Another Walk in The Woods

It was a beautiful morning: sunny (almost), mild (almost), dry (for the next two hours). I decided that I wouldn't need to don my waterproofs and could enjoy my walk in the woods with just a light windproof jacket over my shirt and light fleece (not really midsummer attire). So off I set on a walk through the Castle Grounds. I have a great choice of routes depending on the weather and the direction of the wind and, possibly, the driven rain. The trees can be a great source of protection and one doesn't want to be tramping across a wide open stretch or along the waterfront in the rain with the gale in your face driving the rain under one's hood and hat and down one's neck.

A number of people have commented on the lack of trees on Lewis and some have asked what my walks are like. I've posted some photos from my walks in the past but I decided today that with the trees in full leaf I'd give you the full works just to show that I really can walk in the woods.

The walk. Clockwise.

The following photos are shown in the order of the walk

Speedwell (I think)

A few rhododendrons are still out 

The Ninth Hole

Monkey Flower, Mimulus guttatas (?)

Across the golf course going North

Along the Willow Glen

Leaving the Willow Glen and returning South

Add caption

Looking North across the course

Along the river towards the harbour

An alternative path that I didn't take.

Along the harbour side

The Woodlands

Midnight

It's not the longest day for another couple of weeks but last night I was on my way to bed at midnight when I realised that, as it was still light, there might be a photo to be had where the sun had dipped below the horizon to the North. This was the result:

Liverpool Won. Or Did It?

I grew up in Liverpool. As it happens although my brother is a Liverpool FC supporter (Dad supported Tranmere)  I ended up supporting Everton. Why? Because my class at Quarry Bank was split 12:13 with me being unaligned with friends on both sides (which is a metaphor for my life really). So a friend who was an Evertonian dragooned me into making it 13:13.

Not that, to be honest, I was a particularly enthusiastic follower of the professional game but anyone brought up in the City was, of course, touched by football one way or another.

Liverpool had a very active amateur game and that interested me much more. For one thing if you played for a team you had to have a genuine connection with the team. So the NALGO team was made up entirely of NALGO members. To me this connection was all-important. You had to be eligible to play for the team.

I wasn't good enough to play in the team for which I was eligible however I was good enough to be a linesman (which is what today's assistant referees were called) so I used to be a linesman in the amateur game. I was considering taking my ref's ticket when life got a bit crowded with other things. 

I was also getting rather disillusioned by the professional game as gradually money and marketing started taking over from the game itself and fewer and fewer people actually represented the area which the club represented.

In 1959/60 when I was following Liverpool 15 of the squad of 27 were from Liverpool and its environs, 3 were born elsewhere in England, 2 in Wales, 4 in Scotland and 1 in South Africa.

Today's squad of 54 (exactly twice the size of the '59/60 squad) is made up of 3 Liverpudlians included in the 19 English players with the remaining 35 coming from all over the world.

What made me think of this?

Someone asked how many of the four English teams in the Champions Cup semi-finals were English. The answer was 9.

The wonderful irony of this in my mind is that the English think that an English team won the Champions League Final. It did in name but in reality it was an international team owned by an American company.

Let's face it: no individual and no country can operate in the global economy we live in without thinking internationally.

But that's all okay. Boris is going to make Britain Great Again.