Statistics

Right now as I make this blogpost.

This year worldwide:-

The number of people who have died from corona virus = 3087

The number of people who have died from hunger =  1,899,621

The number of people who have died from HIV/Aids = 285,533

The number of people who have died from malaria =  166,607

The number of people who have died from smoking-related diseases = 849,110

How come people dying from hunger don't attract a fraction of the airtime and newspaper coverage that is being given to the corona virus? Comparatively the numbers speak for themselves. Starkly.

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Remember back on February 4th - 28 days ago, I mentioned that the world's population was 7,762,009,632.

Now it has grown to 7,768,246,725. That is 6,238,000 more people in just 28 days! More people have been added to the world's population than live in Denmark or Norway or Finland or the state of Missouri in the USA or Sydney in Australia.

How come the United Nations and climate change activists hardly ever focus upon Earth's galloping population increase  and the impact of this growth upon the world's finite resources? 

Kelham

Cities are forever changing. Down by The River Don at Kelham Island you will find one of Sheffield's oldest industrial zones. Once those streets echoed with the sound of metal working and the manufacture of cutlery. Later the area entered a long period of abandonment but now it is being re-invented as a rather cool residential area with some trendy bars and restaurants to serve the incoming population.

Fortunately, the old hasn't simply been swept away. It is being incorporated into the neighbourhood as former cutlery works are turned into attractive apartments or offices. Even some of the original cobbles remain in the streets.

I was down there yesterday, mooching about with my camera to hand. It was a lovely, sunny afternoon - a nice antidote to the generally wet and gloomy weather we experienced in February. Though I have taken photos around Kelham Island and Neepsend before, I returned home with some fresh images to edit before sharing.

Kelham Island Basin - View to Keham Island Museum

Mural by Pete McKee

The River Don - Weir by Ball Street Bridge

Celebrities

Celebrities are such wonderful people aren't they? They will do anything for charity. I don't know if it is the same in other countries but here in Britain our celebrities are always raising money for various charities. 

Very kindly they appear on TV quiz shows that then have no need for recruiting ordinary people as contestants. At the end of each show the celebrities tell us the names of their favourite charities. The celebrities may get their expenses paid and of course they achieve extra TV exposure but these factors are purely incidental.

We have one celebrity show called "I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" in which a plane load of celebrities are flown to Australia to spend a couple of weeks in a jungle encampment. They have various tasks to perform called "bush tucker trials" in which they face snakes or spiders and munch upon grubs and animal genitalia to win stars for the other celebrities back in the camp. The celebrities have a jolly old time and in the end one of them is voted King/Queen of The Jungle. The calls of the telephone voting public raise money for charity as we watch the celebrities having fun.

Recently a random bunch of British celebrities were going to be flown out to Mongolia to trek across a frozen lake but the expedition was cancelled at the last minute because of concerns about coronavirus. Instead, the celebrity circus headed for The Namib Desert in Africa to perform a very different trek. And it was all for charity. The cost of cancelling the original project and the transport costs to Namibia were again purely incidental.

I have got a new idea for a celebrity fundraiser called "Seven Continents in Seven Weeks". It's quite simple really. The celebrities head for Heathrow Airport and are then flown business class to Las Vegas in North America. They stay at The Bellagio Hotel and get to visit The Grand Canyon and Death Valley.

Then they are flown to South America where they participate in the big Carnival in Rio de Janeiro before riding with gauchos across The Pampas of Argentina and heading down to Tierra del Fuego to do some penguin and whale watching.

Next it's on to Antarctica to spend a few days with The British Antarctic Survey, learning more about climate change and marine life beneath the ice sheets.

After this the celebrities move on to Australia - attending a charity concert headed by The Rolling Stones in Sydney Opera House before learning to surf at Bondi Beach. Then it's on to Asia, including an early morning visit to The Taj Mahal and a helicopter flight to the summit of Mount Everest - weather permitting.

Next the celebrities move on to Africa to endure a wildlife safari in The Masai Mara National Park in Kenya before heading back to Europe and a restful sojourn in The Isles of Greece, learning to dance like Zorba the Greek to exotic balalaika music.

As I say, celebrities are wonderful people who do so much for charity but some will not be tough enough to complete the demanding "Seven Continents in Seven Weeks" challenge as outlined above. Still, if they remind themselves that it is all in the name of charity perhaps a few celebrities will come up to the plate. Afterwards, one or two of them might write books about the challenge and secure magazine and newspaper interviews too. Celebrities are special people and I am sure that we ordinary mortals will be happy to fund their selfless intercontinental charity work. 

Cults

Something quite sinister is going on. In the past few years, I have become increasingly aware of a secret cult to which many thousands now subscribe. Well, I suppose it is not entirely secret as the adherents boldly advertise their allegiance on  items of clothing. Perhaps that is in the rules.

You may have spotted some of these brainwashed people yourself. Somewhere about their persons they will display the legend "The North Face". 

At first I would naively ask them, "Where is The North Face?" but they would sneer or smirk at me, zealously guarding the secret of "The North Face".

I have heard that they gather in large public halls, all bearing their "The North Face" logos, looking up at stages where hazy images of "The North Face" appear with transcendental music and a deep, echoey voice says "Pray bow my people. Pay homage to The North Face. The only place where true happiness reigns."

And as "The North Facers" troop from the hall, they swipe their contactless bankcards over beeping terminals that harvest their spare incomes like barley in late summer.

Perhaps no one knows where "The North Face" is. Probably - like Shangri-La or Eldorado - it is to be found on the edge of things - in the netherworld, just beyond our reach.

I am considering leading a counter-culture called "The South Face". We will drink foaming pints of Tetley's bitter and devour pork pies as we march there - all the way to "The South Face". So near but yet so far. Will you join me?

Winter

Earlier today I went in search of winter and found it in The High Peak south of Sparrowpit. I parked on an unnamed lane that leads to the rim of a huge limestone quarry and to remote Lodes Barn Farm.

There was a bitter arctic wind when I raised Clint's boot (American: trunk) seeking my trusty boots, warm coat, gloves and headgear. It was a relief when I finally donned my woolly Hull City hat and set off on a chilly ramble to a hill named Bee Low.

My bootsteps - heading to Bee Low

I wasn't out there long - little more than an hour. A circular walk would have been close to impossible.

Back in  the Clintmobile I read for a while before heading back towards the hamlet of Wardlow Mires. There's a great cafe there called The Yonderman. I was dreaming of a bacon and egg sandwich and a mug of tea but in the event all they could offer me was a tuna mayo sandwich with salad. The grills had been switched off ready for cleaning at two thirty. Ah well - you can't have everything you want.

Dove Holes Limestone Quarry

And so I left winter in those chilly uplands and returned to the eastern edge of The High Peak hills where Sheffield looks out towards the plains of Lincolnshire. Lincoln green as if springtime was about to join us.

Lodes Barn Farm

Perspective

President Ronald Reagan born in 1911 & Pope John Paul II born in 1920

Like several regular readers of  "Yorkshire Pudding", I was born in the middle of the twentieth century. We were aware of key events and phases in that century seen from different angles - personal, national and international. We had a real sense of what those hundred years meant.

Now we are in a new century. Already twenty years have  gone by. It's interesting to consider what would have happened by now if we were still back in the 1900's.

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Born in the first year of the century, my grandmother Phyllis White is now twenty years old. She remembers working in a munitions factory on the edge of Sheffield at Templeborough. She worked there for two years along with hundreds of other young women. Most men of fighting age were in France or Belgium, participating in a ridiculous war - The "Great" War. What was "great" about it?

It's two years since both of my grandfathers returned from those killing fields. They never met each other but they both fought at The Battle of the Somme and returned to civilian life without physical injury or psychological counselling. No one will ever know what they experienced.

Twenty years ago there were hardly any automobiles. The majority of urban transport depended upon horses. There was horse shit everywhere. Now with World War One over, the age of the horse is fading away with cars, tractors and omnibuses taking over. It's as if there has been a revolution in transport.

Queen Victoria was still on the throne as this century began. Her loathsome playboy son King Edward VII lasted just nine years before the current monarch King George V came to the throne.

The entire nation mourned when the "Titanic" went down in The North Atlantic eight years ago - the same year that Robert Falcon Scott and his polar team met an icy end in Antarctica.

In Malton, North Riding of Yorkshire, my father Philip was born six years ago. He now likes to ride on the family's milk cart around the streets of  the adjacent village of Norton. My mother Doreen will appear  in May of next year in The West Riding of Yorkshire. She will be born into a coal mining family.

Next year someone called Adolf Hitler will become the fuhrer of the German Nazi Party as the German economy continues to nosedive and in two years time archaeologist Howard Carter will enter the sealed tomb of Tutankhamen in The Valley of the Kings.

For five years the English F.A. Cup football competition has not taken place but in May of this year Aston Villa will beat Huddersfield Town in a keenly contested final at Stamford Bridge in London. The Rugby League Challenge Cup will be won by  Huddersfield for the second year running.

This year Pope John Paul II, Isaac Asimov, Mickey Rooney and Ray Bradbury will all be born and in August all American women will theoretically  be entitled to vote in elections though many thousands of black women and indeed black men will still face serious obstacles.

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Yes it is interesting to layer this century upon the last century - to see how far we have come and to give ourselves a clearer view of the passage of time and how years fit together like building blocks. It's called perspective.

Aston Villa FC - Cup winners 1920

Physiognomy

I first encountered the word "physiognomy" in "Wuthering Heights". It is surprising that Emily Bronte was aware of the term and was able to examine it through her fiction. Lord knows how she herself met the word  for she lived a sheltered life in the Yorkshire vicarage at Haworth, next to St Michael and All Angels' Church where her father was the incumbent vicar. 

What does "physigonomy" mean?  It is simply the idea that we can make out someone's inner character or state of mind by observing their facial appearance. It's as if the two are inseparable - what is on the outside and what is on the inside. The belief runs counter to King Duncan's observation in "Macbeth":  "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face."

I think that we are all liable to put too much store in physiognomy and I am no different from anyone else. Perhaps it is human nature to start assessing other human beings as soon as we see them. Typically, we will initially think warmly of smiley fair-haired people with wide blue eyes. Conversely, we will be apprehensive about scowling dark-haired people with the corners of their mouths turned down.

In my life there have been many times when initial assessments have had to be thoroughly revised. That woman you thought was a miserable, depressive soul may turn out to be a happy-go-lucky joker with a heart of gold. Similarly that very together guy, apparently living happily on an even keel may turn out to be dark and suicidal. Things are not always as they seem.

Judgements based on physical appearance are invariably superficial and misleading. We should be wary. "Physiognomy" is a clever-sounding concept but in reality we should not put too much store in it. There is usually much more to other people than first meets the eye and in the end I subscribe to King Duncan's view.