A bit of a rant about overpaid footballers, exotic creatures, importing unnecessary stuff half way round the world. Oh, and Donald Trump Jr.

Today has been grey! One of those days when it never really gets light. No frost. No furious downpour. No moon to marvel at. Yes, I know the moon is still there but it’s hidden behind the clouds! So it goes. 

Great names from Manchester United and Scotland have come together today to pay tribute to Denis Law, a legendary figure for both club and country, following his death at the age of 84. 

I bet he didn’t earn £500, 000 a week! 

Erling Haaland is reported to have signed a a contract with Manchester City which ties him to club until 2034. Rumour has it hatvhe will be paid £500,000 per week. WHAAAT?? 

I know he’s a talented footballer and all that but is anyone worth that kind of silly money? I imagine him thinking to himself, “What shall I do next week? Oh, I know! I’ll buy a big house!” 

Let’s hope someone can advise him to use the money wisely! 

In Greenland it seems that Donald Trump Jr hosted a lunch where a lot of people wore Make America Great Again caps. The trouble is that it’s now being reported that the cap wearers were homeless people invited in off the street with the offer of free food. 

A political operative and friend of Mr Trump Jr said: “Do you think Donald Trump Jr was wandering around Greenland inviting homeless people … to lunch, or do you realise that the suggestion sounds so beyond the pale ridiculous that you should feel stupid even asking the question?

“There were cameras following him around from the second he got there to the second he left. Did they miss him recruiting homeless people … to his homeless person … lunch?”

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Whatever the truth of the matter, it’s a great story.

Here’s another one. A florist in Sheffield found a frog in a bunch of roses. It was no ordinary frog so they got an expert to look at it. It was a Colombian tree frog that had somehow survived the journey from Colombian in the bunch of roses. What are we doing importing roses from Colombia - half way across the world for goodness sake? Apparently snakes, geckos, lizards, southern European tree frogs have made their way to places like Holland by hiding in olive trees. Who knew that such creatures really wanted to travel? And why are we importing roses from Colombia? Doesn’t anyone know about the cost to the environment? 

More importantly what kind of dangerous pests which can seriously affect our native trees and plants are quietly making their way here undetected. 

It’s all part of the modern mania to have exotic plants in our gardens and to have certain kinds of fruits and flowers all year round. Strawberries are on sale in all our supermarkets! It’s January for goodness sake! Strawberries should coincide with Wimbledon!

Okay! Rant over! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Bright clear skies, a waning wolf moon and frost. That Dylan bio-pic. Feeling like Joan Baez. And the ceasefire.

After an inauspicious start (foggy and dull and unpleasant), yesterday morning turned into a beautiful afternoon. We walked up the hill to Dobcross, catching some vitamin D. 

Because it had become so clear, we were able to see the now waning moon, high and bright and clear late in the evening. In addition it led to a drop in temperature (again!) and a heavy frost this morning. Today is another fine but cold day.

I mentioned e-bikes yesterday. Now it turns out that Timothée Chalamet turned up for the London première of “A Complete Unknown”, the film in which he plays Dylan, on a Lime bike. Something of a publicity stunt, I would have thought.  

And today I read that he has been fined for parking his Lime bike in an unauthorised place. I was under the impression they were often just left any old where but then I am not an expert on hired bikes. And I suppose that Timothée Chalamet can afford the fine.

According to this article, generation Z women are discovering Joan Baez, a surprise consequence of seeing the Dylan bio-pic. Of course, they are not just appreciating her music but identifying with her. It has to be said that Joan Baez’s voice has weathered much better than Bob Dylan’s! 

Out in the wider world, by all accounts a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been signed. Not a permanent ceasefire, of course, but 42 days without fighting. Except that even today more Palestinians have been killed! 

Here is Michael Rosen’s conversation between the King and his Tutor on that very subject: 

So we have the peace treaty,' said the King to his tutor, 'what about our longterm objectives?'

'Good point, sir,' said the King's tutor, 'and I'm glad to see you using a technical term like that.'

'So?' said the King, 'have our longterm objectives changed?'

'No,' said the tutor.

'But surely,' said the King, 'with this peace treaty we're going to have to come to all sorts of agreements with the people in the way.'

'People in the way?' said the tutor.

'You know,' said the King, 'the people in the way of us achieving our longterm objectives.

'O yes,' said the tutor. 'Them! But no, we go on making sure that we don't give in to the demands of the people in the way.'

'But won't the Emperor say that we have to?' said the King.

'What the Emperor says and what the Emperor does,' said the tutor, 'are two completely different things.'

'So we have the peace treaty,' said the King, 'we stop firing our arrows at each other for a while, but we press on with making sure that the people in the way are not in the way?'

'Yes,' said the tutor, 'but now we have to stop the war for a while, we go back to doing it, little by little.'

'That's marvellous,' said the King. 'Drink?'

'Thank you,sir,' said the tutor.

No further comment.

Life goes on stay safe and well, everyone!

Fog! Not seeing the full moon - not even in Australia! Climate change stuff!

There was fog this morning when I walked to the market in Uppermill.  The market, by the way, was still sadly depleted. Jenny Biscuit was still not around. Maybe the weather put her off. By lunchtime the fog had lifted and the day was brighter, although still hardly what you would call sunny! Later in the afternoon, however, the sun came out and the sky was blue! 

A Facebook friend in Australia described driving around trying to find a vantage spot from which to view the Wolf Moon. She didn’t manage to see anything except silver clouds! Much the same here! She had a small panic between two stopping places, fearing she had lost her mobile phone. She found it on the roof of her car, where she had placed it when she stopped the first time and failed to take a photo. Amazingly it did not slide off! 

I was reminded of a time, possibly as long as 50 years ago, when we were driving home from work and realised that other drivers were waving and pointing at us. Eventually we stopped to examine the car, just to see of there was anything obviously wrong, something a relatively new driver might not notice. On the soft top of our red Citroën 2CV was Phil’s briefcase, placed there as he put other things in the car and forgotten about. Fun and games! 

I read an article about e-bikes, specifically about the rental bikes that don’t need to be returned to a base but can just be left on the pavement until someone else decides to pick them up and ride away on them. It wasn’t a particularly great article but it had an interesting quote about cycling for pleasure: “It just wipes your brain. Like an Etch A Sketch, all the bad stuff goes away.” 

Maybe everyone should take up some sort of exercise for pleasure! 

Do modern children still play with the Etch-a-Sketch? I wonder. Our two youngest grandchildren have had something similar, a sort of pad on which you could draw a picture and easily erase it to begin again, but not nearly so efficient as the Etch-a-Sketch. Toys that don’t need batteries and don’t need recharging! Wonderful stuff!

I read that a US climate-change-denying lobby group, Heartland, has set up a branch in the UK, with its opening attended by Liz Truss and Nigel Farage. Do they really not believe in climate change or is this another bandwagon to jump onto to promote their own agendas? Hard to say!

Climate change, however, continues to wreak havoc all over the world, as Californians can bear witness. We all have contributed to climate change as we have benefitted from the various technological and industrial advances that have made life easier. Most of us are trying to compensate for that now - recycling, changing our habits and so on. Some of the biggest creators of climate change havoc, though, actively oppose moves that might make them accept responsibility:

“ In the year preceding the devastating Los Angeles county wildfires, big oil fiercely lobbied to kill a “polluter pay” that moved through the California senate and would have forced major fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate disasters.

Fossil-fuel industry lobbying in California spiked to record levels during the 2023-24 legislative session, and the polluter pay bill was among the most targeted pieces of legislation, a Guardian review of state lobby filings found.”

It’s amazing what money can do!

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone! 

Back to drizzle and damp. MAGA and MAHA. Starbucks news. Ceasefire possibilities.

It seems that we are back to just normal damp weather. There are just a few extremely stubborn bits of snow hanging around, where it was piled up when paths were cleared or where it drifted against walls at the edge of fields. And although there have been a few feeble attempts to brighten up, the cloud which has descended on all the hill tops has been winning the battle.

So much for seeing the full moon and whichever planets are apparently lined up with it in the January sky. During the last week there have been some splendid opportunities to see the moon bright and clear approaching the full but last night there was nothing to be seen but cloud. As ever, heavenly phenomena are rarely visible around here. Even sunrise is delayed because of a great huge hill on one side and sunset is best seen from the attic window as another huge hill gets in the way on he other side. 

Across the pond we have ween MAGA, Make America Great Again, and now there is also MAHA, Make America Healthy Again. MAHA people support the choice of Robert F Kennedy jr as Health Secretary. After all, like them he rejects vaccination, and recently he’e been going on about seed oils (sunflower seed oil, for example) are actually poisoning people. Not true, by the way, as this article explains. 

The MAHA people are mostly female influencers, stay at home ‘moms’ who probably don’r need to worry about how to feed the kids but have plenty of time to post “interesting” items on social media.  “Anyone can consider themselves Maha, but mothers in particular have become its fiercest evangelists online, where they post videos explaining their politics while cooking dinner or resting a swaddled baby in their arms.””

For example, there is Mikyla Page, mother of a three year old. “Before eating anything, the stay-at-home mom reads an ingredients list, staying away from artificial colors, flavors, dyes, and excess sugar. She doesn’t support vaccination, instead believing that “bathing in sunlight” will keep her family healthy, making sure her family gets outside every day to soak up vitamin D.

At first, Page felt alone in her choices. “You’re called crazy for even questioning the medical field,” she said. “My intuition was telling me one thing, but the world was telling me something else. My husband was like, ‘Are you sure this is where you want to go?’ I just went with my gut.”

I don’t patronise Starbucks. On the whole I find their coffee rather insipid, but that’s just a matter of choice. A lot of people must find it perfectly acceptable as their cafes are ubiquitous. However, I don’t want to talk about the quality of their coffee today. i read that they have changed their policy regarding use of their toilets. For some years now it has been possible for anyone to walk in and use the toilet facilities free of charge, a boon for pregnant women, who often have to pee very frequently, parents of small children, who often decide that their little bladders are full at some crucial point in a shopping expedition, and, indeed, anyone  who feels a similar pressing need. Now it seems that Starbucks has decreed that only paying customers can use their loos! Well, at any raye, that’s the situation in America. Will Starbucks UK follow suit? We shall see! 

On a more serious topic, there are reports that Gaza ceasefire negotiations are at their “final stages”. However, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, however, cautioned that people ‘shouldn’t be overexcited about what’s happening right now.” He said, “It is very important not to raise expectations to a level that doesn’t link to what’s happening on the ground right now.

“We are, we do believe, at a developed stage. We do believe we are at the final stages. But obviously, until there is an announcement, there will be no announcement, and therefore we shouldn’t be over-excited about what’s happening right now.”

Perhaps we should all start to cross our fingers. But it’s hard not think that reports of people not allowed to leave Gaza cor medical treatment, as in this article, are not a very optimistic sign. 

We shall see.

.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

Still slippy! The benefits of Latin (and other such subjects) for all. The shortsightedness of cutting provision.

Optimistically I set out to run round the village this morning. The temperature is supposedly up to 3° or 4°, hardly warm but still above freezing. So one would expect some thawing to be taking place. And indeed, the millponds are no longer frozen, but the trodden snow on the pavements now has an extra sheen. Drizzly rain has fallen and has instantly frozen as it has hit the trodden snow. Consequently the pavements are slippier than ever. So it goes! 

Those of us of a certain age greet each other as we go around, reminding and advising each other to be careful on the slippery surfaces!

Now for a bit of language stuff. Here is a little something I found the other day: 

“Not to start an argument, but jammy eggs are the BEST way to eat an egg! We’re talking perfectly set whites with a slightly set yolk that still has a soft, “jammy” texture! If you haven’t tried them yet, consider this your invitation! 

After scouring the internet and dozens of tests, we’ve nailed down the method and timing (to the second!) for PERFECT jammy eggs EVERY TIME! Put ‘em on toast, in salads and bowls, or have them on their own as a protein-packed snack. Let’s get jammin’.”

So basically, “jammy” eggs = soft-boiled eggs. I wonder why food writers feel the need to use nursery language. I have heard soft-boiled eggs referred to as “dippy eggs” or “soldier eggs”, the latter because you then slice your toast into “soldiers” which can be dipped into the still liquid yolk of the egg! There’s nothing quite like nursery food on a cold winter’s morning!

The item about “jammy” eggs suggested putting them in salads (actually I prefer hard-boiled in salads, preferably with a dollop of mayonnaise) or “bowls”. That last one does not refer simply to a piece of crockery but the the trend to serve stuff in a shallow bowl rather than a plate - a combination of ingredients, prettily presented. It’s a fashionable thing at places that do “brunch”, or so I am told.

Recently there have been articles about the benefits of learning Latin. Arlene Holmes-Henderson, a professor at Durham University has been encouraging the introduction of Latin into the curriculum of state secondary schools. Great strides have been made but it can’t be right, she argues, that pupils at private schools in the UK – 7% of the total – get good access to the classics curriculum while for the rest it is patchy. “It is certainly the case that there are fantastic state-maintained schools that have a vibrant classics curriculum. But it is a postcode lottery and that is not fair,” she says. Here’s a link to more of what she has to say on the matter. 

Judging by these letters in response to Professor Holmes-Henderson’s ideas, there are plenty of people in agreement with her.

The same things could be said of music and the arts in general. So many state schools have had to cut provision of these “luxury subjects”. 

Personally I would argue for the reintroduction a compulsory modern Foreign Language component for years 10 and 11 but I fear that that may be another lost cause. Learning a foreign language, ancient or modern, and discovering the culture of the people who speak it have a civilising influence on the world!  

But now it seems that the Bridget Phillipson, who became Secretary of State for Education when Labour moved into Number 10 Downing Street, has decreed that funding for the Latin Excellence Scheme, which has introduced Latin into quite a number of schools, is to be axed. This is regarded as a mistake by people who understand such things. And even if you sympathise with the need to make cuts or changes in education funding, you might think that the funding could remain in place until the end of the academic year.at least. There are secondary school students who have embarked on a GCSE course which they now might not be able to complete.

So much for equality!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

A possible thaw! Lunar names! Poking fun at politicians!

This morning I went out for a run for the first time in a week. Well, I ran and then I walked on slippy places and then I ran some more. It’s noticeably less cold. You couldn’t really say “warmer” because, despite temperatures now officially being just above 0°, it still feels very cold. But cars parked outside our house (parked by the way on double yellow lines which the drivers ignore) had heavily frosted windscreens at 8.00 this morning but clear windscreens by late morning. Perhaps a thaw is on the way!

We have had some beautiful sunny days during the very cold spell, inevitably followed by some clear nights. As a result we have been able to see the moon making its bright way towards full. Look carefully and you can see the almost full moon rising over the hill in the late afternoon the other day. 

Apparently the first full moon of the year is known as the wolf moon. Who knew? So tomorrow night we will have a wolf moon. I have this information about from a newspaper article, from one of the region’s local papers. 

This article told me, courtesy of Professor Christopher Collins, an emeritus astrophysics professor from Liverpool John Moores University, that “Other names for the January full moon include the Old Moon and the Ice Moon, which reflects the frozen landscape of the season.” It certainly reflects the current frozen landscape. 

The article went on to give me this information:

“The Wolf Moon gets its name from Native American tribes, who often heard wolves howling during the cold winter nights, when the animals are more active.

This name eventually made its way across the Atlantic to Europe, where it was adopted by medieval settlers.”

Oh, dear! I rather suspect that the writer needs to check her time line there! Or maybe the Native American people discovered Europe long ago, well before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in the opposite direction. 

Thinking of who discovered and named different countries, here is an updated map of America. 

And here is a cartoon, from the New Yorker magazine I think, with suggestions for places America might like to purchase, or indeed obtain by other means. 

Politicians don’t like to be mocked, or even just referred to in a less than flattering manner. Liz Truss has apparently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Keir Starmer because he said she crashed the economy. Hmm! Here is one response to that.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!