Etcetera

Standing outside primary schools in The Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, you will often see figures like the one shown above, outside Ravenfield Primary School In fact, fifty yards further along the road there's a similar figure - a girl in a red cardigan. I believe the point of these strange dummies is to send out an alert to passing drivers - Slow down, you are passing a school! I have never seen such figures outside any Sheffield schools.

This blogpost is supplementary to the one I published on Friday night about my trip to Conisbrough. Specially for Andrew in Melbourne who is keenly interested in transport matters, here's a photograph  of Conisbrough Viaduct as I approached it alongside The River Don.

I have discovered that the railway viaduct was officially opened in 1909 and that over fifteen million bricks were used in its construction. Wow!

And now I am under the viaduct with The River Don flowing by right in front of me:-

And from directly above where the last picture was taken, here's The River Don making its way to Sprotbrough. 

I must apologise to Meike in Ludwigsburg who noticed my mis-spelling of Sprotbrough on Saturday. The suffixes "-brough"  and "-borough" can be quite confusing when it comes to English place names. In Yorkshire, we  have a famous seaside resort called Scarborough but also a former steel town named Middlesbrough and close to Conisbrough there's a small former mining town called Mexborough.  We have a town called Boroughbridge but also a large village called Brough. No wonder people get mixed up! By the way, "brough" and "borough" both mean "a fortified settlement" just like the suffix "burg" in German place names - hence Ludwigsburg and Magdeburg.

And that's all I have to say this Sunday evening as midnight approaches. No doubt I will be back tomorrow some time. Watch this space!

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Mindfullness

 I remembered a nurse called Olga today .

I’m sure she has died by now.

She was an older woman when I worked with her many moons ago now.

I didn’t like Olga. 

She was brusque and prickly and she never really liked the patients she cared for.

Having said that, 

She never really liked her co workers either.

However Olga liked flowers.

She would bring bunches in from her garden at home, or would send the more biddable patients out when  the daffodils filled the hospital flower beds and would fill a myriad of glass vases with blooms , placing  displays on window ledges and on tables and anywhere they could be seen . 

Weekly she would empty each vase and would hand wash them with hot soapy water in the ward sluice 

It was a ritual she always completed on her own 

Hot soapy water

Cleaning the glass inside and out

Then rinsing each vase before leaving them to air dry 

“ It’s my restful time “she explained once “my time” 

A woman who didn’t really like people enjoying a mindless , repetitive job 

I thought of Olga today as I cleaned my collection of Burleigh Ware  Art Deco crockery. 

I had placed it all on top of my kitchen cabinets five years ago where it has become greasy and dirty with cooking and dust and soot from the fire and slowly and deliberately I have soaked each piece and cleaned away the dirt until my fingers wrinkled from the soaking and the bleach.

It’s been a mindful afternoon with the ticking of the kitchen clock and the sound of bird sound from the garden my only company.

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/wRcZMXV