Sunshine and frost and the frustrations of life.

 It was a fine, bright morning when I went out for today’s run.

It didn’t feel all that cold but in shady places not yet reached by the sun there was evidence of frost. The first I’ve seen since last winter.

So the day began well but it went on to be rather frustrating.

In the late morning I went shopping. Now, the other day I commented on how complicated it had been to activate my replacement credit card. In fact, the most frustrating bit of it was waiting to speak to an actual person and not a bot.  But then it was fairly painless and I was assured that all would be well. Yesterday morning I tried to use it in our local co-op store. The card was not accepted. Okay! This could be just one of the vagaries of our local co-op. So today I tried again in Tesco - “card unsupported”, the machine said. How very embarrassing! i had to find another way to pay.

Now, I am not the main cardholder. Long ago we decided there was little point in having separate credit cards and Phil became the main card holder with me as an additional cardholder. So on my return from frustrating shopping we went online to see what needed to be done. Yes! The main cardholder had to activate things online, something that was not clear when my replacement card arrived. This new procedure was equally as frustrating as the first attempt, with a zillion details to be filled on and secret passcodes being sent across the ether! Hopefully it has all been successful. And later this afternoon we’ll go for a wander and try it out … again!

Modern life is full of frustrating complications. 

I watched an example on the bus as I made my way home from the supermarket. A man got on with a baby buggy, an empty one as the infant was perfectly able to walk with his sibling. The bus driver instructed the man to fold the buggy as two others were about to get on. Okay, said the man. He checked out the available space and simply parked his buggy. Buggy number two (occupied this time) got on and found a space. Buggy number three (also occupied) followed suit. The bus driver then  had a bit of a hissy fit and told the man with buggy number one once again, but rather more forcefully, that he had to fold up his buggy. He duly did so. The folded buggy took up marginally less space than when it was opened up! The driver is only allowed to accept two unfolded buggies at a time. Rules are rules! And must be obeyed! At all times!

It’s a good job nobody got on with a wheelchair!

I read this article earlier today about an longstanding cafe in Athens which is having to close because it’s lease is not being renewed. It is a victim of gentrification. The whole district of the city is changing. Old greek places are being made international to boost tourism.

Here’s something I found about cafes in Greece:

“Cafes in Greece and the Greek Islands is not only just an entertainment place, but it is also a way of living and a big part of daily culture. You will see cafeterias in every corner of Greece, from the busiest spot of the town till the most secluded village in the mountains. People in Greece have their favorite cafeteria where they enjoy long hours with their friends. An average coffee meeting in a cafeteria for a Greek is about 1 and a half hours. The most favorite coffee for the Greeks is the famous frappe. But now many kinds of freddos are the trend (fredo espresso and fredo capuccino).

In summer, cafeterias in Greece are the best places to enjoy a morning coffee or a cold afternoon refreshment. In small towns and villages, in the central square, you will find the Greek traditional cafe that is called kafenion. These kafenions in Greece are mostly frequented by old pensioners or middle-aged men who drink Greek coffee, chat and play cards or backgammon (tavli). Unofficially women are not banned from sitting in the Greek kafenions but they are mostly frequented by men.”

I wonder how they feel about caramel latte, Granddaughter Number Two’s favourite. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Patrick Stewart. Hour-glass figures. Sales of books. Elections. And contrasting brothers.

When I commented last night about the actor Patrick Stewart on our family group chat I think I rather shocked Granddaughter Number One. Patrick Stewart, Captain Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek among other more classical roles, has just died at the age of 86. I said, in Star Trek fashion, that he had ‘boldly gone’ where others had gins before him. Granddaughter Number One seemed to think this was in bad taste or disrespectful. Then this morning I spotted this headline, “To baldly go: Patrick Stewart was an icon for bald men everywhere”, to an article by Stuart Heritage in the Guardian, praising the actor for embracing his baldness and becoming a role model to bald men everywhere. 

There you go. It”s not just your acting that counts, but the image you project to your fans.

As regards images, I hear that the latest thing in plastic surgery is to have a couple of lower ribs broken, or sort of bent, like a green stick fracture, and then to wear a corset so that they reset themselves in a narrower fashion, giving you a wasp waist. I am reminded of the scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett O’Hara is being laced into a corset to emphasise her already fashionably slender waist. It’s amazing what some women will put themselves through for the sake of ‘beauty’. This latest plastic surgery craze is for an hourglass figure apparently. Some women had it naturally, such as Marilyn Monroe, so I am told. Others are seemingly prepared to undergo torture to achieve the same shape. And the history of fashion can provide numerous examples of other strange practices. And it’s not just women who give in to that pressure! 

I have read that sales of Sally Rooney’s books have increased dramatically since her publisher decided not to publish any more in the UK. The mean brigade are saying that this was a clever sales ploy on the part of Ms Rooney! Presumably increased sales means further financial support for Palestine Action. 

The results of the elections in Israel remain somewhat up in the air. At least one report tells us this’

“Netanyahu’s political future uncertain as Israel election results deny him majority

Israel Election Results 2026 Live Updates: Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led alliance has won 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, falling short of the 61 needed for a majority. Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc secured 48 seats, while two Arab parties won a record 19 seats, setting the stage for difficult coalition talks.”

We shall see.

Meanwhile, in the UK Andrew Mountbatten Windsor remains a thorn in the side of his family, with police investigating his having invited Epstein and others to stay in Balmoral. All in the past but still embarrassing for his big brother, no doubt.

King Charles himself is in the Bahamas, on the one hand facing demands for reparation for slavery which helped make his forbears rich and on the other dancing in he streets in parades. Maybe he has always wanted to do something like that. 

And here’s a cartoon about stockpiling :

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Reflections. More than enough free apples. Security matters. Being prepared for emergencies.

 Here’s the sky reflected in the millpond this morning. It was a fine and bright morning as seems to be becoming the norm at the moment, even if the cloud moves in later.

I had not been back long from my run when the doorbell rang. Fortunately I had not been back long enough to have headed for the shower. It was one of my daughter’s friends with a bag of baking apples. I was expecting him this morning but I had not been given a specific time. I just counted on it being some time after 9.30. It seems he has three apple trees in his garden. This year they have produced a bumper crop and he has been over-run with apples, of which he is trying to give away as many as possible. He tried to offload some onto my daughter, who claims to have no time for peeling and cooking apples and making pies. She diverted them to me, with the suggestion that maybe I could make a thank-you apple pie for her friend. So I was expecting a bag of apples but not quite so many as arrived this morning!

My credit card expires at the end of the month. My bank had warned me to expect a replacement, which arrived yesterday. Now, in the past when your credit card expired they sent you a new on, you signed it and cut up the previous one into small pieces. And then you were good to go. Nowadays you have to jump through a series of hoops to “activate” your new card. So I tried to do so through online banking. It said I had no credit card! Well, I suppose technically not as we have one card between us, or rather two versions of the same card, with Phil as the main cardholder and me as the additional cardholder. 

As the additional cardholder, therefore, I had to phone the call-centre number on the back of the card. After answering a number of security questions, I was informed that I would have an approximately 10-minute wait to speak to an adviser. Armed with a sudoku puzzle to stave off boredom, i settled down to wait, tinny music playing and a probably AI voice  every few minutes thanking me for holding, thanking me for my politeness and my patience. Eventually a human replaced the repeat-bot, i jumped through some more security hoops and all was well. Modern life is complicated!

Here’s something else in the same vein.

John Crace wrote this at the start of his column yesterday:

“Back to the future. Some of us can remember the days when the key to surviving a nuclear war was to kneel down under the kitchen table and keep your eyes closed till you were incinerated or died of radiation poisoning. Now the government wants you to hoard some baked beans and a few litres of water in the hope of getting through the next three days.”

 

He went on to write about Farage but that opening paragraph amused me.

Incidentally, here’s something from The Guardian about stockpiling:

“Sales of tinned foods, bottled water, wind-up radios and torches have surged after the UK government advised households to prepare for emergencies.

Retailers have reported a jump in sales of items linked to preparation for emergencies such as extreme weather or cyber-attacks. The Be Ready campaign was launched last week with the aim of persuading households to lay in supplies to last 72 hours.

Maplin said sales of torches had almost quadrupled and sales of power banks and radios had doubled. One brand of emergency wind-up radio sold out on Friday.”

A friend of mine confessed on social media to having given in and bought a wind-up radio. I think Phil bought one some time ago. Well, I may not have enough tins of baked beans but now I have plenty of baking apples.

At the end of next week we are off on our travels once more, heading for a chess event in Portugal. We’ll pay a ridiculous amount of money for a taxi to the airport but we won’t have to worry about parking. That will be someone else’s problem. Here’s a link to an article about someone being fined for “parking” in a forbidden zone in airport when she stopped very briefly to deal with a wasp in her vehicle! Wasps in cars! Nightmare!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

On being organised. Train crashes. Elections. Pedestrianisation.

 It”s Wednesday again. My plan was to stay in bed as the weather has been so dull and damp and maybe go out for some exercise later. But then I realised we had run put of a few essentials which I can only get from our nearby, but not quite local, Tesco. So I made a supreme effort to get up and out for an early bus to Tesco, did a quick run round (and still managed to forget one item which, in my defence, was not on my written list), caught a bus back to Uppermill, bought some fish from the fish-man, went to the cash-machine in the Co-op, and caught the next bus home. So I was home and organising breakfast at the same time as if I had only been to the Uppermill (dwindling) market. Quite a masterpiece of timing!

I read that there has been another train crash in Spain, two high sped trains in a head-on collision. I think there was another similar collision in January of this year. The reported numbers of people killed in today’s crash keep changing. People living near the crash site rushed out to offer assistance. No doubt there will be an investigation and someone will be found responsible. In the meantime, football games have been cancelled as a mark of respect: 

“All games of the first round of Spanish Copa del Rey football competition planned for today have been postponed as a mark of respect following the train crash in Urda, Spanish football federation said in a statement.

“The great Spanish football family remains united in grief over this tragedy, offering its support to the authorities to help the victims of this devastating accident,” the RFEF said in a statement.

Somehow I always think of trains as a safe travel option. And I still suspect that it may be safer than hurtling up and down the motorways by car. As with plane crashes, the results of train crashes are more horrific and dramatic. You might expect that by 2026 we would have eliminated some of the dangers though.

The elections in Israel have generated a host of contradictory reports: Netanyahu defeated! Netanyahu hangs on! The election is a draw! Nobody has a big enough following to allow them to form a government!  Coalitions will have to be formed! We shall see!

According to this article, the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street has been a success so far.  

And here is a cartoon with a more pessimistic view of things.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Running and dodging the rain. Poppies and watermelon badges. Music at political rallies. And Farm Aid.

 I went out running this morning, for the first time in several days. It was fine and bright and crisp.

There was some evidence of storm damage from the weekend.

Later in the morning it rained, copiously, but by early afternoon the sun was shining again. I have not hung washing in the garden - the altogether too unpredictable weather put me off.

Here’s a post from Zarah Sultana MP:

“In 2026, teachers are being threatened with disciplinary action for wearing watermelon badges in solidarity with Palestine and against genocide.

This is Andy Burnham’s Britain.

Shame on him.”

At the same time, everyone is encouraged to wear a Remembrance Poppy. Some people might also wear a white poppy, to make us aware of those who strive for peace. I read something about someone creating a Palestine poppy, presumably in Palestine colours, but I don’t think it’s been much publicised.

Over in the USA, Neil Young is reportedly suing a Donald Trump fundraising committee for $10m (£7.5m) after his song Rockin’ in the Free World was played at a campaign rally. The lawsuit asserts that the committee breached a prior 2020 legal settlement, in which a different Trump campaign organisation agreed not to use the track without permission. Uh! Oh!

He’s not the only artist upset at having their songs used against their will, usually without their knowing about it until it has happened, and usually at a rally for someone they don’t support. Amongst others, Ariana Grande has also taken legal action because of the Trump Team assuming they could use her one of her songs.

In the comments on the report about Neil Young, someone pointed out the he was one of the founders of Farm Aid in the USA. I checked it up on Wikipedias: 

“Farm Aid is an American benefit concert and non-profit organization founded in 1985 by musicians Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp. The goal of the benefit concert is to provide financial relief to family farmers in the United States, to improve agricultural conditions in soil and water, and to support domestic, locally owned farms as they compete against large-scale agribusiness.”

Neil Young and Willie Nelson were performing there again this year - Willie Nelson at the age of 93!

There you go!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

North and south weather divide. Hallowe’en pics. Election stuff here and there. Revloting cyclists.

 As we are in storm season, here is a weather warning!

I have just travelled back to the North of England with my daughter and her various offspring. The journey was uneventful but very wet. Visibility on the motorway was very poor with huge lorries sensing up spray constantly. So it goes!

Oddly enough the weather was better in the North than in the South but still nothing to write home about. I have been able to put our dustbins out for emptying tomorrow without being blown away or getting soaked.

But here’s a picture of what the storms are capable of.  This is Newhaven Harbour.

And it is reported that about 90,000 properties across northern parts of the UK are still without power after a weekend of stormy weather, with forecasters warning of more strong winds to come.

Two men were killed by falling trees after two named storms, Austen and Boelo, bringing widespread travel disruption, flooding, power cuts and event cancellations. On the whole, we got off lightly.

Here are the last two pictures from our Hallowe’en craft sessions. Pumpkins were carved.

And later, candles were lit inside them.

So that’s that! And a good time was had by all!

In the wider world, chaos continues and elections have been going on or are about to go on here and there. This is from the Guardian:

“Hebron, the biggest city in the West Bank, had paid little attention to Israel’s looming elections until it found itself suddenly in the midst of them, a proving ground for Benjamin Netanyahu’s security credentials in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote.

A gun attack on an Israeli military checkpoint on Friday in which two soldiers were killed brought immediate televised visits from Netanyahu and his finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, whose ruling coalition is narrowly trailing with two days of campaigning left.

They vowed abrupt and sweeping retribution, and the prime minister warned of imminent military operations on a scale the West Bank has not seen in nearly 60 years of occupation.

Within hours, the whole city of 250,000 people had been sealed off and the neighbourhood of Farsh al-Hawa, closest to the site of Friday’s attack, had been flattened. By Sunday morning, there was nothing left but rubble of an industrial area that had been full of car workshops, a big ceramics plant and other enterprises.

As the bulldozers were at work there, another district a few kilometres away was being systematically emptied. Ein Deir Baha was allegedly home to at least one of the two men involved in the attack (both of whom were killed on the spot), and on Friday its residents paid the price.

The imam from the local mosque, Fahed Ahmaro, was woken at about midnight by the loudspeakers from military vehicles patrolling the street, telling homeowners to vacate their homes immediately for their own safety.”

Rather more optimistic election news comes from Brazil. Again from the Guardian therevis this:

“Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has staged a dramatic election fightback, defeating his far-right opponent, Flavio Bolsanaro, to claim a historic fourth term in power.

With 100% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 4.4m votes more than Bolsonaro, with a 51.79% share to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.21%. However, soon after Brazil’s electoral authority confirmed Lula’s victory, Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and asked for the results to be annulled.

Lula narrowly lost the first round of the election to Bolsonaro in early October, casting his political future into doubt and plunging progressive Brazilians into three weeks of despair. Never, since the return of democracy in the 1980s, has the first round runner-up won the second vote.

But Lula did precisely that on Sunday, prompting joyous scenes on the streets of São Paulo, where he had been following events, and at the hotel where he was watching the count.}

And in London they have been pedestrianising Oxford Street, including banning cycles, but apparently cyclists have been ignoring the ban today! Oops! Bicycle anarchy!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!