Glynn Hughes...

lived a mile from here. Today, Lisa, Benson and I walked through the nearby hamlet of Mill Bank and found this memorial in a tiny cemetery tucked below the road that runs through the steep sided village. Of all Glyn's works my favourite is Millstone Grit, a marvellous account of his wanders through the south Pennines.

This from the book jacket, "Written as an account of a journey on foot, the book explores the mysteries of the Pennine landscape, its towns, villages and wild places. Glyn Hughes also provides fascinating insight into the people who have inhabited this land, and who have as their history the Luddites, the Brontes at Haworth, weaver poets, non-conformists, mill workers, traditional  farm life and now the new inhabitants of the once derelict cottages. This is no ordinary guide book, but a guide to understanding the special character of this remarkable region- an island of wild beauty between the huge modern conurbations of the industrial north."

Next to the brass plaque a fine piece of slate has carved on it  a poem called Rock Rose, written by Glyn in 2003.

Rock Rose

Love and remember the many before us,

their dark hearts no better sealed than ours,

Chartists, Methodists, the fellow and sister yearners,

ill treated in Mills but not broken,

their ghosts forever drifting the Sublime.

Hammer and chisel, ledger and pen,

cradle and loom are rested,

hewn stone is overgrown or sweetened

and sacredness of field and wood restored.

Happiness is frail when entrusted to human hands

and leaves only shadows.

Here pray that upon the stones of fear or hate

may grow the flowers of loving,

the impious flowers; the rock rose. 

Coronavirus...

is bringing people together even whilst a necessary isolation pulls us apart. This tragedy touches everyone and everyone is touched by their neighbours, friends, colleagues. The world worries about Wuhan, about Northern Italy and New York. I hope that when this is over collectively we'll boot the selfishness of laissez faire capitalism into the dustbin of history where it belongs and build a stronger world based on the interests of the many not the few.

LATEST: Ancient ancestors were worms. Shock.

I rather like it that we are descended from worms. Not least because it confers a touch of dignity on the wriggling creatures. So, next time you turn over a sod of earth spare a thought for that humble slithering entity, or cousin Fredrika as it might so easily be known.

It seems only a short time since we learned our ancestors were tiny mouse creatures huddling in burrows to avoid the snap of dinosaur teeth. Looking further back we are no better than the common worm, nay, were were the common worm.

There's a wonderful Gary Larson cartoon that I also like of a leery amoeba chasing a female amoeba and shouting, "Baby, I am the lowest form of life." Where next, one wonders. The primeval swamp? We must have been in there somewhere, mooching about, savouring the slurry, slurping the salts, sucking the Silurian soup, so to speak.

I find it comforting that with each marvellous discovery the bigots must choke even further on their morning toast. And that, my fellow worms, is exactly how it should be.