Emmeline

 

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928)

Last weekend I felt rotten. Winter had reared its head and I had an irritating cough that disturbed my sleep more than once. I felt a lot better as we rode down to London by train on Tuesday but still not 100%. Shirley had suffered something similar.

I could have done without the mile and a half long walk from Earls Court to Kensington. We were heading there at the behest of Sarah's parents for a pre-theatre meal in an upmarket Indian curry house.

It was the first time we had met Sarah's parents. After the meal, we were whisked off to the theatre in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. 

As we waited for the show to commence, I confided in Sarah's parents that during the time of COVID, Shirley and I have not felt like travelling anywhere on an aeroplane and did they feel the same? Sarah's father said with a chuckle that he was fine about travelling on his own plane and then added, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." I wondered why not.

Wednesday morning was nice and bright so before heading to the tube station, we had a mooch around Brompton Cemetery which was opened in the middle of the Victorian era. There are so many stories within those forty acres and so many fat squirrels, crows and pigeons. It is a green oasis.

Emmeline Pankhurst's grave

The great suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst is buried in Brompton Cemetery and we successfully located her art-deco gravestone. She died in 1928 just shy of her seventieth birthday. Look how far the status of women has progressed in her wake! There's still a long way to go but I think that she would have been quietly pleased about what has transpired on the road to full equality in less than a century.

Botanical adornment on a family mausoleum

Later, we were heading to St Pancras Station far too early. Our train back to Yorkshire was scheduled to leave at one o'clock so we alighted from the tube at Euston Square and sauntered along Euston Road. I remembered that it was here where I once met Tariq Ali - another famous radical thinker and activist, at the very  same place where Tariq Ali once met a giant Yorkshire pudding in size eleven boots.

St Pancras is undoubtedly one of the world's finest railway stations, so skilfully upgraded in recent years to accommodate the Eurostar terminus.  We were still early so we headed beneath the great vaulted roof to the Pret-A-Manger  on the upper floor for lattes with almond croissants for which we seem to be developing a worrying addiction.

The train departed bang on time and reached Sheffield exactly two hours later - just as timetabled. See - we can be Japanese too!

Ghost advertising sign on Lillie Road, West Brompton

Play

Kevin Trainor and Daragh O’Malley ("Snuffy") in "Yes So I Said Yes"

The principal reason that Shirley and I were down in London was to see a play produced by our Ian's girlfriend - Sarah. The venue was The Finborough Theatre  - a small drama space above a pub in affluent west London.

The play had the curious title, "Yes So I Said Yes" and it was written by the Northern Irish playwright and actor - David Ireland. This is the first time it has had a run outside Northern Ireland. It is one of three plays that Ireland has written with regard to "The Troubles" - but located in the times that have followed The Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

The central character is Alan "Snuffy" Black who is described simply in the script as "a Protestant". But he is more than that. He was a paramilitary assassin and his mental state is unsteady to say the least. He is a tortured soul and there's something of Shakespeare's King Lear about him as he wrestles with his demons.

It is hard to say what the play is "about". It is not really telling a story and it doesn't contain any strong moral messages. In my opinion it is all rather absurd. I do not mean that in a dismissive way for absurdity can be extremely effective in theatre - take Samuel Becket's best known play as an example - "Nothing happens. Nobody comes. Nobody goes. It's awful..."  - Waiting for Godot. 

There are laugh out loud moments of comedy in the show which required a small but capable  ensemble of five actors and an actress. "The Guardian" gave it a four star rating and its visiting critic said this of it:

On the cramped patch of the Finborough stage, director Max Elton marshals a marvellous cast of six with the quick fluidity vital to farce. Go prepared to be appalled and challenged.

Given the controversial nature of this play, I was pleasantly surprised that Shirley came out of the drama space singing its praises. There's something really special about live theatre -  especially in small, intimate venues where there's really no hiding place.

Afterwards, we retreated with Sarah to "The Pembroke" on Old Brompton Road where we met up with our Ian who had been busy all day with "BOSH!" related matters and meetings.

Ignorance

Bird woman in Brompton Cemetery this morning

Is it me?

At hotel breakfast buffets, you often see a clever kind of  toasting machine. You slip your slices of bread onto the slipway and slowly they proceed through the machine with its glowing elements toasting the bread on both sides. It's like a conveyor belt but you have to exercise a little patience before the toast comes down the chute.

This morning, Shirley and I came down from the eleventh floor of the Ibis hotel on Lillie Road in West Brompton, London. We were ready for breakfast. I put my  two slices of bread in the toasting machine, knowing I would have to wait a couple of minutes but then this happened.

A man of middle eastern appearance arrived at the toasting machine. He was not wearing a COVID mask as urged by notices displayed at the entrance to the breakfast suite. This is what he proceeded to do. He grabbed two slices of bread and tried to force them into the machine ahead of my two slices. But he was rather late. My slices were already on their journey and his slices ended on top of mine - one of them folding over itself.

I said: "What the hell are you doing? My bread is in there! You have to be patient! Now my toast will not be done. You should have put your slices behind mine.  Are you stupid or something?"

The fellow said nothing. No apology. He took his half finished toast away as I retorted half under my breath: "****ing idiot!!" and I had to put two fresh pieces in the machine as my cooked breakfast plate grew slightly colder. It's not the way I expected the breakfast buffet experience to go.

Last evening we were on our way  to our pre-theatre dinner venue. We had not had any lunch and we were both hungry and thirsty. We popped into a a little cafe at South Kensington. There were no other customers inside. We ordered two teas and two almond croissants. then found a table in the corner.

There was some nice music playing on the sound system - not too loud. You could still converse  easily in spite of it.

Then a third customer arrived - a smart bearded young man and he sat at a nearby table with all his obligatory modern stuff - his laptop, his smartphone and his headphones with associated wiring. When his cappuccino and cake arrived, he asked the waiter to turn the ambient music down.  Of course, he didn't ask us if we minded.

And why was this? It was so that he could listen to his own secret music via his headphones without any external music creeping into his ears. Then he could be in his own little bubble, listening to his insular music while tapping away at his laptop and checking stuff on his phone. He was utterly oblivious to us and the real world that surrounded him.

I have a feeling that the fellow in the cafe and the chap at the breakfast buffet were blood relations or as I said at the start: Is it just me?

American grey squirrel in Brompton Cemetery this morning

289

This is Day 333 of 2021. If that is true, how come I have only created 289 blogposts - including this one? Somehow  there have been 45 days on which I have not posted a fresh blogpost. Perhaps I was asleep. Checking through the past months, I can see that March was my least productive month. I managed to miss eight days but for the life of me I can't remember why.

I am now trying to cover lost ground as the end of the year approaches. I aim to get past 300 posts for the year.

In the year that I began blogging - 2005 - I only published 42 posts. Then the graph started to rise -  110 posts in 2007, 132 in 2009 then up to  214 in 2011. I finally broke the 300 barrier in 2017 with 319 blogposts. My biggest total was just last year with 340 posts published.

Okay. Okay. I can hear you thinking - "This is a dull post! Going on about blogging statistics!" so it's about time to change focus....

Britain is a maritime country with changeable weather conditions throughout the year. Yesterday I reported on the arrival of winter but twenty four hours later, winter is in retreat. The snow and ice are melting as I type and tomorrow is predicted to be a very mild November day in London with the noontime temperature up to 12C.

Why London you ask? Well Shirley and I are heading down there tomorrow. We are going to see a play produced by Ian's girlfriend - Sarah. It's called, "Yes So I Said Yes" by David Ireland and it looks at "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland/ I believe it's going to be pretty gritty. The reviews have been good much to Sarah's relief.

Today I took photos of the weird snowmen outside the house across the road from us. They must  have been made by Sophie and Helen - the two sweet girls who live there. They are both in secondary school now but they still make snowmen - or is the small one a snowcat? I wonder if there will be more snowmen for them to make in the weeks ahead?

Brrrrr!

View up our suburban street five minutes ago at 11.05pm on Sunday night

Here in northern England, it had been an exceptionally mild autumn until this past weekend. I got up very early on Saturday morning - disturbed by an infuriating ticklish cough. I looked out on our back garden and noticed that there had been a light dusting of snow - like icing sugar sprinkled on a sponge cake.

I made a mug of tea and sat down in  the study with the desktop computer in front of me. I am sure you know yourself how easy it is to fritter away time when online. An hour later, I got up and went into the kitchen to check out the back garden once more. In that hour a couple of inches of snow had fallen - associated with Storm Arwen - the first named winter storm. 

The decking furniture was thickly covered in the white stuff and so was the bird table. It was six thirty in the morning and snow was still whipping down. I went back to bed and with Radio 4 playing on the side, I managed to return to slumberland for  two more hours. When I woke for the second time, I looked out of the bedroom window and in the risen morning light revealed a veritable whiteout though by this time the feathery snow was no longer falling.

Clint was supposed to be driving me over to the city of Kingston-upon-Hull later in the morning - sixty miles from our house.  I was meant to join Hull City's small army of supporters that cheered the lads on to victory against Millwall from south east London. In the event, I decided not to go. Our street was snowy, I would have had to dig Clint out and with the ticklish cough and the broken night's sleep I was not in top form. So I stayed at home in the warm.

It's been the same today (Sunday). I have been housebound. The most I have achieved is making Sunday dinner for Frances and Stew who came over with the little princess in spite of yet more falling snow. Snow upon snow. They loved my dauphinoise potatoes. Maybe one day I will post my special recipe in this blog.

Little Phoebe's development is motoring along. When I managed to sit down in the front room for five minutes, she crawled over to me and pulled herself up to a standing position using my trousers to grip upon. Then I read her "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" for the umpteenth time before returning to my Sunday dinner preparations.

According to our digital thermometer, it's minus 1C now and I just popped out to take a photo looking up our suburban street. Brrrr!

Marking

That once was me

It was hidden from public view. Most of it happened rather secretly in my own time - at night, over weekends, in holidays, in the early morning, during lunchtimes. It never seemed to end. No matter how hard I worked at it there was always more to do. I devoted countless hours of my life to it . Perhaps a little conservatively, I estimate three hundred hours a year - the equivalent of seven full weeks.

What am I talking about?

Marking.

Marking was the bane of my life and as an English teacher - later Head of English - I had a lot of it to do. It never enriched me personally one iota.  It was always for somebody else. I would sit there with my red pen reading reams and reams of writing from adolescents - helpfully pointing out grammar and spelling errors, making helpful suggestions while providing praise and encouragement wherever possible.

It was something quite unfamiliar to P.E., Maths and Art teachers for example and not really part of their weekly routine. However, when inspectors came to visit my English department they often had peevish things to say about marking practice. They would never stop to consider for a moment when the marking might be happening. It was an unspoken assumption that English teachers would willingly give up many hours of their private time without extra pay to get children's books and written assignments thoroughly marked and up-to-date.

I remember one particular inspector - who had not been an English teacher himself - criticising a junior colleague. He said he had found some unmarked pages in some of her charges' books. She was a hard working young woman who engaged effectively with her various classes and was an assiduous marker. I thought "So what!". There are plenty of other things I would have liked to say to such passing visitors but they verge on the unprintable. These well-rewarded escapees from the classroom came with their clipboards and then went - never to be seen again.

How many red and green pens did I exhaust in my (almost) forty years of teaching?  A mountain of them that's for sure.

I wish I could get those thankless marking hours back but they have gone forever. I don't even have any examples of my marking to share with you. All those hours and nothing to show. I remember the church clock ringing two in the morning and I remember all the lost lunchtimes sitting at my desk with a pile of exercise books in front of me as I munched sandwiches and gulped hot coffee from my flask. And I remember Sunday nights wading through marking that I meant to do on Saturday morning.

As I say, it was the bane of my life and I thank the Lord Buddha himself that I will never, ever, ever have to do any more marking in my life. Overseen by prison guards, I would prefer to smash rocks in a quarry with a lump hammer.

Joan

Joan Baez is eighty years old now. There was a pureness and integrity about her voice when she was young. Here she is in 1965 singing a Bob Dylan song for the BBC:-

It Ain't Me Babe

written by Bob Dylan (1964)

Go away from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I'm not the one you want, babe
I'm not the one you need
You say you're looking for someone
Never weak, but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're looking for, babe

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I'm not the one you want, babe
I will only let you down
You say you're looking for someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone who'll close his eyes for you
Someone who'll close his heart
Someone who will die for you and more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're looking for, babe

Go, melt back into the night, babe
Everything inside me is stone
There's nothing in here moving
And anyway, I'm not alone
You say you're looking for someone
To pick you up each time you fall
To gather flowers constantly
And to come each time you call
A lover for your life and nothing more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're looking for, babe