Ongoing conflicts - and consequences. The need for tolerance. Mediaeval-style carnivals.

 Today is bright and sunny here. It’s rather a pity the world doesn’t also feel bright and sunny. The various conflicts go on and on, with some (supposedly)unforeseen consequences:

The US embassy in Riyadh has been struck by Iranian drones. Did nobody expect that kind of retaliation?

Zelensky has said that the war with Iran is slowing down the supply of weapons to Ukraine. I suppose that was inevitable; even the USA does not have an unlimited supply of armaments. 

And Gaza is running out of food because “Israel closed all crossings into Gaza indefinitely when it attacked Iran, imposing a siege that has already pushed up food prices and threatens to plunge 2 million people into a new hunger crisis.

After more than two years of war, and with Israeli forces in control of about 60% of the territory, almost all of Gaza’s food must be brought in.

Humanitarian groups feeding much of the population say the supplies they had on Saturday, when the war began, will only last a few more days.

“If [the borders] stay closed, World Central Kitchen will run out of food this week,” said the organisation’s founder and chief, José Andrés, in a post on social media.”

That consequence was probably the most foreseeable. It’s just that Gaza has slipped down the ranking of newsworthy stories. And yet it’s still going on, as if the Palestinian people have been locked in a prison and just left to starve. Here’s a link to the whole article about it.

With conflict escalating in the world and apparent increasing intolerance in this country - apparently Moslem footballers were booed because a game was paused so that they could break their Ramadan fast - we need reminders of how much we all depend on each other. So here’s a cartoon I found some time ago underling how much we all depend on each other.

Some places have been escaping the nastiness of the world by getting into carnival mode. Not all carnival is just colour and dancing and processions. This article tells of places in southern France where their carnival remains a misogynistic throwback to medieval times with men dressed in rather frightening costumes, chasing women through the streets and lashing them with wine-soaked “whips”.  In some cases they don’t want publicity. In the village of Cournonterral, for example, smartphones and cameras are banned; the village’s official website states that spectators are not welcome.

You would think that women’s groups would object and in some places they are demanding a more active role on organising events. But not all women agree with this. Tradition is a way of holding onto your cultural identity, they feel. Beatrice Barbara, who is from a “carnival family”, explains this approach. “People from the outside don’t understand what the carnival means to us. For most of the year, the village seems empty. We wait all year for this moment to come around. People take a week off work, and people who have moved away come back. During carnival, we again become proud of who we are. We don’t want to change it.”

And this is the 21st century! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Thinking about the ongoing conflict. And some unusual words.

Another grey day this morning as another week gets under way. 

As the conflict continues / escalates in the Middle East, our prime minister has agreed that UK military bases over there can be used by the US to attack Iranian missile sites. This despite saying the Uk is not getting involved in the conflict. It sounds rather like involvement to me. And it seems to be being interpreted that way as a drone attack struck an RAF base in Cyprus. 

Britons living and working in the Middle East are being evacuated. Yvette Cooper says it’s being organised.

Meanwhile President Trump has said that the possibility of American troops in Iran is not entirely off the table.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground – like every president says ‘there will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Donald Trump told the Washington Post. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’” 

I had to look up “the yips”, a new expression to me. The internet tells me this:

The yips are a sudden and unexplained loss of ability to execute certain skills in experienced performers such as athletes. Symptoms of the yips are losing fine motor skills and psychological issues that impact the muscle memory and decision-making, leaving them unable to perform basic skills.

The exact cause of the yips is still not fully understood.”

What a strange expression for Mr Trump to use! 

I doubt that the American public want their boys to be boots on the ground.

I also read that the Pentagon is “lethalitymaxxing”. Investigating that I discovered the following definition: 

“Maxxing, a suffix that means optimizing for whatever word you slap “-maxx” onto, e.g., “looksmaxxing” for improving one’s physical appearance, “jestermaxxing“ for acting silly to get laughs, or “lethalitymaxxing” if you’re an official US Department of Defense X account.”

Interesting times give interesting words.

Names are also interesting. I came across an article written by someone called Micklewright. Now, I know that the name Cartwright has its origin in someone who made carts, as does Wainwright, wain being another word for cart or wagon. So what does a micklewright make. One definition says mickle means great or large. Another source says that mickle is an old Irish word for a coin. Does a micklewright make coins?

Then there is the expression “many a mickle makes a muckle”. A muckle is an old cockney term for a bundle. So maybe “many a mickle makes a muckle” is an odd version of that other expression, “look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”.

And since mickle is an Irish word for a coin, it links us to taking the mick, to tease or make a fool of someone. One source says that 'to take the mick' is from that same Irish word 'mickle' - to take the 'mickle'/ to take the 'penny' (i.e. to fool or deceive someone of their money).

Then here’s the name Micklethwaite. As a surname it comes, of course from a place name and there are a number of Micklethwaites around the country. One of those Micklethwaites originated as a Viking settlement in the 10th century, and according to the Domesday Book was called ‘Muceltoit’ (which is Norse for ‘great clearing’). Which brings us back to “mickle” meaning great or large. 

That’s enough ramblings for today.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

Comparing saints. Getting out and about. The dramatic chaos of the modern world.

 Happy Saint David’s Day to any Welsh people out there. It’s an odd thing that all sorts of people celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day while not having the least connection to Ireland but poor old Saint David is largely ignored. Maybe it’s the amount of alcohol consumed on Saint Patrick”s Day

Patrick is supposed to have driven  snakes out Ireland: quite impressive. But David’s best-known miracle is said to have taken place when he was preaching in the middle of a large crowd at the Synod of Brefi: the village of Llanddewi Brefi stands on the spot where the ground on which he stood is reputed to have risen up to form a small hill. A white dove, which became his emblem, was seen settling on his shoulder. Welsh historian John Davies notes that one can scarcely "conceive of any miracle more superfluous" in that part of Wales than the creation of a new hill. 

There was a Welsh musician on BBC Radio 3 last night reminiscing about St David’s Day traditions. Girls got to wear daffodils but boys were supposed to wear leeks. The big challenge was to have your leek survive intact to the end of the day, at which point you were supposed to eat it … raw. He didn’t say whether the girls had to eat their daffodil.

There was no drama on my run round the village this morning, for which I am quite grateful. I enjoy being out and about early. What I don’t enjoy is getting out of bed to go out and about. My alarm rings, I snooze it and spend some time putting off going out and about. Maybe it will be easier as the morning grow brighter earlier but somehow I doubt it. As it’s now March I took another photo of what we laughingly refer to as “my” tree. I plan to post a picture each mont this year. Its March photo is not significantly different, however, from its February or even its January picture.

No drama here, but plenty elsewhere. 

Iranian media and officials are reporting that a joint US-Israel attack on Iran struck a girls' primary school in the southern part of the country, killing 85 people.

The IRNA news agency said the majority of the casualties are children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh all-girls’ school in Minab. Dozens more are unaccounted for, the state-run news agency said.

A local Iranian prosecutor was quoted in the IRNA report. Reuters could not independently confirm the reports. US and Israeli military forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I get a nasty feeling of déja vu.

In return, Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.

Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.

 

And so it goes on.

There’s also Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Israeli settlers are still creating havoc in the West Bank.

Here’s a reminder of the wrongness of it all. Bob Dylan’s words from all those hears agp still ring true.

Come you masters of war.

You that build all the guns.

You that build the death planes.

You that build all the big bombs.

You that hide behind walls.

You that hide behind desks.

I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Let me ask you one question, Is your money that good?

Will it buy you forgiveness, do you think that it could?

I think you will find, when your death takes its toll, all the money you made, will never buy back your soul.

President Trump no doubt dismisses him as ‘just a singer’.

Meanwhile, anyone wanting to flee the Middle East conflict zone will have problems. Hundreds of thousands of travellers were either stranded or diverted to other airports after Israel, Qatar, Syria, ItanI, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain closed their airspace. There were also no flights over the United Arab Emirates, the flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said, after the government announced a “temporary and partial closure” of its airspace.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Horses and cyclists and changing my running route. Things on the wall. Dangerous times.

 This morning I varied my running route slightly. When I reached the point where the quiet lane I follow crosses the main road into the village, still called a lane and not much wider or busier than the lane that crosses it, I greeted a young woman on a horse. We quite often see horses on the back roads around here, away from the major roads. Saturday morning is a good time for horse spotting. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere came a speeding cyclist. The horse, about to do a right turn into the lane that leads to the millponds, was spooked, speeded up, skidded on his turn and almost went down. Fortunately his rider was able to calm him. The cyclist went on bis oblivious way, not acknowledging that he had done anything. Maybe he didn’t even realise he had almost caused a major problem. Saturday morning is also a favourite time for cyclists to get out and about. 

The horse and his rider, after we had a bit of a chat about irresponsible cyclists, went on their way towards the millponds. I decided that maybe an already spooked horse might not appreciate a runner dogging his footsteps, even a slow runner like me. So I turned onto the lane that leads back into the village. On my way down the hill I ran into a nodding acquaintance walking his dog. Well, he’s really a bit more than a nodding acquaintance now as we have stopped and chatted many times and I know his wife from long ago. Embarrassingly he always remembers my name but I cannot for the life of me remember his. 

We chatted so long that the horse and rider had completed the circuit past the millponds and was making her way back up the hill. All was well, she assured us. She thanked me for not further frightening her young horse and told us she hoped he was not permanently afraid of bicycles. They had seen baby deer by the millpond. Had I gone that way I might have seen them and photographed them. It’s a while since I saw deer round there.

As I got close to home I spotted a wood pigeon sitting on the wall. Unexpectedly he didn’t fly off as I approached. Then I realised he was injured. My squeamishness prevented me from doing anything to help. Later in the day when I set off for Tesco there were feathers all over the road; something had finished him off. Nature can be cruel!

Also on the wall, on a different bit of wall, there was glass, a straight glass that you might have a half pint of beer in. It was not chipped or broken so I took it into the house to join the collection of abandoned glasses that I have found from time to time. There have always been a few left behind by followers of the Whit Friday Band Contest. And at the time when the Covid restrictions lifted somewhat and people could drink outside pubs, so long as they kept to their small groups, I would find one from time to time. But who are the people on a February evening who walk along the road from the pub a hundred yards from our house, finishing off their beer and depositing the glass not on the pub wall but on our garden wall? The world is full of strange people.

Some of the strange people are also dangerous. I woke this morning to the news that the US and Israel have attacked Iran, despite supposed peace talks supposedly going well. We wait to see what the repercussions will be.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Signs of spring. Putting judgemental labels on people. And fashion as a statement of all sorts of things.

 It might still be grey and damp as February rushes to its end but there are increasing signs that spring is not too far away. This morning I saw the first almost-open daffodils on my running route. Other parts of the country may well have glorious displays of daffs by now but, apart from clumps of miniature daffodils, these are the first I have seen around her. 

The Green Party has won the Gorton and Denton by-election, which is good. A worryingly large number of people voted for Reform. It is to be hoped that this was a protest vote rather than an indication that people have been taken in by grinning Farage. 

Nazir Afzal, chancellor of the University of Manchester and a former chief prosecutor, wrote this article for the Guardian’s Opinion column. He makes the interesting point that in so many aspects of his life he is just himself, without an identified religious label. He is not the MUSLIM chancellor of the University of Manchester, for example. But as chief prosecutor for North-west England suddenly he was the “Muslim prosecutor” and investigating grooming gangs he was the “Muslim decision maker”. We live in a multicultural country, whether the far right likes it or not. If we look back at our history most of us are descended from immigrants of one kind or another. We need to accept people as they are, without putting labels on anyone, especially labels which are intended to divide us. 

Fashion is a strange thing. We are all of us judged one way or another for the way we look, the way we dress, how we style our hair, whether we wear lots of makeup and paint our nails, or indeed add long extensions to those nails! We look at people and make snap judgements about their political views, whether they are left- or right-leaning, whether we need to feel threatened by them, whether we can feel comfortable talking to them.

Justine Picardie, former editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK has written a book called “Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture”, maintaining that what the members of our royal family wear is a political statement of sorts. And according to this article the appearance of King Charles at the opening of London Fashion Week and that the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Baftas was a sign that the royal family was going about business as usual, despite the much-publicised misbehaviour of a certain former prince. 

And even the fact that Catherine had worn her Bafta dress on another occasion was a sign that she is taking a sustainable approach and showing restraint. Goodness! I can remember a time when Queen Letitia of Spain got press for wearing the same outfit twice.

It’s been going on forever it seems, this political statement via fashion. Justine Picardie, points out that the “after the crisis of the abdication in 1936, when Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) was dressed by Norman Hartnell in an idealised vision of traditional Englishness, to counteract the hard chic of the pro-Nazi Duke and Duchess of Windsor.”

Even the fabric used for clothes can be significant. “Picardie notes an example from 1947 when, in the aftermath of the second world war, then prime minister Clement Attlee expressed his concern over whether the silk for Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress had been produced by Japanese or Italian silk worms. Thankfully, the fabric was made in China.”

Hmmm! Would Chinese silk be acceptable nowadays? I wonder.

The late queen’s outfits were often scrutinised for political messages: the Brexit hat, the choice of jewellery and so on. The royal family is supposed to stay out of politics so maybe choosing your clothing to match the occasion you have to attend is one way of making a statement. Who knew! 

It’s there in all our lives too. We can show solidarity by way we dress. In recent months I have attended a funeral where we were asked to wear the colours of Palestine and another where we were asked to wear suffragette colours. 

Choose your outfit with care!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Appreciating people who serve us. And criticising politicians.

 Another grey day! With a high percentage chance of rain according to my weather app, so I wore a light rain jacket over my running gear this morning. And it did rain but not really enough to worry about. It would be nice, however, to see a bit more sunshine! A person can grow weary of grey clouds!

I read that some people are objecting to influencers filming their visits to restaurants, sometimes just filming the food they are eating, sometimes giving an overview of the restaurant, and most often including selfies in the mix. I may need to change my photographic habits before someone complains about me. I am certainly not an influencer but I do like to take photos of the meals I am about to consume, mostly to share on the family messenger chat and occasionally to post on my blog. A waitress interviewed for the newspapers says that in fact influencers busily filming their meals are probably the least annoying of the clients she has to deal with. 

High on her list of dislikes are the arrogant who consider themselves superior to the waitress, looking down on her for having a “lowly” job and ranging from condescending to downright bossy in their dealings with staff. You never know quite why someone is working as a waitress: it may be a student job; maybe it’s the only job available in the place where she chooses to live; maybe she just enjoys dealing with people (so long as they are polite. I’ve never been a waitress but I remember dealing with the arrogant and supercilious when I worked in a shoe shop in my student days. There was a certain class of customer who would demand to see a range of shoes in a particular style or colour and eventually walk away without having made a purchase, leaving a scattering of shoes on the floor for the assistants to put away in the correct places.

At least such customers didn’t walk out with shoes they hadn’t paid for, unlike the “dine and dasher” who orders fancy food, tucks in appreciatively and then quietly leaves without paying. These exist in Spain as well, the “sin pagar” who are the bane of restaurant staff’s life, especially as waiters and waitresses are notoriously poorly paid. The waitress interviewed for the newspaper tells of pursuing such customers down the street and making them come back and pay, despite their excuse that they had a meeting to go to! 

She also wrote about the “work from homers” who don’t actually work from home but from the place where they a cup of coffee and make it last for hours! I remember a friend from my student days during my time studying in France. She would order a “menthe à l’eau” - peppermint cordial or syrup accompanied by a jug of water for the customer to dilute to their liking - which she would manage to spin out for several hours, adding water until it had almost no green colour left. The cafe was a warmer place to study than her student flat! 

Donald Trump has just made his state of the union speech, the longest US Congress has seen from a President's State of Union address. But history shows he's had a challenger in former Democratic President Bill Clinton:

1 - Donald Trump, February 2026: 1:47:40 

2 - Bill Clinton, January 2000: 1:28:49 

3 - Bill Clinton, January 1995: 1:24:58 

4 - Donald Trump, February 2019: 1:22:25 

5 - Donald Trump, January 2018: 1:20:32

As for the shortest recorded State of the Union, that's a title held by Republican Richard Nixon, who offered Congress some relief by speaking for under half an hour when he finished after just 28 minutes and 55 seconds in January 1972.

It provoked actor Robert de Niro to criticise his president. Many celebrities seem to be doing that lately, all of them being dismissed as just a singer, just an actor, or on the case of De Niro, demented!

So it goes.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!