Whitstable...

Licensed today: the Old Neptune pub in Whitstable, Kent…

"If I win"...

We were warned, though not everyone took the threat seriously at the time. Speaking at a rally in 2016, just a month before the election, Donald Trump said this… “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the result of this great and historic presidential election… if I win”.

Licensed today: a couple enjoying the view over to Ambleside from the Drunken Duck gastropub…

Levens Hall...

My pix of the topiary gardens at Levens Hall, South Lakeland, have been regular sellers over the years. This shot was licensed today… 

Brandelhow pier...

Licensed today: Brandelhow pier, Derwent Water, with Blencathra in the distance… 

Payback time...

This pic of the Green Dragon pub, in the village of Hardraw, North Yorkshire, has just been licensed… retrospectively. It’s a sign of the times that the best pay-days in stock photography now come from infringements: people using pix without paying for them, and then, once they’ve been rumbled, having to pay a great deal more…

Ice cream news...

The biggest news story of the day is that, according to ice-cream sellers, Cadbury’s flake is now too crumbly to be used for 99 cones. “You can’t give someone a 99 with a broken flake,” according to John Taylor, the owner of C&M Creamery Ices. “It’s embarrassing for an ice-cream man”. With blue skies and warm weather forecast for the bank holiday weekend, ice cream sellers should be able to put these concerns to one side for a few days, and concentrate instead on making some serious money.

Licensed today: An old lady at Gargrave post office, North Yorkshire… 

Sledmere House...

Licensed today: the parterre at Sledmere House…

Ghaistrill's Strid...

Martin Amis… and now Rolf Harris: two of my heroes gone within 24 hours. The creepy Mr Harris seemed to prefigure his own demise in the lyrics of his most famous song, Tie me kangaroo down. Altogether now… “Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred, tan me hide when I'm dead". As for his rendition of Two Little Boys, the Christmas No 1 in 1969, the less said the better.

Licensed today: Ghaistrill's Strid on the River Wharfe near Grassington, Wharfedale…

Almshouses...

A few days ago I blogged that I keep taking pix of almshouses, but that they never seem to sell. Well, I ‘broke my duck’ today, with this pic in the Guardian, to accompany an article about the benefits of a kind of social housing which has largely gone out of fashion…

Martin Amis...

I’ve just read the obituary of Martin Amis, who has died at the age of 73. For a few hours the news was the lead story in the Guardian. Though I was never a fan of his books, my opinions were formed without actually reading any of them. The apparently humorous quotes, lifted from his novels and essays, never made me laugh. His literary stylings, however highly polished, seldom seemed profound. He seemed a minor talent, hoisted to literary heights by celebrity and nepotism. I can’t pretend to be an objective observer. Many years ago I had a small – but very personal – gripe with him (the details of which I will take, undivulged, to the grave).

Shot a couple of hours ago: cyclists taking the slow road from Wressle to Breighton...

Sound mirror...

This is the sound mirror at Kilnsea, one of a number built on the north-east coast during World War I to give early warning of the approach of enemy aircraft. The concave shape ‘focused’ the engine noise onto a microphone, which amplified the sound. With faster aircraft, and the invention of Radar, the sound mirror became obsolete...

To hell on a haywain...

Great news on a dreary Friday afternoon: hell is back! Yes, according to the World Values Study, UK millennials are more likely to believe in damnation than old fogies like me, despite generally being less religious. Go figure, as the Americans say.

The Haywain by Hieronymus Bosch. The middle section of the triptych illustrates a Flemish proverb: “The world is a haystack, everyone grabs what he can”…

Waiting for the last bus...

Old man waiting at a bus stop in an East Yorkshire village. He's reluctant to leave... not because he thinks that a bus is due, but because he knows there's a defibrillator close at hand...

Humber Street...

Humber Street, next to the marina in Hull, has been gentrified to the point where the shops sell nothing that anyone might actually need. No wonder half the businesses have changed hands since I last walked down the street (an old-fashioned estate agent? What the hell's that doing here?). I had a pint of overpriced lager, and sat outside, watching the hipsters of Hull go by. I knew I wouldn’t get change out of a fiver; I’m just glad I got some change out of a tenner…

Football punditry...

When asked why the team was doing so badly this season, with relegation now looking likely, Leicester defender Jonny Evans got to the heart of the problem. “We've lost too many games and other teams have been better than us”. Wow… when his playing days are over, a second career in football punditry awaits.

Boring pic... licensed today...

John Sentamu..

John Sentamu, the former archbishop of York, has been forced to step back from active ministry, because, according to a recent report, he failed to act on disclosures that a Church of England vicar repeatedly raped a teenage boy in the 1980s. If we want to know why the church continues to have so many issues with the abuse of children, this statement, by Sentamu, may offer some clues. “Safeguarding is important”, he said, “but it doesn't trump church law”. When church leaders insist on dealing with paedophilia in-house, without troubling the police, or Social Services or the legal system, justice is not being served. Nothing trumps the safety of children, and church law doesn't even come close. 

A patriotic Post Office in Ottringham...

Ellerker...

“We have so many prejudices, conclusions and opinions. We have knowledge about so many factors, and these prevent perception. If I want to understand what you are talking about, I must listen. To listen implies that there is no interpretation but actually listening. That implies that while I am listening there must be no comparison with what I have already learnt. You may be saying something entirely different, so I must have the capacity and art of listening, otherwise I can’t understand what you are talking about. In the same way, is it possible to observe clearly, without any image, what is going on outwardly and inwardly? This means to observe without any conditioning – as a Christian, communist, hippy or square, or what you will – to listen so completely, see without any form of distortion. Is that possible? It is only possible when I know all my prejudices, the formulas I have, the conclusions, the opinions I have gathered, becoming aware of those and putting them aside. Then I can listen, then I can observe” (Krishnamurti).

St Anne's church, in the East Yorkshire village of Ellerker...

Grooming gangs...

There are particular problems associated with gangs of Muslim men grooming young white girls for sex, though it is deemed, in many quarters, either racist or Islamophobic to point this out. This quotation, from an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, offers some clues as to why Muslim men, in Europe, regard women as commodities to be exploited.

“There are creeds that say there are good women and there are bad women. The good women are chaste, modest, and marry as virgins. They wait in their father’s homes. When they get married, their husbands assume authority over them, and their behavior is prescribed and enforced by society as a whole.

“The bad women, meanwhile, are the women who think of themselves as autonomous or independent. They dress as they please, they work, they mix with men or want to, and they go about their life. That is the binary attitude that these young men and women are conditioned in. [Muslim men] have all of these prejudices that the women they see are sluts and there for the taking. It’s only a matter of time before they start behaving accordingly”.

Licensed today: the signal-box – and signal master – at Garsdale station on the Settle-Carlisle railway line, in the Yorkshire Dales…

The swifts are back!...

Donald Trump, a man for whom lying comes as easily as breathing, has told the truth on at least one occasion, when he insisted “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters”. Despite the jury in the E Jean Carroll rape case deciding that Trump is a sexual predator, who now has to pay about $5m in compensatory and punitive damages, almost 70% of Republicans still stand behind him as the GOP presidential nomination for 2024… 

Never mind Donald Trump. The first of Aldeburgh’s swifts arrived in Asselby today. Hooray!…

"Not my type"...

Donald Trump failed to understand, when he said the words, that “she’s not my type” is not a coherent response to the accusation of rape by E Jean Carroll, and, according to a deposition, played for the jury at the ongoing trial, he still doesn’t understand. He even insulted the female lawyer who interviewed him by saying “You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either” and “I hope you’re not insulted”. What... insulted by not featuring in Donald Trump’s sexual fantasies?

Even after everything he’s done, and the chaos he has wrought, this monster of a man, the Mar-a-Lago Mussolini, is still odds-on to be the Republican party’s nominee in the 2024 election.

A quiet corner of a churchyard, yesterday...

Stone Creek...

To get to Stone Creek, on Sunk Island, east of Hull, you set the satnav to “middle of nowhere” (though “back of beyond” works just as well). There’s not much there – just a few boats and a view of Immingham across the Humber estuary – and even by the standards of the east Yorkshire flatlands, Sunk Island itself is flat and featureless. But it was still more fun to take a wander, yesterday, than to have anything to do with the coronation…

Dead whale...

The carcass of a 30-tonne fin whale that died after being beached in Bridlington, has been removed in an operation described by the local council as the “largest of its kind”. The beached whale was loaded whole, with diggers, onto a flatbed truck, and taken away, because it had become “a tourist attraction”. The job had to be done quickly, because decomposing whales have been known to explode. Only those familiar with East Yorkshire’s premier seaside resort will understand why a dead and potentially explosive whale is a bigger draw than the town’s many hostelries, fish ’n’ chip shops and amusement arcades. 

House for sale in Howden. If anyone wants to illustrate the state of the housing market in springtime, I might make a sale..

A waste of a wet weekend...

I have the order of service for the king’s coronation today. The great and the good will be ushered into Westminster Abbey: the Clerk of the Closet, the Groom of the Robes, the Lady Usher of the Black Rod, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, the Inspector of the Royal Foreskin, all presided over by the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells. Other faiths will be represented – Jains, Buddhists, Sikh, Jews, Zoroastrians, Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim and members of the Baháʼí Faith – though the coronation ceremony will be unremittingly Christian in nature. And not just Christian... but Protestant.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will address the kneeling King Charles. “Will you to the utmost of your power to maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?” The king will reply: “All this I promise to do”, and will also declare that he is a “faithful Protestant”. God – the Protestant God – will be mentioned no fewer than eighty times before the great, the good and Prince Andrew file out of the Abbey, to enjoy a right royal knees-up and a pie ’n’ pea supper down at the Old Bull and Bush…

Yesterday in Blacktoft...

A busy polling day turnout in the village of Blacktoft...

Polling day...

It took just five minutes, this morning, to do my civic duty. The polling station in Asselby is the back room of the village pub, just across the road from the Old Sunday School. I showed my photo ID and cast my vote. I doubt if my choice will do anything to alter the political landscape of this corner of the East Riding, but I live in hope.

Licensed today: the Aire & Calder Navigation in Knottingley, West Yorkshire…

Drunken Duck...

Licensed today: the Drunken Duck, pub and restaurant, at Barngates, near Ambleside, Cumbria…

Cuckoo...

Enjoyed a couple of hours at Blacktoft Sands. The reedbeds were tranquil, somnolent; me too. The marsh harriers were the most active birds, with their aerobatic mating displays. I heard bitterns booming, but today’s highlight was hearing the first cuckoo of the year.

Cuckoo (Creative Commons)…

Oath of allegiance...

We are being invited to swear an oath of allegiance – called the Homage of the People – during the king’s coronation ceremony. “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty,” we’re supposed to say, “and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.” Well, bollocks to that. If there’s any need for an oath of allegiance (spoiler alert: there isn’t), it should be the other way round. Considering the royal family’s obscene wealth, and their reluctance to pay tax on any of it, they should be giving grateful thanks that they haven’t been summarily executed by a mob of angry commoners. And who is paying for the whole coronation charade? We are, so help me God!

Licensed today: St Cuthbert's Church in Aldingham, Cumbria…