R's rue

Fulwood Booth Farm It was late when I decided to drive out of the city for a short walk in nearby countryside.  I parked Clint on Fulwood Lane at the top of Roper Hill and the first sound I heard was the distinctive call of a curlew. It is a memorable and plaintive sound. Then I heard another and watched as she winged her way over unkempt grassland, her long beak curling down to the earth. Perhaps they were nesting in that rough pasture. I walked on, passing a farm called Fulwood Booth before descending to Redmires Reservoirs. It was a lovely warm evening with the sun slipping down over Stanage Edge, gilding the edges of this northern city. And as I walked I thought about Simon whose life must surely end in the next few days. It could even end tonight. We are travelling over there again tomorrow. I plan to meet up with a newly assigned Macmillan nurse. The previous one only visited Simon once in the past seven weeks. How nice it would be if he could die peacefully in his...

I had bought my friend Ruth a ticket to her favourite chorale group The Spooky Men for her birthday . With her all communed up in Scotland I was in two minds driving a hour West to see them last night, but having managed to get a work friend Steve to take the spare ticket I went.  It was a great concert, set in the historic Capel Jerusalem in Bethesda.  Funny, innovative, odd and at times incredibly moving , The Spooky Men , perform their own songs about such varied subjects of sad audience members, eyebrows, Men’s Groups and politics ( Vote The Bastards Out being a highlight)  But they peppered the humour with some truly beautiful singing , with a couple of Ukrainian folk songs and the sublime Crossing The Bar being true standouts. I could hear several of our choir members singing in the audience as like me, they went to support Conductor Jamie ( sans his RAF moustache ) who is a guest choir member on The Spooky men’s Uk tour. Jamie is on the far left P...

 I never went abroad as a child with the exception of my near fatal visit to Lloret de mar with my sister, Mother and Aunt Greta when I was a ten year old. My memories, apart from the drowning centre mainly around large ants, the smell of leather goods in the thousands of shops my mother dragged us into and fields of hotel filled flooring. The rest of the very few family holidays we had were in a beige caravan in Scotland, complete with orange melamine cups, midges, and family arguments. Holidays were never happy affairs when we were children.  A thing that changed considerably when, as older teenagers, we were invited away with my elder sister and her family to Spain, where we sat at restaurant tables, were allowed to drink and were treated as adults for the first time in our lives. My parents were not bad people, they were just a little sad and unable parent very well, but that did not mean that they did not want to, for I remember after my father had uncharacteri...