Victory

Sheffield is Britain's fifth largest city. The best loved department store in the city centre was  "John Lewis"- part of a well-known  nationwide chain. The shop sat in a prime position opposite Sheffield  City Hall and was much appreciated by Sheffielders and visitors from surrounding districts.

Astonishingly and sadly, in the middle of the pandemic, the John Lewis board decided to shut the shop down as they sought to rationalise their business. Nobody in this city ever anticipated that our beloved John Lewis would be one for the chop. Of course, shutting the store in the middle of the pandemic meant that Sheffielders did not even have an opportunity to mount a campaign to save it.

One late October evening, I happened to be in the city centre  and  felt shocked and slightly disgusted that the illuminated  John Lewis  signs on the now empty building were still burning bright. It felt like a kick in the teeth to me. They had crept away in the middle of the night and yet they still had the gall to advertise their brand to passers -by now deprived of their familiar department store. The next day I composed  an e-mail to the leader of Sheffield City Council. This is what I wrote:-

Dear Mr Fox,

Like many Sheffielders I remain aggrieved about the way John Lewis shut down their Sheffield department store in the middle of the pandemic.

Last week, I happened to be in the city centre one evening and noticed that the illuminated "John Lewis" signage is still operating - both on the Barkers Pool side of the building and on the Cambridge Street side. I found this infuriating. They have unilaterally departed the fifth largest city in the kingdom and yet they leave their signage switched on to advertise themselves. Symbolically, it is like rubbing salt in Sheffield's wounds.

I know you have more important matters to deal with but I hope you will take action over this ongoing insult and get those glaring signs turned off. Who's paying the electricity bill anyway?

Yours fraternally,

Yorkshire Pudding

Today I was pleased to learn that positive action had been taken with regard to my complaint. I received the following response from one of the leading councillors  though I would have much preferred to hear that John Lewis had rescinded their original decision:

Dear Mr Pudding

Thank you for your email to the Leader, Councillor Terry Fox. This has been passed to me to respond.

We have been in contact and they have agreed to switch off the John Lewis signage this week

If I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me

Kind regards

Councillor Mazher Iqbal

Executive Member for City Futures, Development, Culture & Regeneration

A small victory but bittersweet.

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Friday Night

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/31YJD0n

Terms of Endearment

Do you know someone who has the gift of the gab?

Someone who is clever in communicating?

Someone articulate with words?

But the words ring insincere, self serving and false when spoken?

I’ve been contacted by two such people in two days 

After the first I was minimal in my replies, but the conversation and my lack of chutzpah  bugged me and I kept  thinking of a film scene that I couldn’t quite remember clearly enough

I kept musing about of Meryl Streep sort pulling a face

Before the second conversation I remembered the film scene which was haunting me

I was in Sainsbury’s by the udon noodles, and I said out loud Shirley MacLaine! When I recalled the scene  properly .

In 1983 James L Brooks made Terms of Endearment. For those few that may not have seen it, it is a comedy/drama Autumnal love story between eccentric neighbours , the middle aged  Aurora and Garrett,  (Shirley MacLaine & Jack Nickleson )as well being a study of mother/ daughter love between MacLaine’s character Aurora and her feisty daughter Emma played by Debra Winger.

In one pivotal scene the cowardly  Garrett finishes his budding relationship with Aurora and does so with all the right words, “ sincere” reflections and articulations but  the humiliated Aurora, who sees through his insincerity, just sits there and vomits out a reply of “ Blah, Blah,Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah , Blah ………Blah.

” 

It’s a clever play by Brooks who lets the scene speak for itself…I’m sure that last Blah was improvised

My second unsatisfactory  conversation was today. It was with Someone who just wanted something from me  A shallow request 

I replied with an equivalent of Endearment’s  Blah Blah BLAH 

Not Meryl today , but with Shirley’s Aurora , totally on board.

Hey ho

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/30iQEJ5

Question

 In the weeds

I go again

To find parts

Of myself

I’ve neglected

Since my story is so compelling as you say, what do you want to know?

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Murkiness

Shirland Park

"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?" - John Keats "Ode to Autumn"

I like to have at least one long walk every week of the year. Very often, the days I walk are determined by our weather forecasters. With camera in hand, I prefer my images to be nicely embellished by sunshine. Not for me the washed out greyness created by heavy skies when the yellow orb is in hiding. I like the landscape to burst forth with colour - "alive alive o!" as sweet Molly Malone once sang.

Plenty of sunshine was promised when I set off yesterday morning.

"Where we going this time?" groaned Clint as I lifted his tailgate.

"To Alfreton and beyond!" I announced in my best Buzz Lightyear voice.

It was bright in Sheffield but by the time we got to Phoenix Alfreton a milky greyness had settled over the day. At least it wasn't raining. 

At the war memorial in the old marketplace, the remembrance day service was just finishing. A lone piper could be heard as if from the fields of Ypres or  Passchendaele. I was wishing I had reached Alfreton ten minutes earlier so that I could have also stood in silence to remember the glorious dead. Young men fighting wars that were not of their own making.

I set off into the murk, my footsteps describing a large circle that took me precisely two hours to complete. By the end of it, the mistiness had turned into the thinnest rain you can imagine. It lightly sprayed my leonine locks and dampened the A4 map of the area I had printed off earlier.

Near Ufton Fields Farm, I heard the grinding unlovely sound of mechanical hedge trimming. Perhaps a more appropriate sound for the eleventh of the eleventh - jarring and unsweetened like war itself.

Back at Clint's parking space on Rowland Street, Alfreton, he said, "Are we going home now?"

"Not yet," I replied for there were three or four random Geograph squares I planned to tick off.

Crich Lane Farm

Driving through the winding lanes of The Amber Valley we went under the overhanging branches of mighty beech trees clothed in their russet autumn coats but the murkiness persisted. It was frustrating because I knew that if it had been a sunny afternoon, the autumn scenery would have been simply glorious.

Instead, it was a grey and mournful day. A day for remembering my Uncle Jack who was killed before I could meet him and all the other Uncle Jacks whose lives were so cruelly cut short. 

PL 

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A Photographic Tale of Two Thursdays

Above, entering Shirland yesterday with Clint parked up ahead.

Below, entering Market Warsop last Thursday.

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