April weather. Travel problems. Odds and ends of news.

There was frost on the shed roof this morning. In fact I should have expected it because the weather forecast on the TV last night had predicted as much. The vagaries of April weather in the Northwest of England. Despite the frost, however, it has turned out to be a beautiful day. 

We simply must remember not to plan picnics at this time of year. Not without a contingency plan anyway!

On our recent travels we went through the procedure of having our fingerprints taken and possibly a retina scan as well - I think that’s what the new regulations call for. It was a painless and speedy procedure which didn’t cause us any problems. And yet yesterday I heard that more than 100 passengers were left stranded in Milan after an easyJet flight to Manchester took off without them following huge passport control queues linked to new EU border checks. Surely someone must have foreseen that this could happen. Another Brexit benefit?

One of the stranded passengers interviewed on television news last night complained at the derisory amount of compensation offered by easyJet. I was reminded of the time we were stranded at Milan-Bergamo airport because of fog and a pilot who was not qualified to land in fog (!?). On that occasion the budget airline we flew with simply gave passengers a list of local hotels and left us to fend for ourselves. We were fortunate enough to get on a flight the very next day with no extra charge. I understand that those left behind in Milan on Saturday were counted as ‘no-shows’ and had to pay for new flights! Such are the joys of travel!

So Orbàn has been voted out of power in Hungary. Some wag on Facebook suggested that as J. D? Vance supporting him was so “successful” maybe Mr Vance could work the same magic by campaigning for Farage! 

In Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has initiated a process to provide free health care to all citizens. Hurrah for Mexico.

In contrast, how about this for a headline about our NHS:

Private firms providing services to NHS made £1.6bn profit in two years, research finds 

Exclusive: MPs say profit-making levels in England are ‘scandalous’ and call for cap on amount private companies can make from NHS

There’s something wrong there! 

Here’s a link to an article about Cuban doctors, trained for free and going out to deal with crises in the world, but now being pushed out of places by the US.

And here’s a photo I forgot to post yesterday with information about protestors against the Palestine Action ban being arrested. Wonderful suffragette outfits!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Hail. Swans. Matches. And arresting protestors again. And gambling on war.

My Spanish sister just sent a message asking me what the weather is like here! It seems she has a friend who lives not far from here who had sent her a photo of hailstones raining down. Yes, indeed, we too had hailstones. At least we don’t have sandstorms blown in from the Sahara, which is what happens where she lives near Cádiz. Having said that, there was an occasion a few years ago when freak weather sent sand from the Sahara over a large part of England. Our skylight windows were filthy with it.

So far today we have had dull and cold and windy first thing, some blue sky and sunshine, hail and rain, and now cloudy sunshine again. Never a dull moment!

We have swans on the millpond again. Every year for the last few years they turn up at about this time. 

I have sometimes wondered if they come to nest here but we’ve never yet seen cygnets. They can be quite aggressive and a couple of years ago chased off a resident white duck, a long-term resident of the millpond, whose body was found some time later further up the valley, perhaps attacked by a fox. Maybe it’s because swans are “royal” birds that they think they can rule the pond!

In the kitchen, tucked into one section of the wine rack, there are some ancient boxes of matches, really ancient, daring back to a time when we had a coal-burning stove running the central hearing system. Whenever there is a family birthday I am commissioned to make a cake - some like chocolate cake, others prefer my lemon yoghurt sponge cake - decorated with butter cream icing and “sprinkles”. For the small people we add the appropriate number of candles; for the grown-ups only one candle is provided. The candles have to be lit at least twice, if not three times: once for the birthday person to blow them out and make a wish and relit again for the small people to have a turn at blowing out the candles. (I might consider the hygiene implications of so many people blowing across a cake but really tis is bot the time or place for that). Granddaughter Number Two likes to be the one who lights the candles, using the ancient matches.

Today I read that matchboxes have become collectors’ items. Probably not the ones we have as they are almost certainly too old and battered. As a rule collectors seem to prefer their trophies in pristine, mint condition. The matchbox , I have read, took off in the late 1800s when manufacturers realised that every box could be an advert and it became an unexpected art form, with colourful labels featuring everything from political messages to product marketing.

And now, apparently, matchboxes are the latest home accessory to get a luxury makeover.

“At the upmarket department store chain Selfridges, sales of posh matchboxes are up 121% year-on-year and it said they were “the must-have home accessory for 2026”. The store has more than doubled its range to meet demand, selling over 100 styles at prices ranging from £5 to more than £230.”

Here are Paddywax matches, at the cheaper end of the market, costing only £5 a box.

And here are Panthère de Cartier matches, a set of three matchboxes for the knockdown price of £235.

Oh, boy!

“Jo Laing, who designs and sells ceramic-topped matchboxes, has seen sales rise 60% year on year and her work is now stocked in Harrods. She said they “sell out so quickly we struggle to keep them in stock”. Her reusable limited edition boxes retail for £70.”

It appears that people might not have the budget for a posh candle, but can stretch to fancy matches instead. Bia Bezamat, cultural insights director at market research group Kantar, said: “There’s a sustained trend for ‘little treats’ … It’s a response to cost of living pressures: people want small, affordable pockets of joy to brighten their day.”

Maybe you could just not have candles, a home-fashion trend I have never got into. Some people clearly have more money than sense. But perhaps when we are constantly being reminded of how the cost of living is rising, some people need reminding that luxury of some kind still exists.

In more serious spheres, yesterday “hundreds of people gathered in Trafalgar Square in London and presented signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” Hundreds of demonstrators sat on camping chairs and on the ground as they held up their placards on Saturday afternoon. The Metropolitan police said 212 people had been arrested by 4.50pm, with their ages ranging from 27 to 82.”

So much for rulings that the ban was illegal!

And here’s a link to an article about people betting on the outcome of the wars which are going on. Perhaps gamblers just have no shame! But these are gamblers betting huge amounts of money, another way of getting rich from the misfortunes of others.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Hailstones on a sunny day! Safe splashing. Interesting words. Gardeners.

I woke up quite early this morning to the sound of heavy rain on the skylight windows. So I switched off the alarm, turned over and went back to sleep to the sound of the rain. No run round the village this morning. Mid-morning the sun came out. Maybe the day was shaping up quite nicely after all. Later as I contemplated popping into the village for a couple of items, walking the long way round to make up for not running earlier, I realised that the sun had disappeared and we had hailstones! All seasons in one day!

I see that Artemis II has splashed down safely, which is good, but I still don’t know quite what the purpose of the mission was. I am not one to denigrate scientific endeavour but I do wonder quite what they found out that we did not know before. So it goes. 

I’ve come across a new expression: “friction-maxxing”. I have already commented some time ago on “looks-maxxing”, used about young men “maximising their physical attractiveness”, and supposedly about young women too. According to my research “maxxing is an internet slang suffix meaning to optimize or maximize a particular quality or activity. The suffix originated in game theory and role-playing game terminology before being adopted by incel communities in the 2010s, where looksmaxxing referred to maximizing one's physical attractiveness. It entered mainstream usage through TikTok and social media in the 2020s, often applied humorously to everyday activities.”

Hmm, maybe “looksmaxxing” only applies to young men after all.

“Maxxing”, by the way, is not accepted as a real word by the spellcheck programme, which wants to correct it to “maxing” or even “Maxine”!

Anyway, it seems that “friction-maxxing” is all about doing things the more difficult way, maybe the old-fashioned way. This includes cooking a meal from scratch rather than using ready meals, or one of those deliver services which sends you all the ingredients ready prepared, or, heaven forfend, UberEats. And of course, there’s writing your own reports and essays and dissertations instead of instructing AI to do so. You can even take it so far as to mend your own clothes, or even make them yourself in the first place. Living at a slower pace seems to be the thing, along with the satisfaction that comes with achievement. Here’s a link to an article about it. 

Still thinking of words, here’s a new example of turning nouns into verbs: suddenly there is a verb ‘to sauna”.

And here is some fun with words by Lemn Sissay:

'Is it a homophone or a homonym?'

They row as they row the lake

The morning is to her a hymn

To him it is a wake

Here is an interesting take on Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny.

David Beckham, by the way, has been signed up to co-design a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show, working with Alan Titchmarsh, who does know a thing or two about gardens. He has apparently been given a garden gnome to paint, presumably as well as other garden-related tasks. Gnomes used to be frowned upon, definitely not the thing (except possibly for a few gardens near ours which really do favour gnomes and pot toadstools and all sorts of garden ornamentation) and banned from the Chelsea Flower Show for years. A special dispensarion has been granted for this year and gnomes painted by famous folk such as David Beckham, Cate Blanchett and mary Berry will be auctioned to raise money for gardening projects in schools. There you go!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Washing. Some cartoon comments on life. Sweet nostalgia. And a troubled Foreign Secretary.

The rain has gone … for the time being. I have optimistically hung a lineful of washing in the garden. Optimistically, I say, but the first items are halfway dry already, a little but of sun and a regular gentle wind! That’s the way to do it.

Here’s a cartoon targeting Trump supporters. “The REAL Trump Delusion Syndrome. Some suffer so deeply, they don't even recognise they're suffering at all...  “

Here’s a dalek comment on peace plans.

And here are several cartoons relating to the recent space mission.

One of my early childhood memories is about receiving a threepenny bit for pocket money and going off independently to spend it on sweets, which had to last all week unless you gave in to temptation and ate them all there and then. Some items could be bought at a certain number for a penny, various sorts of chewy sweets or aniseed balls for example. Some were sold loose by weight - sherbet lemons, mint imperials, dolly mixtures, and various disgusting flavours of coloured sugar, marketed as “fizz”, which you consumed by dipping a wet finger into the bag and licking it, turning your finger a lurid blue or pink. Three old pence would usually buy you two ounces of whatever you chose. 

A foot-long barley-sugar stick seemed like a good idea but once partially unwrapped it just got stickier and messier as the days went by. One of the best was a packet of Rowntree’s fruit gums; if you resisted the urge to chew you could keep one fruit gum quietly dissolving in your mouth for about 15 minutes. And if you eked them, sealing the packet up each time, you could make the packet last all week. On balance, I must have been a horribly determined child; I don’t think I could resist the temptation nowadays! 

It was this article that got me thinking about sweets from my childhood sweet-eating. Before it was taken over by Nestlé, Rowntree’s was one of the three great Quaker businesses, along with Fry’s and Cadbury’s. They were said to be known as good Quaker employers, treating their employees well. Now, the article says, Rowntree’s has appointed someone to look into their past connections with slavery. I guess it was one of those things that even philanthropists took for granted back in the 19th century.

I’ve not quoted Michael Rosen for a while. So here’s his reflection on events in Lebanon:

Yvette Cooper is 'troubled'.

She says she's 'troubled'.

She's been on TV saying she's 'troubled'.

What's troubling her, it seems

is that Israel is killing people in Lebanon.

I wonder if that really is what's troubling her.

Perhaps what's troubling her

is that the British government 'stands by Israel'

but hardly anyone else is.

Perhaps what's troubling her

is that she knows she can't go on and on

turning up in studios and in the House of Commons

justifying what Israel is doing.

Perhaps she feels that Israel has

let her down.

"After all we've done for you, Israel

and now you go and do something beastly

that I can't justify."

So Yvette Cooper is 'troubled'.

And it's all been such a surprise.

Up till now

everything that Israel has done

since the 1940s 

has been great.

And here’ s what Jeremy Corbyn had to say about it:

The UK Foreign Secretary says she is “deeply troubled" by Israel's latest massacre in Lebanon.

So “troubled” that the government still supplies Israel with weapons and intelligence.

Israel is committing war crimes in Lebanon - and this government is shamefully complicit.

Hmm!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Leaving Las Palmas. Fires and flowers to greet us. “Blackface” traditions.

On Monday, as I may have mentioned already, we moved house, from a rather elegant flat in the Triana district of Las Palmas to a less elegant place in a district whose name I never learnt, a district of high-rise flats, altogether less tourist-orientated, more everyday life-orientated. Trying hard not to get lost we followed Google maps on the phone to find the local Spar so that we did at least have the makings of breakfast on Tuesday morning. 

Tuesday lunchtime, still trying not to get lost following Google maps (which never make it clear which way is north so that it is easy to head in the wrong direction) we went in search of a restaurant, a specific restaurant, hence Google maps. We paused briefly outside a place that roasted chickens to take away and found the restaurant we were after just a little further along the road. The men sitting at the tables outside started to tell us, “martes, está cerrada”. At first we took this to mean that the restaurant itself was closed on Tuesdays. Such a disappointment! We would have to start afresh. 

But no, the helpful men had jumped to conclusions and assumed we wanted a roast chicken. Confusion sorted, we discovered that yes, of course, we could lunch at this little local restaurant. After further confusion when they began to tell they only served “platos combinados”, making me wonder if we were only going to get egg and chips, we had very good grilled fish - yes, with chips - and a nice ensalada mixta. It quite made up for the rather basic accommodation we had moved into and for the Google maps confusion. A good end to our stay!

And yesterday we flew home, leaving sunshine behind in Las Palmas and returning to sunshine in Greater Manchester. 

Okay, by this morning the blue sky and sunshine had disappeared here and later in the day it rained quite heavily. By early evening, though, the sky was blue again, just in time for the sun to go over the hill. So it goes! 

While we were away wildfires spread over the peat moors around here. Highly inflammable stuff is peat. Saddleworth moor, Marsden moor, Derbyshire all had outbreaks. Some roads were closed, people were advised to stay away from local beauty stops, and in some places people were advised to keep their windows closed. What caused the fires? It could be foolish / careless folk with portable barbecues. It could be kids messing about … they are still on holiday from school. One scientific explanation is that the hot and sunny weather of the last few days dried out the top layer of peat and it just self-combusted! 

Whatever the cause, it’s a mess and the season of fires has started early this year! Maybe today’s rain will have helped. 

On the positive side, we have returned to bluebells and forget-me-nots flowering in the garden. 

While I have been watching Easter processions in Gran Canaria, Morris dancers have been out and about here in the Northwest of England, as I have already said. In nearby Bacup they have a group of something like Morris dancers who are known as  the Britannia Coconut Dancers and perform a tightly structured percussive dance in which wooden "nuts" attached to the body are struck in rhythmic patterns, creating accompaniment through movement itself. 

They dance in “black face”, which I am not sure is strictly politically correct these days. However it has been documented from 1857, when they were known as Tunstead Mill Nutters. It is said to be the last continuous example of a once wider Rossendale practice. Although its earlier origins remain uncertain, the form is understood most securely as a tradition rooted in Lancashire's industrial culture and sustained through local continuity. 

The troupe processes through the town from morning to night in a ritual boundary dance across the town, accompanied by a brass band and stopping at key points along the route. Their striking costume includes striped skirts, clogs, turbans and blackened faces. Their movement is both percussive and processional, built around the rhythmic striking of wooden “nuts” strapped to their knees, wrists, and waists. 

As regards the blackened faces, some say it has connections to Cornish mining communities, or even Mediterranean and Moorish influences - think of the “ y Cristianos” festivities in some parts of Spain. Some say it could originally have been a way of warding off evil spirits. Others put it down to the original “Nutters” being coalminers whose faces were blackened with coal dust at the end of their working shift. I suppose we’ll never know for sure but I remain surprised that nobody has complained! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!