Dear Mum and Dad I carry you in my heart and head for I neither believe and most certainly hope that you not looking down from some heavenly crows-nest
for most of your lives you did not believe either and your latter-day church going was, I think, more social – a way to integrate in the many places you moved to
but your taking us to church not only gave us the choice but sharpened my scepticism into a personal humanist credo according to which I carry you in my heart and head
I thank you, Mum for refusing to teach me to cook reserving that for my sisters and for launching my student cuisine with the gift of a Sabbatier knife and the condescending choice
of “Cooking in a Bedsit” which made me seek out the racier author Elizabeth David sailing round the Med with her married man garnering recipes to change the cooking of a nation
and Dad, though you never took me sailing, you taught me to whip finish a rope and splice an eye to coil a cable neatly and I took pride in your designing a dinghy and slipped into design too
I carry you in my heart and head but I wanted to make concrete these, amongst many things I am grateful you gave me – to put them out into the world just as you birthed and shaped me…
1 – So we are currently on holiday in the Netherlands in which case, this is a TTOT travelogue…
https://youtu.be/ltd34wDpnTE sorry the embed is not working but click the link please to see the massive port of Rotterdam…
2 – Gouda is the nearest city and here is its impressive Town Hall…
3 –
3 – https://youtu.be/B3xx5dH8u0k sorry the embed is not working but click the link please to see a street organ playing the Rolling Stone’s “Satisfaction (I can’t get No…)”
4 – Barbara in handbag heaven! She had purchased a suede handmag some weeks ago and asked me to get some waterproofing spray. I duly sprayed it and thought that the darkening was the wetting effect of the spray – only to find thar, in very fine print, the spray was labelled “Black” – so I owed her a handbag…
5 – After a quick trip to the local supermarket to practise on her new “Boot-Scooter”, Gouda was her first experience of driving round a busy town and she passed with flying colours! Note all the bicycles outside the Library/Cafe… Bicycles often have a separate, parallel road and where they crossover the car roads, each a re traffic-lighted. Families drive bikes with large child pods and youngsters graduate to riding at an early age! This is a country where cycling is truly important…
6 – The Gouda LEGO shop…
7 – Just to prove I know how to take a selfie – still working on the smiling bit… We drove to look at the flower growing area and these are fields of Hyacinths. Whilst buying some tulip bulbs nearby (its a bit too early to see the tulips) the shop owner told us a lot of interesting stuff including the fact that these hyacinths are being grown for the bulbs, not the flowers – so all the flowers in the bicture will be picked and thrown away in order for the bulbs to grow quickly – its still a three year plus project to grow them to a saleable size…
Note the windmill in the background – these windmills are for pumping water, not grinding corn and there is water everywhere, here – all in the process of draining the land (largely below sea-level) and raising the water to higher and higher channels before pumping it into the sea!
Even in the centre of town – nearby Leiden – there is a large windmill for pumping – they are kept working as a backup for the electric pumps – the Netherlands are very flat – we have yet to see a hill – and there is a lot of wind!
8 – Monday we drove to Amsterdam (under an hour away) to visit the Rijksmuseum. We had discovered that the Van Gogh Museum is booked up ten days ahead which was a disappointment, however we did see four Van Goghs in the Rijksmuseum…
The location of the four Van Goghs was marked by a small crowd! Barbara slipped in from the side since she was low enough on the scooter not to get in the crowd’s line of sight!
We also chatted to the Museum Attendant who was full of stories which he was dying to tell but most people ignore him. The small painting in this picture was painted in twenty minutes by Van Gogh while he waited for a friend to join him in visiting the newly opened Rijksmuseum. Also, The painting at left in the crowd picture, is one of the few paintings Van Gogh sold during his lifetime – to his sister.
Not “The Girl With the Pearl Earing” but painted in the same spot, I think, “The Milkmaid” by Vermeer – this was Barbara’s favourite painting. It cost us 50 euros to visit the museum which made us very grateful for the free entry to British Museums (though they are talking about charging tourists in future…).
Sunset from the living room window of the houseboat which is our home for the week…
9 – The A to Z Challenge 2026 started today (April Fool’s Day – perhaps because many participants are wondering why they have let themselves in for this – again!) – ! have got 16 0f the 26 posts in the bag though… https://how-would-you-know.com/all-you-need-to-know-about-weaving/
10 – And we visited Utrecht…
Utrecht’s Dom Tower, the remnant of a cathedral destroyed in a storm in 1674… Needless to say, we did not attempt the 465 steps despite the promise of an unparralel view from the top…
1 – I give thanks today for another years juant around the sun, and at the youthful age of 71, I wonder at the Beatles imagining that 64 (Will you still love me, When I’m sixty-four) was old…
2 – Glad that I checked Barbara’s Passport which, it turns out, expired last March! So on Monday, we have to drive to Liverpool for a ten-minute face to face interview as part of the one-week fast-track passport renewal process so that we mat go on holiday in the Netherlands…
3 – grateful that training on the computer and other processes at the Storage Warehouse that my bosses have opened, turned out to be pretty simple – since they, and all the staff, are Moslem, I will be manning the facility on my own on the 20th March whilst they celebrate Eid. This in fact, the little Eid that marks the end of Ramadan and there is a separate, main Eid celebration at a different time of year.
4 – All local family ar coming over this afternoon for a birthday tea, I am going to serve Skordalia – chickpeas and vegetables, prepared in different ways, boiled, fried etc. and brought together with a sauce comprising Aioli (garlic mayonnaise) enriched with ground almonds and lemon – a treasured recipe from one of the earliest cookbooks I bought whilst still a student – Elizabeth David’s Mediterranean Cookery – I fell in love with her food, herw riting and her…
5 – An American poet friend, Akua Lezli Hope, suggested a collaborative poem idea – to both ask the online I Ching the same question and write a poem based on the answer – done and dusted in under 24 hours – if they get published in my friend Melissa’s online poetry journal Collaborature, I will link you in…
6 – The A to Z writing about Fabrics and Fibres proceeds though I still need to speed up to avoid pantsing it in April…
7 – a photograph taken at the supermarket car par, where the sunset always highlights the Winter tree skeletons…
8 – Melissa asked me to play Crossplay (Scrabble) and we seem to be evenly matched which is always a relief between friends…
9 – Grat for this community…
10 – Dropped an ear-bud right here next to my desk – still not found it, very strange – but glad to discover, through moving things around, that some microscopic creatures are eating the carpet so glad to have caught it before it spreads… Perhaps they ate the ear-bud too…
Have a great week everyone, and don’t forget – this is International Women’s Day…
1 – Here in England, on the BBC, we have a programme called Springwatch – which does what it says on the tin! In my own personal Springwatch, the picture below shows the progress of the daffodils…
These ones must be self-seeded, because I certainly didn’t plant them in this pot of Stargazer Lillies – just beginning to show…
2 – The downside of Spring advancing is that the weeds are also demanding attention – still, Spring is sprung and that’s a grat!
3 – I found time to stop and photograph this elaborate gateway that leads into the lower grounds of Castle Farm ( a Victorian folly castle) and for the poets amongst us, this is of course, a liminal opportunity…
4 – Further along the road, I am grateful to see evidence of the stuff I learned at school and at university – evidence of glaciation – these boulders were plucked from the crag above to become erratics, had they not fallen where they are when the ice melted…
5 – There is a delicate shade of mauve in the trees at the centre of this picture, which is never the colour one imagines naked trees to be…
6 – On my walk to the Doctor’s surgery this morning, I noticed these original railings – fortunate to survive the Second World War when most of their ilk were taken away to melt down for the war effort…
7 – Somehow, the moon seen during the daytime seems to show that we are on a celestial body even more than the nighttime view of it…
8 – Continuing my A to Z writing and research, I came across a blog by a Hawaiian-born, New Zealand Resident – The Dreamstress – who writes about historical fabrics and fashion and even designs historical patterns for you to try – who could resist a design called The Barbara Bum Roll and Support Petticoat…
9 – We have booked a holiday towards the end of March, whence we will drive to Hull, take the night ferry to Rotterdam and spend just over a week on this houseboat which is in the “green heart” of the Netherlands, between Rotterdam, Amsterdam and the Hague… “
10 – The A to Z has reached “I” – I need to speed up but progress is being made…
1 – There is an organisation that runs “Repair Shops” at various local towns hereabouts, and today was Silsden’s turn so I went to investigate and see whether any of my skills might be usefully offered. It is only 3 1/2 hours once a month, and I’m not sure yet whether my specialist painting skills, wood-graining, marbling ets, will be required but first I would have to do a session of shadowing followed by some H & S training – so we shall see…
2 – On my walk down to the Methodist Church where the Repair Shop is held, I saw some signs of Spring advancing…
Daffodils already “swan-necked” at the duck pond…
Nature will force it’s way – Snowdrops coming through a pile of rocks…
3 – See if you can guess what the source this texture shot is…
This is the white stripe of a Zebra Crossing – it’s eroded nature is a reflection of the fact that local councils cannot afford to keep road markings up to scratch…
4 – This is my favourite gravestone amongst all those of our quiet neighbours at the back of our house (upper right) – must have been a musician…
5 – Not sure whether this is a grat or not, on the one hand it shows the resilience of nature, on the other, the roots of this tree might affect our house foundations and the top of the tree is now growing across the view from our kithchen window. When we came back from Crete in 2021 after Covid, we found that someone had taken it upon themselves to cut off the top of this Christmas Tree (originally planted by a neighbour post-Christmas) at the edge of the graveyard behind the house. The truncation did not stop the tree growing and it has put out a new crown which grew 4 feet in just the last year!
6 – On Thursday, I had a major Annual(ish) check by the Environmental Health Officers from Bradford Council which went off okay and afterwards, I went to Skipton which has the nearest Wholefood Shop – to stock up on seeds for the low-carb diet and baking I am on at present. Walking through an area of Skipton I was not familiar with, I took a few snaps…
We have so much history here in Britain, that we are so blasé that this building, embellished with a Royal Crest, does not even have a plaque to say what the building was…
Skipton has many reminders of the importance of the wool trade in the past – some more quirky than others…
7 – The sheep is outside a craft/gallery/antique shop and in the window, was this treadle printing machine which took me back to school where we used a somewhat bigger treadle Heidelberg machine to print school event programmes. This one is still used by the proprietor for a similar purpose.
A side view of the printer with another old printer behind it – also used by the proprietor to make reduction Lino prints…
Also in the shop was a Jones brand antique sewing machine which has a swinging arm bobbin which apparently was a better design than the rotating bobbin promulgated by Singer, however, Singer was more successful as a company so we became stuck with their bobbin design – just saying…
8 – I have almost finished “E” (for Embroidered fabric decoration) in my A to Z – I need to get a move on to be ready for April.
9 – Our rapper grandson is staying for the weekend whilst he does some studio recording in Leeds. Last night we watched the first half of Martin Scorsese’s documentary about Bob Dylan – excellent…
10 – Starting to think about a holiday – possibly to take a car ferry from Hull to Rotterdam and stay in a couple of AiBnB’s in Gouda and perhaps in the coastal lowlands – although it is only a nine hour drive to Copenhagen, hmmm…
1 – We finally had some snow here in the Bradford area – not enough to close the roads as our accountant at work has been hoping for, indeed barely enough to cover my windscreen or even to warrant the name snow – sleet would be nearer lol. Still beware what you wish for, the Beast from the East came in March…
2 – There was a dusting of snow on the hills, however, as you can see in the background of this picture of the Mosque in Bradford, for which I have been the draughtsman for about ten years of its 12 or thirteen years of construction. The building is a purpose built mosque, unlike many in Bradford, which are converted churches, cinemas or large houses. As such, it was designed as a community facility as well as a place of worship and is relatively undecorous (for the sake of economy, since the whole building is built with donations from the congregation). This Islamic star is the exception on the outside of the Mosque and below, one of my contributions – Islamic geometrical, fretwork panels in the main Prayer Hall – they took some drawing up, I can tell you…
3 – I am grateful that uploading images to this page seems, finally, to be working normally – long may it continue…
4 – I haven’t been sharing (or taking) and pictures of textures, which I use, poentially in PhotShop artwork – here are some bubbles…
5 – An inheritance from my late and dear sister, Carol, finally came through courtesy of her partner. I looked up to see if the branch of my bank was open in nearby Keighley, it wasn’t, but the website said I could use the Post Office at the bottom of the road. fine thought I, but the PO told me they no longer dealt with my bank so it meant a drive into Bradford (where it was news to the Customer Assistant that the PO don’t work with their bank) “Oh!” says she “You could have paid that cheque in using the banking app on your phone!” until she realised the cheque was in Euros which meant fetching an A4 quadruplicate document to fill in before handing it and the cheque over the counter. Although the funds won’t clear for a week, I decided to celebrate in a way I knew Carol would have approved of – went straight across the road to Waterstones bookshop, housed in the old Bradford Wool Exchange where I bought
1 Bradford At Work – with details of the mills which will flesh out my A to Z on fabrics and Fibres
2 Depression and How to Get through It
3 a colouring book as a Valentine’s gift for Barabara – Pride and Prejudice
4 Three tiny Van Gogh themed notebooks also for Barbara – since we are both addicted to notebooks…
5 The Chemist, latest release by A.A. Dhand, a local detective story writer – a Sikh who trained as a Pharmacist before turning to writing – gritty…
6 – The former Bradford Wool Exchange is testament to the fact that Bradford, in the 19th Century, had more millionaires than any other city in the world! It is built in High Gothic style – reminiscent of a church and although it has had a large glass box inserted on one side, this has the effect od opening the interior to view. This one for the bookshop lover – you know who you are…
7 – On my way home from the banking expedition, and not being in a hurry, I decided to call in to British Wool – a warehouse I pass on my way to work and through whose open doors, enormous bales of wool can be seen. there are a few survivors and thrivers of the glory days of Bradford’s wool industry, British Wool is a government-controlled cooperative farmers’ organisation to market wool to wholesalers like another Bradford firm – Haworth Scourers. there is also a dyeing firm still operating in Keighley. I had long been interested in drawing together a piece on these survivors and the A to Z gives the perfect opportunity. I rang the bell and two guys came down and we conducted an impromptu interview standing in reception before one of them offered to show me around the factory where each year’s shearing crop ( these days a byproduct of the rearing of sheep for meat) is sorted into upto 90 grades of wool, budled into 8 ton lots and then sold by auction.
So now I have to correct and edit the interview’s AI transcript and it will be available here at some point in April, if not before.
8 – A little light play in the car park in Bradford…
9 – I had another “Bonus” postcard from the Poetry Postcard Festival- the festival which keeps on giving…
10 – The Ten Things of Thankful and all who sail in her…
1 – Although I never know in advance, what I am going to mention here, I am grateful to be of sound, and creative mind and faced with a blank page (screen) I trust that things will come to me.
2 – I was grateful to receive an email from Afshan, an Indian woman who I “met” during the A to Z Challenge 2022 – you can read about her here and I hope she may decide to participate here. Afshan is just one of many lovely people I have met through this blog and keep in touch with…
3 – My Critique Partner Nik shared his 12 in 12 month short story and I have nearly finished my second month’s story to the prompt of “Shuttered” – I will be chatting with Nik later this afternoon (for me) morning in Minneapolis… You cannot read the stories unless you are participating but I can share mine with by posting it here (next post)…
4 – I received a late “Bonus” postcard from lkast July-August Poetry Postcard Festival. Most of the participants are American but they publish a list of all the non-American participants so Americans can send a bonus card to them. So this is my second card from Grant Swados of New York – once on the regular list I was on and again on the bonus list. He has framed the original (postcard-sized) painting I sent him and sent me a reproduction of one of his paintings entitled “The Llama Lisa) a pastiche of the Mona Lisa featuring a llama. Also, he sent a poem about playing darts – a game that makes me think of English pubs, but since he sent the card, rather like when you have bought a new car, I keep seeing dartboards in American TV dramas all the time. Two countries united by a love of tiny missiles…
The postcard I originally sent to Grant…
5 – My Continuous Blood Monitoring experiment is bearing fruit, I am losing weight slowly by keeping my carb count down to an average of 159 grams per day. The drug trial I am participating in, a lower dose of the “weight-loss” drug Semaglutide, might also be helping – I do feel less inclined to snack, am content with smaller meals – but that is not the main point of the study – it is to test whether, at this lower dose, semaglutide helps prevent cardiac events and I have to say that the feeling of queasiness and wind makes me question whether it is worth the price (if it works). I am pretty sure that after the “Randomisation” interview, I am on the real and not the placebo pills – only 4 1/2 years of the study to go – burp!
6 – I have finished “C” in the A to Z and will have time tomorrow to work on “D” which is for Decoration of Fabrics as well as a list of seven fabrics beginning with D
Damask
Dimity
Dobby (see also Piqué)
Double cloth
Double Crepe
Double Georgette
Drill
Duchesse
Dupioni
It is proving to be the most work of any of my A to Z’s so far…
7 – I am a creature of habit and so my washing is in – half already in the dryer and half about to be hung up – Sundays routine is Sunday routine…
8 – Glad to be participating here at TTOT – we had 12 posts last week and as Afshan grat#2 said it inspired her with positivity, I guess its working right!
9 – reminded I have 3 TTOT to visit…
10 – Speaking to my sister in Nova Scotia in an hour…
– If you wondered why I didn’t post here last week, it was because I had a crisis at work! I work Tuesday to Thursday lunchtime but on my way home last Thursday, my immediate boss rang to say that Trading Standards had turned up unannounced and were not happy with our labelling of our products. This is one of the areas that I am responsible for but he didn’t ask me to come back in – which I would have done and would have saved him being made to feel like a naughty boy for the duration of their visit – the whole afternoon! My work, doing the things that others either can’t or don’t want to do, is also not always fully valued because it doesn’t generate revenue in the way that, say, sales or production itself do, but things like getting the details of nutrition right on labels are legal requirements and under the rapid growth in wholesaling that we have undergone in the last year, many products have been added to our system by people other than me and there are details missing. All of which is to say, that I spent every day of my 4.5 days off, going through all the data that creates the labels in order to fix the problem! Except for Monday when I only got up early and only did two hours work before a family emergency gained priority. I am grateful that the task is now almost complete, and checked and that going forward, the protocols I have been calling for around the introduction of new products, stand a greater chance of being followed after the rap on the knuckles…
– On Sunday, the family grapevine was buzzing with the news that Barbara’s brother was in hospital and we had no way of contacting him since his phone was not responding and his partner was abroad. After some detective work by several family members, the hospital that Steve was in, was located and we got to speak to him. He had fallen and his iPhone was indeed not working, so I searched for an old phone to take to him, and on Monday, Barbara and I drove to the hospital just north of Manchester – an hour away, arriving just as he was waiting to be discharged. After a couple of hours waiting for his meds to be dispensed, we drove him home, got him settled in with the knowledge his partner would be home that night – he is doing well now…
– Sunday had also been Barbara’s birthday and I took a break from my labours to bring us over to our daughter Beverley’s in the next village for afternoon tea with a few grandsons and one girlfriend (who is now in India for a couple of months to learn Yoga teaching). So that was a nice interlude…
– A week later and the house is still awash with flowers, to Barbara’s delight, at our age, there are few material things we desire so flowers hit the spot…
5. – Normal service is now being resumed in all areas – I posted a poem, “The Cartography of Life”, for a prompt from the dVerse Poets Pub which I was glad to see was visited by our own Artmater – so nice when people explore the blog for the other things to be found posted here…
6. – After a repetition of the fault with uploading photos here and another round of consulting the tech guys at Bluehost – they finally said that they had tracked down the issue, which I presume was with a third party piece of software since they couldn’t give a timeframe for fixing it – however it now seems to be working as the picture above loaded without issue…
7. -I manged to pick up my ukulele(s) after Christmas, and now that the work crisis is over, I intend to play more regularly – I play all sorts of songs but I have a lot from the ’20’s an ’30’s and more recently some more jazz numbers. I didn’t make it to ten today but I leave you with a favourite rendition of Carole King’s “One Fine Day” by the lovely Sophie Madeline. Sophie made an album of songs as well as the 50 songs of which this was the first, that she posted in 59 days on YouTube before sadly retiring from the world of musical performance on health grounds…
Have a great week ahead, each and everyone of you Gratudinals (and anyone else who stumbles in here…)
1 – The Jasmine seems to be holding its own against some quite sharp frosts…
2 – Indoors, we have been enjoying the scent from this lovely basket of bulbs – a Christmas present…
3 – I sent off for a tapestry circle so that I could begin the Hooking Kit my sister Helen sent for Christmas – it is, as it says on the tin, most therapeutic…
4 – The named storm passed us by this week and we have had no snow this year…
5 – We were pet sitting young Winnie, our daughter’s Border Collie for a few hours yesterday, she is now old enough to travel in the footwell of the car calmly…
6 – Hereabouts, each Yorkshire stone quarry marks its dressed stone with a different marking – ours has simple parallel lines of dashes – photographed in yesterday’s welcome sun…
7 – The Poets Pub has started prompting again after the Christmas break – I typed up a poem from my writing group about “a time I was in danger” – a sailing story in which I wisely turned back – else I might not be here to tell the tale (for which I am grateful)…
8 – Grateful for the TTOF – especially on a dark, dank day like today…
9 – Grateful that I will be having my bi-weekly chat with my sister in Nova Scotia and trusting that even if Trump invades Canada, she will be safely remote there…
10 – Grateful that the tide of opinion seems to be turning against Trump and his dictatorship and crossing my fingers that the American people will find the right action to take to restore democracy and rebuild the damage at home and abroad…
Ten things for which I give thanks this first week of 2026…
1 – Christmas Day was spent at my daughter’s house and I was grateful that I was not responsible for the cooking, beyond two large chickens one of which I took over for the carnivores amongst us. The other one was part of a buffet at ours on Boxing Day and of course, I made bought too much food so we will be compromising our diet for weeks to come…
Four of my six grandsons on Christmas Day with Barbara, their Nan, in the middle…
2 – I promised to show you the present I bought for Barbara – I was on safe ground here – unlike choosing clothes – because Barbara is the Immelda Marcos of handbags and this one was one of her favourite colours – mission successful!
3 – Barbara bought me a set of Sabatier chef’s knives – the top three in the picture below. The fourth down was a present from my parents when I wen t to university and I have used it almost every day since and through two food businesses. It is a carbon steel knife which means if it is not cleaned and dried immediately after use it will rust… Despite this care, it has worn away as it used to be the length of the fifth knife – which was a gift from an old schoo; friend, who lives in France and collected tokens from his supermarket, exchanged for this knife which he gifted as a replacement, having seen the diminished status of my first Sabatier! The new set come with self-sharpening cases which they need, as they are very sharp indeed and you wouldn’t want to brush against them unguarded…
4 – Jake, the grandson who was travelling with his Doctor girlfriend this Summer, gave me a set of spices from Morroco – I wonder if you can guess what they are?
My sister in Canada has made me a hooker! I confess that I opened it early as I had no clue what to get for her – I decided to send her a Needle-felting kit, so we now we shall both be quietly crafting…
5 – The low Winter sun reaches parts of the house not usually illuminated, here striking the top of the stairs through the upstairs windows… For the builders among you, the doors were all made from reclaimed wood so they will never shrink!
6 – I am participating (along with 20,000 others) in a drug trial of an oral version of Semaglutide. I had an interview with the project after 3 months of the run-in doses and will now be randomised for real or placebo. I hope I am on the real ones since the object of the drug is to prevent heart attacks and strokes. Semaglutides in higher doses are the injectable weight-loss drugs and whilst this one seems to be having a beneficial effect on blood sugar and blood pressure, it will likely not cause much weight loss. I shall be watching my test results carefully to see whether I think I am on real or placebo… The trial is over 5 years…
7 – I had lunch in Harrogate (about 45 minutes drive) with Tricia, my American, second cousin once removed and her husband Jack and their two sons, wife, girlfriend and one grandchild. From left to right, me, Tricia, Jack, Min (Korean), Tusk, Palmer, Eda (Turkish) and Josiah. I had not met Palmer, Min and Tusk before so ot is great to now know the whole family!
Myself holding forth at the lunch table. We had Blackeye Beans and Tomato which is a typical Southern dish and I took some of my Persimmon Cake which is also a Southern treat…
8 – I have finally made a start on writing the pages for the A to Z for April and have completed the Theme Reveal, and the A and B pages. If I can get all the posts prepared in advance, I will have more time for reading and commenting on other people’s posts…
9 – After as deep a dive into the back end of computing as I have done since working with Windows 95, all to no avail, and with resorting to top-level help from BlueHost, I got my picture uploading problem solved -only to find it has returned this morning – will it load into Linkzy – I shall soon see…
10 – Grateful to be part of this community of gratitude – Happy New Year to you all!
