Rain. The diminishing market. Sushi soy sauce fish. Retiring later or earlier? Immigration / asylum stuff. K

I t was raining as I walked to the market in Uppermill this morning. So on the way I took a photo of the sunflowers in a nodding acquaintance’s garden in Dobcross. Just a bit of brightness! There is the possibility of thunder later but at the moment it seems to have stopped raining at least.

Really I suppose I should stop calling it the market. It’s down to the fishman and the shoe and slipper man these days. The cheese and biscuit stall has not reappeared since the new year and recently the fruit and veg man has given up too. Mostly I go so that I can get fresh fish without going too far afield. I usually go to the Italian-owned greengrocery as well as the market buy I could go there anyy day of the week. I also used to go regularly to a delicatessen which sold excellent olives and other good things but that closed some time ago and resurrected as yet another trendy clothes boutique! 

So it goes! 

Here’s photo of some strange objects: fish shaped soy sauce dispensers.

Here’s an explanation: 

“They have been a familiar sight at takeaway sushi shops around the world for decades but it could be the beginning of the end for fish-shaped soy sauce dispensers.

South Australia will be the first place in the world to ban them under a wider ban on single-use plastics that comes into force on 1 September.

The device known as shoyu-tai (or soy-sauce snapper in Japanese) was invented in 1954 by Teruo Watanabe, the founder of Osaka-based  of Osaka-bases company Asahi Sogyo! according to a report from Japan’s Radio Kamsai.

It was then common for glass and ceramic containers to be used but the advent of cheap industrial plastics allowed the creation of a small polyethylene container in the shape of a fish, officially named the “Lunch Charm”.”

I don’t eat sushi so I have note come across these “fish”, but now they are being banned in the interests of reducing plastic pollution.

When I visited my older sister recently with my Spanish sister along for good measure, we three sisters reminisced about this and that, as sisters will. And, also as sisters will, occasionally we had different versions of the same event. My older sister commented that now we have nobody we can consult to check the truth of the matter: we are now the older generation, the guardians of the family annals! Scary stuff!

The younger generation are going to have to work rather longer than we did. In fact, there’s a bit of a crisis about the birth rate in the country. There will be fewer workers contributing to the pot which pays the older folks’ pensions and we older folks are living longer!

Meanwhile, if ordinary people are going to have to work longer, sports people are a different matter. Cyclist Geraint Thomas, currently riding his last Tour of Britain, intends this to be his swan song. He’s about 37

And there are commentators wondering how long Novak Djokovic, 38, can keep going. It’s to be hoped that they have squirrelled away enough earnings to continue to have a good life style. Mind you, I expect they’ll find other ways of continuing to earn plenty.

It begins to seem that our government is modelling some of its immigration and asylum policy on what is going on in the USA. Here’s a link to an article about a young man whose family moved from Portugal to the UK when he was twelve. He was arrested while out shopping and detained for a month. The government is apparently taking a hard line on illegal immigrants who work as delivery drivers but this young man completed his secondary education here, has been paying taxes for over 10 years and has a national insurance number - surely indicative of legal status.

Then there are the foreign students who are warned not to overstay their student visas. If they do, they will be “removed”.

And with the news that the right of accepted asylum seekers to bring their families here to join them, here’s an article about a young man from Afghanistan whose life is being turned upside down by that decision. 

Will we have our own ICE agents soon?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

September rain and sunshine. Some thoughts on religion and conflict.

 For a good part of yesterday it rained torrentially. One of my nodding acquaintances told me this morning, as our paths crossed on this fine sunny morning, that her little dog had refused to go out for a walk in the late afternoon, simply turning round at the door and walking away, back into the house. Phil and I managed to find a point late in the day when the rain had stopped and went for a walk round the village. As the evening went on the sky mostly cleared but the temperature dropped: September getting started!

In Peru archaeologists have discovered a 3D mural that could date back 4,000 years. One of the experts said, “These were people who lived from agriculture and from the sea but they already show the first signs of social hierarchy.” The most influential and powerful people would have been shamans, male and female, or priests or priestesses, she explained. “They possessed important knowledge about medicinal plants and also about astronomy; they could predict the weather conditions through observation of the stars and the sun. They acquired knowledge and began to perfect it. They were, in a sense, scientists as well as spiritual and religious leaders.”

That was 4,000 years ago, a civilisation that perhaps went into decline before we had even begun to advance very far in Europe. And then we went over and “discovered” their countries and set about teaching them to be civilised Christians.

As I read this article earlier this morning about Syria, I found myself reflecting on religion and how strange it is that Christianity, Judaism and Islam, three connected religions, all have schisms within them. You might think that something like believing in the same god should unite people. Instead, as well as having Christians against Jews against Moslems we have long had Catholics against Anglicans (though without actual fighting these days), different kinds of Jews disagreeing with each other, and Sunni Moslems against Shi’ite / Alawite Moslems, with the kind of violence described in the article I linked at the start of this paragraph. 

Fortunately we no longer have crusades where “good Christians” go out to kill or convert infidels of one kind or another. But antisemitism still exists and the continuing chaos in the Middle East goes on from day to day. And there are still many who believe, and try to persuade everyone, that every country should live a “western” lifestyle.

I am currently reading “The Map of Love” by Ahdaf Soueif. Set in Egypt in 1997 and in the early years of the 20th century, it tells the story of relationships and friendships against a background of ongoing conflict. Some of the descriptions of political events and violent events and struggles for freedom could have been lifted from today’s news reports, with just a few name changes! At one point Lady Anna Winterbourne, married to Sharif al-Baroudi expresses her feelings of being ashamed to be English. Reflecting on our country’s history in the Middle East I could echo her sentiments.

And of course I am aware that today’s conflicts are mostly political with just an overlay of religion.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Time marches on. The end of summer for teachers and parliament. Some things about educational inequality.

Pinch! Punch! as a friend of mine is in the habit of posting on social media at the start of every month. Apparently there is some kind of tradition of saying this and punching the arm of the person you say it to. It’s all about being the first to say it! It all sounds a bit barbaric and unnecessarily violent to me but there it is. 

And here we are at the start of September! Already!

The friends who are young enough to still be teaching are back at work today. In some cases their pupils don’t return until Wednesday but for the teachers summer is officially over. 

And it’s raining! 

I think summer is also over for MPs. Are they back in Westminster today? I am still trying to work out why government needs to close down for the summer. It’s not as if MPs need to dash off to their estates to oversee the harvest these days. Neither is it the case that the world stops turning and everything comes to a standstill. Here is a link to an article by Frances Ryan where she questions the wisdom of letting Nigel Farage set the agenda for the summer. My thoughts exactly! 

I read a couple of articles this morning about the inequality of life in this country. One of them discussed the 30 hours of free childcare for children from 9 months old to school age, a benefit to which working parents are entitled. However it seems that because of the need to be working a certain number of hours a week, parents who work shorter hours are not entitled to it and consequently children, usually the ones who are already disadvantaged, will be further disadvantaged from the educational side. Here’s a link to that article.

The other article concerned pupils from low-income families being unable to take certain subjects for GCSE because of extra costs involved. Here’s a link to that article. 

School subjects that fall into that category include geography (field trips), modern foreign languages (visits to the country whose language is being studied) music (instrument lessons), food and nutrition, aka home economics (ingredients) and PE (extra kit and equipment). 

Oddly enough I managed to study two foreign languages to O-Level (an ancient precursor of today’s GCSE) and A-Level without visiting France until I was in sixth form or Spain until I was at university. My school organised yearly visits to Paris but they were well outside my family’s budget. Shortly before we sat the A-Level examinations, a friend and I managed to organise ourselves to travel to Paris and Normandy to stay with her brother’s French wife’s family. I suspect we spoke more French than we might have done on a school coach trip to Paris. 

Similarly I had friends who took Music O-Level without instrument lessons. I suspect A-Level might have been more prohibitive as I later discovered that you really need to be proficient in more than one musical instrument. I can’t really speak for the other subjects mentioned. Certainly PE was not even an option when I was a teenager. Life was a lot simpler then though. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Vaccination. Roundabouts. Flagwaving. Immigration/asylum seeking. Excessive dog-friendliness.,

 Amongst the old family stories there is the one about how I almost died of whooping cough and diphtheria when I was a baby. My grandmother is said to have saved my life on more than one occasion by helping me to breathe. One of those illnesses would have been enough but two at once was a bit excessive. Both those potentially baby-killing illnesses have not been common for a long time now in this country, largely because of vaccination. But now I read that a baby has recently died of whooping cough. Oddly enough the headline said that the mother had not been vaccinated. Reading on, I found that if pregnant women are vaccinated against whooping cough at the right time, ideally between 20 and 32 weeks, it passes protection to their baby in the womb so that they are protected from birth. That was not a thing when I was having babies. 

 

It seems that vaccine rates among pregnant women for whooping cough reached a peak of 76% in 2016 but fell to 59% by March last year. Since the deaths last year, vaccination rates among mothers recovered to 73%, but are still below the peak.

Vaccination as a whole is being questioned more and more. There was a big scare about the MMR (measles, mumps & rubella) vaccine when our children were small. There were stories going round that it caused autism. I thought we had got over that scare but apparently vaccination rates  for primary school children were at the lowest levels for 15 years. Almost one in five children starting primary school this week in England are not fully protected from diseases including whooping cough, polio, tetanus and diphtheria. This puts the UK well below the World Health Organisations 95% threshold for herd immunity for all childhood vaccines. 

Influencers and their parenting methods have quite a lot to answer for!

There was time when small road junctions were just that: small road junctions. And then suddenly small roundabouts started appearing at these junctions, initially just a few here and there but now they are ubiquitous. I suppose it was a response to the increase in the number of cars on the roads and the need to control the flow of traffic. Anyway, there is one at a road junction not far from us and yesterday or the day before, driving past with my daughter and family we noticed that it has been painted with a rather crude flag of St George. This is happening all over the country, as is the sudden raising of flags, both the England flag and the Union Jack. It’s all become rather excessive!

I hear that J.D. Vance has criticised those who oppose this flag waving and flag painting. He thinks we should be proud of our flags just as they are in the USA. They do go in for a lot of flag waving over there. Someone commented that roundabout painting does not happen in Wales because it would be too difficult for anyone whom is not a talented artist to try to paint the Welsh flag with its red dragon. 

The immigration debate still rumbles on. It seems that the Church of England has joined in the debate, criticising reform UK’s proposed immigration policy.

And here is a link to an article about a successful immigration/ asylum story, looking back at Angela Merkel’s open door policy. Disturbingly, the article ends in this fashion: 

“A decade has passed since Somar’s journey. Today, the future for migrants – and of Europe itself – remains uncertain, as intolerance grows across the continent. In Germany, where Somar lives, the far-right and anti-migration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party came second in February’s federal elections, with more than 20% of the vote.

Meanwhile, fortified with barbed wire and systematic pushbacks, Europe continues to close itself off.”

Finally, on a lighter note, here’s a link to Tim Dowling writing about dog-friendly cinemas. Yes! Dog-friendly cinemas! Really, there seems to be no limit to what some dog owners need to do to include their dogs in their whole life! I have already ranted about dog-friendly cafes and restaurants, even dog-friendly supermarkets and shopping centres. But do dogs even like going to the cinema? The mind boggles! Well, mine does!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Mending broken hearts. Family blackberrying expedition. The cost of bottle of water. Opinions of media coverage of Reform UK.

 In fairy tales it is possible for people to die of a broken heart. I didn’t think this was possible in real life until I came across takotsubo cardiomyopathy, known as broken heart syndrome, which causes the heart muscle to change shape and suddenly weaken. It is usually triggered by severe emotional or physical stress, such as losing a loved one. People do actually die of it. Fortunately it seems that the world’s first randomised controlled trial for broken heart syndrome has found that 12 weeks of tailored cognitive behavioural therapy, or a heart recovery exercise programme involving swimming, cycling and aerobics, helped patients’ hearts recover.

There you go! Exercise can mend a broken heart! Some people just go for food! 

On the subject of food, we went out foraging again today. My daughter asked if she could drop the small people off at our house while she did some sorting out. Granddaughter Number Two came too. We proposed a blackberry picking expedition. Everyone joined in with enthusiasm, even Granddaughter Number Two despite the fact that she never ever eats fruit. It’s not so much the taste as the texture she dislikes. And this goes right back to her early childhood. 

We got home just as the rain set in. And then we made blackberry buns! All good! 

We have often complained at the price of wine, even a fairly modest bottle of wine, in English restaurants. According to this article, the latest thing is to sell customers highly priced bottle of water. It seems you can go for a £5 bottle of Crag, which comes from the Peak District, or Vidago, a mineral-rich water from a Portuguese spa town, which will cost you £19. Some people obviously have more money than sense. 

The controversy over asylum seekers’ hotels continues. Here’s an article about it. 

At the risk of repeating myself, here is a letter from a Dr Ian Flintoff of Oxford:

Nigel Farage and the small number of Reform MPs justifies, at most, a couple of column inches on the inside pages of the Guardian. Unfortunately, and with the finest of intentions, you and the rest of the media continue to make Farage into a towering national political figure. This is what happened with Donald Trump in America and, to an extent, with Boris Johnson. Do beware! Lavish and extensive promotion enables people to think that Nigel Farage is a true and worthy leader.

Dr Ian Flintoff

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Thoughts about summer and holidays. And some August silliness.,

 The blackberry brambles around here are still full of berries, despite my having set about them earlier this week. And I know of a few other people who have been out and about doing the same.

The poet Seamus Heaney understood blackberrying:

Late August, given heavy 

rain and sun for a full week, 

the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, 

a glossy purple clot 

among others, red, green, 

hard as a knot.

You ate that first one 

and its flesh was sweet 

like thickened wine.

Summer’s blood was in it 

leaving stains 

upon the tongue 

and lust for picking.

Quite so. I need to go out berry picking once again, maybe accompanied by some small assistants.

I read that on Tuesday, the Met Office said this summer would “almost certainly” be the UK’s warmest on record, the mean average temperature for the season stood at 16.13C, based on data up to 25 August. A good summer to spend in the Uk instead of rushing off to warmer climes.,

According to this article, the people of Greece cannot afford to holiday in their own country. But this letter suggests that it is not the case:

“Your article concludes that while foreign visitors can savour Greece’s natural beauty and other joys of their country, for Greeks such pleasures have become a bittersweet memory. We beg to differ, because the evidence points exactly to the opposite.

Every year the Greek statistical authority, Elstat, publishes its Survey on Qualitative Characteristics of Resident Tourists. The July 2025 edition presents comprehensive evidence that Greek residents’ trips and nights spent on trips for leisure, recreation and holidays have been rising since 2021. Both the number of trips and the total number of nights spent on vacations are at their peak for the past decade. The overwhelming majority (more than 85%) of Greeks’ vacations take place within Greece, and more than 70% occur in the summer months of June, July and August.

Further evidence demonstrating the increased ability of Greeks to take vacations is provided by Elstat’s annual Household Budget Survey. The latest edition shows that the category most closely related to vacations, “Restaurants, cafes and hotels”, presents the fastest rise among 12 sub-categories of expenditure; its share in total household expenditure is the highest of the past 16 years, and is now higher than before the crisis.

The numbers speak for themselves: with a remarkable economic recovery, reflected in rising employment and real incomes (as documented by Eurostat), Greeks are taking more and longer vacations, which they overwhelmingly spend in Greece. 

A number of Greeks, however, do have difficulties making ends meet, and raising their welfare standards is our government’s top priority. On that, we firmly believe we are on the right track. And the Greeks’ summer is alive and kicking. 
Omiros Tsapalos
Spokesperson, Hellenic Ministry of Economy and Finance”

I sometimes wonder if the British insistence on having holidays abroad is a peculiarity of our nation. It certainly wasn’t the case when I was a child. And then came the waves of mass tourism and cheap holidays. It would be interesting to see some statistics about here and other European countries., especially if we are going to keep having warmer summers.

Forecasters warn that the weather is due to change, just in time for children returning to school. I seem to remember though that we often had Indian summers when the autumn term started. 

Since August is supposed to be silly season, how about this: Donald Trump claims that in Europe we call him the President of Europe. He says he is honoured by the title… which nobody seems to rememebr giving him

.

I have already commented on the early onset of Christmas advertising. Here’s another I saw today for the royal National Lifeboat Institute: 

“Too early for Christmas cards? 🎄 Not when they’re on sale for as little as £2.50! Shop today and support RNLI lifesavers.”

 Mind you, I do know people who will already have bought their Christmas  cards!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!