George

Stained glass window in St George's Hall, Liverpool

Today is St George's Day. He is the patron saint of England. I have written about him before.

As far as I am concerned, St George has nothing to do with England. He was chosen as our patron saint by King Edward III (1312-1377). Apparently,  St George seemed to represent the ideal of chivalry but even in Edward III's time he was a semi-mythical character.

He never visited England and may have been a Roman military leader, mostly based in the eastern region of modern Turkey. His life story is uncertain. There are many half-truths and theories but for the life of me I cannot understand why he gained his legendary status. He was venerated in various parts of the middle east and of course the nation of Georgia is named after him. He is also the patron saint of Catalonia in Spain.

England deserves a saint from these islands  - pure and simple. If we can have a referendum about leaving The European Union we can surely have a referendum on who should be our patron saint. My money would be on Saint Cuthbert (634 - 687). He was  a real man  who did a lot of good in his lifetime and became  The Bishop of Lindisfarne. He is buried in Durham Cathedral.

I have devised a voting slip to be printed off and posted back by English people only. We don't want any Americans, Australians, Canadians, Irish, Germans, New Zealanders, Swedes, Welsh or Scots deciding who the replacement Patron Saint of England should be:-

The United States of America do not have a proper patron saint so it is about time those folks chose one. I would like to nominate Saint Barack after the 44th president or Saint Bob after Bob Dylan. Both would surely be very acceptable but being a limey I guess it is not really my place to even make a suggestion.

Ripper

In relation to my "Missing" blogpost in which I focused partly on The Yorkshire Ripper's marital home in Bradford, I received the following comment from Debbie Williams:-

"In 1980 I'd just started studying at Sheffield University. I still remember the fear we felt as The Ripper had murdered a student at Leeds University. The student union organised transport to take us back to our halls of residence and my parents paid for taxis, rather than let me walk home. We were jubilant and so relieved when Peter Sutcliffe was caught, frightening close to the University campus. Looking back, I wonder if Sutcliffe would have been caught sooner if most of his victims hadn't been prostitutes?"

I remember that time very well. I had joined a Workers Educational Association course in creative writing in The University of Sheffield's Arts Tower. There were posters on every floor urging women to take their safety seriously. Don't go home alone/Take taxis at night etc.. And this was all because  of the terror that The Ripper was causing.

It affected my wife Shirley who was a young hospital nurse at the time.  Fortunately, she had a little car to bring her home but various levels of anxiety were experienced by all female hospital workers whose shift patterns meant they often left work  at nighttime.

Throughout his deadly campaign, there had never been a known attack  here in Sheffield. Nearly all of his unfortunate victims were bludgeoned to death up in  West Yorkshire - Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield and Halifax. He killed thirteen women and severely injured several others.  One of his survivors recalled him shouting, "Filthy prostitute!" as he struck her.

The fear  in Sheffield was pretty strong even though nobody had been attacked here but up in Bradford and Leeds  the levels of fear must have been off the scale. Female university students had been targeted in addition to prostitutes whose lives are just as precious anyway.

The Yorkshire Ripper was finally captured by accident in a dark office car park off Melbourne Avenue just  a mile and a half from this  keyboard. It was January 2nd 1981 and he had driven  24 year old Olivia Reivers  there. He had his trademark ball-pein hammer in the boot (American: trunk) of his car.  Whatever might have been about to happen was stopped by a pair of policemen slowly cruising down the avenue  in a squad car.  They did a vehicle check  and discovered that Sutcliffe's car was displaying false number plates. He was promptly arrested. 

The next day one of those police officers returned to the arrest scene and found the hammer in  bushes where The Ripper had been allowed to urinate before being taken to the local police station. Then, thankfully, the clues were joined up and after forty eight hours Sutcliffe admitted who he was.

Sutcliffe and Sonia on their wedding day in 1974

Quiztime

Okay. It's time for another quiz with your genial host and quizmaster Mister Yorrrrrrrrkshire Pudding! (Sound of riotous applause and stomping of feet). Grinning like a Cheshire cat, he steps up to the microphone in his gold lamé suit and purple dickie bow.

"Good evening quizzers! Let's not hang about. It's time for "Quiz Time"! And for tonight's quiz, the theme is food! After all, we all eat food don't we? And looking at tonight's audience I would say that some of us eat too much of it!  (Gales of laughter) Food is something that all human beings have in common.":-

⦿

1. With which staple food do you associate these names  - basmati, arborio & jasmine?

2. No British Sunday roast is complete without a pudding made from plain flour, milk and an egg or two but after which English county is that pudding named?

3. In 2002, Donald Trump appeared in a TV commercial for a particular fast food company, but which one was it?  (a) Taco Bell    (b) KFC   or (c) McDonalds

4. Which farm animal do both Jews and Muslims refuse to eat according to their holy laws?

5. Jambalaya is made from cooked rice, vegetables and meat but with which southern American state would you mostly associate this creole/cajun dish?

6. Shaped like little wagon wheels, rotelle is a form of which staple Italian food?

7. Zwiebelkuchen is a savory onion cake made of steamed onions, diced bacon, cream, and caraway seeds on either a yeast or leavened dough but with which European country do you associate  Zwiebelkuchen?

8. What is this berry fruit called? (see picture)

9. What is the main ingredient in hummus?

10. Coq au vin is a traditional French dish from the Burgundy region. Which colour wine is nearly always used in traditional recipes for this dish?

⦿

As usual, answers are given in the Comments section. How did you do?

Missing

It's easy to miss things. 

Last Friday, when I visited Bradford, I was very close to the house shown at the top of this blogpost. It was the marital home of one of Britain's most infamous mass murderers - Peter William Sutcliffe whose tabloid nickname was The Yorkshire Ripper. He killed at least thirteen women and was at large between 1969 and 1981. He terrorised the north of England until he was caught here in Sheffield in January 1981.

He married Sonia Szuma in 1974 and a few years later they were able to buy the house on Garden Lane in the Heaton district of Bradford.  I understand that Sonia  Sutcliffe, at the age of 74,  still lives in that house.  It may seem ghoulish I know but I would have liked to walk down Garden Lane to snap a picture of my own. The image at the top was snipped from Google Streetview.

It is tempting to wonder what drove Peter Sutcliffe to commit his terrible acts. So much has been written about him but when it comes to motivation a lot of the verbiage is pure speculation - guesswork. Sonia was a respectable primary school teacher but nearly all of The Ripper's victims were prostitutes. The couple never had any children though Sonia suffered an unknown number of miscarriages.  At some stage she was judged by health services to be impaired by paranoid schizophrenia. 

After this past Wednesday's visit to Barnsley, I realised I had missed something else and was reminded of this by blog chum Dave in County Cork, Ireland. It wasn't a murderer's house I had missed but the statue of a boy from a novel holding a kestrel.

The novel concerned is "Kes" or "A Kestrel for a Knave"  by the late Barry Hines. The hero he created in that book was a teenage boy called Billy Casper - born into an obscure and challenging life on a Barnsley social housing estate. Billy had nothing going for him but he managed to train a young kestrel. I sometimes say that if you want to understand the real England you should read "Kes". The statue is located on Cheapside in Barnsley. I must have been within twenty five yards of it.

So frustrating. I can see that another day trip to Barnsley will be required.

Babies

Babies may be notorious for crying but they also love to laugh. They laugh at the silliest things and of course because they are babies that laughter is not pretentious. It's 100% genuine. 

There are plenty of compilation videos of baby laughter over at YouTube. If you are feeling down or blue and  need  a bit of cheering up, perhaps those videos would be just the ticket. Doctors could potentially stop prescribing anti-depressant tablets and just recommend laughing baby videos instead.

In this area of hilarity, babies probably have an advantage over adults in that they wear nappies (American:diapers) so that when the laughter causes temporary loss of bladder control, those babies will not be embarrassed but adults - well, that's another story.

 

Oddballing

Inspired by my blogging chum Bruce Oddball in Arizona, today I am simply sharing a bunch of memes - all picked because they are just plain silly and have no serious or political undertones. Bruce  (see above) is the author of "Oddball Observations"  and every Friday he posts his "Friday Funnies" - just for laughs.  I hope you get at least one chuckle from this bunch...

That's all Folks!

Barnsley

 

Barnsley is Sheffield's little brother. It is a town some fifteen miles north of Sheffield and home to 72,000 people. It was at the heart of the South Yorkshire coalfield and so it is very familiar with poverty. Barnsley people have no airs and graces. They are considered to be the salt of the earth and they call a spade a spade.

After leaving the railway station, I strolled to a large open space called Glassworks Square. I swear it wasn't there the last time I was in Barnsley town centre. My eyes were drawn to a statue on the other side of the square so I went over to investigate. 

It was unveiled at the end of 2021 in memory of those who died during the coronavirus epidemic and those who helped. The seven  figures include a little girl, an old man, a volunteer, a nurse, a carer, a police officer and a teacher. I thought it was brilliant but I wish I had hung around to take some better pictures of it than this one...

I was mostly in  Barnsley to "bag"  three specific squares for the Geograph project so I needed to move on. I had about two miles to walk. Below - market stalls in the street with the tower of Barnsley Town Hall beyond...

Barnsley has many old terraced houses in unremarkable  streets like this one - Fife Street...

Not far from Fife Street there are two large public house that would have once allowed hard-working miners and others  to slake their thirsts and spend big chunks of their wages. This is "The Shaw Inn" at the corner of Shaw Street and Racecommon Road...

Below, the date on the parapet tells us that this pub -  "The New Longcar" was opened in 1914 - possibly replacing the old "Longcar". On the side of the pub, the Barnsley Brewery Company is still advertised...

Finally, you might be wondering about the seven foot fish at the top of this blogpost. It's a salmon! It stands outside Sheffield Midland Station  and was commissioned a few years ago to mark the return of salmon to The River Don which was once terribly polluted by industry but finally, through human intervention, the fish came back.