Shivers Down the Spine

I’ve noticed an unusual trend doing walking tours over the last few weeks.

People seem incredibly susceptible to the cold. Okay, we’re just coming out of winter. Okay, it’s certainly not been balmy. But people seem to literally shiver in temperatures between 4C and 7C; hardly arctic. I make sure I have layers on but in these sort of temperatures don’t even need a scarf or gloves.

I did think that some people just don’t dress for the conditions (and they certainly don’t; fashion seems more important than practicality for many) but one client did suggest that the majority of people now are simply cosseted all day in warm offices and travel by car and simply aren’t used to being outside for long periods.

It’s a worrying trend for me. I have visions of only being able to do walks between June and September.

I’ll have to start wintering in the Southern Hemisphere…….

Michael Foot 1913 -2010

Sad to hear of the demise of Michael Foot, although a full life lived to the age of 96 is no mean achievement. He was a champion of Parliament and was motivated by a desire to make things better for people. I hope I leave one tenth the legacy of having "done something" that he did.

However, being committed, passionate, principled and honest is tempered somewhat by being, er, wrong, about so many things. Britain would not have been better served by unilaterally disarming. The British people had no appetite for centralised state control on the scale he espoused. And they are also for the most part not republican in their sympathies.

So he was always on something of a hiding to nothing and the electoral defeat of 1983 certainly involved the use of the word "hiding".

Above all, though, it is difficult to know who provided the biggest boost to Mrs Thatcher's fortunes in the early 1980s: General Galtieri or Michael Foot.

Still Here!

I seem to have been missing from the Blog for ages. Sorry.

The simple reason for this is that I’m bereft of much free time at the moment.

Spring it evidently springing and there’s been a sudden clutch of bookings for new tours and similar work lately. Good. I’ve also been spending quite a bit of time hosting study days (one of the Jelf sidelines!) which means I keep visiting Manchester! (I’m not complaining about that. As I’ve said before it’s actually a rather splendid city and I was able to see some of its new trams the other day.)

I’m also in the final stages now of studying for some exams I’m taking in March and April, so it feels a bit as though it’s the early 1980s again. (Exams, Argentina sabre-rattling in the South Atlantic, terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland and a recession.)

So, before this afternoon’s job (in Birmingham) I suppose I’d better get back to my notes on Cornish Tin Mining mineralogy (as you do)…….

Ian Jelf: Domestic God

It is a fact of life that I do not enjoy doing things I’m not very good at. Put me in front of an old building, a Roman ruin, a bus or the Sydney Opera House and I will happily keep an audience entertained for hours.

Put me in charge of putting a duvet back in its cover and I will still keep an audience entertained…….but for all the wrong reasons. And I will be Very Unhappy about it.

Louise is poorly at the moment (having caught the bug I had last week) so I’m being more than usually domestic. I have today been out with a shopping list, little of which actually tallied with what seems to exist on the shelves.

“No, not that one, the double chocolate ones we usually have”. Sigh.

I have tried to make the washing machine and tumble drier work.

“But why do we put it on ‘G’? What’s that setting mean?”

“Oh I don’t know, it just is!”

And now I've put two duvets back inside their covers in a series of moves which to the untrained eye would make it appear that I was playing a strip version of “Twister”.

Get well soon, Louise. I need you!

(But I know I’m better with canal architecture and Iron Age earthworks. I'll let you know about the pancakes.......)

The Meaning of True Love. Apparently.

Well, it is the feast of Saint Valentine, a time to think of true love, companionship and the meeting of hearts. A time perhaps to do a lighthearted "love-themed" walk in Birmingham (one of which I did this morning) and a time to discard the often vulgar trappings of modern life in favour of the simplicity of genuine romance.

Well, I thought so, until I saw these adorning the window of a bar in Broad Street, Birmingham.

Is true romance dead? Am I getting old? Am I a prude? Apprently, yes.