has been delivered. The email even asks me to click a button to indicate whether the delivery was “great” or “not so great”. What’s all this about?

Licensed today: the gardens of Acorn Bank, a National Trust property in Cumbria...

Five bee hives...

I’m dozing in my bed, in an old Sunday school, in a small village on the road to nowhere, and, thanks to the internet and 24-hour news-gathering, I am able to listen, live, to the President of the United States giving a speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He sounded utterly demented.

Kirklees… where a bee hive seems to be a familiar unit of measurement…

River Eden...

Licensed yesterday: the River Eden at Lazonby...

The slave trade...

When slavery was abolished in 1833, the UK government paid a total of £20m (£1.8bn in today's prices) in compensation. However, that money was not paid to those who had been enslaved, but was given instead to slave-owners for their "loss of human property”.

It’s not hard to see what slave money bought (though we don’t always want to acknowledge it). We can start with major ports such as London, Bristol and Liverpool, though slave ships also sailed from the Cumbrian ports of Whitehaven and Maryport. John Bolton (1756-1837) made his fortune from the ‘triangular trade’: slaves to America, returning with cargoes of sugar, rum and cotton. He operated out of Liverpool, though he preferred to live in the more salubrious setting of Storrs Hall, on the shore of Lake Windermere, where he organised regattas and entertained lavishly. William Wordsworth, a regular visitor to Storrs Hall, spoke of Bolton as his “long loved, tried and sincere friend”.

Storrs Hall, overlooking the lake.

John Bolton also took on the role of local benefactor (a bit like a Mafia boss trying to re-invent himself as a ‘legitimate businessman'). Tainted money paid for the Bowness Grammar School, which was still incomplete at his death in 1837. Interesting that a slave-trader would want to “promote, in connection with the Church of England, the temporal and eternal interests of the population of these hamlets”. Perhaps Bolton felt secure in the posthumous destination of his own immortal soul. And why not? After all, there’s nothing in the Bible - Old Testament or New - to suggest that it’s wrong to treat human beings like farm equipment… commodities to buy and sell. The Church of England is currently apologising for its own contemptible role in the slave trade, but, as always, the apologies come far too late…

Hell, rekindled...

My question, about hell, emailed to Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has been batted back to me, unanswered, by some Lambeth Palace drone, with three cut & pasted paragraphs of boilerplate apology. Right, plan B. I understand that Stephen Cottrell will be taking over the reins, as Archbishop of York, on July 9, so maybe he will be able to engage with my query. If not, I may have to stay even closer to home, by approaching the vicar of St Breville’s (the only church, apparently, dedicated to the patron saint of toasted snacks)…

A Doncaster pub, boarded up, which last served beer back in March. The proud boast - of featuring in the Good Beer Guide, 2020 - now rings rather hollow...

Football's coming home...

Football in 2020 is either feast or famine. After a hiatus of three months, the “beautiful game” (™ Pele) is back today. A total of 92 games will be played over the next 90 days, to complete this interrupted season. There will be no spectators at the grounds. Essential staff, and media folk, will be temperature checked on entry, and restricted to particular areas of the ground. Players are instructed not to spit, or to jump on each other after a goal; they are being told, instead, to run towards the ‘celebration camera’.

Fans watching the games on TV will be able to watch in near silence… or switch on fake ‘fan noise’. They can even dial in the level of racist abuse they want to hear during the game, from ‘mild’ to ‘vile’. Apparently, fan noise with no racist content at all will not be available, due to “technical issues”…

Licensed today: another 'home delivery' pic...

Boat house...

Some pictures just come together if you wait around. The village of Welton, yesterday...

Genital mutilation...

According to an article in today’s Guardian, two million girls and young women are particularly at risk of being ‘cut’, because they are off school due to Corvid-19. Though the UN has set a deadline of 2030 to end female genital mutilation (FGM), the practice is still widespread, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Somalia, for example, has the world’s highest rate of FGM, with an estimated 98% of women having undergone the procedure.

‘Cutting’ is totally unnecessary, with no medical benefits (and is associated with many medical - and psychological - problems). Though not religiously mandated, FGM is only found in, and adjacent to, Islamic communities. How typical of the faithful to focus so forensically on the genitalia of both girls and boys: the source of so much of their own sexual angst and repression.

Licensed today: the altar of St Mary's Church in the Cumbrian village of Wreay, designed by Sarah Losh...

Hellfire extinguished...

Today began, like most days, by emailing Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, with some questions…

For nearly two thousand years, Christians were told about hell as a place of eternal torture for sinners, unbelievers, etc. The message, though unwelcome, seemed plain: hell was a real place, not just a ‘state of mind’. Then, around 1996, a group of churchmen decided that hell should now be considered, more euphemistically, as “separation from God”. Considering that the Bible is traditionally assumed to have been inspired - though not actually written - by the creator of the universe, I wondered what had happened in the last few years of the 20th century to initiate this theological change of heart. Or was it just a pragmatic decision, taken by a committee of clerics, to bring the church into line with what most people already thought? If that is the case, then church congregations had been misled for nearly two millennia about the nature of the afterlife.    

I bought a copy of The Mystery of Salvation, in the hope that it might offer some elucidation (it didn’t! It explained nothing). So I’m left wondering: how, exactly, did the church get from the traditional concept of hell to “separation from God”? What did the process involve? And why has no one in the church ever apologised for frightening children - and credulous adults - with threats of damnation over so many centuries?

Licensed today: Houghton Tower, a fortified manor house in Lancashire...

Opening up...

Tomorrow the ‘non-essential’ shops will re-open their doors to socially distanced customers. We’ll discover which retailers are still viable, after three months of lockdown, and which ones have gone to the wall. There’ll be queues, I imagine, but I won’t be joining them. I don’t want to risk being infected… especially in a quest for non-essential items. And, considering the incubation period of coronavirus, it will take about two weeks before we know if the decision to open up the shops has come at the right time...

Blue Distance...

Peter Case is a song-writer’s song-writer, and Blue Distance is one of his best. The lap steel guitar seems to capture - and amplify - the mood of yearning in the lyrics.

Licensed yesterday: a quiet corner of Penrith...

Making hay...

Licensed today: hay-making in Cumbria...

Don't Give Up...

Don't Give Up, by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush: another song that hits the spot for me. The comments on YouTube suggest that it resonates with a lot of other people too, especially in these difficult times (and I liked this comment: “Lucky bastard, getting to hug Kate Bush for a full six minutes”).

Licensed today: some old geezer enjoying a pint outside an Otley pub. Who knows, maybe we'll be able to do this again some day...

One-term presidents...

My fervent hope is that Trump will join Jimmy Carter and George H W Bush as a ‘one-term president’. My recurring nightmare is that when the votes are counted in November, Trump will declare that the polls have been rigged and that the result is therefore invalid. He’s not going anywhere; he’s staying on. It could happen. One of the glories of our democratic system is the peaceful transition of power from one government to the next. But that relies on goodwill and an innate sense of fairness… qualities which have not characterised the presidency of Donald J Trump.

Summer in the wolds...

Transmission figures...

For just about the first time since lockdown began, on March 23, I feel a little optimism penetrating the gloom. The national figures - for infections, hospitalisations and deaths - continue to fall. The big question is whether the slight loosening of the regulations, and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations, have allowed more transmissions to occur. Considering the virus’s incubation period, we won’t start to get an answer to that question until early next week.

England and Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling has backed the protests taking place across the UK, saying “the only disease right now is the racism that we are fighting”. However, if the figures subsequently rise, because people have been out in the streets, marching ‘shoulder to shoulder’, it would be a terrible irony, because black and brown people continue to be affected disproportionately by the virus.

Licensed today: the Drunken Duck gastropub near Ambleside...

Tank Park Salute...

It’s hard to imagine being reduced to tears by a Billy Bragg song - his voice can sometimes grate on the ears - until you hear Tank Park Salute. He was 18 when his father died, and this song is his response; it may strike a chord with anyone who has a parent, or has had a parent, or is a parent.

A man who lost his little girl to childhood cancer, aged five, found particular comfort in the song. He wrote to the organisers of the Glastonbury Festival, in the hope that Billy Bragg might play it when he appeared in a Sunday evening spot at the festival. On the Sunday morning he took a call on his mobile, from Mr William Bragg himself, to say he would be glad to perform the song. He only changed one word, but it made all the difference (and a grateful, grieving father wrote a blog about it).

Some photographs of a summer’s day,

A little GIRL’S lifetime away

Is all I’ve left of everything we’ve done.


A church on a hill: St Andrew's, Weaverthorpe, in North Yorkshire...

Sandals and shorts...

When the temperature rises, I swap my walking boots for sandals and trousers for shorts. Apparently, this puts me in the vanguard of fashion, because, according to the writer of this article in the Guardian, shorts for men “are enjoying a renaissance”.

“The display of the elongated leg, from ankle to crotch has, in recent fashion history, almost wholly been the preserve of womenswear. It feels radical to see men playing with these proportions,” says Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster. “Suddenly, short shorts seem highly inappropriate, almost profoundly shocking to see.” The shock is the presentation of a male leg in “a highly sexualised and eroticised manner”.

Kati Chitrakorn, the retail and marketing editor of Vogue Business, thinks men are embracing their sexual empowerment: “They’re celebrating a super-sexualised Adonis, relating to their own bodies again as a tool of seduction”. I’ve noticed women eyeing me up recently - a woman behind me in the queue for the butchers actually fainted - and now I know why.

Another delivery pic...

Campsite...

Used in the Guardian today: a campsite overlooked by the Langdale Pikes...

Beeswing...

A live version of Beeswing, Richard Thompson’s best and most bittersweet song: guaranteed to bring a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye...

Stormy skies over Bubwith this evening...

Kentucky Avenue...

Lockdown has definitely made me more lachrymose: ready, at any moment, to enjoy a few cathartic tears. The Guardian is running a countdown of the hundred best singles of all time. We’re down to number 2: Ghost Town, by the Specials. If number one, announced tomorrow, isn’t Like a Rolling Stone, I’ll be vexed. In the meantime I’m compiling my own list: songs which I’m finding particularly poignant in these difficult times. Today’s offering is Kentucky Avenue, by Tom Waits, a wonderfull evocation of an American childhood. From start to finish the song tugs unashamedly at the heart-strings, and I fall for it every time. By the time he sings “I'll take the spokes from your wheelchair…” I’m reaching for a tissue.

Licensed today: main street in Snaith, a typical East Yorkshire village (unless it's a town)...

Conversation...

I feel deprived of challenging conversation. If the Jehovah’s Witnesses were to knock on my door, I’d invite them in to give me an in-depth, socially distanced overview of their loopy belief system in all its tedious detail. To get rid of them, after a couple of hours, I’d suggest they might like to hear my side of the story; that should ensure a stampede towards the door…

Relaxing by the Driffield Canal...

Photo opportunity...

Donald Trump suddenly deployed the army to attack a group of peaceful demonstrators, with tear-gas, rubber bullets and flash grenades, just so he could walk to St John's - the 'Church of the Presidents' - and pose, with a raised Bible, for photographs. I wonder if he’s ever read more than a few verses of the book he’s holding. As well as promoting extreme pacifism (“love your enemies”, “turn the other cheek”, etc), Jesus also advocated violence (“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”).

The president will be able to find justifications, in the ‘good book’, for his most peaceful and violent tendencies. Currently he prefers the sword, though, of course, he recruits other people to wield the weaponry. According to author Sinclair Lewis, “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross”

Donald J Trump trying - in vain - to look presidential...

Marble run...

Laid up on the sofa today, with gout. My only plan for the day was to get to the end of it. But I clicked a link from an article in the Guardian and found this. Something to do when I finally lose my marbles. It really cheered me up.

Licensed today: a display of caravans...