Out and about in the weather. Christmas cards - some not quite understanding the idea!

I admit to having been somewhat reluctant to leave my warm bed this morning to go for a run. But as it wasn’t raining or blowing a gale I decided to get up and go before the forecast Storm Barra should arrive. It was very quiet out - the calm before the storm? By midday the trees were blowing about a bit but it hadn’t reached storm proportions. We’ll see what the rest of the day brings. 

Yesterday I chickened out of running in the the rain. The weather was rather disgusting and besides, we were going out later in the morning to meet my Italian conversation class for lunch in Manchester. 

Travel was an interesting adventure, as ever. We had looked up on the internet times of buses to the tram stop in Oldham to make sure we didn’t miss a connection. When we got to the bus stop the timetable in the bus shelter gave a completely different time from the internet! Which was correct? No way of knowing. If the bus shelter timetable was correct, had we just missed one? Would we have a long wait for the next one?

As we debated this, a bus arrived at the other side of the crossroads, a bus going in the right direction for us. As the bus goes into the village and then comes back down to the crossroads again there are two bus stops, one on each side of the road. So we crossed over, deciding we would be warmer on the bus going through the village than waiting at the stop for it to come back down. But the bus remained stopped on the other side of the crossroads. Another quandary! Had it broken down? Was it in fact following the bus shelter timetable and killing time as it was ahead of schedule? Just as we had decided we would be better off at our original stop, where there was at least a shelter, the bus started to move in our direction and we were able to get on. It made another few minutes pause just outside the village centre, and again at our original bus stop, and yet again at a stop in the middle of nowhere on the road to Oldham, at a point where normally you have a fine view over the moors towards Derbyshire. Yesterday you could see nothing. The horizon had closed in on us.

In Oldham we transferred to the tram, which was fairly empty and where most people were wearing masks. A young man in the front corner seat was talking on his phone, getting gradually more and more agitated. The more agitated he became, the louder he spoke into his phone and the more “colourful” his language became. I briefly considered going to ask him please to moderate his language but from what we could hear of his side of the conversation, which was by far the greater part suggesting the other party was having trouble getting a word in, he might very well have responded with violence. So we let him be, waiting until he eventually got off the tram to comment on how disturbed he seemed to be. 

And so we arrived at Exchange Square in Manchester, a sort of open space between the Arndale Centre, Selfridge’s and the old Corn Exchange, a space that I swear had either no name or a different name before the tram stop appeared there. We had about 10 or 15 minutes to spare, which is just as well as we had to locate the restaurant, supposedly one of the many such establishments at the Corn Exchange. We walked all around the outside of the Corn Exchange. No sign of it. We looked it up on our phones. It was definitely there … somewhere … but where exactly. The little blobby flag they put on electronic maps did not really help. Neither did the weather; it was still raining which no doubt impeded our vision. Eventually we found it. Most of the establishments in the Corn Exchange have wide fronts and their names emblazoned across the top. Our restaurant, Salvi’s, when we located it, had a narrow doorway, garlanded with artificial greenery which hid the name!

But we found it, only two minutes late! The entrance was narrow, leading into a sort of shop or delicatessen selling all sorts or Italian delicacies. We went down some stairs into the basement where the restaurant opened out nicely. Very good food was served in very copious portions. We swopped tales of huge Italian meals we had eaten in the past - all pr almost all in Italian. A good time was had by all!

Our journey home was uneventful, despite the presence of large numbers of secondary school pupils, mostly maskless! 

I’ve started to write Christmas cards. My tree will be set up and decorated when my son and family arrive about a week before Christmas.  His daughter is 7, just old enough to leave him wondering if she still believes in Father Christmas or if she has reached the stage where she pretends to do so to keep Daddy and Mummy happy! She’s still into the magic, however, and will enjoy decorating the tree with me. 

As I write my cards, checking on my address list and keeping track, I reflect on the personalised cards some people make from photos. We have a collection of family photos from an old friend, charting the growing up of his children, adding the children’s partners and now the grandchildren. I”m never that organised. Mind you, neither is he; he just sends a photo with greetings, nothing so sophisticated as a card made from the photo. 

And then I came across this so-called Christmas photo posted by a US congressman. All the family sits in front of the tree, each member holding a huge gun. Even if you believe people should have the right to carry guns for their own protection, these guns are seriously over the top. These are automatic weapons of war, machine guns. Nobody needs such guns. 

I think the congressman has not quite understood the message about peace and goodwill to all men!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Seasonal thoughts.

We walked out yesterday in the early afternoon, trying to catch a bit of winter sunshine. We saw some interesting winter skies, and some sunshine on the distant hills. We did actually see some sunshine as we walked back down the hill to home. 

The post box outside the post office in Dobcross has been nicely decorated once again by the mystery crochet club, this time with a Christmas theme. 

As we came down the last stage of the hill from Dobcross we saw a chap trying to catch a photo of a deer at the top of the slope. If he managed to get a picture he must have a better camera than mine, or at least one with a more powerful zoom facility. 

He pointed out a fallen tree in his garden. It was blown down during Storm Arwen. After it had fallen, he told us, they discovered its hollow trunk was full of honeycombs. So they have consulted a bee expert, or at any rate a chap who keeps bees, who has recommended that they cover the tree with tarpaulins, hoping to keep the bees alive and warm until the Spring when the beekeeper will try get them into hives. We need to protect the bees. 

As we walked Phil reflected on whether or not we are officially in Winter yet. It’s quite hard to tell as the weather does not divide the year up,into nice bitesized chunks. I thought it had something to do with solstices and so I did a little research.

In the Northern hemisphere we can sort of divide the year according to equinoxes and solstices. At the equinoxes, as the name implies, day and night are more or less the same length. We have the Spring Equinox around the 20th of March and the Autumn Equinox around the 22nd of September. In between times, about half way between them, we have a couple of solstices, appropriately enough known as the Winter Solstice (around December 21st - the deep Midwinter) and the Summer Solstice, around June 21st (Midsummer’s Day) . If we were druids, we would know his stuff already. The solstice marks the point when the Sun crosses the Equator’s path and becomes positioned exactly above the Equator between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. 

At the Summer Solstice we have the longest and the further north you are the more daylight you get, culminating in 24 hours daylight at the North Pole. To balance that, at the Winter Solstice we have the shortest day with no daylight at all at the North Pole. I suppose you could argue that having the Northern Lights kind of makes up for that. 

Now if the Autumn Equinox marks the beginning of Autumn and we think of each season being about three months, then Winter proper only begins at the Winter Solstice. Which explains why January and February often seem a lot more wintery than December! That means Winter is just now beginning. So we should not sing ‘In the deep Midwinter” at Christmas time at all. Maybe we should rewrite the carol: 

At the beginning of Winter 

Icy wind made moan … 

and so on. 

To confuse matter further there is the little matter of the Equilux - more Latin-based terminology - “equal light”. We see the sun as a disk in the sky, the top,half popping up over the horizon before the centre. Because the sun’s light is refracted by the atmosphere we don’t actually get perfectly equal division of light and dark on the equinox. Day and night are of equal length a few days before the Spring Equinox and a few days after the Autumn Equinox.

Goodness! All that from a simple question: Are we officially in Winter yet?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Mask wearing attitudes and opinions. Amazonian problems.

I went running in the wind this morning. Very cold it was too. But it’s a much brighter day than yesterday, which was one of those days when it never seemed to get properly light. Today we have had periods of blue sky, courtesy no doubt of that chill wind blowing the clouds across the sky. 

I popped into the coop for a couple of items and noticed that they seem to have got their act together and issued black face masks to all the staff. It’s a step on the way to encouraging customers to do the same. 

According to The London Economic:

“Around four out of five passengers at major railway stations are complying with the rules on face coverings, according to Network Rail.

The Government-owned company said the figure was based on anecdotal evidence from its staff at stations.” 

Not everyone is in favour of masks. Some are a little paranoid about it.,

Right wing journalist Quentin Letts tweeted - "I have a problem with masks... & my preference is not to wear these things... they've become instruments of control & I find them slightly sinister... there's something to do with thought control about this..." 

I wonder if he feels the same about wearing a seat belt in his car, obeying traffic signals, and other such things. 

Some people feel the same about vaccination.

MP Steve Baker, reluctant to tell people what to do, told the House of Commons:-

“This is a fundamental choice between heading towards heaven and heading towards hell. If we continue to react to these fears and uncertainties by taking the authoritarian course… then we are embarked on that downward course.”

Angela Rayner, in contrast, believes in wearing masks and told Sky News: ‘If you’re [in] an indoor setting, there’s no distinction between a pub, sitting in a pub, or sitting on a train, or sitting in a hospital. It’s still a venue that’s indoors and we should be taking the necessary measures to protect people around us.”

I would go a step further and say masks should be worn at football matches. I know they’re not strictly speaking indoor venues but all those people cheering and shouting are under shelter in the stands, not running about in the open air on the pitch! 

As Christmas approaches, far more quickly than expected all of a sudden, and as I haven’t been out and about scanning shops for presents, I have reluctantly turned to Amazon. I try to avoid giving more money to that entity but there it is. But this week we’ve had some fun and games with Amazon. 

First of all Phil received an email very early one morning telling him his parcel had been delivered. He wasn’t expecting a parcel. It seemed to be coming from Europe. Maybe it was a book or something else chess-related. So far we’ve not been able to find out what and where it is. 

Then yesterday I received an email: “Your parcel has been delivered to your next door neighbour’s house.” But we were in. Why did they not ring the bell? This was a parcel I was expecting and this time I was able to locate it.

As I have ordered stuff - actually no more than three or four items - I have been offered a free trial of Amazon Prime, which gives faster and free delivery. Every time I turned it down, specifically saying I don’t want it and being prepared to accept a slower delivery and even a small delivery charge. Then yesterday I received an email saying they have started my free trial - rather cheeky, I thought! Amazon works on the inertia principle, hoping you will just let payments kick in at the end of the trial period. I’ll have to keep an eye on it and be sure to cancel.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Boosting our immunity. Out and about in the wild and windy weather. Feeling fortunate.

Well, we’ve had our booster! We received our “invitation” while we were in Portugal but were unable to organise it immediately. So on our return we set about booking ourselves into the system. As ever, we were given the opportunity to travel half way across Greater Manchester for a vaccination but finally settled for Lees, not quite on our doorstep but closer than some places offered. 

So this morning we trotted off to catch a bus and then walked for about 15 minutes to get to the health centre in Lees. Normally that would not have been a problem but today is particularly wet and windy, just for a change. All in all, it’s the sort of day when you wouldn’t go anywhere unless you absolutely had to. 

When we located the centre, there seemed to be a queue, which did not bode well. The prospect of standing outside in the cold was not really inviting. However, it turned out that the queue was for the chemist next door and we had to make our way round to the back of the building to find our way in. All very confusing.

Inside it was all brisk efficiency, at least four nurses sticking needles in peoples arms and other helpers checking when nurses were available. Cries of “I’m free but I have no vaccine!” rang out from time to time but on the whole all went smoothly.

We were asked to wait for 15 minutes before leaving, just in case we had an immediate adverse reaction. So far, however, we have had no reaction at all. Let’s hope that continues to be the case.

Leaving the health centre, we headed for a bus stop, hoping to be able to catch a bus to Uppermill and maybe coordinate there with the service to Delph. But the bus that goes through Lees and on to Uppermill occasionally stops at Grotton - the middle of nowhere unless you live there - and goes no further. This was the case for the bus due two minutes after our arrival at the stop. The next was in another 15 minutes! And it was still raining hard and blowing a bit of a gale! And there was no bus shelter at the stop!

So we gave in and made our way to the taxi rank to see if a taxi was available. Five minutes later we were on our way home with a chatty driver who gave us his coronavirus story. When the lockdown was threatened he took the decision go to Pakistan to visit his mother, who always complained he did not visit often enough. He would have been bored stuck at home, he declared. He returned in July and two weeks later was in hospital with the virus. No idea where and from whom he contracted it! Fortunately he survived. He’s been back to Pakistan again since then and regaled us with tales of the amount of paperwork needed, and how nobody even looked at his Passenger Locator Form. After he dropped us off I reflected that maybe his to-ing and fro-ing had actually contributed to the spread of the virus. 

We’ll never know, of course, and he was just one of many doing that kind of escapism. 

As we struggled to prevent our umbrellas from blowing inside out, I was grateful to know that we had a warm house to return to. I thought of the people in the North East of the country and up in Scotland who have gone for days and days without power, all thanks to Storm Arwen. According to the latest news broadcast there are still about 5,000 households without electricity. The lucky ones have gas hobs so they can cook warm food. Others have fires and stoves to feed with coal and wood and are managing to heat up some water or soup and at least are able to keep part of the house warm. But many are just barely surviving. 

I said it was all thanks to Storm Arwen but according to my brother-in-law, an electrical engineer who used to work for one of the power companies, cuts over the last decade or so have meant that the infrastructure has not been well maintained. Hmm! Whose fault is that? So maybe some of Storm Arwen’s effects might have been avoided! Who knows!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Cake shopping. Masks. Gender stuff.

My daughter and I have been out buying a Christmas cake this morning, hoping to get one before they all sell out, getting our Christmas a little bit more sorted out. I already knew our local small Tesco had none but we thought the large Sainsbury’s on the retail park next to IKEA might be a good place to look. No, it was very disappointing. Only small, miserable-looking cakes available. So we went to the Marks and Spencer next door. Not the best selection I’ve ever seen but we now have a cake. 

Of course, I should be making my own cake but really I should have done that weeks ago if it was going to happen. I have a friend who always makes her cake in October and allows it to mature but that has never been my thing. I do a lot of other baking for Christmas but making a cake is a step too far.

In the shops we visited this morning, all the staff were masked, as should be the case. On Wednesday in the Uppermill coop it was not the case. Most customers seem to be complying. 

Meanwhile we are just hoping that Christmas will be able to go ahead. Germany is seeing an increase in Covid cases. My German friend has had her flights from Manchester to Hamburg cancelled. Life keep being disrupted. 

Meanwhile, I’ve come across a new word which seems to have arisen during Covid: ambiversion – combining introvert and extrovert traits. Apparently it is very “now”. “There is a theory that Covid and its attendant stresses and circumstance changes recalibrated our preconceptions about how we relate to others. Extroverts have been forced to explore a quieter life that some found they appreciated to an unexpected degree, and introverts are flourishing in a less hectically connected world, or alternatively, realising how much they need and miss human connection. We are becoming, or realising we already were, ambiverts with contradictory and complex needs in our relationships with others, not just tick boxes on a personality test.”

Genome editing in mice has been making progress, according to a news report on the radio. They hope to be able to select the gender of mice used in experiments, and of chickens. This will prevent the need to cull mice and chickens of the wrong gender - male chickens don’t lay eggs and so are rejected in egg producing places. I don’t know which is the preferred gender for laboratory mice but some of them are also culled. Gender selection will avoid this. 

On the human level, I imagine gender selection will not be an option but according to this article pollution affects gender.

“A study of half the US population and the entire Swedish population examined more than 100 possible factors and found, for example, that mercury, chromium and aluminium pollution correlated with more boys being born, while lead pollution increased the proportion of girls. Proximity to farming also affected the sex ratio, possibly due to higher chemical exposures.”

My daughter and I were talking about gender-stereotyping this morning over coffee before we went out shopping. This was a consequence of watching her smallest child play with a farm set. This farm set is quite ancient in toy terms. It lives in a box in our kitchen. We must have bought it originally for granddaughter number one, who is now 23. She used to set up farms with animals and fences and people to take care of everything. Her younger sister, granddaughter number two, now 18, played in a similar fashion. Their brother, now 16, played principally with the tractors, ignoring the animals altogether. Their smaller sister, now 5, sorted the animals into families and created elaborate adventures, often involving the youngest members of the “families” getting up to mischief. And now the smallest member of the family, aged 2, like his older brother, concentrates all his attention on the tractors, the combine harvester, the various farm trailers that can be attached to them, anything, in fact, with wheels! 

As far as we can work out all the children who have played with this farm have been treated in exactly the same way. At no time has gender-specific play been encouraged. All the children have had soft toys and have kicked balls around. They’ve had the same story books read to them. So maybe some children just conform to their gender-stereotype without any encouragement. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Crisp cold. Geese. Natural beauty. Prescient writers.

After the alternating gloom, damp, and watery sunshine of yesterday, today dawned bright and crisp and clear.

Blue sky and sunshine is very welcome even if accompanied by 0 degrees temperature. 

My weather app promises a “high” of 3 degrees today!

The ice floe at the top of the lane leading to the millpond is as treacherous as ever but most of the ice on the millpond itself has melted, leaving only patches at the corners. As I approached the millpond this morning I heard the racket of geese flying overhead. Just as I was wondering to myself where they might be headed the raucous gang swirled round and landed on the millpond, causing the ice patch at my corner to bob up and down, making a curious rhythm agains the weeds growing at the edge. 

George, the resident white goose, apparently unable to fly, and christened George by the locals, hastened to swim/paddle over to join them. Poor thing, he gives every impression of seriously wanting to be a Canada goose and join in all their communal activities! I suspect he also tries to be a swan when they come visiting. 

I went on my way and saw a friend standing quietly on the path through the wooded area. She was clearly watching something. It was the deer again, this time too far up up the hillside to make a halfway decent photograph. There were three of them making their way up the hill.

A bit of nature study - not a bad way to start the day. We are fortunate to have so much so close to home. 

I’ve just read Ursula Le Guin’s novel “The Dispossessed”, with the contrasting worlds of Anarres and Urras, one a sort of idealised communist (in the most basic meaning of the word) society where everything is held in common - nobody eats while another goes hungry and nobody goes hungry while another eats, although at times everyone goes hungry and everyone works to solve the problem - and the other a world of “propertarians”, an Anarrasti word for property owners, with a recognisable mix of (very) rich and (very) poor. The protagonist, a physicist, having gone to Urras to be able to continue work on his theory which could lead to instantaneous transference of matter, takes refuge eventually in the Terran Embassy. There he decides to gift his theory to everyone, rather than let Urras alone have it and use if as a weapon for war. Via the Terran embassy it will be transmitted to all societies. It will be used for peace not war because no-one “owns” it.  

I found myself thinking of the arguments that have gone on recently about patents for Coronavirus vaccines. If the knowledge were freely shared it would be easier to vaccinate the world but instead some people are making vast amounts of money out of it. The knowledge is “owned”, mostly by big pharmaceutical companies. 

Getting back to “The Dispossessed”, at one point the Terran ambassador explains to our hero, Shevek from Anarres, how the people of earth more or less destroyed their planet and were “rescued” by the Hainish, resettling them on Urras. A small population still lives on old Earth where forests and natural beauty have all been almost totally destroyed, where cities are in ruins. The blue planet has turned grey. Some things are able to be put right, perhaps, but, the ambassador tells him, the bits of plastic everywhere are a permanent blight.

Now, this book was published in 1974. I went and checked the date when the plastic problem was mentioned. We have reached a point where micro-plastic particles are everywhere. Even bodies contain micro-plastic particles. Too small to detect except in a science laboratory, they are in just about everything we ingest. We are trying to reduce world use of plastic. But how did Ursula Le Guin know that this was a problem back in the 1970s, when most of us where delighting in using Tupperware? Plastic was the storage and packaging solution. So how did she know it would become the problem it is today? Maybe she really was a prescient witch. Or maybe she just read a lot of scientific journals. 

Keep on recycling and re-using. We don’t want our blue planet to turn grey as in the Le Guin universe.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

To the market again. A surfeit of lockdown pets. Socialising dogs and babies.

At this time of year it’s always touch and go whether or not I am going to cycle to Uppermill market on a Wednesday morning. Well, truth to tell, it’s always touch and go as around here it can be bucketing down with rain in July or August just as much as in November or December. In this latter part of the year, though, there’s the cold factor to take into account as well. 

But when I got up the sky was relatively clear and my weather app said it would be fine with a gentle breeze. So I wrapped up a bit and put on my light weight rain jacket, just in case. I felt somewhat betrayed, therefore, when it started to rain lightly as I left the Italian greengrocers. And this was even more the case when I stood at the cheese and biscuit stall and the heavens opened, proper Galician-style downpour transferred to Saddleworth. Fortunately the biscuit lady had had the foresight to put up her waterproof awning and I was able to shelter. And it was over in minutes. Consequently my ride home was uneventful. 

The fishman and the fruit and veg man were indulging in a bit of banter, as often happens. Indeed, fishman’s daughter told me, raising her eyebrows and rolling her eyes heavenwards, that they do this all the time and that they phone each other several times a week and rabbit on about anything and everything for up to two hours at a time. I suppose there are worse ways to spend your time.

Dog walkers were out in force this morning, especially on my way home along the Donkey Line. Maybe they saw the brief rainstorm and decided to take advantage of the ensuing dry and even sunny bit of the day. Some seem to be professional dog walkers with several dogs on leads. Or maybe they’re just people who like to have their house full of dogs. Not my idea of heaven, but … each to their own.

Apparently many of the people who acquired dogs during lockdown are giving them to rescue centres or in some cases just abandoning them. Now that people are returning to the office the dog has become an encumbrance. And, besides, these are dogs that have never had to get used to being left alone for hours while their owner goes out to work. It’s not just dog either. Animal rescue workers report abandoned rabbits, kittens, parakeets, even an iguana and a python! Those people, fair weather pet-owners, should have taken up a hobby instead - painting, drawing, all kinds of arts and crafts - but in many cases what they wanted was company. And that’s part of the problem with the dogs: they apparently haven’t had enough varied company to become really socialised.  

“We think about one and a half million extra dogs were acquired in the last 18 months,” says Adam Clowes, the Dogs Trust operations manager. “These people got dogs in a very strange time. They weren’t able to introduce their dogs to other dogs in the park, they weren’t able to access good-quality training classes, veterinary care was limited. So we’ve got a whole cohort of dogs that started life in not the real world, and as life starts to return to normal those dogs and their owners are struggling to cope.”

Young mothers with babies born in lockdown have the same sort of problems. Not only have the new arrivals not been passed around from grandma to grandpa to doting aunt and uncle, but they haven’t been to the socialising groups where sitting-up babies don’t exactly play together but get used to the idea of other small people being around and maybe pinching their rattles. It is of course more difficult to send an anti-social baby to a rescue centre or to sell it on the internet ( which is just as well, really! ) but babies are mostly quite adaptable and most of them do learn eventually. It’s probably the reception class teachers who will have the hardest time of it when this cohort starts school. 

So it goes. 

 

In the meantime one of our local schools seems to be managing to get their small charges to work cooperatively. Out walking  yesterday we spotted the work of Dobcross schoolchildren, getting one part of the village into the Christmas mood.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.