Monthly Archives: April 2025

The Beauties of Retirement (Part 2) Fears & Spontaneity

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The world is full of fear. The Daily Telegraph, normally a sensible sort of paper, just ran a headline “China invades Taiwan: Japan steps in”. The sub-heading, when you click through is “If China invades Taiwan, what could Japan do?”

It is, I admit, beautifully done, From a classic click-bait hook through to a sensible opening. I’m sure, if tackled, they would actually say there was no intention to provoke panic and that they would not descend to such tabloid tactics. But I think I will make up my own mind on that.

Apart from that we have the meltdown of world trade to worry about, fishing in nature reserves, denial of climate change, fracking, the changing of history, new laws to disadvantage women, ethnic minorities and poor people, and no compassion shown to small children, though we knew they were going into the cages again as soon as the election was done because, whatever his faults, President Trump is a keen and consistent disciple of the anti-Christ. I can’t help but wonder what Pope Francis saw deep in Vance’s eyes just before he breathed his last.

So, that’s fear number one – living in a world in a world which is ruled by Bond villains.

Two, death. To be honest, as you can probably guess from my poor physical condition, I have ignored the possibility for much of my life and am not going to worry too much now.

Three, losing my driving license. There are loads of stories about this – new medical conditions, new rules, tougher tests, – the papers delight in scaring us about losing our licenses. We can’t all take up cycling, we don’t all have wives who drive. And we don’t all live in areas of good public transport or conveniently sited services. Fortunately I can get groceries delivered and am within a swift electric scooter journey of a shop, a pharmacy and a GP Surgery, so I’m not too bad. I will just have to restrict myself to seeing things within battery range  (and not up steep hills or along fast roads). On our trip this morning we only touched a road once, and that was only to cross it.

Four, I will be taxed out of existence by the Government, a cry which has become louder  as Labour won the election and started making changes. The tabloids love a Labour scare story. However, we had an unplanned bag of chips for lunch while we were out in the sun watching the young squirrels play in trees, so I need a nap. I don’t need to think about politics.

The Beauties of Retirement (Part 1) Infirmity

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On Friday night I noticed I seemed to be getting cold, so I put on an extra layer. It’s been a bit colder recently and we have the thermostat turned down so it is to be expected at this time of year. Later I put on another layer, but as I went to bed I felt even colder. Then I started shivering, and despite the expensive pocket spring mattress I bought when we moved, Julia was able to feel the tremors. This launched her on a path of nursing and worrying and, eventually,  hot lemon cold cure, paracetamol and hot water bottles seemed to solve the problem.

On Saturday morning, I wrapped up warm and spent most of the day watching TV. This included Sharpe’s Waterloo, which isn’t my favourite episode, but was undemanding for an addled brain. It also avoided breaking into any series that we watch in the evening. I didn’t even set foot in the office or check my emails. I was that tired. That’s one of the things with getting older, being ill takes much more time than when I was younger. I used to be ill, go to bed, get up and go back to work. Over the years this has become a much longer process. However, as I annoyingly, tell everyone, patience is the key.

Of course, in those days I was fit and not taking a cocktail of medication to suppress my immune system.

By Sunday I was back on the computer. I entered the BTO Garden Bird data – I’m doing the birdwatch and the blackbird counts. Science that you can sit down whilst eating breakfast has always got to be good science. Then Julia went out to do an afternoon serving teas to thirsty visitors to the Nene Valley Railway and, freed of supervision,  I bought two medallions and a book online.   The medals were cheap, and the book is about Captain Athelstan Popkess. He was Chief Constable of Nottingham for 30 years and was a pioneering modern policeman. He also tended to attract controversy.

Then it was time for a small meal (my digestion has still not settled) of Quorn chilli (my sister came to tea) and a little light TV.  I think you can make a perfectly adequate vegetarian chilli just by leaving the meat out but my sister uses Quorn so we have it a try last week in Bolognese then tried chilli this week. I still cling to my opinion that it is alright to eat meat, but it is also good to eat meat-free some days. Expensively produced mushroom protein doesn’t really figure in my diet as it seems less kind to the planet that just having the veg without additions.

This is part One of my musings on retirement. I expect my readers, being people of intelligence, have already spotted the possibility  of this having more than one part because of the hint in the title. You have also probably spotted that I just said “more than one part”. That’s another hint. I’m not sure how many parts there are going to be. It all depends when I get distracted by something else.

 

 

 

A Lost Week!

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Golden key (actually silver-gilt, used by Sir Arthur Blake KBE at the opening of the Nottingham savings Bank branch on St Ann’s Well Road, Nottingham, November 23, 1926

I just looked at the date on my last post and received a shock. I knew it had been a while, but was amazed to find it was a whole seven days. So, what have I been doing?

Not much.

From the point of view of colour rendition this shows I stll have a lot to learn. Taken only seconds apart under the same light

I have become addicted to writing articles about junk. I have now done four for the research page of the Peterborough Military History Group, a couple more for the newsletter and nineteen posts for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page. I’m never sure if these really count as “acceptances” as they are short and they are submitted to people I know.  On the other hand, poems are short too. I became obsessed with “The Golden Key” as I started writing it. I’ve had it about 30 years and never really got on with it, so it was about time. I can’t set a link directly to it but it’s currently at the top if yo use the link above.

Even better if you can leave a “Like”. It’s part of my crusade to strike back against traditional coins. There’s a place for kings and stuff in numismatics, but for every King there are thousands of commoners and they all have stories too.

Sir Arthur Blake KBE JP – a photograph taken later in life – courtesy of the national portrait gallery.

Talking about acceptances – I had a rejection this morning. It means that my record for April is 100% rejections. Not one single acceptance. It’s a strange month, as there was only one journal open for submissions, and that was only open until 15th April, which is why I can tell you, by the 24th, that I have a 100% rejection record. I’m sure I’ll get over it.

That’s it for now. I will have some cracking photos for you over the next few days as we have been going through some old boxes. However, for now,

 

Some Thoughts on Garden Birds

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I took 52 photographs this morning. Many of them are faulty, most of them are uninspired, and several are already slowly pixelating in the bin. I didn’t stop to plan, just grabbed the camera and started shooting whilst cooking breakfast.

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking that the only way to improve my photography is to take more pictures, so today, I just switched on and pointe. I am a bit rusty but I will improve.

Even if I don’t improve I’m bound to get some good shots just by accident. And that, more or less, is what happened. The dunnock is quite good, the blackbird and pigeon are OK. The magpie looks blind, but I wanted it because it shows the sheen of blue and green on the black. And the ubiquitous squirrel looks much the same as all the other pictures of squirrels gorging on sunflower seeds. Both carrion crow shots were blurred, and the final shot of that sequence was just a patch of grass.

Meanwhile, as I cooked, I missed shots of robins, blue tits and great tits. I have others, but it would have been nice to get a more complete set of pictures.

Ornithologically speaking, we have a dull garden. The BTO listing of my reports so far show we have had 17 species in the garden, some only once. This will rise to 18 species after my next report as we had our first carrion crow this week.

We had more species when we fed on the farm, but that’s to be expected when you are next to farmland.  However, a problem we also had there was the feeders being taken over by jackdaws at times. Mostly they just fed in the chicken field but we often had mass attacks that shut everything out of the feeders. We got round that by feeding fat balls (their favourite) on the far side of the building.

So far we’ve had a few visits from jackdaws but only a small number at a time. They have only visited us in two of the last 11 weeks. Same for starlings – often a pest species – only seen in four weeks of the eleven, and usually just one bird.

When you think my mother used to throw some bread, a few seeds and some scraps out on top of a wall, and regularly attract twenty or thirty finches and tits, I feel like we are putting on a poor show. However, when you look at the way bird populations have plummeted over the last fifty years, we are lucky to get any. Thirty six years ago when I moved to Nottingham, I regularly had song thrushes and sparrows in the garden. It must be thirty years since I last saw a song thrush in a garden, and in fact they are rare anywhere these days.

There’s a very good statistical analysis here, which shows that song thrushes have declined by 47% since 1970. That’s only one view. In my garden they declined by 100% just over 30 years ago. The rate of decline obviously varies depending on the factor causing it – disease, farming practices, climate change, conditions in places where they migrate to, European idiots with shotguns – and some are even increasing (blackcaps and red kites being two examples).

Anyway, whatever is happening I am trying to help out with extra food, even if they don’t always appreciate it.

 

 

Struggling Still with Time

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Buzzard

I had another acceptance. I’m now about to enter a lean streak with just three editors to reply – one I’ve never submitted to before, one is a new editor with a magazine that normally turns me down and the third is a guest editor in a magazine with which I have mixed results. And that final one is the one I submitted as the only submission of this month. With everyone cutting back on frequency of publication, and with them all operating on different schedules this sometimes happens. A few years ago there were several who published every month but both of them have now gone to publishing just six issues a year.

I now have more poetry to write, so I had a quick image search for Crowland Abbey. It’s been an interesting subject over the years, and I just wanted to look at some photos for ideas. I found a great picture, and a quote I recognised from John Clare’s sonnet about the abbey – Wrecks of Ornamented Stones. It’s a good quote and, I thought regretfully, a shame that someone had already used it.

Donkey watching . . .

Then I looked harder. It seems I’m being immodest in calling it a great picture, as it’s one of mine, and it was me who already used the title. Sometimes I’m just so prolific I forget what I’ve written. February 2017. We’ve seen a few changes since then. Like the old abbey I am “struggling still with time”.

Having appropriated another line of Clare’s poem I am now going back to my previous (pre-Crowland search) activity – reading tanka and stealing ideas to help me write poems of my own. That’s the T S Eliot method isn’t it?

“Good poets borrow, great poets steal.”

Captain Cook and a seagull

Unfortunately, as usual, it seems to be a misattribution. What he actually said was  “mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” I know that because I just lifted it from another blog. I could research it myself, but it was easier just to cut and paste and then post a link.

It’s pretty much the same, it’s just that the second quote is far too complicated. I look through a poem and extract something that sets me going. It’s not plagiarism, or outright theft, it’s seeking inspiration and understanding. Think of an opal miner. They take a stone from the depths of the earth, and give it a wash. It’s a thing of beauty in its own right. Then a stone cutter cuts and polishes. Still a thing of beauty, but different, as it is after a jeweller has set it.  Theft is probably not the right word, it’s just a well-travelled idea, and I’m about to take a few of them on a new journey.

Wren

 

An Odd Few Days

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It’s been a strange couple of days. It started off well on Monday when we saw a jay about half a mile from home. That was pretty much the high point of the day. In fact, the high point of two days. We went to the Numismatic Society on Monday night, after an afternoon of packing yet more junk into the car. We then set off home . . .

Easier said than done. We arrived at Grantham in the dark and almost immediately ran into roadworks and a diversion, which promised “Diversion A1 (S)” but actually delivered a rather tedious and annoying drive through the countryside, including more roadwork, which took us to Melton Mowbray before pointing us back towards Peterborough.

To be fair, the route via Melton is a decent route, and one I used to use quite a lot, though road improvements on the A! have now made that my favoured route. However, if I were intending to travel home via Melton, I wouldn’t start by going to Grantham.

The normal route via Grantham and the A1 is about 60 miles and, realistically, takes more like and hour and a half than the slightly faster time Google calculates.

The normal route via  Melton is 55 miles and takes about ten minutes longer, though if you hit the wrong traffic and get held up behind a tractor, or forget it’s market day in Melton, it can take considerable longer. That’s why we started using the other route.

If, however, you go to Grantham first and then drive down a number of unlit country roads behind a large lorry to reach Melton and then picking up the Peterborough road, it is around 75 miles, and I don’t have a clue how long it took. Seemed like ages but might have only been about two and  a half hours. It would have been nice to have had some warning, particularly after we fell foul of a random, and badly signposted, diversion last time we went to the Numismatic Society.

When we got back, we watched as rat frolicking on the front lawn. Next morning Julia checked the back fence and it seems they are coming in under the fence again. She has blocked the holes and will be spraying the boundaries again. This is the first sighting for a while, though I realise you are never far from a rat. Time to think abbout some more serious measures.

 

Then this evening, I switched on the light in the office, and it blew. This was annoying but I went to make tea (sausage with leek and mushroom gravy, mustard mash and carrots mashed with parsnips),. This, when added to our lunchtime avocado and breakfast fruit (admittedly taken with porridge and toast and marmalade) made us feel quite virtuous. We also had a spot of simnel cake in the middle of the afternoon, now I come to think about it, so maybe not that virtuous after all.

Later, I found that the bathroom light wasn’t working, so went to switch on the hall light to give me some light in the bathroom whilst muttering about dodgy electrics. We don’t generally use the hall light as the light coming through the glass doors from the living room or kitchen usually provide enough light. The hall light didn’t work either. At that point the metaphorical lightbulb in my head came on. After 36 years with old-fashioned ceramic fuses, we now have circuit breakers and they are a lot more sensitive than fuses. 

And so it proved. But before we were able to get the lights back on, poor old Julia had to leave the shelter of the house to enter the garage in search of the breakers. No, I haven’t a clue why electricians put them in garages, but it seems quite common. It’s probably so that people, tiring of torches and trekking to the garage, will pay them large amounts of money to move the boxes somewhere more convenient.

It appears, from research I just did (I say “research”, I mean “two minutes on Google”) that this is more discreet (why?) and more convenient for electricians and emergency workers who may need quick access. Me, I’d put the convenience of the residents isn’t at the top of the list. It’s a bit like the quick release clips they now fit to batteries these days – much easier for a fireman if you are in aa serious accident, but not quite so much fun when they pop off at random and you car dies. I know this from experience.

No, not a clue why the photos won’t all line up.

Persistence Pays Off

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If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

I found that quote yesterday when replying to a comment, so if you saw it then, I apologise for the repetition. I was actually looking for another quote, but I thought that one would do just as well. It is also good enough to bear repetition.

Robin, Arnot Hill Park

For some reason my thoughts of writing always centre round this time of year. I am sitting in a book-lined room, with busts of historical figures on my shelves. It is pleasantly warm, bees are buzzing the lavender, the scent of lilacs drifts in through the open glass doors and I smile as I put my fountain pen down and look at another finished manuscript.

Reality is always a little different. I have no glass doors, my writing room is lined with chaos and the scent of toast fills the air.  I have two small busts on my shelves – Cromwell and Dickens. I chose Cromwell because I like Cromwell and I chose Dickens on account of the quality of his beard. I have tried to enthuse myself to read Dickens again but I’m failing.

Tulip

On the other hand, re-writing Wilkins Micawber as an amateur detective has a certain attraction. Pea souper fogs, opium dens and mysterious, gaunt, black-clad figures do all the work for you. All you need is talent and time . . .

Meanwhile, back at the poetry, which requires little time and, let’s be honest. only a smattering of talent, I have had some more acceptances. last week I had three accepted by one editor – a haibun, a tank and a haiku. They have never accepted a haiku off me before. Then this week I have had a haiku accepted by a magazine which has been resisting me for some years. They used to accept things, then the new editor stopped. Now, with a new editorial team, they have accepted one again. It just goes to show the power of hard work and persistence. I haven’t really improved as a poet, but I am getting more published, so it has to be the work rate and the persistence, though I suppose there are talented poets out there who would take issue with me about my approach.

Feeder with Greenfinch

 

 

 

 

 

Another Poem

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Apple Blossom – Sherwood

Paper Cities

My wife’s mother watched American bombers glistening in the sky, saw the bombs fall and, later helped clear the debris from the dropping of an atom bomb. She told me stories of what happens when you drop incendiaries on a city of paper houses and taught me how to fold a paper crane.

On the other side of the world my mother tried her gas mask on and practised hiding under her school desk. In October 1940 a German bomber flew low across the school and dropped two bombs. She picked up a piece of bomb casing in the school yard while it was still warm.

We discuss this with the kids as we fold paper cranes for a school project. It means more to them, when told in terms of grandmothers, than all the pictures on TV.

familiar folds
I have not made
the thousand yet . . .
one of the children asks
for blue and yellow paper

 

First published in Cattatils – August 2023

Some blossom is showing

 

The Worm in the Apple

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Arnot Hill

It’s a very pleasant day today. The sun is shining, birds are feeding and the house is quiet. At a time like this I should be able to write tremendous things.

However, there’s always a worm in the apple and, as usual, I am failing to capitalise on my good fortune. I’m worrying about all sorts of things. They are all minor and they will all be resolved in time, but they seem to take the edge off things. On top of that, I don’t really have a plan, just a huge disorganised pile of things in my head with an imaginary notice that says “To Do”. It’s not much help.

Arnot Hill Park, Arnold, Nottingham

Then, of course, there is the feeling that I should just sit down and sort myself out. I’m in the same position as the hypothetical coach who offers his team the advice “score more goals” from the sidelines. It’s right, I do need (metaphorically speaking) score more goals, but I actually need help with the nuts and bolts rather than the grand picture.

You can’t just shout “score more tries” from the sidelines (note I’m reverting to rugby as it is a more comfortable place for me than football. It’s about the 101 ways a team does all the small things better – I once read an interesting piece about the effects of simply trying to gain a yard in every tackle, not just stopping the opposition but gaining a little ground each time.

Tufted Duck – Arnot Hill Park

There are around 700 tackles in the average Rugby League match. Assuming even distribution that means one team, if it can make an extra yard per tackle , can gain 350 yards per match. That’s 3.5 lengths of the pitch, giving you more chances to score, and keeping the opposition further out.

Same goes for Rugby Union. They make around 170 tackles per team per match, which is still nearly two pitch lengths, and it’s still an advantage worth having.  They do, of course, have other areas of the game missing from Rugby League, where they can employ similar small improvements.

The Heron is back again. Arnot Hill Park

So, my new list, which I am going to start working on as soon as I post this, will be about the nuts and bolts of writing. Picking the high value targets and cutting out distractions (like computer games and losing my notes).

However, by the time I have posted this, Julia will be home from her stint in the tearoom, and I will be distracted by making her lunch. Some things just can’t be avoided. Happy wife, happy life.

Greylag Goose Arnot Hill Park Arnold

By a great feat of organisation (I sometimes get it right) I have found the picture I need to match the title. The rest of the pictures are others from Arnot Hill Park which don’t show worms in apples.

Arnot Hill Park, Arnold, Nottingham

Note that the worm/apple, being an older sculpture, is treated with preservative. The newer ones are left to decay naturally. This old man/tree spirit sculpture shown below no longer exists, nature having taken its course.

Arnot Hill Park, Arnold, Nottingham

 

 

 

A Lead Medallion and a Lot of History

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Carving at Sheepwash Car Park – Carsington

This started off as an article for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire, but it’s quite interesting just as a general knowledge piece. Well, I find it interesting. To be fair, as Julia has had to point out at times, whilst yawning, my threshold of “interesting” is quite low compared to many people. I should probably add some extra photos and travelogue type writing, but I’m not sure i have time or skill, and I definitely don’t have the knees for getting extra photos of the Derbyshire countryside. So if you are wondering why it’s a bit dull in places, it’s because collectors like dull detail.

The lead industry in Roman Derbyshire must have been huge, considering the roads they built to service it, and the number of ingots they seem to have mislaid for future archaeologists to find. There is actually a road that runs from somewhere in the region of Wirksworth to the town of Margidunum, which is now a roundabout on the A46 near Bingham. We used to pass it every day when we went to the farm. It’s quite impressive to think that this has been an important road junction for 2,000 years.

It is an ancient industry. Derbyshire lead was mined by the Romans, who left a number of inscribed ingots behind them, and there is a Saxon carving of a lead miner in the church at Wirksworth. The area was the main source of lead in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries, and provided a good living for those able to cope with poisonous dust, underground floods, falling rocks, methane gas and, eventually, accidental gunpowder explosions. In the 17th century, only wool was more important to the national economy, as lead was in great demand for plumbing (the name coming from plumbum, the Latin for lead), leaded windows and ammunition.

Ammunition in those days was mainly cannon balls and musket balls. Cannon balls were stone initially, and after about 1450 cast iron took over. They say that 42,000 cannonballs were fired at Waterloo, and 9,000,000 musket balls. I have calculated how many tons of lead that is, but there are so many variables it’s not necessarily a useful exercise, but you can see how much lead it took to fight a war. Using various approximations, it came to 250 tons of lead for Waterloo and about 3.5 tons for Naseby, which was a lot smaller and earlier.

There are fields in Derbyshire that are still considered to be unusable for crops or livestock due to Mediaeval lead pollution.

This is a 48mm lead medallion. At first glance it has little to recommend it, being just a grey medal with a plain, low-relief design.. The reverse is the seal of the Duchy of Lancaster and the obverse has a Queen’s Crown in the centre with the dates 1952-1977 over it, marking it out as a Silver Jubilee commemorative. Fortunately there is an inscription above this – “SMELTED.FROM.MATLOCK.LEAD.ORE.” and under it “WIRKSWORTH/BARMOTE COURTS”, which adds considerably to the interest.

The mining rights were the property of the crown and the Duchy of Lancaster was responsible for collecting the King’s taxes levied on lead. There were many rules attached to lead prospecting and mining, which had grown by custom rather than legislation, and these rules were interpreted by Barmote Courts, an institution peculiar to the Derbyshire lead mining areas. There are two remaining courts, one for the High Peak and one for the Low Peak. Both courts now meet at Wirksworth and their duties are largely ceremonial. They last decided on a question of mining rights in 2013. A representative of the Crown is present at the court and, by tradition, members of the court are provided with bread and cheese and pipes and tobacco.

Compared to the actual lead industry, and the Roman road system, the Barmote Courts, being only 700 years old, are quite recent.

Derbyshire Trees