Tag Archives: Sheffield

Trivialities

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The big news of the day is that I completed my poetry challenge, with 200 written in a fortnight. Very few of them are any good, but it was meant as a writing exercise rather than anything else so that doesn’t really matter. It seems to have worked, though there were days that it seemed to be working as aversion therapy rather than a writing exercise.

It’s only 14 a day when you work it out and if you stick to haiku that’s only 42 lines. it hardly seems like much of a challenge does it?

Or so I thought…

I then went to Sheffield to pick up Number Two Son.

That took more time than I thought, and gave me a few photo opportunities.

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The Afternoon Passes…

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The afternoon slipped past as smoothly as the morning, though it was arguably less productive. All I did in the afternoon was to eat lunch and take a trip to Sheffield.

Lunch was slightly disappointing, so I’m not going to review it, except to say that if we ever need to stop for food in Chesterfield again I will ignore Frankie and Benny’s and go to Harvester instead. You get more flavour at Harvester, and free salad. I say “free”, though I concede this may not be totally accurate.

They have a big wheel in Chesterfield at the moment.  I’m sure it will be quite interesting to go on it and see the twisted spire close up if you can ignore the fact you are being taken for a trip in the sky in a device where costs and weight have been kept to a minimum. I really should have taken my camera, as it made an interesting sight.

We then carried on to Sheffield and dropped Number Two son off, along with two bags of healthy foodstuffs and the contents of my wallet. He’s been home for the weekend discussing his dissertation with Julia. He discussed the Rugby and the Superbowl with me. It’s probably for the best, as, though my grasp of sport is poor, it’s far better than my grasp of matters academic.

Tonight, being back to sensible eating, we will dine on soup. Julia has already prepared and packed the lunch salads for tomorrow. I foresee a dreary, though virtuous, few days.

The Snow Arrives

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Finally, it arrived.

It wasn’t impressive.

We have some snow left in the street, where it will be a patchy nuisance until it melts, but all the main roads are clear. Driving into town to pick up Julia at 4.00 pm it was quite clear that the centre of town was warmer than Sherwood as there was nothing on the floor at all, not even the narrow road at the back of the leisure centre.

The bad news is that we’re meant to be down to minus 12 degrees C tomorrow. That’s minus 10.4 degrees F. We will be as cold as northern Scotland, which, the news tells me, is colder than Everest.

Based on the accuracy of previous forecasts that will probably be a few degrees under freezing.

Number Two son has just been out for a walk and says it isn’t too bad. He arrived home by train this afternoon and says Sheffield has even less snow than Nottingham.

All in all, it’s a very unsnowy day round here, though news reports do show that there is plenty of snow locally. Looks like we dodged the bullet.

Though it may be a bit early, as their is time for snow yet, I will permit myself a small smile. 🙂

Peace Medals

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When all the fighting was done, the UK decided to have a national Peace Celebration. The selected day was Saturday 19th July 1919. This was a little optimistic as the Great War was not officially over when they started the planning, and we were still engaged fighting the Bolsheviks in Russia. We were also still fighting amongst ourselves, with mutinies in Southampton, Calais and Kinmel and tanks on the streets of Glasgow.

There was trouble during the celebrations too, with the riot at Luton being the best known. The town museum, as I remember from a visit many years ago, has a livelier version of events than The Guardian. They blame trouble between the The Discharged Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Federation and the Comrades of the Great War, followed by a riot which involved looting a piano shop and playing Keep the Home Fires Burning after setting fire to the Town Hall. The two ex-service organisations had different political outlooks, the Comrades of the Great War being set up as a right wing alternative to The Discharged Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Federation. Eventually they were to resolve their differences and become founder organisations of the British Legion.

Part of the Peace Celebrations featured the giving of medallions, often in white metal, to local school children. Unlike 1911, Nottingham didn’t produce a medal. The Nottingham Peace Celebrations provided sports, cinema visits, fancy dress parades and teas for 30,000 children, though there is no mention of medals, apart from sports prizes.

Some places provided generic medals, though others were specifically made for individual towns and villages. The Derby Peace Medal in the header page is one of the better examples of design – featuring the badge of the local regiment.

Sheffield Peace Medal – obverse
Sheffield Peace Medal – reverse

The Sheffield medal is more typical, with a generic figure of Peace on one side and the city coat of arms on the other side.

Birmingham Peace Medal – reverse
Birmingham Peace Medal – obverse

The Birmingham medal is slightly better from the design point of view – I’ve always liked this representation of Victory. It features on a generic peace medal, with an agricultural scene on the reverse, which was the first of these medals I ever had (given to me by my grandfather back in the 1970s).

Derby Peace Medal – obverse
Derby Peace Medal – reverse

This is the obverse and reverse of the Derby medal.

Note: I’ve added a link to the previous post to access a picture of the 1911 silver steward’s jewel.

Escape to Derbyshire (Part 1)

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As I was sorting laundry this morning (another day off – we really are spoiling ourselves) we had a postal delivery for Number Two son.

“Why don’t we nip up to Sheffield and give it to him.” I suggested. (Having already suggested Stoke on Trent, which is usually a winner, and Bakewell as days out, I was becoming desperate at the thought of another day of housework).

It worked, and Julia texted him to arrange it. After waiting for a reply and wondering what would happen if she rang him in the middle of a lecture, she finally rang him. Me? Well, to be honest, at 10.15, I didn’t think there was much chance of catching him in the middle of a lecture.

I was right. What actually happened was that we woke him up.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we popped up to Sheffield, got caught in traffic,  dropped off the letter, took him to lunch at KFC, lectured him on the importance of eating properly (yes, I know…) and did various parent things.

I also took a photo of one of the gardens in his street. The one with Virginia creeper growing up the telegraph pole was quite impressive but the one with the beans was more interesting.

Front garden vegetable growing
Runner beans

 

The garden next door to the beans had a fine display of fuchsias, which was a coincidence as we’d been eating fuchsia berries from our garden this morning. I’ve eaten fuchsia berries before and not been impressed but these are supposed to be juicy and delicious. To be fair, it’s been a poor year, and they aren’t in a great position, but they didn’t seem any different to the others I’ve tried. Interesting idea though – plenty of flowers and a claimed 300 berries per plant. It’s the one in the header picture.

After that, having cunningly secreted the postcode of the Riverside Herb Centre in my shirt pocket, I entered the details in the satnav (I’m finally moving into the 21st Century) and set off. It was a visit of mixed results, with virtually no plants available. Fortunately there is a shop selling a variety of products, including oak-smoked rapeseed oil. I’ll cover that in a later post, once I’ve decided what to do with it. I checked on the internet and the main suggestions are to use it for salad dressing. It doesn’t seem very imaginative.

We also bought black onion seed, garam masala, beeswax hand lotion and a packet of ginger creams. They will probably appear in reviews on the other blog.

After that, well that’s going to be Part 2.

 

 

It’s built on seven hills

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I do not, of course refer to Rome, because that would be too simple, and too exotic. No, I refer to Sheffield. Unlike Rome, which is famous for culture, romance and Roman ruins, Sheffield is famous for cutlery, silver plate and Henderson’s Relish.

Now, I have to admit that I have never counted the hills in Sheffield and I rely on Number Two son for this information. However, I can say that wherever you go in the city you do seem to be on a hill or next to one, so I find the seven hills story easy to believe.

The reason for this digression from my normal tale of life on the farm is that after work on Monday night I took him back to Sheffield when I should have been blogging. It was a trip I didn’t mind making. Though it was nice to see him for a few days my wallet and the fridge both heaved a sigh of relief when he left.

There are no photographs of Sheffield, though I do have some from the farm.

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We had New College down to get some practice with animals, tried out a new unit on egg quality and spotted two male and one female Orange Tip, though (as usual) I couldn’t get a picture, and I finally got to grips with the new booking system. The old booking system had a major flaw, in that it wasn’t a system, so this is a great improvement. I felt quite virtuous for a few minutes.

On the trip to Sheffield we went through Chesterfield, a town famous for its twisted spire. Whilst by-passing the town non the A61, which is a bit of a concrete canyon at the lower end, we were surprised to see a Jay perched on a section of crash barrier by the roadside. It’s not the first bird I think of seeing in an urban environment but there were some trees and patches of waste land within a few hundred yards so I suppose it wasn’t too far away from its natural habitat.

I suppose the moral there is that you don’t always appreciate what is actually in the landscape as you drive down a dual carriageway.

Tuesday (or today, if you prefer) has passed quickly. Julia has painted the outside of the pigsaw and is making the tail. She also had a meeting about the kitchen extension. I passed my time pottering about and, whilst clearing out some old files, found a web-based Health and Safety course that I had forgotten all about. That took up most of the afternoon but if I hadn’t done that I’d only have frittered my time away searching the net for trivia.

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Alasdair and I filled the bird feeders last night at 3 pm. At 9.45 am, when we arrived this morning, the fat ball feeder in the hedge was empty (three balls gone in 18 hours!). I knew the jackdaws had found it, but they must have been working hard to eat three in that time. One more secure feeder in the back also came under Jackdaw attack this afternoon. It’s not just the quantity they eat but the way they drive the smaller birds away. I think we may have to stop feeding fat balls.