Friday morning awards. Student protests,. And a bit of art appreciation.

 This morning i got up ridiculously early, considerably earlier than the time that my alarm usually rings. I was even sufficiently disciplined only to snooze my alarm once and then dragged my reluctant body from bed. By 8.15 I was on a bus headed for the smallest grandchildren’s school, where one of them was about to receive a certificate of some kind. The later bus would not have got me to the school on time.

The school has a weekly “awards assembly” where they celebrate children’s birthdays and where class teachers award certificates for good work good behaviour and kindness, intended no doubt to reinforce such behaviour and encourage it in those who do not behave so of their own accord.

I was greeted on the bus by a small girl, Grandson Number Two’s small friend and Thursday bus travel companion. They regularly head for the baxk of the bus where they kneel on the seat and cause havoc as they comment loudly on the cars which follow the bus - angry cars, happy cats, grumpy cars, impatient cars, an amazing bit of imaginative play. This morning, little Alice was simply exclaiming excitedly as the rattly bus went over speed bumps.

Our small boy received  his teacher’s learning award for “showing a fantastic love of learning during our microhabitat hunt. You were curious, enthusiastic and excited to explore the world around you, asking thoughtful questions and sharing your own ideas. Well done!”

This is the child who can be a reluctant reader and gets grumpy if bored but who displays a veritable encyclopaedic knowledge of things science- and bug’n’beetles-related. He also has artistic flare. If school consisted soleybof science and craft, he would be delighted!

Coincidentally his small friend Alice also recieved an award for always being emthusiastic, helpful, kind and cheerful! Her mother was delighted, as much for her small daughter’s award as for the fact that the small friends both won certificates!

In France, much older pupils have been protesting about overloaded tiemetables, overcrowded classes, insufficient teachers and … unbearable temperatures during the heatwaves. That last grievance is perhaps a bit unreasonable but so it goes. In what seems like classic French fashion, riot police have been deployed to confront the increasingly violent protests. Some 3,000 lycée students have been detained since the start of the increasingly violent protests. They have a kind of tradition of such student protests in France. I remember May 1968!

Now, this is an art installation in Farnham in Surrey. Its official title is “A Hand’s Turn”. 

The cones, which measure up to 8ft tall, and are intended to symbolise “the enduring role of hands in craft for thousands of years”. However it is also referred to as the “Madonna bra sxulptures”.

It’s had to be moved to a shadier location as the cones heat up in the sun and children have burned their hands on them apparently. One of the artists who created the installation is pleased with its new location and commented, “They are intended to be played with, hugged and even the unintended percussive ability they provide is great fun.

“What a special place Farnham is for its commitment to craft and community. Farnham didn’t give up on the cones, so neither will I”.

There you go!.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Odd seasons. Old friends. Intolerance in football.

 Yeaterday began with torrential rain. I set off for Manchester in my raincoat to meet some old friends for lunch. By he time I reached the tram stop in Oldham the rain had more or less stopped. By the time I got to Manchester the sun was trying to shine.

I met my old friends, we put the world to rights and made our way to an Italian trattoria that one of my friends had noticed on her way to our meeting point in Waterstone’s cafe. We had some very good pasta and a glass or two of wine while we reminisced and put the world a little more to rights. 

When we left the trattoria in the mid-afternoon we all felt decided overdressed with our raincoats. Girls were out and about in cropped tops and shorts. Goodness, this was the last day of September.

After I returned hoe, Phil and I went for an early-evening stroll round the village, admiring the blue sky.

And then as the sun disappeared over the hill, the temperature plummeted. We need a new name for the season as it seems to include summer and autumn - possibly sumtober- not to:mention hints of winter in the late evening!

I hear that Jurgen Klopp is disgusted by suggestions that his German team is “not white enough”. Oh boy!

“The barrage of racist and generally offensive commentaries on social media followed Germany’s 1-0 defeat by Greece last Sunday, in the Nations League, marking the first time Greece had beaten Germany.

It is also reflective of plenty of utterances from MPs of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, who have repeatedly and consistently criticised the diversity and ethnic makeup of the national team, often referring to the squad in derogatory terms such as a “politically correct mercenary force”.”

But he has been quite restrained. 

“Asked to respond to the debate as to whether the national team were “not German enough” or “not white enough”, he said: “There is absolutely no reason to pay attention to these people. You won’t get my thoughts on this. I have little time in everyday life for idiocy – and even less on social media.

“The great crux of our lives is that everyone is allowed to express their opinion … it’s insane when something like that exists.””

The world grows crazier by the day.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Invited out to breakfast. Anti-immigration riots - an old problem!

 Granddaughter Number Two treated me to breakfast this morning. From time to time she likes to organise some kind of grandmother-granddaughter event. She’s been trying to organise us a day out In York but the train service from here to York has been disrupted lately. So last night she phoned and proposed that I hop on the bus at the crossroads, the bus she would be travelling on from her house, and we could go to a local farm that has branched out into a cafe and a farm-shop. So that’s what we did. 

She had a bacon sandwich, one of her favourite things, while I had a toasted fruit teacake. I had my usual coffee whereas she had a strange concoction with caramel and maple syrup, calling itself a latter! I tried it. It was quite tasty as hot drinks go but definitely should not be included in a list of “coffees”!  

I bought local honey in the farm-shop and spotted items I must go back for as possible Christmas presents for various members of the family. Christmas fever has started earlier than ever this year. Pubs have notices reminding people to book for Christmas dinners and a travel agency in Uppermill has a big notice advertising a day trip to York to visit the Christmas markets. York gets crowded with tourists at the best of times so the prospect of Christmas markets as well is quite horrific. 

As you can tell, I am not a great fan of christmas markets! 

Here’s a story, from this article, which demonstrates how long-standing the problem of immigration has always been:

“On 30 April 1517, the eve of the annual May Day festival, an angry crowd of more than 1,000 people marched through London protesting at the city’s immigrant population. Xenophobia was rife in Tudor England. Although foreigners, known as “strangers”, made up just 6% of the city’s population, they were often considered a malign presence: “Libertynes, drunkards, murderers, thieves and Conspirators,” in the words of one chronicler.

As darkness fell, the mood turned ugly. Thomas More, under-sheriff of London, appealed to the crowd to turn back. But his entreaties went unheard. The mob surged through the streets sacking the shops and houses of French, Italian and Flemish merchants and craftsmen. Only after an army was called out, leading to scores of arrests and over a dozen executions, was order returned.

Evil May Day, as the riot came to be known, was not quickly forgotten.”

Shakespeare may have written about in a play called Sir Thomas More, a collaboratively written play that survives only in a single manuscript. The play is thought to have been written primarily by Anthony Munday, perhaps, some scholars think, aided by Henry Chettle, in the 1590s, with somewhat later contributions from Thomas Dekker, perhaps from William Shakespeare, and just possibly from Thomas Heywood.

Sir Isn McKellen Introduced a monologue from the play, a momologue cloed The Strangers’ Case, with these words:

“It’s all happening 400 years ago. In London, there’s a riot happening. There’s a mob out in the streets and they’re complaining about the the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who’ve arrived there. And they’re shouting the odds and complaining and saying that the immigrants should be sent back home wherever they came from. And the authorities send out this young lawyer, Thomas More, to put down the riot, which he does in two ways. One by saying that you can’t riot like this. It’s against the law. So, shut up, be quiet. And also, being by Shakespeare, with an appeal to their humanity.”

And now I’ve found the speech, I think:

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise

Hath chid down all the majesty of England;

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,

Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silent by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled; and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an agèd man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

[...]

Say now the king,

As he is clement if th’offender mourn,

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whither would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor?

Go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, anywhere that not adheresto England,

Why, you must needs be strangers: 

would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what would you think

To be thus used? 

This is the strangers’ case;

And this your mountainish inhumanity.

Maybe we need another Shakespeare to plead the case for a little more  tolerance and humanity in the modern world.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Reflecting on life and its contradictions.

It’s another fine September day here. First thing this morning it was so still that the local millponds were busily reflecting the beauty of the world.

This did not make it any easier to get out of bed - somehow you can always sleep beautifully after the alarm has rung - but I made a supreme effort and went for my morning run.

Life is full of little contradictions … or maybe not so little.

Nigel Farage (yes, there he is again!) has posted this:

“I have been warning both on and out of Parliament for many months about Iranian agents coming into the UK via small boats across the Channel.

We deserve to be told the truth about the Fairford bomb plotters identities.”

And now it turns out that the suspects are all young UK citizens, from London! Oops!

Didn’t something similar happen about the attack on the children’s dance class in Southport?

And, besides, quite when has Mr Farage been in Parliament often enough to give repeated warnings about anything? 

Then there’s Ed Milliband declaring to Conference that Labour was mistaken in its stance of Israel and Palestine.

“The Guardian understands Miliband will say in his speech that the sanctions marked a definitive change in how Labour will approach the situation in the Middle East.

“I want to say to the millions of people in this country and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: we hear you, you were right,” he will say.

“And under Andy’s leadership, we have reset our approach. We call out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank. We call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza. We call out Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. And we match words with actions.””

Meanwhile proPalestine protestors were still being arrested outside the conference in Liverpool. Here’s a link to some film of police action. 

On Thursday Netanyahu said that the people who walked out of his speech to the UN were “moral cowards”.  The next day Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, foreign minister for Iceland said, “We have heard the words ‘moral cowards’ from this podium. To me, moral cowards are those leaders around the world who refuse to sit down and negotiate a just and lasting peace, those who deny access to humanitarian aid for people in desperate need. And moral cowards are those leaders who repeatedly go against and disrespect international law.”

It took somebody’s daughter to stand up and say that. I love Icelandic surnames that allow you to be somebody’s daughter! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

September stormy weather. Ash over Etna. Rubble over Gaza. Homelessness. The selfishness of the world.

 It’s one of those windy Sunday September mornings. I woke up to the sound of rain and turned over and had a bit more snoozing time but I hadn’t realised how blustery it was. When I went out later, taking advantage of one of the periods of sunshine between the rain showers, I realised how windy it was and how blustery it mist have been overnight. There were snapped-off small branches all over the paths. 

The blustery night did for my sunflower too, decapitating the poor thing completely. I had been hoping to continue to document its decline photographically and then into an art project I have got underway. The windy weather has put paid to that! 

Elsewhere in the world, Etna is still causing problems for Catania airport. 

• Flights at Catania’s airport will be remain suspended on Sunday due to Mount Etna ash in the region.
• The airport was closed on Saturday amid ongoing volcanic activity, and it has now been confirmed that flights will be suspended until 21:59 GMT on Sunday.

Somehow photos of plumes of ash are never so impressive as photos of lava pouring down the side of the volcano.

Then there is this:

“61m tonnes of rubble: Gaza aid workers face delicate task of clearing ruins concealing up to 10,000 bodies

Removal of war debris, in which lives, memories and unexploded Israeli bombs lie buried, is one of largest clearance operations in modern history.”

How will they ever deal with such a mess. Whole families are under there, many with nobody left to identify them or mourn for them.

“To make things more difficult, the Israeli authorities have banned the necessary equipment from entering Gaza on the grounds that almost any aid that is not food or medicine could be ‘dual use’ and could somehow benefit Hamas.”

Well, that sounds like an excuse if ever ai heard one!

i was reading about an old lady in Madrid who has been evicted from her flat, the flat where she has lived for 71 years. The flat was originally in her father’s name. On his death, the contract transferred to her mother and later to Maricarmen herself. The whole building was bought by a developer and she was offered the chance to buy the apartment for €247,000 (£212,000), not feasible for an old lady on monthly state pension of €1,350. Then they raised her rent from €500 to €1,650 per month. And lawyers found a way of saying the contract in her name was not truly valid! You can see where that was going! 

Lots of people have protested, including the actor Carlos Bardem, brother of the more internationally famous Javier Bardem, and the singer and actor Ana Belén. But it doesn’t seem to have made any difference. 

And now I find myself wondering what the rent would be nowadays for the flat we used to rent in Vigo for €550 a month, if my memory serves me well. No doubt our departure allowed the owner to raise that rent.

Finally, here’s a cartoon reflecting on the selfishness of the modern world.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!