Season of mist … and cold! The race between war and pollution to finish us off. And children reading.

Today began with mist. I walked over Dobcross and down to the market in Uppermill in a very closed in world. The hills had been swallowed up. 

As I arrived home, the sun was just coming up over the hill.

By midday the sky was blue.  It’s rather cold though. 

I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to find a post I saw earlier in which my German friend commented on her country’s warning to its citizens to be ready for World War III. Instead here’s a post from Michael Rosen this morning:

”So we're living at a time when the US is giving missiles to a country so that it fires them at Russia?  Those of us who lived through the Cold War, were told that 'mutually assured destruction' ensured that this wouldn't happen.  What now?”

It’s not just the USA. “Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, while diplomatic sources briefed they expected other European countries to follow the US lead.”

So it seems we’re all busily contributing to the possibility/probability of World War III. And the UK is doing its bit. We’re writing to our MP. We would like there still to he a world for grandchildren to grow up in.

 Of course, that’s assuming we haven’t disappeared under plastic waste, or indeed ingested so much microplastic that we’re no longer fully human. Here’s a link to an article about AEPW, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, an organisation set up in 2019 by a group of some of the world’s biggest producers of plastic. They’re producing more plastic waste than the organisation is managing to reduce. Its a bit like the bullies volunteering to stop bullying from happening in the playground, or the “firemen” in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” who don’t put fires out but burn any books that are found.

We recycle as much of everything as we can, separating our rubbish into bins of different colours according to the type of waste. It can be difficult as our local council recycling plant doesn’t accept all kinds of plastic. Some types of plastic containers simply have to go into general waste, which annoys me. Then I read this he other day: 

“Plastic bottles are reviled for polluting the oceans, leaching chemicals, into drinks and being a source of microplastics in the human body.

They even cause problems with recycling. When plastic bottles are mixed with cardboard in recycling bins, in the wet winter months the sodden cardboard wraps around the plastic bottles and trays, causing havoc at recycling plants.

New figures now suggest that plastic contamination in paper and card jumps by 40% between November and March and as a result the UK sends an extra 5,000 tonnes of plastic waste to landfill or incineration.

The government is expected to signal in the next few weeks whether it will continue a Conservative policy which planned to allow councils to collect “co-mingled” recycling or if it will insist that paper, plastic, glass, metal, food and garden waste should be separated at source.”

It rather defeats the object of having separate bins if everything ends up in landfill anyway. 

And while I’m ranting about recycling and rubbish and such, I want to complain about screw tops on plastic bottles and  those plastic-aluminum foil-paperboard laminated cartons of fruit juices. The are attached by a plastic link which can make them difficult to unscrew when you open the bottle or carton for the first time and then they are a pain to fasten up again as they need to be correctly clicked into place. And I’m sure most people, like us, want to store their cartons of fruit juice in the fridge without fear of the juice spilling everywhere. Okay! Rant over! 

I’ve talked a bit about what we want for our grandchildren. Here’s Michael Rosen’s reading manifesto, which seems perfectly sensible and logical to me:

1. Reading books helps children make the most of what school and the world offer them.

2. Books give children language, thoughts, ideas and feelings.

3. Books show them places and times and cultures very near and dear to them.

4. Books show them places and times and cultures they may not have come across before.

5. Books help children walk in other people’s shoes, seeing things from someone else’s point of view.

6. Books help children see that they are not alone.

7. We have to do what we can to put books into children’s hands.

8. We have to do what we can to find space and time for children to talk about books.

9. We have to celebrate children’s books.

10. Children’s books are for everyone because we are all children at some time or another.

And to finish off, as Christmas rushes towards us, here”s Ben Jennings cartoon on Santa’s dilemma this Christmas:- 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Home again. Suddenly it’s winter! And Christmas! A shock to the system!

 After a week of mostly sunny weather in Figueira da Foz, with temperatures in the 20 - 25°, it was something of a shock to the system to watch rain turning to sleet turning to snow early yesterday evening. 

We had left our hotel at 11.00 am, with our fingers crossed that we didn’t meet heavy traffic, as our flight was scheduled to leave at 14.15 and getting through security could be time-consuming. As it was we made good time but there was still not enough time to sit down to lunch in the airport before we departed. Never mind, we thought, we can get a sandwich on the plane. However, almost the first announcement on the plane was an apology for there being no hot food available. Never mind, we thought, a sandwich will suffice. No sandwiches either. Only chocolate and crisps and drinks! The plane had not been properly restocked! 

When we got to Manchester I had to resort to buying us an overpriced sandwich from W.H. Smith as we waited for our daughter to collect us from the airport. Manchester’s Terminal 3, by the way is just about the most confusing and confused place at which to arrive. Finding the pick-up point was difficult, to say the least. Sign posts to the place petered out. Even when we found out approximately where it was, we had to cross muddy and grassy areas, with annoying kerbstones, as well as walking through a carpark: altogether difficult, sometimes dangerous and goodness knows how people with mobility problems deal with it! 

But we got home safely, stopping off to buy bread en route, took some soup out of the freezer and settled in for the rest of the evening. 

This morning we woke up to this view from the skylight window. 

Rather different from yesterday’s early morning picture.

I took a look at the pavements and decided it looked dry enough to run. It was fine but cold. The weather could deteriorate later, so that was the moment to go. It was a little like running through a Christmas card at times.

Talking of Christmas, I read this morning that in Birmingham they opened up their German-style Christmas markets on November 1st, barely taking the time to remove all the Hallowe’en decorations. NOVEMBER FIRST!! That seems a little early to me. Surely there is a limit to the number of times you want to run around drinking gluhwein and eating wurst on the city streets. Not everyone who works in the city is happy with this. “It’s just not the same any more. It’s too commercial. It starts too early, and it’s got too expensive,” said Kate Jones, 46, walking through the market on her way home from work. “I’ve been working here for 20 years, and I’ve seen it get so much bigger. It’s not as intimate. I never really go any more, and I think a lot of people who live and work here feel like that.”

Personally, I’m not a fan of the Christmas markets, as I have explained at least three or four times who my Italian friend who gets very excited about them. There’s a prodigious amount of tat on sale - repeated tat on various stalls. They bring visitors into the city centre though. A spokesperson for Birmingham city council said: “The Frankfurt Christmas market brings millions of visitors into the city each year, providing a huge economic boost and we are proud that the market also provides jobs for over 350 local people working alongside German staff.”

Manchester city centre also opened the markets on Friday and seem very pleased with them. “We’re very proud that Manchester Christmas markets are the biggest Christmas markets in the country and are really pleased that since opening last Friday they have broken all attendance records,” said Pat Karney, a local councillor. “The intoxicating Christmas atmosphere across our markets is free for everyone to enjoy with no requirement to buy anything.”

Local bars and restaurants and cafes are less pleased as they lose customers. I am less pleased because it becomes hard to make your way along King Street, for example, a pleasant pedestrian street that is just about wide enough in normal times. It will be hard to window shop there next time I go to the centre of town! 

So here we are, home again from our travels and suddenly having to think about Christmas! 

It was nice to get back to a decent cup of coffee for breakfast. I have to say the breakfast coffee in our hotel was quite execrable. It came from one of those machines where you select an option: small black coffee, Americano, coffee with milk, cappuccino. We tried them all, individually and in combinations with each other. All rather weak and watery and in one case rather chocolatey, which was strange. So it was with great pleasure that I had two cups of coffee made with our trusty Italian style Bonka coffee maker. 

In all other respects our hotel was excellent with friendly, helpful staff, some of them remembering us from last year (when the coffee was equally bad, so we should have known better!) Maybe next year we’ll have to go for hot chocolate or green tea!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Christmas giving. Contrasting weather. Bits of pedantic and consumerist nonsense.,

This morning I spotted a Christmas tree with parcels beneath it. Getting closer, I could see that these parcels were items of clothing, wrapped in plastic bags to protect them from the weather, second hand items, aka “pre-loved”, being donated to the needy. A good idea! 

This week such donations have hardly needed protection from the weather here. We’ve mostly had sunshine. Today is forecast to reach 23° - not bad for mid-November. It will be a shock to the system to get back to cold weather tomorrow. Granddaughter Number Two tells me that snow is forecast early in the coming week for York where she is studying. One part of her loves the picturesque quality snowy scenes. Another part of her relished cold weather as she likes to curl up in a duvet to read. But, more importantly, another part of her doesn’t want to have to trudge half an hour across campus to lectures and seminars.

Weather-wise and eating-wise (despite some of our favourite restaurants being closed) this week has been good. Chess-wise, less so. But you can’t have everything. 

Grandson Number One, earning a good salary at the age of 19, and having very few outgoings beyond paying a token contribution to the family home, recently asked me to admire the watch he had acquired: close on £200 pounds worth of timepiece. This seems a bit excessive to me but he really hankers after something even more expensive. And anyway, I was under the impression that young people didn’t bother to wear watches but preferred to look at their phones. 

I thought of this when I read today that a gold pocket watch presented to the captain of a steamship which rescued more than 700 passengers from the Titanic has sold for a record-breaking £1.56m. The sum – the highest amount ever paid for Titanic memorabilia – was paid by a private collector in the US, said auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son of Devizes, Wiltshire. The previous record was set in April, when another gold pocket watch, recovered from the body of the richest man on the ship, John Jacob Astor, sold for £1.175m.

I have commented on more than one occasion on the fact that collecting expensive memorabilia has taken over from collecting religious relics, saints bones and bits of the true cross and so on. 

Now for a bit of pedantic nonsense, posted by a friend: 

“Proper Shepherd’s Pie. Americans tend to call cottage pie, shepherd’s pie. A proper Shepherd’s pie is made with lamb. If ground beef is the protein, it is a cottage pie.”

I suppose it’s logical that “real” shepherd’s pie should be made with lamb rather than beef.

And here’s a new word, new to me anyway: lalochezia - the emotional relief gained from using abusive or profane language. Perfectly understandable, in my opinion. I have long felt that nowadays people swear too much. Swearing should be reserved for occasions when you really need to vent some emotion or other. According to something I read recently, people from the north of England are more likely to swear than those from the south. It was some judge ruling on somebody’s use of abusive language in the workplace. The accused, he said, was less likely to have has real malicious intent as swearing was second-nature to northerners. There you go: a bit of North-South divide stereotyping!

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

Some of the wonders of modern technology. Dangerously crazy people. And problems for X.

 Suddenly it’s Saturday and we’re making arrangements for travelling to the airport on Monday to go home. 

While I’ve been here my companions in the Italian conversation class have been organising a Christmas lunch for the group. Since the time of Covid we have been an online class. There are too few of us to make it worth while renting a room for a face to face class, which would of course be preferable, and so we do a zoom class each week. However we meet at Christmastime and at the end of each term for lunch, ideally at an Italian restaurant. This year it was agreed that we would go to a restaurant in Didsbury, the other side of Manchester from where I live. This is largely to accommodate a former member of our class, unable to continue with the class as she is really not computer literate. Neither is she very mobile for getting to a central Manchester place for lunch. But she lives close to the Didsbury restaurant and would love to get together with us. 

Now, I can catch a tram from Oldham to Didsbury. It will be quite a long journey but doable. I googled the restaurant, hoping to find a route from the tram-stop. The computer threw up a map of Europe, informing me that the fastest way to the restaurant was by car and plotting out a route from Figueira da Foz, through the north of Spain, across France and finally up from the south coast of England to Manchester. How I laughed! The wonders of modern technology!

Thinking of modern technology, here is picture of a man in a tinfoil hat - a Tin Foil Hatter. 

People like him believe  that such hats prevent mind control by governments, spies, mobsters, corporations, extraterrestrial, or paranormal beings that employ ESP and suchlike. Most of them are probably relative harmless nutcases. 

However, it is said that one of them is Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr, nominee for Health Secretary under Trump. California’s Democratic representative Robert Garcia called  the nomination “f**’ing insane”, writing on X: “He’s a vaccine denier and a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist. He will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems. This is going to cost lives.” We live in interesting times!

But will Robert Garcia be writing on X much longer. I read that people are leaving X. Here’s a link to Gaby Hinsliff writing about it in the Guardian.

My German friend is a great fan of the Hamburg football team, St Pauli. She is almost certainly relieved to discover that St Pauli have become the first major football club to leave X, describing the social media site as a “hate machine” and expressing concern that it may influence the outcome of the forthcoming German election.

Scrutiny of the role played by X in platforming hate speech, far-right conspiracy theories and racism has intensified since Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s US election. Trump was vociferously supported by  Elon Musk, who bought X – then known as Twitter – in October 2022. He has now been given part-control of a new “department of government efficiency” this week. 

The traditionally left-wing Bundesliga club have ceased operating their account and urged fans to switch to Bluesky, an alternative application whose user base is believed to have grown by about 750,000 in the past few days. “Musk has converted X into a hate machine,” part of the club’s statement read.

Now the writer Stephen King has announced he is quitting X after describing the platform as “too toxic”. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis is doing the same. The Guardian newspaper also said it would stop posting on X and has the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. 

I doubt that it will lead to Elon Musk being impoverished but people are making gestures. Here’s a First Dog on the Moon cartoon about it.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!. 

Traditional eating. And a reminder about Gaza.

 For several years now we have made it a tradition during our visits to Figueira da Foz, where Phil plays in the annual chess tournament and I play tourist, to go to eat at the Nucleo Sportinguista.

I’ve not found out exactly what the link is to Sporting Clube Portugal but there definitely is one. There are Nucleos in various places in Portugal. I get the impression that they were originally for supporters who became members, a place for them to eat well. The one here opened in 1994 and took a decision to be a restaurant not just for members but for the general public. It has won prizes for being the best Nucleo! There you go!

For the last few years we’ve made a point of going there for lunch with our friend Kevin. We have a huge platter of various kinds of fish and drink plenty of wine. But this year he has expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that they insist on your NOT sharing one huge platter between two people, for example. And then there are the potatoes! Copious amounts of large boiled potatoes. They don’t do chips and not much in the way of varied vegetables. So this year we will lunch elsewhere.

Yesterday, however, Phil and I ended up at the Nucleo Sportinguista, having failed to find an alternative to our liking that we’d not already patronised twice this week. We didn’t choose the huge platter but a single fish dish each - solha (plaice) for me and dourada (sea-bream) for Phil. They came on a big platter with boiled potatoes! We had a small mixed salad to accompany the fish. The potatoes were pedestrian to say the least, not even the best boiled potatoes in the world (the Galicians lay claim to those, by the way!) but the fish was delicious. 

They don’t do wine by the glass but my cute little “garrafa” of white wine only coast €1.50, so no complaints on that score. 

And we had a bit of a chat with the friendly waitress, explaining that we go there every year.

Now for a bit of serious stuff.

Here’s a poem by Michael Rosen

If it can be proved that

it's not genocide

that would be a huge relief.

It would mean that it's only

a huge massacre,

mass killing

and widespread slaughter

In which case

it would be OK.

And here’s a social media post by Jeremy Corbyn:

“There is a very simple reason why the UK government refuses to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza.

If they did, they would be admitting their own complicity in one of the greatest crimes of our time.

End all arms sales to Israel, now.”

We mustn’t forget that this is still happening.

That’s all.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!