Signs of spring. Former King Jaun Carlos of Spain. And chess. And a possibly confused possum.

 It’s another fine day. Not quite as summerlike as yesterday as there is a bit more of a fresh wind but still, there is light at the end of the tunnel …

… or at any rate at the end of the old coach entrance dating back to when the pub next door was an actual coaching house and there were stables in the yard behind.

And there are signs of spring everywhere. Mind you, one of my nodding acquaintances commented this morning that it might be snowing by the weekend. Such a pessimist!

I read that Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón, abdicated king of Spain, disgraced former king of Spain, is tired of living in exile in Abu Dhabi and wants to return to Spain. Maybe Abu Dhabi is a bit too close to the conflict zone for comfort. Maybe he’s just feeling 88 and wants to go home. Will Spain welcome him with open arms? According to this article it’s debatable. 

I’ve always quite liked Juan Carlos, despite all the scandal about extramarital affairs and difficult family members. He was brought up in difficult times. When Franco died he chose not to follow the Franco route and changed Spain’s government completely, despite being groomed as Franco’s successor. When 23F, came along, the attempted coup in 1982, he was instrumental in calming it all down and preventing total chaos in the country. 

Now some people suggest he might have been involved in instigating the coup in the first place but Javier Cercas, a writer I appreciate, declares him to have been a defender of democracy. That’s what I always taught my A Level Spanish students anyway. 

What happens next remains to be seen. 

Still in Spain, here are some rather fine pictures from book about chess, a book made for King Alfonso X back in the thirteenth century. 

According to this article, study of ancient chess boards and pictures, mediaeval and pre-mediaeval times were much more tolerant of difference in race and colour than was thought to be the case. However, it seems that the establishment of black and white pieces as the game developed may have contributed to awareness of differences in race and skin colour. Who would have thought it. My question: is it significant that the player with the white pieces has the first move? 

I’ve never quite understood why people buy soft toys in airports but here’s a link to an article about a real live possum setting up shop,in the soft toys display in an airport in Tasmania! Enterprising little creature. Or maybe he thought the soft toys were his friends and relations.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Saint Patrick. Sponsorship of artists. A good washing day. And help for happy bees.

 Well, Saint Patrick”s Day passed us by unnoticed in this house yesterday. Not that we had any intention of dressing up in green and celebrating, having no connection with Ireland whatsoever.

That doesn’t prevent quite a lot of people using the saint’s day as an excuse to go out and party. 

This morning I was reminded that the day had been and gone. And I remembered that I had a suitable cartoon about good old Saint Pat and the snakes. 

And someone passed on this joke to me:

“An Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman were riding in a hot-air balloon.

The balloon was about to crash into a mountain, so the pilot says, "We need to lose more weight to get clear. One of you has to jump."

The Scotsman says, "I do this for the glory of Scotland!" and he jumps out of the basket.

But the balloon still wasn’t high enough. "We need to lose more weight!" the pilot says.

The Welshman says, "I do this for the glory of Wales!" and he jumps out.

"We need to lose just one more person, and we’ll make it!" the pilot says.

The Irishman says, "I do this for the glory of Ireland!" — and he picks up the Englishman and throws him over the side.”

There you go!

On the subject of Ireland, here’s a link to an article about Ireland awarding a basic income to artists so that they could develop their talents. Not all striving artists received it; there was a kind of lottery to see who would get it. But it sounds like an excellent idea. 

Summer seems to have arrived here, skipping over False Spring and Actual Spring a d pushing aside Second Winter. Not only has it been a fine day to hang the washing out to dry in the garden, but said washing has dried nicely. Well, the stuff that went out first thing has dried nicely. I cannot guarantee that the last lot to go out will do as well. We shall see.

I spotted the first dandelion of 2026 in the garden this afternoon. 

Pretty soon the grass will be sprinkled with yellow stars. The bees will be happy. We must not use weedkiller or cut them down.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Productive running. Some odd facts about butter. Babies. Exploitation.

We’ve got sunshine and blue sky again today. People I have met while out and about assure me that we should have some nice spring weather for the next few days. We’ll see how that goes.

I read that there is a new fad amongst runners, serious runners who run farther and faster than I can manage. It seems that they put cream and a little salt into sealed containers, put the containers inside their running backpacks (running backpacks are slim affairs that hug close to your upper back so that they don’t flap about while you run - I’m pretty sure most runners don’t need a backpack but that’s a different matter!) and off they go. As they run energetically the cream is churned and turns into butter. Okay! I certainly don’t run fast enough to churn cream into butter. Besides, some days it takes quite enough effort to organise myself into my running gear without the extra hassle of sorting out a container of cream. It seems like a lot of effort for probably very little reward. But then, it is very satisfying to be able say “I made this” or “here’s some butter I made earlier”. 

Another interesting (and rather greasy) fact about butter is that some influencers are recommending snacking on sticks of butter, unwrapping it and biting chunks of it as you might  bite into an energy bar or a kitkat. No good for vegans, of course! Now, I like butter on toast, on crumpets, on hot cross buns. Our smallest grandson likes a nice slice of buttered bread, just bread and butter, no jam, so long as it is butter and not margarine. But somehow biting into a pat of butter seems a bit over the top. And might it not be a bit messy to transport on an everyday basis. I imagine reaching into my handbag and pulling out a soggy butter packet. And that’s without the possibility of its leaking all over the contents of the aforementioned handbag.

And here’s another interesting fact: some yummy mummies are being persuaded (by mumfluencers?) that feeding your baby a spoonful of butter will help him sleep through the night. Paediatricians say that there is no evidence that this works and in fact they advise that ideally babies should be purely breastfed until they are 6 months old. But I suppose that if you have been sleep deprived for months on end you will try anything - even nonsense  broadcast on social media. Maybe I was fortunate but my babies, once the first few chaotic weeks of their existence was over, would wake for a feed towards midnight and then again at about 4.00am. And then sleep til proper morning. Not quite an undisturbed night’s sleep but giving us enough peaceful sleep to survive. We were also fortunate that as toddlers they didn’t get into the habit of regularly climbing into our bed in the small hours!

I also came across an interesting statistic about babies: 75% of nine-month-olds in England have daily screen time. Some spend more than 3 hours a day looking at a screen. Here’s a link to article about it. 

I remember a time when there was an outcry about babies and toddlers being strapped into their buggies and ‘parked’ in front of the television. Now it’s a more portable kind of screen. Some say that screen time can actually be beneficial, provided it is used with care. I assume that means parents actually interacting with their babies while looking at something onscreen, rather like actually watching a Tv programme with your child and talking about what goes on. And the ability to navigate a screen of whatever kind is becoming an essential skill. So maybe children should start young but I still find it rather disturbing when a child who can’t yet speak knows how to use touch control to select what they want to see! 

Now, here’s a link to an article about the Quapaw Nation in the United States and their environmental work, bringing back to life land contaminated by toxic waste from mining.

It is reported that the Quapaw Nation is the only US Native community to carry out a cleanup of one of the country’s worst sites of environmental contamination. They’re supposedly going back to their roots. When the first Europeans encountered the Quapaw, back in the 1600s, they grew all kinds of crops, tended by the women while the men did the hunting. The women also had their say in tribal politics. But the white man didn’t approve. After all,  farming and leadership were men’s business.

“To be truly civilized,” they declared, “Quapaw men would have to become farmers.”

Of course, they also had their land stolen and attempts were made to “civilise” all the indigenous people. I hope they can make the reclaiming work, probably needing to combine modern technology with old ways of doing things

Incidentally, we have been watching a TV series called “Territory”, a sort of cowboy story set in Australia with huge cattle “stations”. As well as the control politics of the white Australians, the series also reveals the exploitation of the aborigine people -  a kind of Australian version of Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee. Greed is a formidable motivator of exploitative behaviour!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Mother’s Day reflections continued. Skills. Animal lovers’ weakness. Wider world madness.

Well, we eventually managed to help the smallest grandson deliver his surprise to his mother in the late afternoon / early evening yesterday. She was duly impressed. And the small boy was pleased to find that his plan for the roots of the plants in his carefully constructed pot were visible through the open mouth of his creature had worked. Success on all fronts, I think. 

Part of the media frenzy run up to Mother’s Day was a series about the best advice readers’ and columnists’ mothers had given them. Columnist Tim Dowling’s mother apparently impressed on him the advantages of being able to raise one eyebrow at a time, as a means of expressing doubt, scepticism, satire, humour and so on. He practised hard and mastered the art. Somebody has to be able to do these things.

My father could famously waggle his rather large ears. This was well before any of us had heard of Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant. Over one Christmas dinner, when we all maybe drank a few too many Christmas toasts, my Spanish brother-in-law and I discovered that we could both flare our nostrils at will. Not as useful as skill as raising one eyebrow at a time but still something that rather a lot of people are unable to do. 

In the letters section of the newspaper, Caroline Alexander had this to say: 

“Regarding words of wisdom from mothers, a friend’s mum taught her to recite the mantra “Bus pass, dinner money, homework, handkerchief” whenever she left the house to go to school. It still applies in principle. The first two have been replaced by a phone and credit card, the third by reading specs. But the necessity of a simple handkerchief has stood the test of time. Thank you, Mrs Moss.”

My mother also used to insist on our having a clean handkerchief. We all had name labels on ours! It’s a long time since I had an actual handkerchief but I usually ensure ai have a supply of tissues. And as regards the checklist before leaving the house, mine would include mobile phone and keys to the house - an almost paranoid fear of being locked out!

Getting back to Tim Dowling, I think it was in yesterday’s )column that he complained about his dog waking him in the small hours. He went on to say this:

“Every night I go to bed to find the dog already there, in my place, head on my pillow. Every night I shoo the dog off, and the dog obediently retreats to its own bed, and falls asleep. That used to be the routine, until I started waking up in the dark with the dog staring at me.

The dog manages to take up a huge amount of bed without disturbing my wife in any way, because that would be a disaster for both of us

The dog wants to be allowed to climb back up on to the bed. I will relent – if not yet, then eventually – but if my wife wakes up at any point during the dog’s campaign, all bets are off.’

I have made clear in numerous previous posts my feelings about dogs, and other animals, in bedrooms. Our eldest granddaughter has her cat sleeping in hers as he can’t be trusted not to cause havoc if left to his own devices. No doubt Mr Dowling’s dog warms the bed nicely for him but personally I find the prospect of putting my head down on a pillow where a dog has been resting, possible slobbering, I find quite repulsive. 

Each to his own I suppose! 

Finally, here’s a comment on the madness of the wider world: 

You’re just trying to enjoy the view with the squad… when the humans decide to turn the whole planet into a fireworks show 

Even the aliens are done: ‘Humans are really stupid”. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Mothering Sunday reflections.

 It’s Mother’s Day. Or is it Mothers’ Day. I’m never sure where the apostrophe should go. All the mass of advertising that has been bombarding us for the last few weeks usually refers to Mother’s Day, or even to Mothers Day, omitting the apostrophe altogether. It probably should be the first option: Mother’s Day. After all, we have just one mother, except that nowadays there are families with two mothers or no mothers at all but two fathers. And then there are the separated parents who have then remarried, meaning that the children have a mother and a stepmother. It’s a lot easier in Spanish where it is El Día de la Madre - just one symbolic mother.

Whatever the punctuation, there has been a lot of advertising for this Day, giving advice on what presents to buy, even what to give your children on Mother’s Day. There was even an article in the Guardian telling us what are the best Mother’s Day gifts for … wait for it … mums, grannies, aunties and friends. Some of their suggestions are quite pricey! 

It’s a far cry from when I was a child and we went (or were sent) 4along to Sunday School, learning our bible stories and singing songs like “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”, “Daisies are our silver, buttercups are our gold”, “Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light” and, as we dropped out threepenny bits into the collection bag, “Hear the pennies dropping, listen where they fall, every one for Jesus, he shall have them all.” 

Once a year, on the fourth Sunday in Lent,  we children were given a card to take home to give to Mummy, because it was Mothering Sunday, not Mother’s Day, and they didn’t sell Mother’s Day cards in the shops. It was a less commercial-dominated time. Our mother usually received two such cards. We were four siblings but by the time the two youngest were old enough for Sunday School my older sister and I were deemed too old for that and had to attend grown-up church. 

Anyway, there it was: Mothering Sunday. 

According to one source, “in the 16th century, Mothering Sunday was less about mothers and more about church. Back then, people would make a journey to their ‘mother’ church once a year. This might have been their home church, their nearest cathedral or a major parish church in a bigger town. The service which took place at the ‘mother’ church symbolised the coming together of families. This would have represented a significant journey for many.”

The ‘mother’ church, another source tells me, is the church where you were baptised. On Mothering Sunday you were supposed to go back there for the Sunday service on that one day of the year, even if you had moved away and regularly worshipped elsewhere. Does this have anything to do with Mary and Joseph having to go to Bethlehem ‘to be counted’, as the story goes? I wonder.

I wonder how many people have been or will go to church today. Maybe more than would usually attend. For most of us nowadays going to church is for special occasions - baptisms, weddings, funerals - if we go to church at all?

Another theory about Mothering Sunday, the one I was always told about, is that young women ‘in service’, ie working as domestic staff in wealthy household, would be given this day ‘off’ to go and visit their mother, clean her house, prepare a meal for her. Some ‘day off’!

Our smallest grandson, 6 years old) put rather lot of effort into making a special surprise present for Mummy. I collected him from school on Thursday. On the way home he planned his work, asking me did I have see-through plastic pot he could use. We rummaged through the plastics recycling bag to find something suitable. He then decorated it with coloured card. Did I also have some ‘googly eyes’ he could stick on his creation? We found some in my craft box. We would need some ‘dirt’, he told me. Did he mean ‘soil’? “Yes, but I call it dirt. You should have some in the garden.” This is what he produced. 

Ideally he wanted to plant cress seeds, to make hair for his creature. Through the creature’s open mouth he hoped to be able to see the roots! However, I didn’t have cress seeds and, besides, they probably wouldn’t grow sufficiently between Thursday and today. So we compromised and he agreed I could buy a plant of some kind to insert into the work of art and his “surprise” could remain here until Mother’s Day. Here is the result.

Now I wait for Mummy to bring him round so he can present her with her surprise.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Sunny day. Sending warships? Tax dodgers! Tourists visiting the favelas of Rio.

The wind has dropped, the sky is blue and almost cloudless, and the sun is shining. All in all a fine spring day.

Mr Trump would like to UK to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, the strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, the strait which provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is one of the world's most strategically important choke points. Mr Trump would like the UK to help keep the strait open. We shall see where that goes!

Meanwhile, some wealthy British nationals are trying to get out of the Gulf states. According to one report some of them are trying to bypass the UK, where they might find themselves liable to pay UK taxes, by going to Ireland or France, hoping to stay there until the conflict is over. With only about three weeks remaining in the current financial year, many overseas residents have already “spent” their allocation of days in Britain without incurring tax liabilities. Some are seeking guidance from HMRC on whether they would be granted 60 extra days under an “exceptional circumstances” provision. “Exceptional circumstances’ during the Covid lockdown allowed some people to remain in the UK longer than their  allocated time without paying tax because they were not able to travel. Oh! It must be hard having all that money and being expected to contribute to your country of birth, or at least the country whose passport you hold. 

One wealthy man, hiding away in Dublin, commented: ““I’m happy to pay income tax and tax on investments next tax year, but I don’t want the sale of a business that I sold years ago to fall within UK capital gains tax.” He added, “I paid for my own travel home, by the way.”

How nice of him to pay his own travel! 

It’s understandable that people want to escape from conflict zones. They should consider themselves lucky that they didn’t have to pay huge amounts to escape in a flimsy dinghy! Clearly a different class of refugees! 

I read that the thing to do if you go on holiday in Brazil is to visit the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.  Apparently tens of thousands of tourists have flocked to a specific  terrace, known locally as the ‘’Porta do Céu (Gateway to Heaven), since last year, when favela entrepreneurs began making viral drone videos showing visitors swaggering or dancing through a metal door and across the roof to a euphoric Brazilian soundtrack, before the camera zooms out, revealing the favela’s place in the heart of Rio’s awe-inspiring landscape.

I was reminded of the film City of God (2002).

Description: This iconic film captures the brutal reality of life in the Cidade de Deus favela in Rio de Janeiro, following the lives of two boys who take different paths amidst the rise of gang violence.

Fact: The film was shot on location in Rio's real favelas, and many of the actors were non-professionals from those communities

I suppose it’s a bit like visiting the old quarter of some Spanish cities, except that most of those are not still occupied by the poor. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.