Return to Maggie's Bar

Emily, Amy, Benji, Sally, Maggie, a May evening, a starry starry night

Inclusively Injected with love

Last Summer, we were invited to Maggie’s Bar (click here for reminder). Yesterday evening we returned to enjoy the additional gazebo which warded off the meterological uncertainties of Spring 2021. Benji sat on Sally’s knee (as in collage above.) Nibbles were nibbled. Discussions roamed around the past and our present lives, hopes, dreams and lockdown experiences, the prophetic Corona cushion, WhoGivesACrapRecycledToiletRoll, TV, cinema, theatre, the future….  On our return to the bar, we could toast the gospel that the entire Shipley branch of the Harry Potter Film Club have now been Covid-Vaccinated, Double-Jabbed, Inclusively-Injected…. There was also a Birthday Bonus present for Sally. Not only does Maggie run a very popular bar, but her eyes, hands and talents can craft lovingly produced Cross Stitch works of art. As Shakespeare truly muses:

I count myself in nothing else so happy

As in a soul remembering my good friends

A Cross Stitched gift, more signs of Spring, ecological toilet rolls....

Then welcome, Winter

Hunkering down with Call My Agent and It's A Sin

Winter's costs and benefits

Although this year’s Winter has not included usual highlights like sitting by roaring fires in stately homes, getting a beer at a Christmas market, singing carols in the cloisters at Fountains Abbey or solving Murder Mysteries on New Year’s Eve, snow has still fallen appropriately, woolly clothes have been wrapped around, mulled wine has been glugged and boots have crunched on icy meadows. And I thank the Winter stars for the universe’s permission to savour stodgy pudding and custard at this time of year. I manage to stem the flow of inner tears when our weekly posh takeaway from La Rue restaurant in Saltaire doesn’t include a sponge pud as a dessert choice on their menu. But then I’m only human. Winter has costs but benefits too – hunkering down with movies and box sets, curtains shut, anticipating that Spring will come. Carpe diem.

Winter's Beauty
by W H Davies

Is it not fine to walk in Spring,
When leaves are born, and hear birds sing?
And when they lose their singing powers,
In Summer, watch the bees at flowers?
Is it not fine, when Summer's past,
To have the leaves, no longer fast,
Biting my heel where'er I go,
Or dancing lightly on my toe?
Now Winter's here and rivers freeze;
As I walk out I see the trees,
Wherein the pretty squirrels sleep,
All standing in the snow so deep:
And every twig, however small,
Is blossomed white and beautiful.
Then welcome, Winter, with thy power
To make this tree a big white flower;
To make this tree a lovely sight,
With fifty brown arms draped in white,
While thousands of small fingers show
In soft white gloves of purest snow.

One tree, Four Seasons.... (plus the real Frankie Valli and the movie-acting Four Seasons from Jersey Boys)

That Was The Year That Was

What do I know?

As screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride) wrote in his 1982 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade

Nobody Knows Anything

And looking back to January 2020, I could not have predicted that I would live through historic times:

• the stout guarding of George Eliot’s statue in Nuneaton Market Square in case any protestors felt the need to vandalise the author of Mill on the Floss;
• the (final) Brexit deal, heralding months and years of further bureaucratic wrangling (thank goodness the deal is “oven-ready”) but hopefully there is an end to the Tory EuroPsychoDrama which distracts, deflects and divides;
• the clear and democratic defeat of President Trump in a corrosive American election;
• the clamping down by Chinese authorities on civil liberties in Hong Kong;
• the (to date) almost 83,000,000 cases and almost 2,000,000 deaths from a global, deadly pandemic.

What I DO know.

I know I’ve done a lot of local walking, completed a lot of jigsaw puzzles, re-read Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son, read a lot of other books (including my book of the year, Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet), watched a lot of TV, attended lectures, interviews and Tai Chi classes online, watched theatre online and extracted every ounce of pleasure I could from the family and friends I’ve managed to see with the changing (and sometimes confusing) restrictions, lockdown and tiers. I know one daughter was furloughed for a time (and has worked from her home for much of the time.) I know another daughter continued training to become a nurse (including working on Covid wards and now helping deliver the vaccine.) I know my wife attended French and ballet classes and a book group online and I know she continued to work (safely) at a local Food Bank which, in 2010, delivered 600 bags a year and currently delivers 600 bags a week…. anyone care to speculate what social policies have led to the increase in the demand for food parcels?

Rainbows everywhere

In windows, on hillsides, in the sky…. Rainbows expressed appreciation towards key workers. Compassion, kindness and solidarity triumphed over selfishness after the initial panic of the approaching first lockdown and before the cynicism of the Autumn. The environment bounced back. Birds filled the air. Nature triumphed. In the Spring and Summer children rode bicycles freely on emptier-than-usual roads. Until this year the record for the speed of developing a vaccine was held by the 1960s mumps jab, but the glory (and hard work) of scientists cooperating around the world have produced two safe and effective vaccines for Covid-19 within a year, and a third vaccine is imminent. Hopefully the days are over for those who believe Michael Gove’s soundbite that “people have had enough of experts….” (Particularly those who never heard Gove’s pitiful attempts to wriggle out of saying it in the months following.)

Women-led countries

An analysis by academics at Liverpool and Reading Universities of the initial governmental policy responses to Covid-19 up to 19th May, adjusted for variables (GDP, population density etc), concluded that countries led by women handled the pandemic “systematically and significantly better” than those led by men, particularly ones following a populist agenda (take a bow, Trump, Bolsanaro and BoJo.) So, let’s hear it for Finland’s Sanna Marin, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Germany’s Angela Merkel. “When women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”

So, looking back through the diary of my little life for 2020, what did I comment upon?

January & February 2020

• Confirmation reaches the UK Media that Chinese people are dying of a novel virus, probably originating in a wet market in Wuhan. (As the weeks go by, I convince myself that my 33 days of coughing and high temperature in November and December of 2019 are not connected. I am NOT Patient Zero.) The Republican-controlled Senate acquits President Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstructing congress; in February President Trump tells a rally that the now-identified Covid-19 virus will be gone by April.

In my little life I saw Cats, Little Women, Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker, Jojo Rabbit, EMMA. and Parasite at the cinema. At the theatre I saw King John, A Museum in Baghdad and The Whip at the RSC, the musical Gypsy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Ballet Rambert at Bradford Alhambra and I went to a Van Gogh audio-visual display in York. I enjoyed a cheese and wine evening in Leeds with a pal, attended a school reunion in Wakefield and marvelled at the National Space Centre in Leicester. To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Sally and I chugged along on a steam train with Prosecco and afternoon tea. (Meanwhile, Covid-19 rolls down the line to Italy….)

March & April 2020

• The World Health Organisation declares that Covid-19 is a pandemic, Italy goes into full lockdown and, after increasing clamour from health experts, the UK government locks down, and the “Clap for Carers” begins on Thursday nights at 8pm. For a fortnight, supermarkets struggle to fill shelves with particular items. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister is diagnosed with Covid-19 and Keir Starmer becomes Labour leader. Captain Tom Moore becomes a hero by doing laps of his garden on a zimmer frame and raising £32m for the NHS. The Queen reassures the nation. President Trump suggests injecting bleach and bringing light inside the body (worth quoting verbatim for the record):

"I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs…. I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too... So, we'll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute - that's pretty powerful."

In my little life I saw Dark Waters, Military Wives and Onward at the cinema and Acosta Danza (Carlos Acosta dance group) at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. They were the final trips to the cinema and theatre until the Autumn because of lockdown or tier restrictions. Final meals out, final family gatherings, the beginnings of Skype and Zoom group calls, the scheduling of WALKING began. Emily returned home to live in our attic in isolation as she worked on a “hot ward” and subsequently recovered from what was almost certainly Covid symptoms. My niece, and then my sister, were diagnosed with (and hospitalised by) Covid-19 in April – thankfully both went on to recover. NT Live, YouTube, quality TV and lectures online filled time and Tai Chi classes switched to online.

May & June 2020

• Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s claim of delivering 100,000 Covid tests a day is debunked when he has to admit that what he meant was that the bulk of them had been put in the post. UK government credibility is undermined by advisor Dominic Cummings’s ludicrous version of his trip to County Durham and Barnard Castle. George Floyd, an unarmed black man, is unlawfully killed by police in Minneapolis. Marcus Rashford leads a successful campaign for free school meals for disadvantaged children.

In my little life I attended my first Zoom funeral (very impressive) and phrases like “socially distanced” became ubiquitous. The Hay Festival successfully broadcast its talks and performances online. Our future holidays were cancelled. We got a new bed and in May became an “empty nest” again.

July & August 2020

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak launches an Eat Out To Help Out scheme to revive the hospitality industry. Joe Biden chooses Kamala Harris as a running mate to stand against Donald Trump later in the year. The awarding of GCSE and A Level results is a fiasco that was predicted and could easily have been avoided and the hapless Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, keeps his job after the first of what seems like a series of gaffes and U-turns that continues through the rest of the year.

In my little life we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary with a picnic and walk on Penistone Hill. We were able to meet friends in the garden – but only until August 1st. The birth of Great Niece Charlotte added new life to the wider Johnson clan, a welcome miracle in the middle of the year. The RSC started broadcasting the Talking Shakespeare series of interviews. Pre-Covid arrangements and maskless supermarket shopping seemed to be a very distant memory.

September & October 2020

• The “world-beating” (organised by the PM’s private sector chums) Test and Trace system fails as schools and office workers return at the same time to superspread Covid-19 and kickstart the second wave of infections. Jacinda Ardern wins a landslide victory in the New Zealand elections having shown clear leadership in dealing with the pandemic. Having publicly argued with the Mayors of Middlesborough and Manchester about regional lockdown rules, Boris Johnson announces a second national lockdown for November.

In my little life I went to the cinema once: The Perfect Candidate and, gloriously, went to Leeds Playhouse to see some socially distanced theatre: Orpheus in the Record Shop, Krapp’s Last Tape and La Voix Humaine. My 60th birthday came and went without pomp but with good food, a terrific hike and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

November & December 2020

• The second national lockdown makes some, but not enough, impact on the rising cases of Covid-19 but the world celebrates as a German-Turkish couple, Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, produce an effective vaccine at Pfizer. Dominic Cummings (and Lee Cain) exit from UK power struggles in 10 Downing Street and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris decisively win the US Presidential election with a bigger margin than Trump beat Clinton in 2016. A 90-year old grandmother from Coventry, Margaret Keenan, becomes the first (non-clinical-trial) person in the world to receive a fully-tested and approved Covid vaccine. Second in line for the jab in Warwickshire was 81-year old William Shakespeare….!

In my little life, I squeezed in one cinema trip: Uncle Vanya and was deliriously happy when the US election made sense of my hope in humanity. I started my re-reading of all Shakespeare’s works with Two Gentlemen of Verona and we began having posh takeaways delivered once a week to “celebrate” another week survived. As the year ended we managed to see a good number of friends in outdoor venues and the Christmas spirit endured in spite of the government’s poor communication skills.

So what next?

It would be good to think that 2021 will be the year when lessons learned from the pandemic begin to bear fruit. That....

• the “rat race” is not the only way to live
• home working is possible
• a long daily commute is not conducive to good living
• nature is indispensable
• a cleaner environment is achievable
• community resources are value for money
• the arts bring entertainment, inspiration and solace to millions
• local expertise is invaluable
• experts are worth attending to
• heroes come in all shapes, sizes, creeds and colour
• an equal right for one is an equal right for all
• carers, volunteers and key workers are more important in a crisis than pin-striped hedge-fund managers
• compassion and kindness are free
• the welfare state is as precious as the NHS
• magic money trees are not and have never been real – because where there’s a (political) will, there’s a (financial) way.

New Year. New Decade. Welcome to the future....  

Sighing after swallows flown

La Rue, Saltaire, posh takeaway

Lockdown 2.0

Another week, another jigsaw. This time, a birthday jigsaw featuring “The Harry Potter Film Club” named because we started the club to watch the Harry Potter films one after the other and have since graduated to Oscar-winners, foreign language films, strange comedies, cheesy romances, macabre crime movies and everything in between. The week has also seen the successful ordering and whole-stomached consuming of a posh takeaway from local British/French bistro La Rue – a new way for businesses to try and keep afloat in these challenging times. I’m assuming the UK Prime Minister has an excellent plan for dealing with the 2020 pandemic; I can only hope that upwards of a million infections and over 50,000 deaths were part of his vision. Otherwise, why would he keep trying to tell me it was all looking promising (me, with the rose-tinted spectacles)? To be honest, I wouldn’t want to be a member of the cabinet at the moment; though next week might feel better without Dominic Cummings who many government insiders describe as malignant and mendacious. Just saying.

Sever from my lot your lot

I can usually conjure something from Shakespeare or poetry to fit the times and Lockdown 2.0 brought to mind the Autumnal poem below. It is by one of my top ten poets: Christina Rossetti, author of the soulful In the Bleak Midwinter and the wild Goblin Market. The voice of the poem “live(s) alone, (and) look(s) to die alone” having ordered all her friends to stay away and “sever” themselves from her. “I have hedged me with a thorny hedge.” There are many interpretations of the identity of the character inside this Petrarchan sonnet, and why exactly she is in her own personal lockdown. But, in November 2020, the last four lines catch my mood during the latest Covid-19 national restrictions. (Incidentally that mysterious last line is a gift for teachers trying to demonstrate the technique and effects of assonance (on the “u”) and alliteration (on the “s” and the “t”….) God and Gaia bless you, Christina Rossetti. I thank you for your gifts.

Hirst Wood, La Rue Puddings, My homemade Chicken&Mushroom Pie, Christina Rossetti - all good things....

From Sunset to Star Rise

By Christina Rossetti

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.

From Sunset to Star Rise

PreBirthday Birthday Treats

Big Birthday Tighter Lockdown

I live in an area that has had an increasing Covid infection rate so, with tighter lockdown restrictions, my plans for celebrating my 60th birthday in the middle of October are well and truly on hold. Which explains why my favourite walk on the moors to Top Withins (scheduled for my birthday weekend) happened early. And a trip to the Harvey Nichols restaurant in Leeds was also tacked onto a trip that was meant to be just doing chores. Blowing the cobwebs away and putting the world to rights with a picnic at the Brontë Falls; and savouring the time and tastes over a delicious meal – I already feel I’ve been well and truly treated. (Happy Early Birthday To Me!) As a bonus I visited for the first time the Tiled Hall Café at Leeds Art Gallery.

Seasons Mingling

On Friday, I meandered along the River Aire and bathed in forest light feeling like the luckiest man alive. The day before, on Thursday, marble-sized hailstones battered Saltaire, crushing plants and battering berries off the weeping cotoneaster in our back garden. Is it Summer or Autumn or has Winter sneaked in? Sometime in October I’ll record (I hope) a RETURN TO LIVE THEATRE – I’ll be attending 3 x 45minute performances at Leeds Playhouse…. But yesterday, after the river walk and Tai Chi in the park (who guessed I would ever be doing Tai Chi?) I made a RETURN TO THE CINEMA…. So, in Pictureville, I was one of five masked punters who was glued to The Perfect Candidate.

No urgent justification to fund this project

I may have been so cinema-deprived that The Perfect Candidate felt like the best thing I’ve seen in ages – and that’s because it’s the ONLY thing I’ve seen at the cinema since the beginning of lockdown. There were a couple of moments in the film that felt formulaic – though other parts that were not formulaic and I was definitely transported out of my self and my immediate concerns into a different world. So here’s what I thought about my first cinema film in six months:

• I felt safe and comfortable in Pictureville cinema
• One of my favourite films of 2012 was Wajdja about a girl and her desire to ride a bike, made in secretive conditions in Saudi Arabia by the same director as The Perfect Candidate, Haifaa Al-Mounsour – this new film has a bigger budget, seems more obviously “cinematic” but has the same sensibilities and attention to human detail as Wadjda
• As soon as you see Dr Maryam (Mila Al Zahrani) driving her car, you know this is a 21st century Saudi Arabia. Maryam is an ordinary woman, observant and devout, and with extraordinary determination and enough temper to cut through some of the bullshit she encounters in her life as a trained doctor in a remote clinic and, later, accidentally, as a candidate for the local Municipal Council
• Helping Maryam (at first reluctantly) are her two sisters: Sara (a teenage eye-roller) and Selma (a confident wedding planner, played by Dhay who is, apparently, for those who know these things, a real-life social media influencer)
• The three sisters are left home alone by their patriarchal father who, against stereotype, wants to go “on tour” with his band of musicians, partly to recover from the grief over the loss of his unconventional wife a year before. He is prepared to defy extremist threats to censor his musical talents and states that he wants his daughters to live fulfilled lives.
• The authorities want Dr Maryam to concentrate on treating patients who are prepared to let a female doctor touch them and, later, to focus her political efforts on playgrounds for children and gardens. But there’s a more urgent priority in Maryam’s mind and her rival male candidate has no interest in…. repairing the road to her local clinic
• The Perfect Candidate made me laugh, feel angry, feel nervous, opened new vistas in my mind – and gave me hope

 

Twilight Garden Tour at Harewood

Life starts all over again…. 

As Summer hovers, clinging on, and Autumn looms, about to spread, I think about Jordan Baker’s line in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

I wrote about that idea in the last post. A potent activity that reflected the idea was also our recent evening visit to Harewood House grounds. For many years, it was a place to take children to go wild on the adventure playground; and in recent times the Christmas decorations have been a highlight. Now, it’s all about the grounds….

Trevor and Sam

Head Gardener, Trevor Nicholson, led a small Covid-secure group on an exclusive tour of the site as the day visitors left and the sun went down. Accompanying Trevor was super-enthusiastic volunteer, Sam. We spent most of our time in the Himalayan garden and heard about the challenges of developing a great garden space and keeping it fresh each season. Many changes have happened over the centuries and in recent years, the mix of conservation, climate change, visitor experiences and the personal whims of gardeners and family alike have kept the team busy and scratching their heads and scrabbling in the soil to make the place spectacular for now but secure for the future. The Buddhist Stupa in the Himalayan Garden at Harewood is the only one of its kind in the UK and has been built and blessed by monks from Bhutan.

Walled Garden and Terrace View

The Walled Garden at Harewood currently has twelve large borders, all useful, many growing fruits and vegetables that are used on the estate or sold in local farm shops. It too has taken many forms over the decades and access to pictures of its development were fascinating, including a surreal period when it housed a maze. We ended our tour on the famous Charles Barry terrace with a glass of Prosecco and a meet-up with our “rival” twilight tour of people who had been round the Bird Garden.

September Song

Rossini's in Shipley, Happy Anniversary to Our House, Outdoor dining in Tollerton

September Song

Sally and I went out for a meal, ostensibly to celebrate 25 years living in the house we do, but mainly to try out a new restaurant within walking distance: Rossini’s in Shipley. An Italian family ran a restaurant (D’Atonino’s) in the same building for many decades and the relaunched place has a similar menu but fancy new décor and of course plenty of Covid safety arrangements. It was lovely. And it was good to be out and about in the evening as summer begins to fade. Time to trim the beech hedge, put a fancy new number on our gatepost and get in some final walks before the weather turns too cold….

New (Academic) Year, New Term, New Start

For nigh on 33 years, September was always the beginning of a New Term in my teaching career. Time to check the stapler, Sellotape, hole punch, paper supplies, exercise books…. I can imagine this year’s New Start excitement will be complicated by feelings of uncertainty and nervousness as many pupils will be returning to school for the first time in weeks…. Bear in mind that some pupils (children of key workers) and many teachers have been working throughout the whole period of lockdown/semi-lockdown/are-we-locked-down-or-not…. I know from experience, though, that all teachers, all support staff, all the many adults who contribute to the UK education system and all students (from the age of 4 to 19) will do their very best to make something happen. Children will arrive with something in their brains and hearts and they will leave at the end of each day with more.  (PS I don’t believe anyone needs to “catch up” – they just carry on from where they are – “catching up” is a media-constructed myth that presupposes education is a straightforward one-size-fits-all-linear experience. Spoiler alert – it ain’t.) Here’s to Autumn and the Falling Leaves of Golden-Brown-Wisdom and the Harvest season….. and the season of my Birth Day….

Walk to Gilstead, Steps in Northcliffe woods, Tai Chi in Roberts Park (I hesitate to identify me)

Yearly trick of looking new

Spring turns to Summer
As night follows day and age follows youth, so the seasons move along whether or not we humans are loving, reproducing, fighting infection or dying. Walls fall, buildings fall, whole cities and empires fall. But, for now at least, the flowers and plants and trees continue to grow, Earth turns, and after the dark comes the dawn. Further lockdown measures have been “eased” and the crowds (mostly socially distancing, but not always) are returning to beauty spots. After Summer, the Autumn will come, and Winter will be here anon. In the meantime, Phllip Larkin’s poem The Trees has been on my mind on recent walks.

Yearly trick of looking new

The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

"Truly Heart-stirring Relic"

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, begun in 1847, looks after key properties and materials today

September 1847
September always feels like a time of renewal – throughout my school years and my career as a teacher it always signalled the start of the new term, new books, new pens, turning over a new leaf. It signals the month when Autumn begins and the Summer fades fast. April, wrote T S Eliot in The Wasteland, “is the cruellest month” but for me April means my Mum’s and Sister’s birthdays and (not-so-secretly for those who know me) Shakespeare’s birthday on the 23rd April (which was also his death day and has been designated the feast of St George…) We often make unremarkable dates significant by remembering personal events – the first time or the last time we did something…. September also contains a historical twanging thrill for me, a secret celebration, I know, for many Shakespeare fanatics…. In 1847 an auction took place in London advertising the sale of “The Truly Heart-stirring Relic of a Most Glorious Period, and of England’s Immortal Bard.” What we now know as Shakespeare’s Birthplace was up for public sale and celebrities as grand as Prince Albert and Charles Dickens were promoters of “saving the house for the nation.” Stratford-upon-Avon has never looked back, though it was an uphill struggle to keep the project on track and every year sees challenges to the promotion of Shakespeare’s genius. One of my favourite blogs (The Shakespeare Blog by Sylvia Morris) details the struggle and the commemoration of the auction in 2017.

Shakespeare flirting with both Comedy and Tragedy in a Richard Westall painting at the Birthplace Trust and London scenes from recent visits to The Globe on the South Bank in London.

Bring me laughter

Sally, Sue (friends from Primary School), me and Birthday Boy, Brian - Mad Hatters all!

Wide horizons
Our good friend, Brian, had a special birthday recently – a fine excuse to return to one of my favourite hotels – The Midland in Morecambe. With its backdrop of wide horizons across the bay to the Lake District. With its ever-changing skies with scudding clouds, sudden acres of blue and plentiful “god rays” revealing sea spouts and turbulent weather in the distance. We didn’t get rained on which was a blessing and we could marvel at the cry of the gulls, the salty spray and the great pleasures of spending time with amici sympatici (sympathetic friends.)

Blowing away the cobwebs and putting the world to rights....

Art Deco
I’ve blogged about this place before (here and here) but it has never failed to impress with its art deco features, Eric Gill sculptures inside and out and atmospheric setting, perfect for film companies to exploit (as indeed they have, often for mystery thrillers – Poirot and The Bay both filmed here.)

The Midland Hotel in Morecambe

Chatter of Mad Hatters
Over dinner, breakfast (and tea in Heysham at the Mad Hatter’s Café!) we put the world to rights talking about our lives, the universe and everything in between. Needless to say the quality of the food at The Midland is very high with sea food an obvious speciality, given the location.

Viking Legends
Walking along the wide promenade to Heysham is a must on visits to The Midland where St Peter’s Church and St Patrick’s chapel are dramatically sited to inspire a sense of History and awe. St Peter’s was consecrated in 967 CE but there is archaeological evidence of an earlier wooden church. My favourite item inside the church is a Viking hogback stone portraying the legends of Sigmund and Sigurd.

Tantalising buried secrets
St Patrick’s chapel on the promontory above St Peter’s is well worth the extra climb. Looked after by the National Trust, its most significant feature is the presence of rock cut graves, probably ossuaries to hold bones, but historical speculation will no doubt continue about these mysterious “coffins,” particularly since further excavation in 1993 revealed over a thousand artefacts left by a hunter-gatherer group from about 1000 BCE. The area has been preserved from development for a future research dig.

Bring me sunshine....
The other “must-do” activity in Morecambe is to pay tribute to Eric Morecambe’s statue by Graham Ibbetson; and take the obligatory photograph before winding through the northern countryside back through Lancashire and into the North Yorkshire moors, stopping, naturally, at Ribblehead for a final treat of Victorian engineering….

Graham Ibbetson's statue of Eric Morecambe and the stunning Ribblehead Viaduct

Rhubarb and Robins

Bettys Cookery School, welcome tables at daughter's houses, and who doesn't love rhubarb?

True friendship
Back in April 2019, Sally and Maggie, braved the rigours (and joys) of Bettys famous Cookery School (yes, there is no apostrophe) to produce a meal for members of their combined families (including lucky old me). On that balmy Spring evening I sat down to locally sourced ingredients:

• Spiced mackerel
• Beef in red wine sauce and carrot purée with Yorkshire mash
• Ginger panna cotta with stewed rhubarb

Sitting down to a meal (or sharing a drink) with loved ones is a global human impulse: all ages, types, nations, ethnicities and religions share company, count blessings, celebrate occasions, forge relationships, court lovers, toast memories, provoke laughter, make peace and bury hurts with food and/or drink.

The Strid at Bolton Abbey, local walks, ponds and washing at daughters' houses

Tear and Share
Children across the world revel in party sweets, jelly and ice cream. Everyone has beloved food from formative years (for me, I’ll always feel nostalgic about corned beef hash, scuffles, ginger beer, parkin, sponge pudding and custard and pie&peas on Bonfire Night.) Shakespeare gives us hundreds of references to food, drink and feasting; some plays contain extraordinary dinner table dramas (Timon of Athens and Titus Andronicus immediately come to mind.) Scripture gives us “breaking bread together” and in the charred remains following the cataclysmic eruptions of Vesuvius what is more moving than the charred remains of a loaf of bread, scored for tearing and sharing?

Northcliffe meadow, Dove Cottage in Shibden near Halifax, and who doesn't love a robin?

Sprouts and Trust
I made a friend at university who is a lifetime touchstone for one of my core philosophies: sprouts and trust….! One evening we sobered up enough to realise we had been chatting shit for a couple of hours about castles, the countryside, sprouts, our families, time travel, music, and back again to sprouts…. And my diary entry of that day is titled “Sprouts and Trust,” an oddbeat combination that summed up my friend and appealed to me. Alongside food, drink and good companionship, I believe Nature is The Great Binder, the powerful force to which you can submit for healing and calm: the sea, the meadows, the forests, the fields, the dry stone walls of Yorkshire. Who needs pomp and ceremony? True friendship needs no ceremony. Talk sprouts, feel trust. Strange and diverse combinations are the stuff of life. Once again, who needs pomp and ceremony? Rhubarb and Robins will suffice. Simple fruit, steadfast creature.
Ceremony was but devised at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes….
Where there is true friendship, there needs none

True friendship, Bolton Abbey, Dove Cottage, welcome table, sprouts and trust, rhubarb and robins....

What sport shall we devise here in this garden?

Sally, Emily, Michael, Alex and Janet at Hidcote

“our sea-walled garden, the whole land….”
Shakespeare famously used gardening as a metaphor for how to conduct your life: seeding, planting, tending, nurturing, weeding, watering, pruning, feeding, trimming, harvesting, composting, laying fallow.... And he presents England as a giant garden that needs the same treatment. John O'Gaunt used his "royal throne of kings" speech to cement the idea, referencing "this sceptred isle....this earth of majesty....this other Eden, this demi-paradise....this precious stone....this dear, dear land...." Most people forget that the speech leads up to the concept that this gorgeous land is now being run by rich landlords who have effectively destroyed the country from within - hello, Conservative party - (my post-Brexit analysis of the speech - here - remains the same.)

The bees and butterflies fluttering by
In the muddled, topsy-turvy, venal, lie-ridden road to Brexit, life for ordinary peasants goes on (yes, I am a committed Remoaner and proud of it and yes, if you are a Brexiter, I hope you're right and life's going to be lovely but don't bleat about how it's the EU's fault that they're protecting their own interests - of course they are, you numpties, and quite right too, just as we should but we're the ones leaving - and let me know what you imagined would happen with Ireland and fruit-picking and visas and nationals living abroad....) but, this post has such pretty pictures that I'm going to bury the politics and concentrate on what a lovely day it was at Hidcote because life goes on.... the peasants continue to till the land (literally and metaphorically).... Michael will still provide magnificent picnics on the ground in the orchard in order to keep his and my family nourished amongst the whips and scorns of life. And, dodging showers on sultry summer days, we will still find time to answer the Queen's question in Richard II:

What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?

We could while away the hours conversing with the flowers....

Hidcote
Hidcote is a lovely National Trust Arts and Crafts garden created by the horticulturist, Major Lawrence Johnstone. The effect is of wandering through a series of "rooms" in the open air as all the different areas feel like you've entered a new space. The queen and her lady (in Richard II that is) overhear two gardeners chuntering in iambic pentameter, wondering why they should bother to "keep law and form and due proportion" when "the whole land is full of weeds."

O, what a pity is it

That (the king) had not so trimm’d and dress’d his land

As we this garden!

There is so much goodness in the hearts of ordinary people, it is important to spend times wandering the highways and byways of the land - and wiling away the hours in places like Hidcote - to remember that the news onslaught is not the only story. We need time to smell the roses and forget the king.

Back to Joyce's for home-made buns....