Clarissa et al.

Re: the School Bus Saga. (Blogged 28/05/09)

My father has just received an email from the council officer concerned.

They have been calculating the distance to the wrong address.

No apology.

Apparently the 'misunderstanding' is all the mother's fault for not telling them that the address was wrong.

The fact that she hasn't moved and the letter arrived at the correct house in the correct village (pop.20) suggests that there wasn't anything significantly wrong with the address they sent the letter to.

If the postman wasn't bothered by it, who else is going to notice one wrong letter in a postcode?

Nobody except a computer programmed to calculate distances from one postcode to another. Computers don't do actual thinking. If you feed them wrong information, they give wrong information back. Like that irritating meerkat says "Simples"

Up until now there have been two country houses in north Lincolnshire open to the public, and I work at both of them. Moreover, neither is any longer a family home although Normanby retains a family flat.

This week a third historic house was added to the other two when Scawby Hall opened its doors to the public, so I went to see it. With me I took Joe because he shares my liking for historic houses and Jess because of the Stubbs paintings.

Therein lay my mistake: they squabbled over the front seat as though they were both six instead of fifteen and twenty-three! And - the thing I really hadn't expected - none of the paintings by Stubbs was of a horse! One double portrait, one man and dogs, and one dog on its own. There were some horse pictures by Herring and others, but they were fairly unistinguished.

That said, it is a pleasant house with what promises to be a good tour once it is running more slickly. The first lady was all apologies: she had expected to be on the door an was having to read the script. She handed over to Sir Anthony Nelthorpe in the drawing room (when he returned from taking his son and daughter-in-law to the station) and he gave real value for money with his detailed knowlege of his family's history. The remainder of the tour was with a lady with a well-prepared script who clearly was a bit thrown by questions and interjections.

One thing that was very nice was that we were invited to sit down in each room to listen to the talk.

Finally Lady Nelthorpe saw us out and stopped to chat a bit; obviously they are doing their market research in the friendliest possible way.

Anyway, it is a nice Jacobean country house with a pleasing range of furniture and pictures, and a family history of mainly very decent people. Oh, and a garden which is stunning in places, but really needs just one more gardener to keep on top of all the trimming and tidying. Below is the herbacious border which is one of the first things you see and is quite stunning.

Today would have been my mother's 81st birthday.

I took flowers to her grave this afternoon and found that Helen had already left a bunch. She wasn't a great flower person, but this is Daddy's favourite picture of her.

My father received a phone call today from a lady desperate for help. Her eleven year old is in her final year of primary school and is going on to the secondary school in the same town: these are the catchment area schools. At the moment the child has a free bus pass, but once she moves on to secondary school someone is saying that she will no longer be entitled as she lives less than three miles from the school.

Well, if she happened to be a crow it might be just under three miles. However, by the route the bus takes along minor roads (the shortest route) it is four and a half miles. By the main road it is five miles.

Ah, yes, but the child could walk across fields.

An eleven year old?

Alone?

Assuming she is not expected to make off through fields of crops, pigs, sheep and bullocks but by recognised footpaths, the route first takes her a mile-and-a-half along a minor road with no footpath and high hedges on either side. She could then take a series of tracks for just under two miles through three farmyards, past several disused pits and a reservoir, and along a rutted green road much played on by off-roading motor-cyclists. At last she reaches the main Grimsby to Lincoln road which she crosses, and - once out of the village - she can walk a futher mile on the grass verge (no footpath) along that same road, before finally crossing the A road which is used by lorries en route to Immingham and the Humber Bank.

Assuming she survives the journey it will take her a good hour-and-a-half (four-and-a-half hilly, muddy miles) both morning and evening which in winter will mean leaving and arriving home in the dark. This is deepest Lincolnshire - no streetlights except for the village section on the main road.

All this information can be found quite easily using the AA and Ordnance Survey websites. They are sending somebody from Lincoln (mileage allowance 30-40p per mile) to check the route.

My father is not best pleased, but then he has been campaigning for years for video conferencing, but the officers (not, on the whole, the councillors) are unwilling to lose their first class travel to London (or wherever) and their overnight jollies in expensive hotels all paid for by the tax-payer.

They claim video conferencing would be expensive to set up. How expensive is Skype? And how does that compare with a first class return rail ticket from Lincoln to Kingscross?

By the way, talking of political expenses, we have heard a lot about politicians and their second home allowances, but what about the civil servants who 'examined' and passed the more ridiculous claims. Will they be reprimanded or even called to account?

On the day Joe is invited to join the Guild of Servers I find a shortcut to this delighful tongue in cheek website on Rev Ruth's blog http://www.dioceseofwenchoster.co.uk/sacristy.htm

I have just received a whole series of comments on some videos posted about two years ago on this and another blog on which my niece briefly tried out blogging.

The comments ask a series of questions all of which are answered either in my profile or on the blog with the video clips, but couched in very personal terms, and then there is a message which seems to be asking me for personal friendship beyond the blogosphere.

I think that I shall simply not answer. I don't like to be rude, but I found those five messages distinctly creepy.

Many years ago when I was a teenager my father was asked by the local Liberal party (of which he was then a member) to stand for parliament. At that particular point in history there was a real possibility that the right local man could win the seat as a Liberal, and he gave the matter a lot of thought.

Much of that thought revolved around my sister and myself. He didn't want to live away from us all week, yet moving us all down to London would have involved disrupting our education. This was all before the second home allowances came in and any move would have involved selling the family home.

In the end he decided against accepting the nomination, but suppose things had been different, and suppose it was nowadays, not then.

My mother always 'Englished' my father's election adresses for the council: the ideas were his, but the style, the grammar, the spelling and the proof-reading were all her responsibility (as today they are mine). The same applies to letters, press handouts etc. Don't get the idea that he is illiterate, but the war stopped his grammar school education at 14 and my mother was an English teacher. All my life from as early as I was able to answer the phone and take a sensible message I have done so for him - and that has always been the job of whichever family member happened to be nearest the phone when it rang.

Suppose these arrangements carried over into an MP's life. There has been a lot of scandal about employing family members, but why shouldn't spouses and children be paid for secretarial work if that is what they do? Why shouldn't a grown-up child spend his/her gap year as a researcher? Why not them rather than somebody else's grown-up child?

And what about second homes? Cleethorpes is a long way from London - by no means a daily commute. Let's turn that location into the city of Mudbank (a place invented by Frank Whitmarsh, a local newspaper columnist in my youth), and let's give the city's three MPs much the same family profile as my father had when he was asked to stand: middle-aged, married to a teacher, with two daughters.

Mr. Black – Mudbank North

He is a local man and long-time councillor.

The family home is in the constituency where his wife (sometimes with their younger student daughter) lives and works during the week and where they both live at weekends and during the holidays.

On being elected MP he was able to find lodgings in London very easily as his elder daughter had recently bought a terrace house in the east end near where she was teaching at a local junior school. From his allowances he pays a rent which covers a good proportion of the mortgage repayments and the utility bills. He has a comfortable place to stay with congenial company and an easy journey into Westminster.

On the face of it Mr. Black could be said to be using the expenses system to benefit his family, but would his rent actually be less if he were paying it to a stranger? Wouldn't a London flat, rather than B&B, be more expensive? Does the fact that he is paying his daughter rent make a difference? Would it only become 'dodgy' if he was buying the house and claiming the interest on the mortgage from expenses and then, on losing his seat/retiring, he sold it at a knock-down price to his daughter?

Mrs White – Mudbank North

She is a Yorkshire woman selected from a short list.

The family’s main home is in Yorkshire where her husband is head of a large secondary school attended by both their teenage daughters now in the midst of exam work. To do her job effectively and have her family about her whenever possible she has to rent flats/houses with at least two bedrooms both in London and in Mudbank. Her second home allowance pays for only one of these and she has to be quite creative with that allowance for the London flat in order to cover the basic costs of both that and the much cheaper one in her constituencey.

Is the fact that Mrs. White is claiming every penny she can in order to fund two flats out of one allowance dishonest? After all she wouldn't have to have either of the flats if it were not for her job as an MP. Would the claiming of these allowances only become dishonest she chose to call her five bedroomed detached in Yorkshire her second home?

Mr. Green – Mudbank Rural

He is a career politician with an idependent income.

The Greens live in London where their two young daughters attend a prestigious girls’ day school and where Mrs. Green, a former actress, teaches her very expensive courses in motivational speaking. On being elected Mr. Green bought a pretty ‘holiday’ cottage in his constituency where the whole family can go for a goodly proportion of weekends and holidays. The mortgage interest and running expenses, including a lot of decorating and furnishing costs, for this second home are paid from his allowances.

Mr. Green could have bought a much cheaper house in Mudbank, and he would probably own a holiday cottage somewhere a lot more expensive than Lincolnshire if he were not an MP, and he would use it a lot less. Is it right that he should claim so much towards it? Is he asking the taxpayer to fund his expensive lifestyle? Or is it a necessary expense in doing his work as a member of parliament?

In other words, though I am sure many MPs have been careless, and some have been downright dishonest, maybe we shouldn't be too hasty to judge, and maybe we shouldn't assume one size fits all.

Last night I caught up with a film that has been on my must see list for about forty years: the 1934 version of 'Of Human Bondage' starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.

As a teenager I was a passionate film buff with a special interest in the early talkies, and the British contribution to 1930s Hollywood could easily have been my specialist subject on Mastermind. Since then I have become somewhat less of a buff, but I still like to catch up on ancient curiosities whenever possible.

This particular film was remade in 1946 with Paul Henreid, and in 1964 with Laurence Harvey. (Obviously no-one was ever going to cast an anglo-saxon as an shy, artistic and somewhat repressed English man!) It was said that all copies of the 1934 version had been destroyed to stop comparisons with later, less good, versions, and I wasn't sure that I would ever get to see it. The book by Somerset Maugham had also been something of a favourite in my teens.

Anyway, last night I at last managed to see it, and of course I was scared that it would turn out to be creaky old rubbish. Well, old it certainly was, but it was a beautifully made film with perfectly judged and understated central performances. Bette Davis's cockney accent has been criticised (including in this week's Radio Times), but it seemed to me that she had admirably caught the nuances of a cockney girl desperately trying - and failing - to sound 'refined'.

The film was also very intelligently written and directed with so much implied for an adult audience to understand, but so little stated to fall foul of the draconian Hays Code of the time.

Around what I would call lunch time today, my nephew Joe came round bringing with him his breakfast - left over pizza from the previous evening. It was not a pizza any self-respecting Italian would recognise! Thick and soggy it was covered with lumps of a grey substance which I am told is donna kebab (not something any self-respecting Turk would recognise, I hope). He ate this concoction cold.

My father and I had smoked salmon sandwiches for lunch shortly after.

At tea-time Joe's father dropped him off his regular Saturday fish, chips and curry sauce (not a curry any self-respecting Indian would recognise). He was not yet hungry.

Two hours later my father and I also had fish and chips which I cooked from scratch for dinner. Joe then ate his warmed up in their wrapping in the microwave.

The odd thing is that Joe really appreciates good food, and yet he can eat this junk.

I should say that I have nothing against fish and chips from the chippy, but not ones that have gone cold and soggy and have been reheated! Nor do I object to a good take-away pizza. Just not cold and a day old with that strange grey topping.

I have just had what it is fashionable to call an epiphany. I was watching television, and suddenly it struck me - a whole load of tastes and ideas which I had previously regarded as being separate were in fact all one! I simply don't like big things!

I don't like cities.
I don't like Wagner.
I don't like films with lots of noise and effects.
I don't like epic novels with lots of sub-plots and characters.
I don't like the sort of stately homes that are private palaces.

I list these things because I do very much like villages and small towns, classical music, movies, novels and historic houses. Now I have figured out that it is just a question of scale, I can be cool rather than guilty about my blind spots.

Come to that, I love to have a week staying in a nice cottage in our lovely little mountains in Wales or the Lake District, but if I won a month's holiday in a five star hotel in the Rockies I would happily give it away.

There's probably a word for it - gargantuaphobia or some such - except that I'm not phobic about them, just totally unmoved by things on too large a scale.

This was the weekend on which the churches in the eastern half of West Lindsey were en fete. With the change in churchwardens I was for the first time in years not one of those in charge of Swallow's contribution, but just a dogsbody. My dogsbodying included one small flower arrangement and a cake (see Busy blog) plus the usual village archive material. I also rejigged the church history leaflet to which I added some new pictures spread through the text,

and Paul added an appeal for the church roof restoration (no thermometer). We also did big laminated versions to go up on display boards.

Apart from that I did a couple of hours church sitting, welcoming, guiding and tea making on Saturday, and yesterday I went to church for the service and stayed for an hour's craic (lovely word - we should all adopt it) plus a bit of the welcome, guide etc.

Here is a taste of the floral contributions to Swallow's festival by other people:

Then I went off on my own to explore a few more of Lincolnshire's churches.

Following my post-mediaeval theme of last week I started at Southrey, a little church right in the south of the area. It was built from timber as a temporary stop-gap in 1898 by a local builder called George Turner (no relation).

It is a really cosy little church, and they were holding an art exhibition with a range and quality of art work from this tiny village of less than 200 souls quite the equal of that produced by Scunthorpe's (pop.72,000) art group at their annual exhibition at the museum. Most of it was, of course, the usual collection of pretty watercolour and acrylic landscapes and pet portraits varying from childish naivity to quite sophisticated, but works by two artists stood out - a nude (chalk on black paper) drawn in a few bold confident strokes and a pencil drawing of an old station building done in tiny meticulous detail - very different from each other, but both the work of artists rather than dabblers.

My next church was Stainfield built in 1711 to a design said to be by Sir Christopher Wren.

The 'east' end (in inverted commas because the church is not correctly oriented and east is actually more-or-less south) was unfortunately gothicised by James Fowler in 1887 (Was there any church in Lincolnshire he left alone? The ones he did from scratch are rather good, but with so many of the older ones you do regret what might have been.) The Tyrrwhit Tapestries (actually cross-stitch embroideries) of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments are well worth a look.

Apley's church started off as a mortuary chapel in 1871 where it replaced a brick shed which had done that duty for the best part of a century since the old derelict church was demolished and the congregation combined with Stainfield. In the 1890s an enthusiastic clergyman had it licensed for all services except weddings. It is tiny. It is plain. It is welcoming and warm.

Finally Goltho the oldest of the day's churches. This tiny church was declared redundant in 1976 though two services are held each year on St. George's day (its patronal festival) and at harvest. Recently there have also been a few weddings of people willing to go through all the necessary hoops to make these licensed and legal. You can well see how someone with a romantic turn of mind and a limited number of guests (all in possession of a good pair of wellies) would choose this little gem for their nuptuals.

Goltho is a lost mediaeval village so the church, rebuilt in the sixteenth century, stands in the middle of fields accessed by a footpath and a muddy track. The exterior is built in good red Lincolnshire brick in the then fashionable Flemish bond, but the interior is pure eighteenth century. The door to the stairs leading to the gallery is so low that even I had to duck (so glad that none of my usual - tall - companions on these expeditions was with me!)

I was going to call in at Nettleton and/or Thoresway, but the combination of time, a rumbling tummy and a full bladder made me decide to drive straight home after this.

Today I had a lot to do, so I got up early to get it done, and everything started fine.

Joe had urgently demanded to be collected at 9.30 prompt to take him to Issy's to borrow a card table prior to going to Great Limber church to set up for the festival. It took him twenty minutes to get together the things that he urgently needed to take to the church along with the card table. Query: Wouldn't any sensible person have them stacked by the door ready? Whoopi Goldberg excellent on Desert Island Discs while I was waiting.

Issy for once not in rush mode as she was having a leisurely morning, Jeni having stopped over in Louth for a last day of school before GCSE exams party.
Nice long chat over a cup of tea.

To Limber church: Joe takes just as long to unload as to load the car.

To Morrisons for the shopping, and I find myself parking just as Sharon draws into the neighbouring space. Coffee and much needed catch-up chat in Morrisons cafe.

Shopping was Friday slow and there was a queue at the petrol station.

Home to do flower arrangement for church. Quite pleased with my efforts in theming it to the village fete with a maypole design.
Lousy photo - sorry.

Manage to have kitchen almost tidy by the time Pa gets home.

Becky phones. Long talk. She asks about the poem I said I was writing. It's ready, but I'm not sure she is. She wants to hear it. It makes her cry, but she loves it and wants a copy.

Take flowers and newly re-illustrated, re-formatted and laminated church history and tour to church. Veronica was there and in chatty mood while she arranges altar flowers and I pin up the history, sort out the archive photos and copies of the registers and censuses, and put my small flower arrangement in place. A pair of swallows get in and make a heck of a noise while settling in for the night much to our chagrin.

Come home. Pa has had a good lunch so, rather than set to and cook dinner, I make a bread and butter tea which we eat while watching Ballykissangel on ITV3.

I have promised cakes to both Swallow and Limber churches so I set out my stuff for baking. Joe wants to go to Swallow church to see what we have done and to collect his plug bar, so we go there first. The plug bar has gone walkabout, but Kath and Lynne are there and in chatty mood.

I get started on my cakes. The boys turn up and get under foot. However I do manage to make three coffee cakes and three shortbread rounds. It is now past midnight, the cakes are cool and I have just finished icing them.

At least I am not on church-watch and tea making duty until the afternoon.

Our very long Parish Council AGM had a moment of light relief when Veronica, the clerk, asked whether any of the councillors had any expenses and we replied almost in unison, "Yes, my moat needs cleaning."

Earlier my niece told me "I rang the Swine Flu hotline today, but all I got was crackling."

They said that if America ever elected a black president pigs would fly, and 100 days into Mr. Obama's presidency swine flu!

Over this weekend, and no doubt next, there were a lot of cake stalls in churches. Most of the cakes are home-made and many of them are of very good quality. Unlike the teas, they tend not to be sold at bargain prices.

It is therefore very irritating to discover that some of them are mass-produced fare taken out of their packets and masqueraing as home-made. It is only a tiny minority and I am sure that most of the churches are unaware of this deception.

There is nothing wrong with donating supermarket cakes and I am sure that many a hard-pressed working woman has done this. I have absolutely no objection to eating a slice of McVitie's Jamaica Ginger or Tesco's Tarte-au-citron with my cup of tea, but I do object to paying two or three times the supermarket price for a whole cake re-wrapped by some woman too ashamed to admit to the rest of the church ladies that she lacked either the time or the skill to make her own.

The chocolate marble sponge cake looked lovely, but had never been anywhere near a domestic oven and had the unmistakeable taste and texture of improvers and preservatives, unlike the fruit loaf and the coffee and walnut cake both of which are very good indeed.

I don't want to be a grumpy old woman, but I suspect that many of the women unwrapping shop cakes to pass off as their own would be the first to cry fraud if someone soaked the labels off supermarket jam. So non-cooks be brave: leave the packaging on the cake and let the stallholders slice it up for tea, put it in the tombola draw with all the other jars, bottles and packages, or sell it for what it is.

This is the first weekend of the 2009 West Lindsey Churches Festival, so yesterday Joe and I duly went to explore some of the churches in the western half of the district. (The eastern half including Swallow fests next weekend)

We started with an organ recital at Hackthorn, a Victorian church in a remarkably pretty setting. I had left my camera at home so I have to rely an Joe's pictures and for some reason he didn't see fit to take the lovely view of this church beside a lake, but only an interior. It is a very good Victorian interior with some good stone carving and excellent wood carving. It seems a pity that an age which could produce such high quality craftsmanship should have so little faith in itself that all the stone heads are mediaeval in style and dress, not people of the craftsman's own era.
 In the gallery (from which this photo was taken) they had the parish registers borrowed back from Lincoln and the churchwarden who was their guardian was so uptight about it that she started telling people off the minute they touched the earliest of them. Someone had provided cushions to rest them on, but had failed to provide the equally necessary white gloves. Apart from Churchwarden Jobsworth, this was a most enjoyable visit and Joe spent a good length of time up the tower looking at the bells. I lighted a candle for James.

Our next church took us back a century to this little eighteenth century gem at Saxby.
Apart from one later stained glass window this little church is all of period. The west door opens on to a wide view from the Lincoln Edge across the Trent valley and into Nottinghamshire beyond; yesterday, despite the bright sunshine it also opened onto a bitingly strong west wind.

Ingham gave us two churches. First the Methodist chapel (sole survivor of three in a village - pop.800 - which still retains three pubs): here we enjoyed a friendly chat with a lay preacher 86 years young and pondered the oddity of building a gallery with no stairs to access it, before going into the chapel rooms for tea and scones at 50p a head!

In the Anglican church they had a lovely exhibition of wedding dresses which Joe wholly neglected to photograph. I know that I once read him the riot act about flash photography and fragile historic textiles, but I didn't mean to put him off ever photographing any dresses etc. I particularly wanted a picture of a bridesmaid's dress which was made of broiderie anglaise and was to exactly the design of those worn by Shelagh and Jackie at my parents' wedding in 1953 and by Helen and myself at Uncle Steve's and Auntie Carol's wedding ten years later - this one dated from the 1980s and was for a teenager rather than a tot, but was in all particulars but the fabric the same as Shelagh's and Jackie's dresses, and in everything but the length the same as Helen's and mine right down to the same fabric.

This is the only picture Joe took at Ingham and shows the plant stall where I bought 10 Scarlet Emperor runner bean plants for £1.

On to Stow Minster, our only deviation from our theme of eighteenth and nineteenth century architecture. Stow is Saxon, though hugely restored in the nineteenth century and on this occasion holding a Victorian market. I love this church's massive dignity without the excessive ornamentation of the gothic. Yesterday I was overwhelmed with distaste for the market which called to mind the thought of money changers in the temple and we left quite quickly.
I saw a haematite necklace on one stall which was so Liz that I was tempted to do my first bit of Christmas shopping, but didn't partly for the reason above, partly because I bought her a necklace last year and mainly because when the stall holder said it was Egyptian it made me wonder whether my strong impression it was perfect for Liz was because I have already seen her wearing one just like it.

Our next port of call was Morton. I have long been told that this church is a must see with its William Morris / Burne Jones windows. I have now seen the windows which I must confess do absolutely nothing for me.
Joe liked them, and also had a pleasant chat with some of the locals about Lisbet our last rector and theirs prior to that.

Pilham next, where these brave souls were serving tea and cakes (£1 a head) in the churchyard.
We ran into Maureen and had a little chat, learning that her reaction to Stow's Victorian market had been much the same as mine. Here the tiny church had on display a collection of quotaions, poems and sayings about love in all its various forms.

Finally to Snitterby where their theme was 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'. Readers of this blog may have noticed that this is not exactly my favourite hymn; however the flower arrangements were very imaginative, and the welcome was warm.
Home via the chippie.

Today we continued our tour of west West Lindsey's churches, but not before we had attended Cuxwold church for its proper purpose. Here the entire congregation - all five of us - suffered a rather unpleasant experience. I'm not sure what had happened, but the communion wine wasn't. My guess was Stardrops or some similar cleaning fluid - it was very, very nasty.

Polos on the way home and a mug of good coffee later, we set off to Glentham. Here they have an embroidery circle and have made the most magnificent range of kneelers. The embroidery below is their millennium banner, and the full view of the church shows just some of the kneelers displayed along the box pews.
They also have a tradition of washing this ancient coffin cover. Apparently it requires seven virgins to accomplish this and the custom has fallen into abeyance.

 Bishop Norton is a small church in the process of building a new extension to house a large loo, a small kitchen and a shed for the mower. The stone is an amazingly good match for the ancient stone. Their display theme was Baptisms through the Ages and they had a good range of christening gowns and photographs over the last century.
Next to the church is an old building in a ruinous state: we were told that it is the ancient manor house and that permission has been granted to demolish it an build two executive homes. They have saved worse ruins on Grand Designs, and I think that it would be worth the effort. Despite the concrete roof tiles, the modern(ish) brick extension and the sash windows, do I spot late mediaeval origins in the shape and form of this building?

Monday Update: Joe has just shown me the Bishop Norton Heritage Trail leaflet which he picked up yesterday in which the building is described as "Queen Ann period" and "home of the manorial court": later than I guessed, but still well worth attempting to save I would have thought.

On Saturday I felt guilty that by the time we reached Snitterby I had just 27p left in my purse to put in their collection plate, so - having replenished my cash - we called back there for a cream tea (£1 a head). Finally we went to Grayingham which had a good display of local history and archives less preciously guarded than yesterday, but properly protected by the handing out of white gloves.

They also had a very good cake stall.

Home for curry waiting for us in the slow cooker. See above for the source of the pudding.

By the way,
HAPPY 15th BIRTHDAY, JESS!

By the way, I haven't been ignoring everybody. The computer had a bad attack of amnesia - couldn't even remember his own desk-top - and had to go away for a few days. He's better now, and I am slowly catching up.

I don't know who owns either of the above. I think they are funny, so thank you very much whoever you are.

If you like football and live anywhere on the north eastern coast of England you are probably not a happy bunny. Starting in the south of the north with my home team, just look at this season's statistics:

Grimsby - one above relegation in League 2
Hull - one above relegation in the Premiership
Middlesborough - in the relegation zone in the Premiership
Hartlepool - two above relegation in League 1
Sunderland - two above relegation in the Premiership
Newcastle - in the relegation zone in the Premiership
Berwick - second to bottom Scottish League 3

This poem has taken me a long time and many versions to get to this stage. I still don't know whether it is any good or not. All I do know is that I felt compelled to write it. Even the form surprises me; I intended to write a sonnet

He crossed the tracks to Heaven
   and left a hell
      where cruel imagination
      trails her supposings
     across our consciousness:
          Why was he there?
          Was he aware?
          Did he know the noise?
               the rush of air?
               the impact?

He crossed the tracks to Heaven
   and left behind
       a broken body
       of broken dreams;
       an empty room
           of childish hopes
           and manly plans:
       a life hardly begun.

He crossed the tracks to Heaven
   and left fond memories.

He crossed the tracks to Heaven.

This is my closure as far as blogging on the subject is concerned. I thought about writing about the two funerals I went to last week, and if the computer had been working I should probably have done so, but such events are not really the subject for review and the time for an immediate emotional response has passed.