West Side Story

 Anon may be sickened with this fact but I’ve just booked tickets to me and a friend to go and see West Side Story on Sunday. 

What a fucking extravagance ! 

What with me pleading poverty only yesterday with only one ten of beans to my name 

Anyway I was getting all haughty about Steven Spielberg’s upcoming version of the musical classic, thinking to myself that the original Jerome Robbins’ version could not and should not be beaten.

A BBC interview with Spielberg totally changed my mind

The reasons for the remake were simple in his eyes for he just could not bear the fact of several generations of the movie going public not knowing of the power of this musical.

And he’s right. 

Whole generations of younger people have never heard of the 1950 s version.

They know nothing of the sheer exuberance of the choreography, of the singing and of the innovative staging and so he wanted to be faithful to the original by presenting an updated but classic version, set in the New York streets with Latina actors instead of a tanned up Natalie Wood and George Chakiris.

I’m very much looking forward to the new production

And so I’m on nights again. I will pop off at Tesco on the way home to by provisions so don’t worry Anon  I shall be eating healthier today….last night my colleagues and I treated ourselves to an Indian takeaway on our break time which was a real extravagance ( I can feel Anon quietly shaking in repressed rage at the very thought of it ) 

Poor me, life as a nurse is hard

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Walking

In the past week I have watched two lovely programmes about walking in the countryside -  courtesy of the BBC. Called "Winter Walks", the programmes are gentle and slow-moving as selected celebrities undertake five or six mile walks along public footpaths in somewhat unfamiliar territory.

The two programmes I have watched were both set in Yorkshire and involved two Yorkshire people. They were Amanda Owen - also known as The Yorkshire Shepherdess and Alistair Campbell who was Tony Blair's chief strategist when Labour were last in power in this country.

The celebrities walk alone carrying a small camera on a selfie stick and there is some further drone footage which is edited into the film.

Being a regular walker myself, I am well-acquainted with the benefits that walking can offer us  - both in terms of physical and mental well-being. As Amanda Owen and Alistair Campbell walk along they both remark on the healing quality of walking and the peaceful joy of putting one foot in front of the other as their thoughts wander without the usual constraints.

Amanda Owen lives on a hill farm with her husband and nine children. She has written several books and has become a popular TV celebrity - largely through a documentary  programme called "Yorkshire Farm". Alistair Campbell has bravely opened up about his struggles with depression and mental ill-health even though he has remained a prominent spokesman for the left in British politics.

On Amanda's walk she talks to a couple of sheep farmers and a mountain cyclist before proceeding and on Alistair's walk he stops to talk to a farmer who is patiently repairing a drystone wall. We have many miles of such walls in Yorkshire. Some of them are a thousand years old. Every stone was carefully  put in place by human hands as winds blew around or the sun beat down. Millions of stones. Millions. It's quite a thing.

I wish I could find a way of sharing the two programmes with you. They were, as I say, quite lovely. And they illustrated so nicely some of  the wonders of walking in the  countryside - getting physically tired as you absorb the ever-changing scenes that Mother Nature is keen to share with us when we get out there.

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Storm Barra

 It’s wild out there.

After work and dog walks, we all went to bed

I’m on night shifts until Christmas 

No food in the house when I woke in semi darkness 

I found chicken drumsticks , roast potatoes and a container of saved gravy in the back of the freezer and shared the feast with the girls in bed.

We are cuddling up to keep warm 

As Barra roars on

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Part deux

 Gratitude is the awareness that even when I can’t see the road ahead, I trust the path. Gratitude is a warm hug you haven’t had in years.  Gratitude is having hummus with celery. Gratitude is treating the mundane as an extraordinary gift. Share yours. 

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Arthur

"We had to grow up because we did not die."

Sometimes I have an idea for a blogpost. I might even begin writing it and then a little warning light flashes faintly deep in the dark forest of my mind. The warning light suggests that I might have blogged on the topic before. As they say - what goes around comes around.

That's when I make use of the blog search facility which can be extremely helpful. Then sure enough, in most instances, I discover that what I thought was new is not new at all. The topic or the idea, the whim or the fancy has already been addressed. Ah well, I console myself that we cannot remember everything.

This is what happened earlier this week. In my photo library I had rediscovered a black and white photograph snapped in the summer of 1959. It was of my first class at primary school with our teacher, Miss Readhead, standing beside us. Quickly I tapped out a nostalgic blogpost and clicked "publish".

Ten minutes later the light in the forest began to flash. I duly checked and sure enough I had written a similar post  just last year. Consequently, I deleted the new post but not before a dozen visitors had seen it. 

One of them even wrote a comment. She reflected on her own childhood which was blighted by a man she should have been able to trust. In comparison, my own childhood was quite innocent and carefree - as childhood is meant to be. The epigram at the top of this post was taken from that comment.

Human thinking can jump around. Things connect often in peculiar ways. I found myself contemplating a six year old boy called Arthur Labinjo-Hughes who has touched the hearts of so many in this land  over the last couple of weeks. He died last year in the most horrible circumstances while in the "care" of his father and cruel step-mother. He was crying out for help but nobody listened. His birth mother was in prison and now the pair who effectively killed him are in jail too. Here was Arthur on his way to school with his whole life ahead of him:-

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