A View (A Good Few Miles) From The Greenhouse; Cancel Culture….innit?

The year rolls on, it doesn’t seem two minutes since I was setting the tomato seed and it’s now only five weeks until Christmas Day! Where on earth does all that time go? There’s less and less to do in the greenhouse, not that I really mind, as it means I can spend a little more time on my other “hobbies”, one of which is taking grainy photos, from the wall of Wet Sleddale reservoir, of the chimneys at Shap limestone crushing plant/cement works. If you’ve ever driven into the northern hinterlands along the M6 and wondered what this blot (the chimneys, not Shap itself) on the landscape was, now you know.

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and, as usual, I got a little bit spoiled. Three gifts deserve honourable mention, An Opinel sharpening steel (to replace the twenty year old one that’d become as dull as a Keir Starmer speech), a book which I’m eagerly anticipating getting around to reading if I can ever find the time entitled “The Walker’s Guide To Outdoor Clues And Signs” by Tristan Gooley and a ticket for a “Sunrise” photography trip on one of the Ullswater steamers. The steel got put to good use almost immediately and the day for the trip arrived sooner than anticipated. The two days preceding the trip had dawned fair, if a little cloudy and anticipation was high. As you may have already guessed, it didn’t just rain on Thursday the 9th of November, the heavens opened up and stayed open, apart from a couple of ten minute windows, for the whole of the voyage. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, because I quite like being on the water, but when you set out to get a picture or two of the sunrise, you at least expect it to actually make an appearance!

TBF, it’d be churlish of me to pretend the sun didn’t actually rise on the 9th, because it did and I at least got a decent shot of the effect it had on the clouds. Friday the 10th deliver one of the most stunning sunrises I’ve seen in this part of the world for many a year. You know that old saying; “It’s better to be born lucky than handsome”? It’s true.

I’ve mentioned Dave (geologist Dave) on more than one occasion previously but I don’t think I’ve mentioned the fact he regularly turns up to “Beer and Bullshit” Tuesdays with either a piece of rock, a mineral sample of some kind and even the odd fossil, a month or so ago he brought in some samples he’d collected on a trip to Elba, back in the 1990’s, along with the itinerary for his trip and even his hotel bill, still priced (very reasonably) in lira, how the Italians must wish they still had their own currency to help regulate their own economy, eh? This last week he brought in an Ammonite fossil, between 160 and 200 million years old, captured in Jurassic shale rock. People think all that old men talk about in pubs is immigration, political corruption, how vacuous “celebrity” culture is, how poor the weather is, how bad the sheep trading business is, how nobody under thirty’s ever had it so good, how “diverse” (hence rubbish) our sports teams are and why you can no longer have your second pint in the same glass you drank the first one from. Clearly, they’re wrong, we talk about rocks too and how they aren’t as big, hard or metamorphic as they used to be, back in our day.

One of the jobs I have been meaning to get around to is giving the established vine a good hard pruning. I had been waiting for all the leaves to fall, which, according to the “experts” is the clearest proof the vine’s dormant, but a quick inspect didn’t reveal any significant new growth at all, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I’ll keep an eye on it, hopefully I haven’t gone in too soon, but I’m guessing, so long as any new growth that does come isn’t allowed to become established it should be fine. Fingers crossed!

I’ve been on a couple of decent walks in recent weeks, one of them took me to Wansfell, which sits above Ambleside, some twenty miles south of where I live. A drive over Kirkstone Pass is just one of the joys involved in visiting this part of the Lake District and its hills. Baystones is the highest point on this particular fell and it’s also the “Wainwright” for those interested in such things, but there are three summits, Baystones, Wansfell itself and Wansfell Pike. It was Remembrance Sunday and I’d recently refreshed my memory about three of my great uncles who’d died in World War One. Two of them had been half brothers of my Grandad Joe, who were both under twenty when they were killed in action, but the most poignant story surrounds my great uncle Ernest, the eldest brother of my grandad Wilf (my dads dad). Ernest had joined the KOYLI’s at the outbreak of war as a twenty three year old. During his service he rose through the ranks from private to Company Quarter Master Sergeant. He was wounded in action and died of his injuries on November the 11th 1918, he was posthumously awarded The Military Medal for “bravery in the face of the enemy”. As we left Wansfell, heading for the Pike, we could see a group of people already there (about a mile or so away), one of them had unfurled a large Palestinian flag. I don’t know what I might have said or done, had he or she still been there when I arrived, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t have been a hearty “Good Morning”.

Friday last saw me head out to Wet Sleddale reservoir to join the fellow members of my camera “club” for a walk and to take some pictures. These fortnightly excursions are generally good mornings out, the guy who coordinates it generally takes us to places that offer a range of opportunities to take pictures of different things and to either try new, or attempt to perfect, photography techniques. I got lost in the fog and was lucky to get out of the track side bog with nothing worse than a very muddy car and a bit of a red face to show for it, but that’s another story. It’s off the beaten track alright, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable a place to visit, especially if you’re lucky enough to arrive there just as the mist’s lifting off the water. Like a lot of the infrastructure in Britain, it’s seen better days, but that just adds to the charm.

Cancel culture doesn’t exist, as every “Progressive” talking head and “Left Wing” media apparatchik will continue to tell you, so I can’t help but comment on the reaction to Nigel Farage taking the filthy lucre (a reputed £1.5 million) for a stint in the “celebrity jungle”. A not inconsiderable number of people have lost their collective minds over it and they’re going to make sure, by boycotting the ITV, Ant & Dec, Aldi, Boots, Unilever and Coca Cola (amongst others) that the producers of the show (something I’ve never watched beyond the odd clip) remove “the failed politician, Brexit architect, far-right, racist, fascist, homophobic, Nazi Islamaphobe” from our screens, they’re going to let everyone know just what righteous and freedom loving people they are. Social media’s rife with lists of advertisers, posted by people who don’t watch the show, demanding ACTION. I’m guessing that, at weekends, some of these same people can be found marching through London, chanting such inanities as “From the river to the sea”, when they aren’t even aware of which sea they’re talking about, or even on top of a Lake District fell, using the flag of a tiny “country” they couldn’t even find on a map, to signal their boundless virtue. What a bunch of wet blankets we have infesting our country, trying to impose their prejudices on people who couldn’t give a single flying fart where they shop or which telly box shows they watch. For my part, and even though I have a bit of an old mans crush on her, I’m going to continue to boycott The Grauniad and “Master Chef-The Professionals”, until such time as food writer and critic Grace Dent’s forced out of the show. I’ll bet, for all her cultivated “northern-ness” she’s a right old Liberal, It simply shouldn’t be allowed!
 

© Colin Cross 2023