I don’t recall how many years ago we started a kind of family tradition of walking from our house in Delph to the fish and chip shop in Diggle where we would buy fish and chips, consume it al fresco by a local millpond and then walk home again. There would be me, Phil, his brother, our daughter who didn’t work on Fridays, and one and then two of her smallest offspring. Various older offspring joined us from time to time. This became known as the Diggle Chippy Hike.
Diggle Chippy is located in a wooden hut on the main road on Diggle. It’s decorated inside with photos of old Saddleworth. They serve very good fish and chips. They taste even better eaten by the pond. For a brief while after Covid you couldn’t go inside the chippy but had to place your order, pay and then collect your order from the side door. Things are back to normal now.
The attendees of the Hike have varied as the small children started school. And then for a couple of years my brother-in-law had various health problems, including foot problems, that made long walks difficult. So it’s been a while since we did a Diggle Chippy Hike.
We’d not seen my brother-in-law since some time before Christmas. Various members of the family were afflicted by a flu virus and nobody wanted to inflict their germs on anyone else. Then last week sometime he contacted us and proposed coming to visit today, provided we had recovered from our Christmas flu and provided he didn’t pick up yet another chest infection on his travels to Amsterdam to attend music concert.
Everyone seemed to be well this morning. The weather forecast not being good, he proposed coming via Diggle Chippy and collecting a chippy lunch, for old time’s sake. With the promise of a chippy lunch, our daughter opted to join us. And then Granddaughter Number Two, not working today, followed suit.
So we sat and ate fish and chips - sausage and chips for Granddaughter Number Two - and chatted round the table. We didn’t so much set the world to rights as demolish the character of the USA, its government, its policies, almost everything about it! Quite cathartic but rather depressing!
Now, here’s something I found on social media, posted by someone who goes by handle of “revchuckcurrie”:
“As an American, I want to applaud European leaders who stood up to Donald Trump over Greenland. Yesterday Trump was crying for war. Today in Davos, Trump surrendered to Europe, which is a very, very good thing. The United States has never been perfect, but as the world’s oldest democracy, we’ve provided an uninterrupted example of expanding democracy for 250 years, until now. We need pro-democracy voices in Europe and the Americas to grow even louder. To keep Trump’s America in check.”
Well! I wondered about the claim to be the world’s oldest democracy. What about ancient Greece? But I suppose their democracy didn’t last and so it doesn’t count. Searching on the internet I find that if you count from when the United States declared independence from Britain, then they might count as the oldest democracy. Mind you, you have to bear in mind that black people couldn’t vote and women couldn’t vote. What kind of democracy are we talking about? I’m not getting started on “expanding democracy”!
That’s how it goes.
In one of those “news flashes” that pop up on your electronic devices, this morning I was informed that “Victoria Beckham has trademarks on all her children’s names”. Two responses: why do I need to know that? And can you actually trademark your children’s names? Regarding the second of these I wonder if there is an organisation that checks up on you if you accidentally give your child a Beckham name. I also wonder about the Spanish women called Cruz, a name chosen for one of the Beckham sons I think. Might they not get indignant as they had the name first?
More seriously, I think it reflects rather badly on our news media that we give attention to trivia about the Beckhams’ family arguments and their opinions of names and so on. More imprtant things going on in the world are being ignored.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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