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For several years, I've completed a Writing Challenge with many people all over the globe. We write something inspired by prompts for 21 days plus an introduction. This year, the prompts are about place, and I've chosen the River Porter in Sheffield. I hope some readers will participate and I have a couple of challenges; see the paragraphs in bold towards the end.

A TV sketch, from way back in the 1960s.  A woman comedian, I can see her face and hear her voice but can’t recall her name, enters a Travel Agent’s.  She wants to book a holiday.  “Where would you like to go?”  She replies, “Sheffield.”  Cue uproarious laughter. 

For well over a century, Sheffield inspired William Blake’s “Dark Satanic Mills”.  From the 18^th century through to the 20^th, Sheffield polluted air and water.  I can remember the smog.  The dirt that came through the window frames and settled on the windowsill.  The black buildings, slowly becoming cleaner as Sheffield in the 1960s claimed to be the cleanest industrial city in Europe. 

Those mills I’ve been writing about (20 in all on the River Porter and more on the other rivers) dumped everything in the rivers.  The Porter Valley is much cleaner now and has been all my life.  But I can remember when nothing could live in the Don.  (Nowadays, things are better, apart from the sewage.)

In my mid-teens, I walked up and down the Valley and read Rachel Carson's “Silent Spring” and The Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth”.  I joined the Conservation Society (long before Friends of the Earth was founded).  Then at University I with others founded the Ecology Society.  And later I joined the Green Party.

That’s over 50 years.  And yes things have improved in some ways, certainly locally.  But climate change is still a massive threat. 

And I despair.  Politicians of all parties are back-pedalling furiously, despite the threat of environmental collapse being known since the early 70s, if not earlier — some nibbling around the edges, some outright net zero deniers.  The evidence is there for all to see.  But for whatever reason – hallucinatory boredom over the lockdown, addiction to spurious social media channels, listening to politicians who are in it for money or self-aggrandisement – they persist in turning their backs on the evidence. 

They say the Don gets its name from Danu, the river goddess.  I don’t know whether her remit covers the Porter, maybe the whole of Sheffield?  We have beaten her to a pulp.  But gods don’t die they lie in wait in our memory. 

John Wesley, a Christian evangelist of the early industrial revolution spoke of “fleeing the wrath that is to come”.  He addressed the men who died of industrial diseases, people forced out of the commons to work in city slums.  Where do we flee to today? 

It’s easy to forget when you walk along the Porter Valley, it feels permanent.  But after all these years, where and how will the river flow next?

How might posts of this type be used for marketing?  Think about how you might use this post or a post like it to promote your business.  I add a few thoughts after each post, like this:

This post is about my frustrations with the way we treat the environment.  It goes way back to the early 1970s, although at the time the fear was of a second ice age!  I suppose this falls under the heading of politics and so this approach may be something to avoid for marketing purposes.  Some people in business deliberately separate themselves from politics in the belief that it might put potential customers off.  Is this true?  I suppose it depends to some extent on what you're selling.  On the other hand, people buy from people and if they agree with your values, maybe they are more likely to become customers.  Ultimately, it's about finding the tone that communicates what you stand for without scaring away the people who agree with you!

My other challenge is for Sheffielders.  Do you have anything to share about the Porter?  Your experiences along it, bits and pieces of history you've uncovered, folklore you've heard.  If you remember something, please share it in the comments.  (Or maybe you are more familiar with other rivers in Sheffield, you could share those too.)  Let's see what we can find out over the coming weeks.

This is the sixth of 21 stories about the Porter.  The last story was: Rattening.  The next is: The Same River Twice.

This is Endcliffe Park again and it is the Holme Mill goyt.  You can see the same goyt from another angle in the first post of this series.  The Holme Mill dam is here.  You can see the river in the distance.  The goyt continues in the same direction as the river.  The river bends to its right and flows over a barely visible weir.  The water in the goyt flows towards the camera, beneath it and then into the dam.