R's rue

  What is life, 'tis all a vapour Tho' long on earth we both did stay Our time was wasted like a taper Fleeting soon it died away. Two hundred years ago, Thomas Harris and his wife Elizabeth were buried in Old Somerby churchyard. They both died in the 1820s having reached great ages for their time. Thomas was 82 and Elizabeth was 79. I am sure that their skilfully carved slate gravestone once stood upright but nowadays it lies horizontal in the grass. Possibly a modern health and safety matter. But what really caught my eye about their gravestone was the epitaph at the bottom. It seems devoid of religious content or any ambition to achieve an after-life state of being. It could have almost been written by the existentialist playwright - Samuel Beckett. A world without a benign "God" watching over them like a shepherd and maybe a pointless world too. The four lines do not make great poetry. They seem rather amateurish to me  but the meaning is clear. You can sense the ...

Yesterday, with nice weather promised, I was in the mood for an adventure and a day's walking in unfamiliar countryside from a town I did not know at all. I was up early in my cosy little room in "The Angel and Royal Hotel". It is a very historic hostelry that can trace its origins back almost a thousand years. Kings have stayed or held court there - including King John in 1213 and Richard III in 1483. Quite amazing really - just like the hotel's exorbitant breakfast prices. After my shower, I was out into the morning sunshine. The town was bustling with work traffic and secondary schoolchildren in their various uniforms. I made for Thatcher's birthplace and then afterwards snapped the top picture of St Wulfram's Church before heading to St Peter's Hill for an economic breakfast and coffee in the town's only Wetherspoons pub - "The Tollmarche Inn". St Mary Magdalene Church, Old Somerby By 9.30am I was ready to begin my long country ramble, pl...

There's a popular brand of cider in Great Britain called "Thatchers". Petty as this may seem, I have never bought or drunk any of it because of the name - "Thatcher". Of course it reminds me of our first female prime minister -  Margaret Thatcher. Would you drink "Trump" beer? She was a very divisive figure and even today she remains something of a political goddess in the eyes of the right. In contrast, she is still reviled in many working class communities because of the damage she caused and the disdain she showed towards those communities. Like many, I loathed her for who she was and what she did. Thatcher was born in the Lincolnshire market town of Grantham. Her parents ran a grocery shop there. Until yesterday, I had never been to Grantham - apart from quick stops at the town's railway station when heading down to London. Yesterday night I stayed at "The Angel and Royal Hotel" in the town centre before embarking on a very long count...

"Digger" starring Tom Cruise. I saw it today. It was not as I imagined it might be - about an Australian infantryman who dug trenches in World War I and played "Waltzing Matilda" on his grandfather's harmonica. No. This was something else entirely. You have probably heard that "Digger" has been panned by many film critics and has nosedived at the box office. Many think it will lose more money than any other film in history. I am sure that the film makers never planned it that way. They probably thought that they had a big hit on their hands. It was with that knowledge in mind that I went to see "Digger" anyway. Could it really be that bad? Surely, it had to have some merit. Thus I was at "The Showroom" for the 12.30 screening. And I will say this about "Digger" - it held my attention throughout. I found it to be both odd and intriguing.  At first you think you are watching a regular film about a megalomaniacal oil tycoon w...

Currently, I am reading a recently published book about The Beatles. It is titled, "John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs" and I like the approach that the writer takes. Each of the forty three short chapters focuses upon a different song from the Lennon and McCartney catalogue. Ian Leslie, the writer, is knowledgeable about the mechanics of music but he is also passionately interested in how The Beatles developed and how the selected songs reflected their evolution. I was ten years old when The Beatles began to filter into Britain's consciousness - before they took America by storm. Though very young, I was already very much into popular music. Under the bed covers, I would listen to Radio Luxembourg on my transistor radio. The very first single that my brothers and I bought was "Return to Sender" by Elvis Presley. That came out in October 1962 and soon went to top spot in the charts. Another record that came out that month was "Love Me Do" by The Fab...

Seeing the grave monuments to the Collins brothers at Shiregreen caused me to consider my own demise as I drove along the motorway to Hull this morning. Naturally, I was off to watch Hull City draw 2-2 at home to Everton. I have decided that when I die, my family will be instructed to build a grassy mound in the middle of our local park - Endcliffe Park. On top of it will stand a marble statue of me in my prime. It will be twice my actual height making it exactly twelve feet tall. The funeral ceremony itself will have no religious content whatsoever as I have never believed in that bumph. Instead there will be a couple of Yorkshire rock and roll bands - The Feisty Whippets and The Tweed Flat Caps along with poetry readings by two of my favourite bloggers - Steve Reed from London and Jennifer Barlow from South Carolina.  Meike Riley will sing "Nessun Dorma" which means "no one shall sleep" and  using only a ceremonial stainless steel garden spade,  Roger (Cro Magnon)...