Lazy Blog today

 

I found this video

Mary is now the only survivor 

Bittersweet to watch again 

I’m working three long day shifts together so up at 5.30 making soup in the slow cooker for my supper. My “ big gay team” got fourth last night which was bloody great, not bad cos we are up to 90 participants from all over the world......mave was in my group, suffice to say the conversation was rather .....ribald 

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Suburbs

Nether Green, Sheffield looking to Ranmoor

Thanks to everybody who commented on my father's  fading account of an Indian adventure he undertook in 1944. Now I am seriously mulling over the idea of editing and transcribing his original manuscript. I do not feel duty-bound to copy it out verbatim. I will give myself  licence to make judicious alterations and add a little polish to it all. It will take many hours by hey, like everyone else I have wasted oodles of time during this damned pandemic. There's plenty of time to spare.

Yesterday, after getting my act together - emptying the dishwasher, writing that last blogpost, having a shower and a shave, making a couple of phone calls etcetera - I  was keen to get some exercise so I drove over to the neighbouring suburb of Nether Green and parked Clint on Stumperlowe Park Road.

"Where are you going this time?" he asked as I was putting my boots on.

"Oh just for a mooch round. I will be an hour or so," I smiled, patting his silver roof.

Thirty years ago, we almost bought a house in Nether Green. Our offer was accepted but two months later the deal fell through. The owners had decided to stay put after all! So for us it was back to the drawing board and we ended up buying the house we live in now.

Typical million pound house in Nether Green

I have always liked Nether Green. It is a very pleasant suburb. It has a great pub - "The Rising Sun". Set back from the main road there are a lot of million pound detached houses but there are also terraced streets where less affluent people have made their homes. There's a nice mixture of people and it feels very safe there.

I wandered through the streets taking occasional photographs until I arrived at Christ Church in the adjacent suburb of Fulwood. It was a pretty grey day but dry - not too bad for February.

In the evening I made a nice spaghetti with a cheese sauce I concocted myself and chunks of salmon, chopped mushrooms and green beans. Afterwards, I phoned my brother Robin in the countryside south of Toulouse, France.  It was the occasion of his seventieth birthday and I wanted to send him my best wishes.  Both of us are still going strong after all these years .

Is it Art?  Behind the disused sports social club at Fulwood

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🐶

 Dog licks

Wags tail

Says 

Come here

Spoil

Me

😃

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Fancy A Chat?

 

Hello, 

Let’s have a chat.

I’ve been out for a long walk hoping for a chat but strange as it may seem, I didn’t bump into anyone I knew. 

The walk was so long that half way through Dorothy had a mini gay-man’s flounce and sat miserably  at the back door of a parked car in the blind hope that it was Bluebell.

She’s only just forgiven me now, and that was after the fact I let her lick the eggy bits from my Brunch plate.

Yes people as part of my diet I only have Brunch and Dinner now and alongside a reduction of alcohol and eating crap after 6 pm at night. It seems to be working

Well....I had to do something , my underwear drawer needed a mercy killing initiative.

Stretched to buggery and with too many holes.

Thank god for Amazon. 

As Mrs Doubtfire  would say

So in these final moments of lockdown I am polishing those tarnished bits of me, I missed when pulling up my bra straps over the last year. Something, I think we all do, when there is a whiff of spring in the air and the weak sun, warms your bones when out with the dogs.

Takes a long sip of coffee from my trusty bucket

I’m feeling happy today. Happy with my new resolve. I’ve started to read the 20 books collected and stacked on my new ( ultra trendy John Lewis) side table and I’ve started the first of my on line courses which remind me I still have a brain and the capacity to debate. 

............phone rings ...I answer

I’ve returned after a long phonecall from Nu which was as invigorating as an icy plunge in the sea. We haven’t physically met for a year and we are now making tentative plans what we will do when we can...more adventures afoot more laughter ahead.

Blogland has settled down too, with less troll activity spoiling the chatter and it’s nice to feel more kindness and less game playing around........oh and as I’m talking about blogs .....

Go visit Libby at 

https://libbysaidok.blogspot.com/ her new blog needs a few virtual hugs of welcome

I’ve just video called my friend John in Sheffield. We discuss Hitchcock at length, it’s one of those conversations we used to have over too much red wine in All Bar One. 

I miss him

Time for a coffee refill

Bloody hell it’s 2pm ....I’m working the next three days so I have jobs to do. 

Operation dog snot removal, more sooty cobwebs  to scoop up, ones I missed last week.

I’m glad We’ve had this chat.

I will leave you with a photo of the primroses I planted by the front door.

They are optimistic and cheerful and mirror my mood

Enjoy them 

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1944

Back in 1944, my father Philip was  still in The Royal Air Force. He was based in India and worked in the meteorological department. Like other British military personnel sent to the sub-continent, he was fearful of a Japanese invasion that never happened. Hindsight can be a wonderful thing.

In the late spring of 44, just before his thirtieth birthday, he was granted a fortnight's leave with an air force companion called Arnold.  They planned to travel north from Delhi by train - nine hundred miles to Srinagar in Kashmir and then on to the Ladakh region up in The Himalayas. 

They aimed to do some high level trekking in the mountains and have a genuine adventure nine years before Chomulungma (Mount Everest) was first scaled.. You can imagine that at that time - in the middle of a world war - there weren't many foreign trekkers out and about in The Himalayas and you can also imagine that in those days the kind of mountaineering gear we can easily buy today was simply unavailable - especially in remote regions of northern India.

Dad kept a diary of that memorable fortnight and when he got back safely to Delhi, he wrote a detailed account of the adventure. There are fifty pages of closely typed script. They are aging and turning brown now and some of the type is blurring. It can be pretty hard to read.

The account is in my possession and I know that I should take the trouble to read it all - every single word and perhaps transcribe it too. It would only take me a week or so to do.if I put my mind to it I doubt that anyone has read the whole thing since my father typed it out so painstakingly. I should read it all in honour of him.

However, all I have ever done is to dip into it and read small chunks. He called it "Kashmir Journey" and has then handwritten an alternative title - "The Lure of The Ladakh". Here he is on the first page in a sleeper compartment heading away from Delhi and out into the Indian night:-

The carriage was almost continuously illuminated by brilliant blue-white flashes of tropical lightning. while the roar of the train and any other sounds were obliterated by the flood of sound created by the storm. Worst of all, as I lay there I realised that something was not quite right with my bed. My pyjamas and sheets had a dampness that was something more  than one would normally associate with monsoonal weather.. I sat up, switched on  the light and horror of horrors! I found that my snowily dhobied sheets were now covered with a patch of dark grey filth that was streaming down through the ventilator above my chest.  The rain had infiltrated our compartment bringing with it accumulated dirt and grime from the roof of  an old Indian railway coach. What a mess!

And this in from page 34 when the Himalayan adventure is fully underway:-

To take The Himalayas lightly is the greatest mistake, almost crime, that a climber or trekker can make. These mountains never cease to reveal some new trait of weather, surface, slope or hazard and one has to be ever watchful and plan each stage with great caution. Here there are mountains that take months of organisation and a  month of climbing to reach the summit. There are no Alpine pygmies that can be climbed in a day from some luxurious  Swiss valley hotel. As we sat around our table, the mountain giants stood sentry over us in silence and in the colourful illumination of another majestic sunset.

Perhaps writing this blogpost will inspire me to read the whole account - some seventy six years after it was written. Dad died in 1979 when I was twenty five. If he had still been alive today he  would have been 106 years old. I don't think that a single day has ever passed by without me thinking of him. I know this might sound pathetic but even now, I still miss him.

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