Well, the Three Kings should have left presents on balconies for Spanish children overnight and la BIfana should have flown over Italy on her broomstick doing the same task but here in the UK children have been back in school for a couple of days now apart, that is, from the odd bits of Scotland where schools have been closed for snow.
Yes, Christmas is officially over. I can gather together all the Christmas cards and make the usual decision about whether just to throw them away, recycle them or go through them to see which bits the small people might use to make a collage or even Christmas cards next time round. It’s usually the second option in the end but I also need to go through and check for messages from old friends to which I ought to reply in some form or other.
The tree can also be dismantled and its needles (or quills as the 6 year old recently called them) vacuumed up. I considered waiting until Thursday when the small people come for tea but in the end it’s more fun decorating the tree than removing all the baubles. So, I think the time has come!
The across-the-road neighbours removed all their outdoor decorations on Sunday and their huge tree disappeared from their living room window yesterday. They’re always the first to put up the Christmas decorations so I suppose it’s only to be expected that they would be the first to take them down.
An old superstition, of course, says that if you don’t take down the decorations to day, the 12th day of Christmas, then you must leave them up all year. Otherwise who knows what dire prognostications might befall you! When I was a child I recall that although the tree disappeared on time many of the paper streamers with which the living room was festooned would be left until later on in January when my brother and I had birthdays … and birthday parties. Those were the days when birthday parties meant a small, select group of friends invited to tea and party games at your house rather than the whole class invited to a party venue!
I was reading an article about fast food. It’s quite a long but interesting read, although much of its content refers more to the United States than to here.
Some interesting facts emerge:
Cats can catch bird flu from drinking milk from infected cows.
Some American mega-dairies may have as many as 100,000 cows. As such they can no longer truly be called dairies, can they?
Owners of such mega dairies are often reluctant to comply with controls and quarantines, helping the spread of diseases like bird flu.
Today’s American dairy workers are likely to be recent immigrants who are paid low wages. They sometimes work 60 to 80 hours a week, and often move around frequently between jobs. (Will the actions of ICE change things there? I wonder.)
In case we were getting complacent, huge dairies are becoming the thing in the UK too. In 1980, there were 46,000 dairy farms in the UK. Now there are just over 7,000. Just four companies now process about 75% of the UK’s milk. Now, we have at least two independent dairies in our areas, both delivering milk to homes, to small shops such as the Italian greengrocery in Uppermill, and to small local cafes I find myself wondering how long they will survive. I am aware that the dairy farm that delivers to us is manned by multiple generations, from the old man possibly older than me (or maybe the same age) to his teenage granddaughter. Will that granddaughter and her siblings want to carry on forever?
We have small local cafes but scattered among them are chains. We don’t (yet) have Starbucks or MacDonalds or Burger King but you don’t need to go far to find one. And in city centre Manchester they abound. By the way, Starbucks is the largest chain of coffee shops in the world. But a family-owned German firm, JAB Holding Company, sells more coffee than Starbucks does, under multiple brand names that JAB wholly or partially owns – including Keurig, Krispy Kreme, Peet’s Coffee, Stumptown Coffee, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Pret a Manger.
And when I travel, I notice that still quite small but growing airports such as Porto now have Costa Coffee and Starbucks, selling the international range of coffees with its variety of odd flavours. When we started travelling Porto there was just one airport cafe (before you go through security into the international chaos of the airport proper) where you could order a “meia de leite”. Those were the days!
That’s enough of that. Here’s one last fact, one we might have guessed anyway:
“During campaign stops at the fast food restaurant the president would ask for two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fishes and a chocolate milkshake, according to an insider’s account of his presidential bid.
The Post said the book also revealed that the plane had to be stocked with bountiful supplies of cookies and other snacks because “Trump, a renowned germaphobe, would not eat from a previously opened package”.”
There you go.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
