VW

WINTERKORN I must insist that the following agenda item remains top secret. If the matters that are to be revealed should leak into the public domain, it would surely cause tremendous damage to the reputation of our company. Now over to Helmut whose software team, I am sure you will agree has come up with an ingenious solution to the American emissions issue!

(Guffawing laughter from the rest of the board)

SCHWEIN Damned Americans!

HELMUT  Gentlemen. If you study the papers I have placed in front of you you will see that we have found a way of doctoring the onboard software so that emissions outputs during official testing will appear to be four times lower than in normal driving conditions.

SCHWEIN You beautiful man Helmut! You mean it's roughly the same process that we have been employing in Europe since emissions testing began?

HELMUT Precisely but with a little tweaking.

WINTERKORN With the cleverly depressed emissions results our green credentials will not be impaired and we can bolster sales across North America just as we did in The European Union and Asia.

ENGEL But what about the hidden impact on the environment and on people's health in urban areas!

SCHWEIN Don't be such a softie Engel! This is business my friend. Besides the relationship between diesel emissions and respiratory difficulties is not entirely proven. 

WINTERKORN I agree with Herr Schwein. It is essential that we develop strategies that defeat the march of dimwitted environmentalists and the governments that have been drawn in by their absurd propaganda!

SCHWEIN I propose that we move forward immediately with Helmut's ideas if we are going to advance sales to the next level.

WINTERKORN All in favour say "ja".

REST OF BOARD  Ja!

WINTERKORN Now before I draw this meeting to a close gentlemen and err... Frau Sexkätzchen , can we rise to sing the company song

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD

For mighty Volkswagen

Let's all raise a flagon

Das Auto! Das Auto!

The People's Car!

________________________________________________________

And they say that crime doesn't pay!

Recording

"Callers are advised that this call may be recorded for training purposes".

"In order to provide a better service to customers, we record all calls."

"Before providing a list of call options you are advised that calls are recorded for the security of our staff.... Your call is important to us, please wait while we put you through to a member of our team."

Why? Why are they recording our calls? What if we said to them - "Now that I have finally got through to a human being I must inform you that this call is being recorded for legal purposes. So if you give me any bother or keep me waiting any longer or try to sell me an insurance package I do not want or call me by my first name you can expect the wrath of the law to come down upon you like a ton of bricks!"

What if we said to them - "I do not wish to have my voice recorded by you! Please turn off the recorder or I shall come round to your call centre and wallop you with a cricket bat!" What makes them think it is okay to routinely record us? And I don't know about you but I have never had any come back on these thousands of call recordings. Are they really recording us or is it just an empty threat? I mean if they really are recording calls they will need huge servers to retain the calls they claim that they are habitually recording.

In the past, nobody warned us or informed us that calls were being recorded because they weren't. Nowadays, although the person at the other end speaks with a polite, mater-of-fact voice as they let us know about their recording mania I think that there are threatening undertones. No longer is the customer always right, the customer has become a type of untrustworthy enemy who needs to be tamed through the threat of being recorded. Something like George Orwell's "1984":-

How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like 

swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, 

and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing 

it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened 

in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. (Chapter 4)

Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, 

could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the 

sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The 

possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the 

State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, 

now existed for the first time. (Chapter 9)

Viva!

Let me introduce you to the couple shown above and then you can join me in wishing them farewell. They have been the licensees at my local pub - "The Banner Cross Hotel" for the last eighteen years. On the left there's Roger and behind him his partner in love  and war and business - the redoubtable Janet. 

They are upping sticks and moving to Tenerife where they plan to forge a new life together in the sun. Both ardent Sheffield Wednesday fans I suspect that there is much that they will miss about their home city but they are ready and very willing to go. It will be an adventure and if perchance it didn't work out they could always come home.

Both strong characters they have presided over the pub like the king and a queen of a small country. When you entered their pub you were very much in  their realm. Janet would often yell out, "WE'RE ALL WEDNESDAY AREN'T WE?" and frequently gave Sheffield United fans short shrift though it was mostly  a kind of pantomime. Roger was often bad cop - making sure there was always a good level of behaviour in the pub and barring people who stupidly crossed the line. But underneath it all they were decent, hardworking licensees who did their best in difficult times for pubs.

Many's the pint of foaming ale they have served me and many's the night I have spent in their company or tackled their many pub quizzes - sometimes successfully despite quizzing masterminds like Higgy, Jonathan, Richard and the i-phone cheats."Are you all stupid or what?" Janet would sometimes bellow into the microphone.

Both Janet and Roger have been known to sample  their liquid wares. I guess it is one of the by-products of running a pub and it's hard to maintain a healthy relationship with alcohol when you are surrounded by drink and you live right above the pub.

There was a big leaving party in the pub on Saturday. I went down but it was just too busy for my liking so I turned round and went down to "The Lescar" instead. Apparently the bar was three or four deep with thirsty customers keen to pay homage to the abdicating monarchs. I saw them for the last time yesterday evening when the pub was quiet again - except for old favourite songs on the juke box and Janet dancing along with close friends. It has been such a long and much anticipated goodbye.

A new chapter is about to begin at our local and nobody knows for sure what the future holds for it. There could so easily come a time when we will look back with nostalgic longing on the eighteen year era of King Roger and Queen Janet.  As they board the plane for Tenerife and their new life, I wish them God speed as people sometimes say but in answer to Janet's famous capitalised question I say finally, "NO! WE'RE HULL CITY!"

Surprised

Great Britain is very well mapped by our brilliant Ordnance Survey organisation that began its amazing work back in the middle of the eighteenth century.

They produce a wide range of meticulously detailed maps that can be ordered online or bought from all good bookshops. Without Ordnance Survey maps, I would never have been able to explore this green and pleasant land in the way I have done. Their maps have led me to all manner of secret and wonderful places as I have plodded through the landscape.

Unbeknownst to me, OS have been staging a series of photo competitions this year - the prize being to get your picture printed on the front cover of one of their maps.

It seems that they had no suitable entries for OS Explorer maps 279 and 280 which cover lands to the east of Sheffield. So - they trawled through the geograph website and found two of my pictures and wonder of wonders they are now being used on the map covers for Doncaster and The Isle of Axholme!

I don't think they are the best examples of my photography by a long shot but they do the job required and I am rather proud of this very unexpected achievement. It gives me a little taste of immortality even though the many people who purchase and use these particular maps will have no idea who the photographer was. OS are sending me complimentary copies of the maps.

And now that I know about this competition I have sent off a dozen entries for their Landranger series of maps so maybe I will have another success or two. Of course there's no prize money involved but still I am well chuffed!

The Isle of Axholme is a low-lying rural area west of the River Trent. It is where Shirley's parents Charlie and Winnie had their arable farm and it really does have something of an island mentality - rather cut off from the outside world as it was before Dutch engineers finally drained the area in the seventeenth century. For this reason, it is especially pleasing that my photo of the riverside has made it on to the front cover of Map 280.

Drunkenness

A river begins with a small stream.
Drunkenness begins with just a glass.

It is a long time since I experienced the feeling of drunkenness. Years in fact. Nowadays, though I continue to enjoy three or four  beers every other evening, I never get myself into a  state of inebriation. I like to be in control and to wake refreshed, ready for a new day. The thought of a hangover attracts me about as much as signing up to be a warrior for The Islamic State.

But there have been times... when I was younger. In university and elsewhere. Times when I drank myself stupid so that I did shameful things that were totally uncharacteristic of the real me - like releasing a dark beast that usually sleeps within. Punches I threw. The arguments I had. Vehicles I drove. Women I pulled. Staggering homewards. Waking with no memory of what happened the night before. There are things I did when really drunk that I have never shared with anyone - secrets that I will surely take to my grave.

My parents were never big drinkers. Their relationship with the demon alcohol was sensible and most unremarkable. However when Mum was in her late seventies, she began to like a tipple and her drink of choice was strong whisky. She began to drink it in the afternoon and the measures she poured herself became bigger and bigger. If she came to stay at our house she would sometimes sneak into our dining room to pour herself secret glassfuls.  Even when she was in the old folks' home where she finally died she would badger care assistants to fetch her drink. It was a sad thing to witness.

Drunkenness can be fun for an hour or two - especially if it happens in pleasant circumstances with friends or family - but more often than not it is the precursor of bad things. Buying alcohol is quite costly and the money that is spent on it can be a big drain on personal finances. It can threaten physical and mental health in several ways including diabetes, heart problems, personality disorder. It may cause serious road traffic accidents and it is often a key factor in sexual or physical assaults. Theft, vandalism, days off work, family battles and social media rants are frequently spawned by drunkenness.

The English pub is a special institution. My distant cousin John in Silsden referred to it as "the third place" - not home or work but the "third place" in which we have our being - possibly surrounded by other pub goers and friends. It is somewhere you can relax and let off a little steam, play a game of darts, read a newspaper or just stare into the foam on top of your pint. But of course pubs can also be the very places where drunkenness happens. It is undoubtedly a question of balance and of self-restraint. The line between responsible drinking and alcohol-fuelled mindlessness is paper thin.

How is your relationship with alcohol these days?

Gone

The last time I saw Fred he was curled upon our back lawn. With radar ears still attuned to possible danger or feeding opportunities, he looked up warily when I emerged from our kitchen door with cheap dog food on an old tin plate.

Customarily at this point, Fred would dance away to the shady cover of bracken fronds or the fatsia japonica bush that grows in a space once occupied by a very old apple tree. But that late afternoon he made little effort to shy away as I placed his free meal three or four yards from his resting place.

He looked at me with pinpoint accuracy. It is difficult to read any animal's eyes for we are liable to put human constructions on their internal emotions. Nonetheless I thought that Fred was saying two things with his eyes - "Thank you!" and "I have almost reached the end". 

He was painfully thin and his gingery pelt was scraggy - as if he had lost the energy to groom himself properly. His rump was almost bald as if, troubled by parasites, he had scratched the fur away or perhaps he had recently been attacked by another fox or a well-fed pet dog.

Earlier in the day, our next door neighbour had dropped round the phone number of the local RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection of Animals). It seemed that another neighbour had been alarmed by Fred's condition. She said there were flies about his rear end and he seemed desperately weak. Euthanasia would, she apparently  thought, be the most humane end to his vulpine life.

From our kitchen window I watched Fred make a half-hearted attempt to consume the plate of food but it wasn't long before he stole away - limping up the little garden path towards our vegetable patch. And that was my last sight of him.

In the following days, I  looked under bushes and into other secret places, hoping to find Fred's lifeless body so that I could bury it decently somewhere and mark his grave with rocks and a flower or two.

I shall probably never know the exact place or time when he died but I will remember that piercing last look he gave me.  We had a bond that he also recognised. Strange as this may seem, I am enormously thankful that he  came into our lives so often these past few months and  proud that we nourished him right to the end. Goodbye Fred! Sweet dreams!

Urban Fox

Gingerly he slinked

Quite slyly

Into our lives

Standing there on the lawn

Gazing at evening sunshine

Reflected in our windows

Watching our shapes

Moving behind the glass

Quite ghostly.

I brought him food

And called him Fred

As if honouring

Some pagan god.

He would  "wolf it down"

Or scurry under

The fatsia japonica

Jaws clamped

Round his midnight feast.

Then just as he came

He left us

Never to be seen again

Like a dream

That evaporates

In morning light.

Hated like a gipsy

Feared like a beggar

Unstroked or chin tickled

He died somewhere

Under a privet hedge

Or garden shed

With no stone

Inscription

"Here lies Fred."

Delightful

Nineteenth century surveyors' tower between Silsden and Addingham

Back in Sheffield now but we had a lovely break up in Wharfedale and on the last evening I managed to squeeze in a six mile walk before we went to "The Crown Inn" for delicious meat pies with mashed potato, mushy peas and "groovy gravy" all washed down with the water of life - "Tetley's" bitter.

This old internet thingumajig has a habit of surprising us doesn't it? In 2011, I visited my Uncle Jack's grave in Norton near Malton. At the tender age of twenty three, he was killed in the Battle of Britain. On the grave I saw a little wooden cross with a poppy attached to it and I wondered who had placed it there. Anyway, after posting a picture of the grave within the "geograph" site I soon found out who the cross donor was. He contacted me from Silsden near Keighley and I learnt that he was a distant cousin who also bore my unusual surname. My great grandfather's brother was this man's great great grandfather so we are very much of the same stock.

John and Heather in Silsden

We kept in touch and exchanged some information about family history and on Tuesday afternoon, after plucking up courage to meet up, we visited him and his wife in their pleasant bungalow home next to The Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The village of Silsden is only three miles south west of Addingham - over the hill and in the next valley which is called Airedale. It was a successful meeting and we stayed for almost two hours, chatting in the September sunshine. They're called John and Heather - and  it was very nice to meet them.

It was four o' clock when we got back to Addingham. I grabbed a map and laced up my boots before plodding out north of the village. To walk in unfamiliar territory is free and very delightful - like a secret world unfolding before your eyes. You never quite know what will be round the next corner and this fills my heart with the precious joy of simply being alive.

Wharefedale with view to Bolton Abey

The track from Hawpike to Addingham

Cattle silhouetted against a September sky near Highfield Farm