Isolation: one experience. My final word on Cummings

I was recently asked to write about self-isolation for our village newsletter Menston News. I chose to expand a little on what I had written on this blog around Easter time. Here’s what I wrote for the village newsletter.

Twelve weeks isolation, or more?

When I’m asked about the 12 weeks confinement to our small flat, due to end mid-June but quite likely to be extended, I have to say that it’s not so bad. Both my wife Petronela and I have been put in the extra vulnerable class. For the first couple of weeks we had to keep 2 metres between us because, as a teacher, Petronela could well have brought the coronavirus home. That was the hardest part. Another difficulty for her is missing her students at Allerton High School.

Front cover of Menston News, showing in general the view in Spring from our sitting room window. It is now largely obscured by the multiple greens of trees in full leaf, equally beautiful.

Mind you, we are lucky. Our sitting room window overlooks Menston park. Our kitchen and bedroom windows look over the Wharfe Valley to the hills beyond.

The fine weather means we can have the windows open night and day. The dawn chorus, usually spoiled by passing motor vehicles or planes from the airport, can be enjoyed and the air coming through open windows is noticeably cleaner. We are in no hurry to go back to things as they were.

We do miss our walks, close to home through the park, around High Royds, down Bleachmill Lane, on the Chevin, and further afield on the moors. Fifty times back and forth across our sitting room, just about 1km, is not quite the same!

The problem with the current war is that the enemy is silent, hidden until it strikes you, but in other respects the problem has similarities to what many people endured in WWll.

I’m old enough to remember the whole family sleeping in a cage (Morrison shelter?). I think this was close to the Fleet Air Arm base at Sandbanks, Dorset, where my grandfather was some high-ranking officer. The shelter was in the cellar (my maternal grandmother refused to sleep in it, remaining outside of it).  Also, the sight of rows of houses without their front walls, revealing the lives of the former residents like dolls’ houses with their fronts open except the baths were hanging down on the lead drainage pipes, remains clearly in my memory. As does the sound of the air raid siren, which unusually sounded like a baby crying. I was then about 3 years old!

We’re also lucky to have wonderful neighbours; the young couple in the upstairs flat, Grace and Phil, knocked on our door well before the call went out generally for volunteers, asking if they could help. Since then they have done our shopping. We had other offers too.

We’re lucky in other ways. So-called social media means we’re not so cut off as we might have been. Petronela works on lesson plans and keeps up regularly with her teacher colleagues and her parents in Romania with video chats. I have more time to write, as a keen blogger (https://grumpytyke.com) with ‘friends’ in many other countries (over a dozen), as a member of our Menston based writers’ club – Writing on the Wharfe – which continues to ‘meet’ through video chats on Messenger, or just for enjoyment.

We are not complaining. We know many are in a worse situation than us, for many reasons.

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Final word

If I ever had faith in our present Government, not only for tackling the covid-19 pandemic but in general, that’s completely gone now. The continued support by the Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Dominic Cummings is ridiculous and, as implied in my question in a recent post, if this ‘adviser’ is essential for this Government to govern then who is actually governing?

It seems to me that we are being ‘governed’ by an unelected person whose main attribute seems to be an ability to win elections (and lie). As a former communications consultant I say he has no idea about truly communicating, certainly not the truth; I could do a better job even now, in my dotage!

The PM says he want to move on; the quickest way to have done that would have been to get rid of this dubious ‘adviser’. It still is.

This is not my final word; my final word will be a letter to my local MP Philip Davies.

 

Décima: celebrating a birthday which changed my life

This Saturday we are ‘celebrating’ the 5th birthday of our writers’ club, Writers on the Wharfe (now ‘virtual’ of course). Formation of the club was life-changing for me although for most of my working life I was writing for a living. It’s a good time I think to reflect on my ‘writing’ journey.

I’d rarely tried to write fiction or a ‘poem’ before the club (other than haiku and those were usually linked to a photograph in what I called ‘picture haiku’). I can think of only a couple of very short stories.

Restricted forms

Those who’ve been following me for a while will know that when I try to write I often prefer a tightly restricted format, like an English sonnet, an acrostic, haiku or even, with prose, writing to an exact length, eg 100 words or even 25 words, or some self-imposed restriction like in my recent post when I tried to ‘make’ a character in 20 sentences or less.

I cannot force myself to sit down and write, though that was never a problem as a journalist. So, although in the writers’ club we are usually given a theme about which to write for the next meeting I now rarely follow this.

I gave up attempting haiku when I decided good haiku were not possible except probably in Japanese, as I explained here. But my real journey into ‘restricted poems’ began after an hour with ‘eyup poet’ Matt Abbot on a barge in Leeds on the Leeds-Liverpool canal.

The décima

Vicente Espinel

So, I was excited to discover a new-to-me restricted form, the décima. It was created in Spain in the 16th century by Vicente Espinel, born in Ronda in 1550. Like haiku, it was often used in a ‘conversation’ between two poets, one answering the other’s décima with another décima. However, like haiku, the décima was created for a different language and a different culture so those written in English can never be quite right.

Even more exciting was the discovery that, set to music, there are competitions in Puerto Rica where the décimas are composed ‘on the spot’ to a given theme. How they are able to do that is just amazing. However, just as rhyming poetry is easier in Romanian because of the grammar, the décima is possibly a bit easier in Spanish as two written syllables are sometimes voiced as one. On the other hand, the interchangeability of eg,‘don’t’ and ‘do not’ in English can make achieving the syllable count easier.

In an attempt to make the occasion ‘special’ I’ve attempted to write two on the theme ‘birthday’, one by my alter ego answering that from ‘me’.

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Birthday

I’m celebrating a birthday
A truly golden day for me
My start in fiction as you’ll see
A few false ‘haiku’ on the way
Even ‘tankas’ kept boredom at bay
But then came someone, she’s crazy
A sylphlike figure far from lazy.
Dark tales left, came a writers’ club
First coffee shop then kind of pub.
Ruxandra is now boss; rules are hazy.

Alter ego’s response

Well, I’m grumpy tyke it seems
Even hazy rules bring rebel
A milder revolt than Bebel,
I often don’t follow the themes
I tend just to follow my dreams
I’ve done it today yet again
Not today’s ‘Isolated Brain’,
The set theme for why I don’t know.
Having considered I said “NO!”
Adopting ‘Birthday’ kept me sane.

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If you haven’t worked it out from my efforts, the décima is a poem of ten lines each with eight syllables, the rhyming plan being ABBAACCDDC.

There’s more info on:
https://dversepoets.com/2016/04/21/form-for-allmeeting-the-bar-decima/
from which I took most of my information. There’s also an example of a competition with sung décima in Puerto Rica.

More information about formation of the writers’ club at:

https://wp.me/pkm0h-NI

 

Poetry ‘collection’ launch; a delightful surprise

Poet KMHerbert – Kayla – at the launch

Writers and other artists talking about their works, graduates in English literature (even professors!), or critics, analysing novels and poetry, usually just irritate me; I long ago gave up going to ‘an evening with … ‘ at the Ilkley Literature Festival (or reading blog posts with a similar theme – though there are rare exceptions – just a couple of women blogging writers). Usually so much self-indulgent, pretentious claptrap from others!

This probably stems from my experience with Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. I first read it at seven years old and loved it. Eight or nine years later it was the set book for my English Literature GCE ‘O’ level; the analysis over a year ruined it for me and I have not been able to read it since. Of course I failed the exam. Fortunately I didn’t need it but ‘O’ level English Language was no problem and that was handy to have when I changed career course from science to journalism.

A surprise

Sussi Louise Smith – Sussi – at the launch

It was a delightful surprise when I attended the launch of a ‘collection’ of poems and illustrations by two members of our writers’ club – Writing on the Wharfe – this week. Far from irritating me, the ‘presentations’ had me enthralled – K.M.Herbert (Kayla) explaining some of the motivation behind her poems and Sussi Louise Smith (Sussi) showing clearly the emotions aroused by the poems and carried through into her illustrations.

Kayla is Canadian, Sussi is Danish, but both have lived in Yorkshire for a while.

Here’s what I wrote on our writers’ club Facebook page the following morning:

”So glad I made it to Kayla’s and Sussi’s launch last night. A fascinating evening to have a little of the creative process of two of our ‘collective’ of talented artists explained and such openness about the emotions driving the writing of Kayla’s poems over a five year period and Sussi’s reaction to them, inspiring her wonderful illustrations.

“Anyone who knows me will know that I generally don’t react well to writers and other artists explaining their thought processes – usually so much pretentious b……. – but Kayla and Sussi took us on a wonderful journey through the ‘collection’ of 12 poems and illustrations ‘Between the Spaces’.

“The chosen medium, a set of postcards, Kayla’s poem on one side, Sussi’s illustration on the other, was inspired.

“You can order a set at:  www.kmherbert.com”

The setting for the launch was perfect too: surrounded by books in the intimacy of  Ilkley’s The Grove Bookshop.

Just one poem and illustration

I cannot choose a favourite poem nor illustration now, possibly never, it’s been difficult enough to separate out just one, but here is one of Kayla’s shortest fills of the spaces in her life over five years and Sussi’s illustration for it.

PS. If you see an advertisement in the middle of this post it has nothing to do with me. I do not, of course, object to WordPress putting an ad at the end of a post as I’m not willing to pay to get rid of them. But messing up a bloggers’ carefully constructed posts with advertisements in the middle is unacceptable. Much as I like most aspects of WordPress after using it for about a decade I’ll have to look for an alternative.

Worse, the ads are usually completely inappropriate; the latest is for a military video game. I object strongly to such a game being associated with my blog. I do not play video games, I don’t believe many of my followers will play video games either. 

 

Where have so many WordPress bloggers I followed gone?

I’ve never aimed to post every day so none of my blogs were intended to be a daily journal of my life. In fact, reading other bloggers and perhaps (usually) commenting on them was always more important to me.

Maintaining three WordPress blogs

The little Sony delivers amazing quality for its size, acquired mainly for ‘blipfoto’, with one of my favourite classic camera marques but with the tools of my first love

For those of you who do not know, at one time I maintained three personal blogs: this one, one for my interest in photography (particularly about classic cameras and film photography) and an ‘alternative’ site for the village in which I live.

Having decided some time ago not to maintain posting on the village blog and circumstances dictating rare posting on the photography blog, coupled with missing some bloggers I used to enjoy a lot, today I decided to see what the situation with the bloggers I ‘follow’ is.

Missing ‘followed’ bloggers

49 have not posted for 2 years or more. I wonder what happened to them. There was not a final post saying “I’m stopping posting on the blog, because ….”, as far as I know, not one; of course I did do a ‘final’ post on the village site announcing my intention to stop posting and giving the reasons.

So most of those I followed who have not posted for two years I have now  ‘unfollowed’ but a few I particularly liked I’ve continued to follow in the hope they may reappear.

For myself, my first love being writing, I’ll continue to post on this blog, which is more suitable for longer posts, including those about my short stories or ‘poems’.

But, more suitable for a photo with a short text, or even no text, blipfoto has a wonderful supportive community and having met a challenge from a blogger friend, to reach 300 ‘blips’ by Christmas Day, I’m going to make a big effort to ‘blip’ more frequently – my target is at least once a week.

And, I might just try to post now and then on my photo blog – grumpytykepix – particularly as I’ll now allow more digital pix among any on film which I’m now able to do.

 

 

Editing photos & video from our Ilkley Literature Festival ‘performance’

The inevitable ‘group photo’ after the performance – l to r: Jo, Sam, me, Kayla, Ruxandra, James, David, Bob, Johm, Martin and Sussi

Youtube videos – over the past few days I’ve gained a lot of admiration for those who seem to roll them out regularly. Earlier I’d done a little editing of photos from our ‘performance’ at the Ilkley Literature Festival for my previous blog post. A doddle! But editing video is something else, for me.

Wanting to put titles, end credits, etc on the just over an hour of our writers’ club ‘performance’ at the Festival, I discovered I’d forgotten much of how to use my graphics program and video editor (2 years or more since I used them). An added complication was that one contribution to our ‘show’ (the first in order of appearance) had been entered into a competition for which rules state no previous publication or broadcast, so I had to take that out before making it ‘public’. Another cut had to be made for another reason so I had to work out how to make this not too ugly.

Superb flamenco guitar

If you appreciate superb guitar playing (Samuel Moore) it’s worth watching the video (our complete ‘performance’, with writers, lasted just about an hour).

Some good short stories

If you’re a writer you may enjoy our club writers reading their own pieces. If you want to avoid me reading mine (published in my previous post) I’m now ‘first up’ in the video as the first on the night has been cut at the writer’s request.

Of course I use only free programs, open source or those offering free basics but the possibility to pay for advanced facilities, which I do not. When in paid employment I used Adobe programs like Indesign, Photoshop and occasionally Illustrator, but I never needed to edit videos.

Scribus and NCH VideoPad

The graphics/publishing program I use now, Scribus, is excellent but rather quirky and with a steep learning (relearning) curve. Much the same can be said of the the video editor, NCH VideoPad. What I didn’t expect was the 2 hours 20 minutes to convert the VideoPad file (for a video of just over one hour) to something suitable for uploading to Youtube (.mp4). Maybe that’s down to my ancient MacBook. Even less expected was the 4+ hours to upload to Youtube (finally I went to bed and left it to it so it could have been much longer).

 

Winding up for Ilkley Literature Festival

After rehearsal last Saturday. Full caption on the village website

Winding myself up for next Saturday’s ‘performance’ at the Ilkley Literature Festival, including promoting as much as I can. I even put a link on my now almost unused Facebook and resurrected my ‘alternative village website’ on which I haven’t posted for over a year.

I won’t post my contribution until after the event – I think I’ll have to ‘translate’ my ‘Yorkshire dialect’ before posting.

There’s more information on the resurrected village site, if you want it.

https://wp.me/p3LVH3-1MU

 

 

Another wee wander in Wharfedale – Otley Chevin

My post of a few days ago was about wandering a little further up the Wharfe Valley than where we live. The final picture in the gallery in that post showed Otley Chevin, at the foot of which nestles our village – Menston. Sunday turned out to be a surprisingly lovely day, fairly cold and a brisk breeze but good for a walk though rather muddy.

Just below the summit, but on the other (east) side is our local airport, the highest in England, in fact I believe the highest in the UK (though there are certainly higher airfields) – Leeds Bradford International Airport. So a walk on the Chevin means you are often ‘buzzed’ by aircraft, more usually landing. You are now often ‘buzzed’ too by that magnificent bird, the Red Kite, though yesterday he didn’t come close enough for a good picture (first pic in gallery). We often see a pair, circling over the village, from our kitchen or sitting room windows.

We often climb up half way on ‘our side’ to the Chevin Inn but yesterday we chose to take the car to the top (5 minutes or so) and walk from there. Not a very long walk, but we were out for about two hours. The final picture is on the road descending to our village, always a welcome sight when I was working in York as I was just a few minutes from home.

 

A wee wander in wonderful Wharfedale

Paul Hudson, for those not in the BBC ‘Look North’ tv area, is the much maligned weather forecaster. The stone probably is more reliable!

Yesterday (Tuesday) was one of those wonderful Yorkshire days which hauled itself out of the gloom of the majority of days here this winter to show a part of Yorkshire at its beautiful best. I’m lucky enough to live in the Wharfe Valley but beautiful as it is where we live a day like that cries out for a wander further afield, heading towards Upper Wharfedale.

We didn’t go far, lingering a while in the village of Appletreewick, passing Bolton Abbey, crossing the River Wharfe by the side of the Barden Tower to arrive in this wonderful traditional Yorkshire village. It has two pubs, one of which is not open so often but the other, the Craven Arms, a historic inn, has always been open when we visited and no exception today.

Excellent beer and, new to me, Appletreewick cider, brewed in the village I understand. Cider is Petronela’s usual drink so if she says it’s good it’s good. I had a taste and can back that up but I couldn’t resist one of my favourite Yorkshire beers – Theakston’s ‘Old Peculier’, a really tasty dark beer but very strong so only 1 pint if you’re driving. The food is good too and we’d usually have a soup but as the soup of the day was something with goats’ cheese, Petronela will not eat anything with goat or lamb, we passed on that this time. We had brought food with us – schnitel (chicken breast) and pork pie so no problem.

I’ve tried to put the gallery in order of time from leaving home till arriving back, taking a circular tour around part of the River Wharfe, through Ilkley to Barden, crossing the river to the north side there and traversing Appletreewick to reach Burnsall then crossing back across the river at that pretty village to return on the south side to Barden again then up over Barden moor, descending towards Skipton in Airedale before turning again to pick up the Wharfe again at Bolton Abbey till home in our village of Menston.

Ten minutes from leaving home, about to descend into Ilkley past the Cow&Calf rocks

Barden Tower

Entering Appletreewick

Down the hill through the village …

… to the “ancient inn”, the Craven Arms

Skipton advertises itself as ‘Gateway to the Dales’. The Craven Arms at Appletreewick is …

Great menu though we did not eat this time

Real working gas lights, one on each side of the entrance, must be worth a shot

Here’s one of them

Shall I stoke the fire? (no need, great outside today!)

Now where’s that drink. A rare pic of P and me together, thanks to a friendly waitress

Cheers! Note the sign for fishing tickets. The Wharfe is one of the best fly fishing rivers in the country.

Petronela’s happy with a pint of Appletreewick cider

!

Leaving the village

Descending into Burnsall to cross the river on the packhorse bridge

Tearooms in Burnsall

A Wharfe meander near Burnsall

River Wharfe

Another packhorse bridge – no packhorses now

Barden Tower from the other side

A climb over Barden moor

Barden moor, our most recent moorland walk, about 1/2 hour in the car from home

Then down to Embsay, close to Skipton

On the small road from Embsay to Bolton Abbey there’s a farm with, probably, thousands of sheep. Herding them into the shed on the left, presumably for lambing

Nearly home, 10 minutes to go

Entering our village, tucked under ‘Otley Chevin’. When I worked in York that road over the top was the first part of my route

 

Wonderful winter walk – to Bleachmill, Menston

Bleachmill house

A perfect day to meander down to Bleachmill House, our favourite short walk from our village, Menston in the Wharfe Valley, one of Yorkshire’s beautiful dales. ‘Icing on the cake’ is a mug of tea with extraordinary friends Sue and Simon in their ‘farmhouse kitchen’ and the crazy “very free-range” chickens, picking up some “very free-range eggs” before we left.

Having baked Yorkshire teacakes earlier Sue was just about to make a lemon drizzle cake. So too early – dammit; it’s one of my favourites! No cake but the usual laughs which will last me at least a week.

Sorry I couldn’t get a shot with Sue facing the ‘camera’

No need for more words. I hope the pictures, all taken on iPad except for Petronela’s pic of me delighting in a robin singing his heart out high in a tree, say enough.

 

A superb Sunday walk

Today is going to be full of chores so it’s a good opportunity to post something about our walk yesterday, our favourite short walk around our village of Menston. Cold with a biting wind coming up the valley but a  beautiful sunny day. I had hoped to catch Petronela’s namesake but she refused to play and hid herself somewhere in the bushes.

When we arrived Sue our friend was preparing Sunday lunch so we had a wonderful ‘catchup’ sitting in her cosy farmhouse-style kitchen while she peeled potatoes. Her son and his lady have just moved in while they renovate the barn next door to be their home (it’ll take a year) so we made new friends too. P enjoyed chatting with him, also a teacher, while I enoyed chatting with his lady (who said “of course”?). My camera for some reason refused to play ball too so unfortunately no pix of Sue or her offspring (man of the house Simon had lost himself in ‘the garden’) but I must at sometime do a post on this amazing couple, who always have us laughing. P was still giggling about one episode in bed last night!