More blossom this afternoon in New Earswick, the 'garden suburb' founded by the York philanthropist, Joseph Rowntree, who said "I do not want to establish communities bearing the stamp of charity but rather of rightly ordered and self governing communities"...
Licenced today: a couple of walkers on Longmire Road, in the Troutbeck valley...
Used in today's Sunday Times: the main street of Snaith, just a few minute's drive from Asselby...
Though I’ll soon be able to meet up with friends outside, everyone else seems to have the same idea too… with the result that the beer gardens of most of the salubrious pubs are already booked up. In a desperate barrel-scraping exercise, I’ve booked a table for five in the beer garden of the Grievous Bodily Arms for Thursday, April 15, from 6.00-8.15pm. Our table will be downwind of the gents toilets, but, as the landlord pointed out, by poking me in the chest with a calloused finger, “beggars can’t be choosers”.
I had to leave a non-refundable deposit of £20, in used notes. The drinks order is already in… so four pints of Old Profanity (and one sarsaparilla, in a dirty glass) will be brought to our table… at 6.05, 6.55 and 7.40. The snacks have to be pre-ordered too: five bags of pork scratchings… two with bristles, three without. If we don't leave the premises by 8.15 sharp, we can expect either “a punitive fine” or "a punch in the face". I can hardly wait.
There are so many cyclists about, even in mid-week. These two have found a good spot for lunch: next to the duckpond in the village of Askham Richard...
As the colour returns to the landscape, I'm finding some new spots for a wander with my camera...
Another woodland path, around North Cave Wetlands, where I spent a couple of hours today…
In the game of life, with my ninety minutes up, I'm heading into ‘extra time’. According to Psalm 90 - often supposed to have been written by Moses himself - “the days of our years are threescore years and ten”, a typically oblique construction from the ‘good book’. The average lifespan of the first ten patriarchs mentioned in Genesis, from Adam to Noah, was 912, with Methuselah - 969 - the poster boy for longevity. These figures are presented in all seriousness; we look in vain for a punchline or a knowing wink. However, the average lifespan, for a man living in the time of Moses, would more likely have been 40-50 years.
Licenced yesterday: market day in Ulverston…
I had a wander through North Cliffe Woods yesterday, hoping to see or hear one of the first summer visitors, like a chiffchaff or a willow warbler. Still too early. But I heard both green and greater spotted woodpeckers... calling, not drumming...
According to today’s Guardian, Brazil is “staring into the abyss”, with the country’s hospitals overwhelmed and the death toll still rising. Covid-sceptic president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to spurn calls for a life-saving lockdown, apparently fearful of the impact it might have on the economy and his hopes of re-election next year.
Though accounting for only 2.7% of the world's population, Brazil has seeen 10.6% of all Covid deaths. The country’s death toll now stands at 287,000, second ony to the USA. By their actions, or inactions, authoritatian leaders like Bolsonaro and Trump are directly responsible for a great deal of needless suffering.
Pic used in the Guardian today…
Licensed today: a statue of W E Forster, Bradford’s MP for 25 years, now re-sited next to the Broadway Shopping Centre in Bradford...
Had a wander with my camera yesterday, along the River Ouse. It’s not one of those pretty little rivers - like the Wharfe in Langstrothdale - where people come to spread a picnic blanket on the grassy banks and where kids splash around in the shallows. The Ouse is a hard-working watercourse - leaden, funereal and here, in its tidal reaches, hidden behind floodbanks - where silent, brooding men come to walk savage dogs, or neck a few cans of industrial-strength lager, or dispose of a body.
Licenced today: Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay...
Children as young as 11 are being beheaded in Mozambique as part of an Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands and forced many more from their homes, according to a report by Save the Children. Is there anything in the Koran about beheading children? No. But there are verses like these…
“When you encounter the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely” (sura 47:3). “I will cast dread into the hearts of the unbelievers. Strike off their heads, then, and strike off all of their fingertips” (sura 8:12).
The majority of the world’s Muslims do not take such verses literally. Unfortunately they appear in a book which even moderate Muslims believe to be “perfect”. While the Bible is claimed by Christians to be inspired by God, but written by men, Muslims believe the Koran was written by the finger of Allah himself. It’s hard to claim that Isis insurgents are misguided, when their holy book decrees that Christians, Jews and unbelievers should be put to death. It’s not a big stretch, by those who truly believe they are running an errand for God, to target children as well. As theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg has noted: “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil... that takes religion.”
St John the Baptist's Church, Healaugh...
The Vatican has said the Catholic church cannot bless same-sex unions, because God “does not bless sin”. According to Catholic teaching, marriage between a man and a woman is part of God’s plan and intended for the creation of children. Since gay unions are not intended to be part of that plan, such relationships cannot be legitimately blessed. Though the abuse of children doesn’t appear to be “part of God’s plan” either, Catholic clerics obviously find this less of a moral dilemma.
Not even sure why I shot it, but this pic of a nursing home in South Lakeland was licenced today...
In the mistaken belief that his microphone was turned off, a man commentating on a girls’ high school basketball game in Oklamoma called one of the teams “fucking niggers” as they ‘took a knee’. Matt Rowan, who describes himself as a family man and former youth pastor, took to Twitter to say that there was “no excuse” for his comments. However, he also disclosed that he suffers from type 1 diabetes, and blamed the racist comments on hyperglycemia. “I do not believe I would have made such horrible statements absent my sugar spiking,” his statement read…
It’s exactly one year ago since the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a global pandemic. For month after month Donald Trump insisted that what he called “the China Virus” - or “Kung Flu” - would simply disappear. His response to the pandemic was basically to do nothing (or to recommend ‘remedies’ which even a homeopathic practitioner would find laughable). Trump helped to politicise the wearing of face-masks, with the result that half a million people died from covid during his time in office. Conversely, Joe Biden promised to vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of his presidency. At the current rate he’ll meet this target… with time to spare.
Licenced today: the gardens of Holker Hall, in South Lakeland, a stately home which looks like a sanatorium…
Though The Phantom Tollbooth was published 60 years ago, author Norton Juster predicted the many longeurs of lockdown. Milo lands in the Doldrums, a land of greyness where nothing happens and nothing ever changes. The inhabitants - the Lethargarians - are busy doing nothing, and are on a tight schedule.
“At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend from 8 to 9 daydreaming. From 9 to 9:30 we take our early mid-morning nap. From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay. From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap. From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch. From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter. From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap. From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today. From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap. From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner. From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally. From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time. As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done”.
Milo manages to escape from the Doldrums by using the power of his imagination. My own exit strategy - drinking lighter fluid - is proving to be less effective.
Cottages in Nun Monkton...
I’ve just read that Norton Juster has died. His most famous book - The Phantom Tollbooth - was published in 1961. From the very first sentence (“There was once a boy called Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself - not just sometimes but always”) I was hooked. Milo is sent a “strange package” containing “One Genuine Turnpike Tollbooth”. He gets in his electric car, puts a coin in the booth and drives into a new world where the colours are “richer and brighter than he could ever remember”, and the flowers shine “as if they’d been cleaned and polished”.
The book is full of imaginative wordplay, and idioms take a literal turn. Milo is arrested by Officer Shrift, who, unsurprisingly, is short. How does Milo get to an island called Conclusions? By jumping, of course.
In his book proposal, Juster said he wanted "to stimulate and heighten perception - to help children notice and appreciate the visual world around them”. The Phantom Tollbooth remains my favourite book from childhood, and I’d be happy to read it again... to remind myself how playful language can be.
Licenced today: two Yorkshire rivers - the Ouse in York and the Wharfe at Tadcaster - to the same customer…
Licenced today: more punters queueing up for a Big Mac, fries and a Double Choc Fudge McFlurry...
According to a survey in The Grocer magazine, three-quarters of Brits “care about fair trade”. The FAIRTRADE (all caps) certification system is governed by Fairtrade International, which includes the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation. They ensure compliance with internationally agreed standards and guarantee a minimum fair price. ‘Fair Trade’ (two words, capital F, capital T) applies to companies which follow less stringent principles. Other spellings, including ‘fair-trade’, ‘fairtrade’ and ‘FairTrade’, have no legal standing… and join words such as ‘fresh’, ‘pure’, ‘natural’, 'healthy', ‘home-made’ and ‘traditional’ in meaning whatever a food producer decides that they mean.
The supermarkets have gone a step further, by promoting fantasy foods from fictional farms. Tesco invented ‘Boswell Farm’ and ‘Woodside Farm’ to promote foods (and their ‘Rosedene Farms’ brand sells apples from the UK, pears from Belgium, strawberries from Spain and blueberries from Chile). Aldi uses ‘Ashfield Farm’ as an invented supplier for its meat, while Lidl opts for ‘Birchwood Farm’ and ‘Strathvale Farm’. Retailers believe that using farm names appeals to shoppers at a time when people want to know more about the origins of their food (while cynically denying them that option)…
Licenced today: eco-houses at Findhorn in Scotland…
Wearing a mask feels like an ingrained habit now, like putting on a seat belt before starting the car. But there are other aspects of social etiquette which I may need to relearn. Kiss a woman on one cheek, both cheeks, or go the 'full French' and kiss on left cheek, right cheek, then left cheek again? Is a playful tweak of a nipple still OK?
Licenced last week: the Skirrid Inn, in the village of Llanvihangel Crucorney, Monmouthshire, reckoned to be the oldest pub in Wales…
Even as the pews are emptying, the Anglican church continues to strive for total irrelevance. Henry Ndukuba, the archbishop of Nigeria, has described homosexuality as a “deadly virus” which should be “radically expunged and excised”. The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has called these comments “unacceptable and dehumanising”. The rest of us just open another packet of peanuts and watch in disbelief... if we can be bothered to watch at all.
Licenced yesterday: Top Withens, possibly the inspiration for Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights…
Licensed today: High Row in Darlington. The town looks rather more salubrious in my pic than it did when I lived there, briefly, many years ago. I had a flat on Greenbank Road, close to the Methodist chapel where my grandfather, the Rev John Morrison, used to preach (though the chapel has been demolished to make way for a car park)…
Lockdown has certainly impacted my mental equilibrium, though not in any of the ways I might have imagined. No panic attacks, thank goodness, and none of the low-level, free-floating anxiety that used to stain the brightest of days with a gloomy chiaroscuro. I’m not depressed about spending so much time on my own; I’m just bored by my own company, my own thoughts, and by the lack of stimulation. If you'd asked me what makes life worth living, there have been days when I wouldn’t have been able to come up with a ready answer.
During the winter months I’ve been going to bed early, and sleeping in late. When I’m home, I want to be out; when I’m out, I want to be home. I’m not looking intently enough to take good photographs; I’m not concentrating hard enough to write well. I’m easily distracted. Of course, this lassitude may be a relatively sane way of coping with such unusual circumstances. Roll on springtime!
Licensed today: the bus station in Rochdale…
Pontins don’t want any “undesirable guests” staying at their family holiday parks. The instructions sent to booking agents (and passed to the press by a whistleblower) include a list of forty “undesirable” names. Boylan, Boyle, Carney, Carr, Cash, Connors, Corcoran, Delaney, Doherty, Doran, Gallagher, Horan, Keefe, Kell, Leahy, Lee, Maclaughlin, McAlwick, McCully, McDonagh, McGinley, McGinn, McGuiness, McHarg, McLaughan, McMahon, Milligan, Mongans, Murphy, Nolan, O’Brien, O’Connell, O’Donnell, O’Donoghue, O’Mahoney, O’Reilly, Sheridan, Stokes, Walsh, Ward.
Looking for alternative holiday accommodation would be the vice captain of the England cricket team, my housemaster at Uppingham School, one of the Goons, the former CEO of Tesco, half a dozen comedians, two winners of the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, the brewers of the other Irish stout and a quartet of musical sisters. The biggest surprise, for me, was learning that Pontins holiday camps still exist.
Licenced today: Fitzpatrick's Herbal Health temperance bar in Rawtenstall, Lancashire...
I called in yesterday at North Cave Wetlands - just two junctions to the east along the M62 - where the old gravel pits are now a nature reserve. The animated scene on the lagoons put lockdown into sharp perspective. It’s difficult to take seriously the idea that God created the universe with humans in mind, when the rest of the natural world treats our existential crisis with equanimity. Would the birds care if we became extict? More to the point, would the lapwings, grebes and black-headed gulls even notice?
Licenced today: the bar of what, in the good old days, we used to call a ‘pub’, or ‘public house’, or ‘local’, or ‘boozer’…
Twenty million people have now been vaccinated in the UK, and willingness to have the jab is also increasing. A new poll suggests that 89% of those questioned are in favour of getting the vaccine, up from 70% in December.
Licenced today: coastal erosion at Aldbrough, East Yorkshire. The couple in the middle distance are wondering where their caravan went…
