Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a lonesome willow tree, located at the southern end of Lake Wānaka in the Otago region of New Zealand, in 2019.
Last week we took a short trip to get up close and personal with the sun. Well not THE sun, obviously, but rather an art installation at nearby Kedleston Hall that portrays the surface of the sun in breathtaking detail, complete with sunspots and swirling solar winds. Helios is the work of artist Luke Jerram*, who based his creation on thousands of images of the sun collected by NASA and other astronomical organisations.
It’s easy to understand why Jerram was inspired to create Helios, which is named after the ancient Greek god of the sun. Did you know that our sun is 4.5 billion years old, and has about the same amount of time left until it runs out of gas? And it’s very, very hot! The surface of the sun is around 5,500°C, while its core has a mind boggling temperature of 15 million°C. Our sun has a diameter of 1.4 million kilometres (855,000 miles), but is just around average in size – some other stars are up to 100 times bigger. Wow!
Jerram’s brightly illuminated piece is 7 metres in diameter, and totally dominated the grand – 19 metres high – saloon hall in which it was suspended. The scale is mind-blowing, with one centimetre of the sculpture representing 2,000 kilometres of the real sun’s surface. Clearly, our sun is one really big dude. As if to make the point, displayed in an adjacent room and made to the same scale was a tiny model of the Earth. It really put us in our place; this planet, which to us seems impossibly huge, is a mere pimple when viewed from a cosmic perspective.
However, not everyone seemed convinced. Two other visitors, nerdy types – men, of course – were a bit agitated. They complained that although the representations of the Earth and the sun may have been made to the same scale, the distance between them had been miscalculated. According to their calculations, the model of the Earth should rightly have been positioned outside in the carpark, or maybe even half-way to the nearby city of Derby. I could barely stifle my yawns – why couldn’t they just appreciate Luke Jerram’s creativity, rather than droning on tediously about impenetrable mathematics? Life’s too short, guys!
Coinciding with the Helios exhibition at Kedleston Hall** was a celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. This, I’m sure, was no coincidence. Diwali celebrates the victory of light over darkness, so programming an art installation with the sun at its very heart to run alongside a Diwali celebration was a stroke of genius.
This photo features Diwali decorations on the floor of the grand Marble Hall. Through the open door to the rear you can glimpse the lower part of Helios, suspended in the Saloon Hall.
This was the third consecutive year in which Kedleston has celebrated Diwali. Many Derby residents share a cultural heritage derived from the Indian sub-continent, and Diwali celebrations are therefore big in the city. Extending those celebrations a few miles north seems entirely appropriate, particularly in view of Kedleston’s historical links with India. Those links date back over a century to one of the stately home’s former owners – George Nathaniel Curzon, a.k.a. Lord Curzon (1859–1925) – who served as Viceroy of India between 1899 and 1905. Kedleston still displays many artefacts and artworks that Curzon brought back from his travels.
The Diwali celebrations introduced an unexpected splash of colour to Kedleston. At their heart were displays of hundreds of hand-crafted marigolds, which decorated several of the rooms. In Indian culture marigolds are used extensively in religious festivals, weddings and other ceremonies to symbolise purity, positivity and the divine, and they certainly brought a hint of the exotic to this traditionally English stately home. Other Diwali elements on display included clay oil lamps to light the way, and rangoli light projections.
Although fairly modest, Kedleston’s Diwali celebrations were good to see, and served as a potent reminder of the diverse population living within just a few miles of this grand building. I wonder what the old Viceroy would have made of them?
As we drove away from Kedleston Hall, having spent the afternoon in the company of the sun, and being inspired by the hope that is implicit in the Diwali festival, I found myself quietly singing a masterpiece by the late, sadly lamented George Harrison.
All four of the Beatles briefly embraced Indian culture following visits to that country in 1966 and 1968, but only George Harrison really got it. Much of George’s subsequent work was inspired directly or indirectly by Indian culture and religion, including I believe the wonderful “Here Comes the Sun” which appeared on the Beatles’ Abbey Road album in 1969. If you don’t know the song, or even if you do and would like to wallow in it one more time, listen to it here courtesy of YouTube.
* Postscript: Another work by Luke Jerram
A couple of years ago another work by Luke Jerram was exhibited at Derby Cathedral. On that occasion his chosen subject was the moon, suspended impressively above the nave. Clearly, he is fascinated by all things astronomical.
** Postscript: More on Kedleston Hall
My home county of Derbyshire is blessed with many grand stately homes. Kedleston is one of my favourites, and I have blogged about it before. You can read more about Kedleston Hall, and enjoy more of Mrs P’s photos, here and here.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a handsome Bullfinch at Old Moor Nature Reserve in 2014.
A couple of weeks ago Mrs P and I took ourselves off to London for a few days to attend a sumo tournament. Almost without exception the people we told about our plans thought we’d gone crazy. You could see it in their eyes – “Why?” they wondered, “why would anyone pay good money to watch a load of semi-naked fat guys trying to beat each other up?” To which my response is this: please don’t criticise what you don’t understand.
Mrs P and I first encountered sumo in the mid-1980s, when we were able to watch parts of a tournament on television during a vacation visit to Japan. We were intrigued, quickly spotting that this apparently crude and brutal sport is more subtle than it first appears, being rooted in at least 2,000 years of Japanese history and culture. We realised very quicky that if ever the opportunity arose we would like to get to know more about this unfamiliar, but strangely fascinating activity.
A few years later in 1991 the Japan Festival, which was held in London and across the UK, included the first-ever official sumo tournament to be held outside Japan. We managed to get tickets for one day of that event, which was held at the Royal Albert Hall, and so managed to watch sumo live and in the flesh for the first time.
Eight years later we returned for a second visit to Japan. We were staying with a friend who worked at the British Embassy, and through his connections were able to get tickets for one day of the September sumo tournament at the Kokugikan in Tokyo, the country’s foremost sumo arena. It was a wonderful, strangely exotic experience that we have never forgotten.
Although in recent years we have been able to follow sumo on television courtesy of broadcasts by NHK World, we assumed that we would never again get the chance to experience it first-hand. So, when we learned that Grand Sumo was to return to the Royal Albert Hall in October 2025, we were desperate to get tickets.
On the day that tickets went on sale Mrs P logged onto the ticket line the moment it went live, and found that there were already more than 1,000 people in the queue ahead of her! It was evident that the tournament was going to be a big success, and luckily, after a long wait and a lot of anxiety, she was able to bag tickets for the first two days of the five-day event.
Sumo wrestling has an extraordinarily long history. Prehistoric wall paintings suggest that it evolved out of a ritual agricultural dance that was performed to pray for a good harvest. The earliest written references date from the early 8th century, and tell the story of a bout fought between two warlords – in the presence of the Emperor – in 23BCE.
Before the day’s sumo begins the wrestlers parade in all their finery
From the 8th century, ritual sumo was carried out at the imperial court to predict the year’s harvest and to pray for abundance and prosperity. Beginning in the 12th century, it evolved into a form of combat training for samurai warriors. A few hundred years later, Japan embarked upon a long period of isolation from the outside world. Peace reigned supreme, and because samurai warriors no longer needed to fight, sumo wrestling began to develop into a form of entertainment, often as a way to raise money for the repair of shrines and temples. Thus was sumo professionalised.
In the mid-nineteenth century Japan opened up again to foreign contacts and sumo was perceived to be old fashioned, a relic of the past that needed to be relegated to the pages of history. However, in 1884 the Emperor organised a tournament which proved to be a turning point for the sport. Instead of appearing old fashioned, sumo was now seen as a national symbol, part of a shared heritage in which all Japanese people could take pride. And so it remains today.
Grand champion Hoshoryu performs a traditional ring-entering ceremony. He went on to win the tournament (“basho” in Jananese) .
Rituals and ceremonies abound in sumo, and help make it like no other sport I’ve ever seen. These include (1) the ring-entering ceremonies at the beginning of each tournament day, in which the wrestlers (called rikishi in Japanese) parade into the ring wearing elaborate aprons over their belts (mawashi); (2) the tossing of salt into the ring (dohyo) by the wrestlers to symbolically clean it; (3) the rinsing of the mouth with “power water” (chikara-mizu) before a fight, which is similar to the ritual carried out before entering a Shinto shrine; (4) the stomping of the feet by rikishi before a bout begins, which is a ritual to scare away demons; (5) the bow-twirling ceremony (yumitori-shiki), which is performed at the end of each day’s wrestling. Dating back to the 1700s, it symbolises both the winner’s dance and a spiritual cleansing; (6) the ceremonial clothing worn by the referee (gyoji), which resembles that of a Shinto priest.
The bow-twirling ceremony marks the end of the day’s sumo
.The basic rules of sumo are very, very simple: it is a form of wrestling in which a contestant loses if he is forced out of the ring first, or if any part of his body except the soles of his feet touch the ground. Having said that, there are no fewer than 82 recognised techniques (kimarite) that can be deployed to achieve a winning outcome. Sumo is a lot more complex and subtle than it appears at first glance.
Unlike other fighting sports, sumo does not have weight classes; so long as he stands over 167cm tall and weighs over 67kg any man can participate. One of the most exciting aspects of watching sumo is the “David versus Goliath” battles, fights between two wrestlers with vastly different builds. In sumo, strength and power are important, obviously, but so too are technique and speed. The Davids of the sumo world often deploy their own special skills to defeat their Goliath opponents, much to the delight of most neutral onlookers.
Mrs P and I attended the first two days of the Grand Sumo tournament, and had a truly memorable time. The Royal Albert Hall was packed with spectators, and the atmosphere was electric. While some audience members may have attended out of idle curiosity, it was clear that most knew and understood sumo. It was great to finally be able to sit alongside and to speak with a few people who share our interest in a sport that clearly baffles most Brits.
Outside the Royal Albert Hall, traditional Japanese banners advised passers-by that something special is happening inside.
The tournament attracted a good deal of coverage in the media and online. Wrestling took place in the evening, and earlier in the day the wrestlers – 40 of them, in total – got out and about visiting some of London’s tourist hotspots. If media reports are to be believed the wrestlers made quite an impression on the locals, and were widely perceived as “gentle giants”.
Big screens suspended from the roof of the Royal Albert Hall offered close-ups of the action if required.
And the wrestlers could turn up – unannounced, of course – just about anywhere, so you can imagine how thrilled Mrs P and I were when we bumped into two of them one afternoon in the Natural History Museum. Shodai (one of our favourite wrestlers!) and Mitakeumi even agreed for a hastily snapped photo.
Ura is our #1 favourite sumo wrestler. He seems like a really nice guy! Other sumo fans clearly agree, as he won the “audience favourite” vote that was run for spectators at the tournament!
Sadly, we couldn’t get tickets for the final three days of the tournament, but fortunately it was televised by the BBC so we managed to see every single match (there were 100 bouts spread across the five days). It was great to be able to watch the conclusion of the tournament on television, but so much better to watch the first two days live and in person in the Royal Albert Hall. It was a surreal experience to be present at an event that is so quintessentially Japanese in a venue that is so very British. Surreal, but wonderful too!
I do understand why, when it is casually viewed without any background knowledge, sumo may be difficult to appreciate. The culture shock must be palpable. But I do wish more Brits would give sumo a chance – they might even get to like it!
And the opportunity to watch this sport here in the UK may arise again quite soon. There is a lot of speculation in the media right now that, following the undoubted success of the October 2025 tournament, sumo may return to London in the near future. I do hope so, I really do.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a lonely bridge on the Old Military Road, near Braemar in the Scottish Highlands, in 2019.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a Paddington Bear tucking into a marmalade sandwich at John O’Groats (in the far north of Scotland) earlier this year.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a green iguana at Tortuguero in Costa Rica.
Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo in Jaipur, India, in 2006.
I don’t normally post to my blog on Mondays, but as today (22 September) is World Rhino Day I thought I’d bring forward my deadline to share an update on Yorkshire Wildlife Park’s “teenage” superstar…
When a baby Eastern Black Rhinoceros was born at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in January 2024, the management knew they were onto a winner. Great news for species conservation, obviously, but great news too for visitor numbers. I mean, who doesn’t love a baby rhino? The marketing department went into overdrive, and Rocco the Rhino – named after a public vote – quickly became the Park’s pin-up superstar. The only problem was that, for us at least, Rocco proved to be disappointingly elusive.
Now nearly 20 months old, Rocco clearly enjoys his food!
Mrs P and I visited the Park several times during the 18 months after the birth, and top of our wish list was always a sighting of Rocco, who was – to judge from the publicity photos – the epitome of armoured cuteness. But we were always disappointed. Instead of roaming their enormous paddock. Rocco and his mum and dad were holed up in their indoor quarters and therefore visible to visitors only via a grainy CCTV system. When we asked about the best time to see him, we were told that the doors to the rhinos’ outside world opened at 11:30am, but it was up to Rocco and his parents to decide whether or not they wanted to come out.
The marketing department went into overdrive, and Rocco the Rhino – named after a public vote – quickly became the Park’s pin-up superstar
We were also advised that sometimes the doors would remain closed beyond the 11:30am deadline to give Rocco’s mum Najuma a much needed rest. Rocco, we were told, was an energetic and demanding calf who was causing his poor mother a good deal of stress, and the keepers felt it was important to consider her welfare as well as the needs of the infant rhino. Fair enough, I suppose, but it was unfortunate that Rocco was never out and about when we were visiting the Park.
This video, made by staff at Yorkshire Wildlife Park at the end of March 2024, provides the view of Rocco that we sadly never got to enjoy!
But at last, just a couple of weeks ago, we finally caught up with Rocco in person. At last! The only downside of this encounter was that Rocco is no longer the cute little calf we had been longing to see. He’s now around 20 months old, and his build and bulk more closely resemble that of his poor old mum. To put it into human terms, I suppose he’s now a sturdy teenager. Impressive? Yes, definitely. Cute? No, sadly those days are gone for good.
Rocco trailing close behind his long-suffering mum Najuma
Putting aside our disappointment at missing out on his cute phase, Rocco’s birth gives cause for celebration. Najuma and Rocco’s dad Makibo came to Yorkshire Wildlife Park in 2018 as part of an international breeding programme to save the species, which is classed as critically endangered. Here’s what the Park’s website has to say about its plight:
Eastern Black Rhinos are the rarest of the 3-remaining subspecies. Between 1970 and 1992, their population declined by 96% to 2300 from a devastating period of poaching for their horns…Thanks to global conservation efforts, Black Rhino numbers have steadily risen to around 6000 individuals. The European Breeding Programme currently holds around 100 individuals in various wildlife parks and zoos.
Source: Yorkshire Wildlife Park website, retrieved on 8 September 2025
Rocco follows Najuma everywhere!
It’s good to know that ethically responsible organisations like Yorkshire Wildlife Park are doing their bit to support the conservation of this wonderful species. Finally catching up with Rocco, after so many missed opportunities, was a big thrill. Hopefully before too long he’ll have a brother or sister, and if he does we will visit the Park regularly in the hope of spotting the new arrival before it grows too big to be cute!
No longer a calf, Rocco’s growing up fast!
Of course, there are many other species – including several conservation priorities – living at the Park. The following photos offer a glimpse of some that we encountered on our recent visit. Maybe I’ll write at length about these species in future posts to this blog?
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Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo at Cajabamba market in Ecuador, in 1989.
Now I'm 64 