Art

In the centre of this Yorkshire city you will find The Winter Gardens and connected with that large, modern glasshouse you soon find yourself in The Millennium Galleries. I had heard that there was a new exhibition there based upon "Football Art Prize" entries so I went there to check it out.

This is what the gallery blurb said by way of explanation:-

The Football Art Prize makes a welcome return to Sheffield to celebrate the passion, drama and unity the beautiful game inspires around the globe.

Coinciding with the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Prize showcases the work of over 60 UK and international artists. See the heartfelt highs and lows on the pitch, the players that give it their all, and the dedication of the loyal fans who follow them, captured through a striking array of painting, drawing, photography, film and video.

I love football and I love art so what a great combination for me. Some of the exhibits were just so-so and I didn't think much of the overall winning piece - a video on a loop showing an Asian woman doing "keep-uppies" with a football.

My favourite exhibit by far was the picture of the French international midfielder N'Golo Kante shown at the top of this blogpost. It is not a photograph. It is a charcoal drawing by self-taught Kanmi Olukanni who said that the picture was inspired by Kante's man-of-the-match performance for Chelsea in The UEFA Champions League Cup Final of 2021. The picture has glass protection so I am sorry about the reflections. I tried my best.

Here are four more exhibits that caught my eye:-

From the top... the first one is a photograph of some boys playing football on a huge landfill site  in  Sylhet, Bangladesh. It is where they work, making tiny amounts of money from recycling other people's waste. The lad in the middle of the group is wearing an Argentina shirt.

The second item is an oil painting of a night game at Upton Park in London - the former home of West Ham United. Shirley and I once saw Hull City play The Hammers there. The painting is called, "Upton Park Days". It reminded me of standing on the Bunker's Hill Terrace at Hull City's old ground - Boothferry Park.

The third item is another photograph. It shows an artificial football pitch in a remote coastal location to the north east of Greenland. The photographer found the contrast between harsh terrain and a familiar field design appealing. By the way, has Trump grabbed Greenland yet as he once threatened to do?

Lastly it's an acrylic painting of the tough Irish midfielder - Roy Keane. It's after his football career has finished. The painter, Kyle King-Jagger has put him in a sandwich shop and titled the painting, "Roy's Rolls". Roy appears to be selling prawn sandwiches which he once derided as the halftime food choice of football club board members.

After visiting the exhibition, I sat in Tudor Square for half an hour and drank cold water from my flask while reading the book I am grinding my way through at present. I will tell you about when I'm done. Then I bought two T-shirts from "Blacks" on The Moor before catching a bus home. 

Earlier I had walked all the way into the city centre. That takes forty five minutes from our house. But the weather was fine and I had the time so why not?

Inside Sheffield's Winter Gardens earlier today

Bossyboots

Yesterday afternoon,we looked after Little Miss Bossyboots while Phoebe and her parents went to see "Toy Story 5" at the cinema. When two year old Margot heard that they were on their way back to our house, she insisted on waiting for them in the street. She even took out her little green chair and Shirley had to sit with her for half an hour. Lord knows why Phoebe & Co took so long. Meanwhile, I was busy cooking our Sunday dinner.

They said that "Toy Story 5" had been quite brilliant  and so I pledged to see it myself.

After another great Sunday dinner prepared by Yorkshire's answer to Gordon Ramsey, we ate a lovely, light strawberry vanilla cheesecake that Shirley had prepared from scratch. That also went down a treat. Stewart's mother Cheryl was with us but she doesn't eat desserts apart from fresh fruit so we gave her strawberries and raspberries.

When they had gone home, I caught the 88 bus up to Bents Green for  "The Hammer and Pincers" pub quiz with my chums - Mick and Mike. We did not win and couldn't even get the anagram question - "Which is the only word in the English language that is an anagram of CARTHORSE?"*

For our quizzes, Mick always brings scrap paper on which we can work out anagrams etc.. The lads are very used to me doodling on those pieces of paper. I have done it for years while talking with them or dealing with quiz questions. I normally draw faces and I used to do it in teachers' meetings too. I find that the act of doodling helps me to think.

Over the years, I must have doodled hundreds of faces. Mostly those doodles are thrown away but last night I thought I would save my idle doodles for you to see and maybe psycho-analyse...

These pictures are available for sale as I hope to raise funds for a deserving charity. Please put in your bids. The charity is The Yorkshire Pudding Holiday Fund.

Oh - and by the way- today was cloudy and a lot cooler so I caught a bus into the city centre. I was there to watch the lunchtime screening of "Toy Story 5". It was very good but the consummation of friendship between the two little girls - Bonnie and Blaze seemed to take forever. Still the animation was as stupendous as in the four previous "Toy Story" films and I am glad that I bothered. It was great that a key feature of the plot involved weighing up the alienating and isolating effects of "tech" - including tablets and other devices in comparison with more traditional toys that encourage imaginative play and social connection.

*= ORCHESTRA

Yomping

This past week, most days have been so hot here in sub-tropical Yorkshire that long walks in the countryside would have been foolhardy. However, by Saturday, a change in the weather seemed to be occurring with slightly reduced heat and a welcome buffeting breeze to clear the air.

Shirley was doing her regular volunteer shift at the "Age Concern" charity shop  so after a light lunch of boiled eggs and baked beans I decided to go out for a walk west of this northern city.  Sensibly, I guzzled a pint of water before driving away from home.

I parked Butch at Redmires Reservoirs and then headed out to one of my favourite places in the entire world - tiny Oaking Clough Reservoir with its curious stone building. See the top picture. I have blogged about it before. Go here and here.

When I got there, I noticed a few things. First, a rotund hiker had just arrived from the opposite direction. He was standing looking at his smartphone and we were the only two people in that landscape at that moment in time. When I came up to him, I said "Hello" which seemed to startle him and he mumbled something unintelligible. Perhaps he was slightly annoyed that I had disturbed his Facebooking or whatever it is that people do on those blasted devices.

Secondly, I noticed a family of Canada geese. They seemed alarmed by my sudden appearance - which I can well understand. They had just been chilling out by the water's edge. Not many humans ever visit Oaking Clough. Incidentally,  may I say to any Canadians reading this blogpost - why can't you keep your ruddy geese in your own country?  We have got enough of our own geese over here

Thirdly on the boarded up window on one side of the little stone window I saw this odd message:-

Needless to say, I won't be phoning. But while I was there - checking out both sides of the abandoned building - and not for the first time - I revisited the idea of sleeping out there one night. Maybe I am slightly mad because I wish I could expunge that niggling notion from my mind. After all, the tiny lodge is probably haunted by the ghosts of water workers or grouse shooters. No Mr Pudding - do NOT go there!

Soon it was time to strike out west from Oaking Clough. There are no footpaths in that tranche of moorland and that is why I had brought my compass with me. West for a mile and a half would bring me to the rim of Stanage Edge.

Bog cotton

The terrain was difficult - with bogs and heather and bracken and occasionally ruined vegetation - previously burnt by agents of the grouse shooting fraternity. It was exhausting but, after longer than I anticipated, I made it to the very edge of Yorkshire and what was once the edge of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. 

In need of rest, I sat upon an ancient millstone grit boulder and looked over to Win Hill and down the valley to Hathersage as a gentle wind fitfully cooled me. There was hardly anybody else around.

After five minutes, I was up and off, treading that familiar path, passing High Neb and on to The Long Causeway that Roman soldiers walked as they traversed The North in centuries further back than the evolution of Northumbria and Mercia.

It was later than I had planned so I kept marching past Stanage Pole and along the edge of Broadshaw  Plantation before dropping down to the reservoirs at Redmires which happen to be the source of our domestic water supply.

It had been a damned good workout but I had more work to do - making our evening meal - ahead of another nervy England football match. Fortunately justice was done - we beat Panama by two goals to nil. 

Onward now to the Congo Democratic Republic. Is it truly "Democratic"? Who knows?

The only stile on Stanage Edge

Identification

When it comes to garden plants, I don't pay them a lot of attention - unless they are vegetables or bear edible fruit. Otherwise, I like plants that fill spaces and look after themselves - often competing for pre-eminence - as in wild Nature.

I cannot remember when we planted two spiky plants in one of our borders - nor where we acquired them. They have just been there, managing to survive in spite of the shade and the competition.But a week ago I noticed that one of those plants was starting to push out some kind of flowering spike. It had never happened before.

That flowering spike is quite large - around five feet. And so I became curious. What on earth is this plant that dares to create such a display? 

I could be wrong and plant experts like Steve Reed or Poppy Patchwork could easily correct me but I think the plant is a yukka filamentosa - sometimes known as Adam's Needle. It is, I believe, native to the south-eastern states of America.

Recently we have been having some very hot weather here in Yorkshire and I wonder if that is what has encouraged the plant to bloom for the first time. Meanwhile the sister plant is looking on with no sign of a similar flowering spike pushing skywards.

But I will keep an eye on her. You never know, she might have  got the message too.

Background

I am well aware that when "Poem" is the title of one of my blogposts, viewing figures will plunge. A lot of people - though thankfully not all - have an antipathy towards poetry. But to me she is a familiar bedfellow, by my side for well over six decades.

As a teacher of English, I often had to grapple with the habitual and obstinate grumble, "I don't like poetry!" It was a prejudice that ignored the delight that most people find in song lyrics or that small children find in nursery rhymes or when people choose epitaphs. The retort also niggled me because I simply could not understand it. It seemed so sadly misguided.

There's a notion out there in the world that poetry is somehow snobbish, highfalutin and cast down from ivory towers but I think of it as a vehicle for getting to the very core of things. Every word should matter and there should be no excess. Poetry should speak truly but sometimes mysteriously too.

When I was seven years old, I was up in my bedroom writing in an exercise book. Something clicked and I made my own, original poem about a hero venturing out to do battle against the forces of evil. I wish I still had that poem but I don't.

Mum was calling my family to the tea table and I came downstairs with my exercise book. I asked them to listen to my poem and I stood in the doorway that led to the stairs then rather proudly I read that poem out aloud. And you know what? There was no applause - just an astonished pause followed immediately by hearty familial laughter.

It was not a funny poem but I guess that there is something rather funny about a seven year old boy in short trousers reciting a self-penned poem to his family. It was not the sort of thing that happened in the heart of East Yorkshire. Seven year old boys climbed trees, played football or picked caterpillars off cabbage leaves. They did not write poems about knights of yore on white horses.

And so we come to yesterday's poem - "Nileometer". It was conceived yesterday morning and quickly went through three drafts. It was finished by teatime but I didn't read it aloud to Shirley and Phoebe - fearing mirth perhaps.

Inspiration was drawn from the idea of a cruise boat passing a succession of random scenes along the Nile - just gliding by. And I thought of the Nileometer on Elephantine Island where ancient Egyptians measured water levels and it seemed that that is what my poem was doing - measuring, taking stock...

And here's something else that features in the poem. It's the pyramid-like hill that overlooks The Valley of the Kings which may be the very reason that later pharaohs chose that location for their tombs. I did not know about the hill until I went there...

To make a poem you have to have an idea for one. That seems pretty obvious. Not exactly a detailed recipe but some kind of inspiration. And when you have got your first draft down you need to look at what you have written -  tweaking it, picking away at words, editing, replacing, questioning yourself. You become like a French polisher, addressing small faults, applying wax and buffing up. I don't think you are ever fully satisfied.

Yesterday, I was very pleased with myself. There was no hanging about, no prevarication. I just got on with it, riding the wave of my idea and there the poem was - done. Like a loaf of bread fresh from the oven.

So different from my currently shelved poem, "Stanage Edge". I embarked on that one in November and thought it would be helpful to take my time for once, let it ferment like wine in a barrel but I haven't gone back to it in many weeks. Maybe my changed method choice was wrong but I will return to it soon and there will be another "Poem" blogpost. Readers will no doubt scurry for shelter. After all, too much exposure to poetry could damage your health.

Poem

 

Nileometer
"I'll march beneath your banner while fortune it do smile,
And we'll comfort one another on the banks of the Nile." - Traditional

Always drifting north
My very name an anagram of Nile.
Up on deck I watch
That storied world sail by
Linked to Ancient Egypt
By filigree threads thinner than spider silk.

Baladi cows stumble through meadows
Eager to drink at the riverside
As a lone fisherman
In a cream galabiya
Casts his net where his forebears stood.
Exactly.
Before stars appeared
In the cool of early evening.

Verdurous palms and papyrus stands skirt the shore
Where brown children splash in Abyssinian waves,
Now that the crocodiles have gone -
Only their stuffed corpses at Kom Ombo
Sprawled behind glass gathering dust.
And beyond this green gullet of life
Lies a forbidden land
Of shortbread coloured crags
And scorched sand
Where scorpions hide and there is no water.
Just a biblical wilderness
Fit only for wandering prophets with delusions
And griffon vultures on thermals.

It was there in those fabled tunnels west of Luxor
In the lee of a pyramidal hill that
I thought I saw my life
Chiselled out in hieroglyphs
Flowing north like The Nile itself
But I could only surmise the meaning
For I had no code...
Nile…Line…Lien…Neil.

Where is the measure?
Who truly knows?

Then

Back then you addressed adults quite formally. Mr Assert was the school caretaker. Mrs Rosling ran the post office. Mrs Austwick had the sweet shop and Mr Peers was the proprietor of the village's general store. Next door was a widow from Northern Ireland. She was Mrs Varley and she was a pillar of the church. She sang to the rafters when nobody else seemed to be raising their voices in praise of "The Lord".

The village policeman was Sergeant Pepys. He had two daughters - Diane and Vicky and sometimes we played in what was once a rural court room - still part of their mid-Victorian police house.

Our village employed a street sweeper. He was Mr Grubham and he was small in stature. Looking back, it is possible that he had learning difficulties. You would see him with his brushes and his bin on wheels, forever sweeping the roads and footpaths and titivating the verges. He never said much but he did his job and people were kind to him.

Miss Spicer sometimes babysat us and Mum paid her for a couple of hours of cleaning every Friday morning. She polished the brasses and swept out the fires and I can still remember the musty odour of her body as she worked. Then she kept breaking things and Mum had to say it was the end.  I can still remember the tension and the tears for she had been like part of our family.

Back then we ate simply. There was no pizza, no spaghetti, no takeaway curries or Chinese meals. Once a month we might have fish and chips wrapped in newspaper from the village chip shop. That was a special treat. And we never "ate out" because pubs were very much for adults to drink and socialise in. Children were not allowed over the threshold. Besides, back then the majority of pubs did not offer food.

Back then, there were only two channels on our little black and white television - BBC and ITV. As I recall, programmes did not commence until about four thirty and they finished at midnight with The National Anthem - though I hardly ever saw that because I was tucked up in bed in my striped pyjamas. Sometimes I heard that familiar tune seeping up through the floorboards.

Back then, everybody was white apart from Steven Nicholson whose father was an American airman though Steven had never even met him. There was also an Irish family in the village but they were so well-assimilated that there was no hint of an Irish accent. And of course there was Mrs Varley too but she came from The North.

On summer weekends and holidays we were free to wander away from home - we biked along quiet lanes to outlying farms and sometimes we picked potatoes or peas. That was backbreaking work for little pecuniary reward. Sometimes we ventured by the canal which strikes west three miles to The River Hull.

Weeks had their rhythms and so did the years. Bonfire Nights were eagerly anticipated and around 1966, the village  took to creating a massive community bonfire on the school field. Guy Fawkes sat up there and the primrose coloured flames that destroyed him were like the tongues of cackling demons. Rockets burst in  the sky and Catherine wheels rotated crazily in the darkness. We ate toffee apples and baked potatoes.

Back then, it was all so simple, so uncomplicated. We were not bombarded with news or opinions or social media. We just got on with things. Just lived.

And what I have said here was merely the surface of "Then". There's so much more that I could say because "Then" is woven into my very being like the arteries that crisscross inside my body, carrying blood to every extremity or like the veins that take it back. And I am sure Dear Reader that you have your own "Then" that never really leaves you. Close your eyes and you return.