A wobbly start to the Paris Olympics?

 It’s almost time for the Olympic Games but according to this article there is still some concern about how enthusiastic or not Parisians are about the whole business. Some Parisians, of course, will be more interested in getting away from the capital as it’s almost time for le grand départ when those who can go away for most of August. And then today we have news of arson attacks on part of the TGV network, causing havoc for train services in and out of the capital. Even Eurostar has been affected and holiday makers and other travellers planning to go to Paris from the UK by train are facing delays and cancellations. 

It’s rather like a French version of our local problem of the tram service between Oldham and Rochdale being suspended, on a bigger scale, of course, and ours was the result of natural causes (a landslip apparently) rather than deliberate vandalism and possible terrorist activity. The French problem sounds like deliberate disruption. 

Some people argue that politics should be kept out of sport, but I read that a spectacular boat procession down the Seine at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games could be used by national delegations seeking to show “solidarity” with the Palestinian cause.

Around 90 vessels carrying 10,500 athletes and officials are due to float in convoy through Paris tonight, including a delegation from Israel. Pro-Palestine organisers said discussions were taking place about a high-profile demonstration.

A “show of solidarity” could involve some unnamed national delegations flying the Palestinian flag or wearing messages on clothing, sources said, as part of a policy of those opposed to Israel’s involvement in the Games to target open-air events over the next three weeks.

A spokesman for Team Israel said that none of their athletes had opted out of taking part in the boat procession. 

However, Stephanie Adam, a campaigner with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said: “While the International Olympic Committee and host country France would like to hide the dissent, including through repressive and underhanded tactics, the strong popular opposition to genocidal Israel’s presence in the Olympics made itself heard and seen at the Israel-Mali Olympic football match on Wednesday. The dissent will only grow during the Games.

“We call on participating delegations to join calls for a ceasefire now and to stop Israel’s Gaza genocide. We urge Olympic athletes to use their platform to take a stand for Palestinian rights.”

There you go. Personally I am not getting excited about the games. My sports enthusiasm seems to have evaporated after the end of the Tour! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Presidential activity. Overseas territories. Strange “sports”.

Joe Biden is no longer running for a second term in office. This gives people chance to write about what a good bloke he is really and all the supposedly good things he has done. So far, nobody seems to have stood up and said he shouldn’t continue as president until the end of his current term. And so he has welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spoken at length to Congress and received a ridiculous number of standing ovations! The world is an oddly dangerous place.

French Polynesia was in the news recently, reminding me that France still has “pays d’outre-mer” - overseas countries. I still find it strange that in the 21st century France “owns” places so far away and still maintains control over justice, security and public order, currency, defence and foreign policy. But then we have the Falkland Islands. As a British overseas territory, the Falklands have internal self-governance, but the United Kingdom takes responsibility for their defence and foreign affairs. So let’s not get all  huffy about Franc controlling a place so far away

What got me started on this was reading this article about Teahupo’o, Tahiti, which will host the 2024 Paris Olympic surfing event. Not exactly Paris but, hey! what’s in a name. I suppose it would be hard to recreate Teahupo’o’s “magical” tunnel wave on the River Seine.And presumably the places where surfers go off the coast of France don’t quite fit the bill.

The village has changed over decades from fishing village to aa surfing place because of their wave. Some local people, such as Léon Estall, 33, a professional fisher, cannot see the economic benefits for the village. “It’s not the local population here who are making much money from this,” he says, while working his side job selling coconuts to tourists on the roadside. “Unfortunately, the money is going elsewhere. We’re a bit heartbroken about that.”

That seems to be increasingly the cry of people who love in tourist places, mostly not quite so remote as Teahupo’o. So much for progress!

Besides, who even knew that surfing was an Olympic sport. But it seems to me that if beach volleyball is an Olympic sport (which apparently is the  case) then why not surfing?

Thinking of competitive sport, here’s a link to an article about a young man who is known as the ‘Godfather of Competitive Eating’. What a strange way to seek fame and fortune. Come to that, what a strange way to earn a living, let along grow rich! And yet, Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi is described as competitive eating’s first elite athlete and can eat 50 hot dogs in 10 minutes. Quite why anyone would want to (unless the prize money is very good) defeats me. Besides he suffers from arthritis of the jaw from so much chewing!

The world is crazy in many ways!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Breakfast in the park. Chaos in the side street. Rebellion in the Commons - quickly punished! And not taking part in the Olympics.

 I try to ride my bike on actual roads, especially main roads, as little as possible, preferring bridle paths and smaller lanes. This morning as I swooped down the last section of Den Lane, about to turn into Uppermill high street, I spotted familiar figures crossing the bottom of the lane: my daughter and her smallest child. They had just dropped Granddaughter Number Four at school and were having a stroll round Uppermill before deciding what to do with the rest of the day. So I picked up some pains au chocolat at the co-op store, did my usual run around the market and went and joined them in the park for an open air breakfast/snack.

There was a little moment of chaos in the side street next to the co-op store as the co-op lorry tried to park in his usual place to make his deliveries, rather hampered by a car parked on double yellow lines at the corner! I suppose it could have been someone who doesn’t frequent Uppermill on a Wednesday and wasn’t expecting a huge delivery lorry  but anyone with an ounce of common sense and rather less sense of entitlement to do what they like would have parked elsewhere. 

Granddaughter Number Four doesn’t finish school for summer until tomorrow. I think the local secondary school finished yesterday. My daughter finished her training sessions yesterday and is now officially on holiday: hence her being able to walk the small boy through Uppermill this morning. She still has stuff to organise before school resumes in September but she was looking relaxed this morning. Having spent all my working life in educational establishments one kind or another I remember that feeling of freedom with the whole of summer stretching out ahead of you. It doesn’t last long and you quickly realise you have a million things you want/need to do in the  limited time available. 

And we need a bit more sunshine! It’s quite warm out there today but the morning sun has withdrawn behind the clouds. But at least it’s not raining!

One of my young heroines, Zarah Sultana MP - not my actual MP but still a good person to follow - has had the parliamentary whip withdrawn from her for voting for an amendment to the King’s speech, proposed by the SNP. This is what she wrote on social media:

“i have been informed by the Chief Whip and the Labour Party leadership that the whip has been withdrawn from me for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, which would lift 330,000 children put of poverty. 

I will always stand up for the most vulnerable in our society.”

And there’s more: 

“A couple of years ago I proposed a law in Parliament to introduce free school meals for all.

This would tackle child poverty and guarantee every primary school pupil has a hot healthy meal each day.

Today I joined campaigners in Westminster to renew this call.”

The House of Commons voted 363 to 103 to reject the amendment about the child benefit cap, tabled in the name of the SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn.

Zarah Sultana was informed by email last night about the decision to withdraw the whip. She’s not alone: The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the former business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, along with Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, and Imran Hussain have also been suspended. Most Labour MPs toed the party line. Independent thinking is clearly discouraged. At least it is in this case but it’s not consistently been the case

According to Owen Jones, writing in the Guardian, “Such parliamentary rebellions are scattered through our democratic history, and are accepted almost as a convention of government. Boris Johnson suspended multiple Brexit rebels in 2019 and it was rightly seen as an aberration. He did not, for example, exact the same punishment when five Tory MPs backed a Labour motion extending free school meals in 2020. When it comes to Labour history, even Tony Blair never resorted to such petty authoritarianism. Forty-seven Labour MPs rebelled over a cut to the lone parent benefit in 1997 – none had the whip removed.

There isn’t the money available, we are told. The price tag is £1.7bn, a pittance given annual government expenditure is £1.2tr. According to the Sunday Times rich list, the 350 wealthiest British households have a combined fortune of £795bn: is leaving their taxes at the same level more important than parents skipping hot meals to feed their little ones? When Starmer told Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the UK would give Ukraine £3bn a year “for as long as it takes” he acknowledged there is money available for what the government considers a priority. This Labour government simply does not regard child poverty as a priority.”

Also among the headlines in the news this morning, not a main headline but still there, was the news that King Charles is to get a pay rise. The sovereign grant will rise to £132m for 2025-26. Now, of course I know all the arguments about how the money is needed for upkeep of estates and renovation of the palace and such like. And I know we have standards to maintain and all that kind of thing but it does rather smack of rubbing struggling families’ noses in it. Mind you, Charles was sensible: he only had two children!

This weekend another event to take our minds off serious matters kicks off: the Paris Olympics. One of our bright hopes for winning lots of medals, equestrian Charlotte Dujardin, has had to withdraw as she has been provisionally banned for six months by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports for mistreating a horse during training. I’ve already commented on the fact that Slovenia won’t be represented by Tadej Pogacar on his bike. One factor in his decision is apparently the fact that his equally successful cyclist girlfriend has not been selected! Oops!  

And here’s a link to an article about “false news” reports that the Olympic athletes have to sleep on cardboard ‘no-sex’ bed. Various athletes, from a range of disciplines, have tested the beds in no-sex but vigorous ways and have demonstrated how sturdy they are! 

It must be the silly season. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Watching the final stage of the Tour. Entertaining small boys.

Well, that’s the Tour de France over and done with for another year. Yes, I am aware it finished on Sunday but somehow we didn’t realise that the highlights were being broadcast at 9.00pm instead of the usual 7.00pm. And then we were busy doing this and that … as you do … and when we decided to watch the highlights, which we have been recording to watch at our leisure, the programme was still recording. However, it was at least one third of the way through and we wanted to watch it in its entirety. So we chose to wait another day and watch another episode of the Italian detective series we’ve been watching instead. We already knew who was winning, and probably who was coming second and third -  barring a nasty twist of fate in the shape of a bike crash.

So we watched it last night. It’s very unusual not to know who is going to win the Tour and so the final stage of usually begins with a stately procession along the Champs Élysées with the winner’s support team often strung out with glasses of champagne. Then follows a final sprint round and round the centre of Paris to see who will win the final stage. 

This wasn’t possible this year - those pesky Olympic Games got in the way. So they did a time trial into Nice instead, involving a lot of uphill stuff. 

Mark Cavendish was the first to set off, with no aspiration to do any more than finish the Tour. He didn’t even try to go all that fast, even giving fans hand-slaps as he passed them. His final Tour was an emotional affair and they gave him a special award and everyone seemed to admire him. Hoorah!

The top three riders, Pogacar, Eingegaard and Evenepoel each in turn beat the times set by the riders who had preceded them on the time trial route. I would have quite likes a surprise win by Evenepoel but in the event it was Pogacar who won the final stage as well as the Tour. 

He’s not going to ride for his country in the Olympics. He’s won the Giro d’Italia snd the Tour de France in quick succession. There’s only so much a cyclist can do! Besides there’s a world championship even coming up before too long. 

I’m impressed by the fact that Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Roglic even managed to start the Tour de France after their crash in the Basque Country. Poor Roglic continued to crash until he had to pull out of the Tour but the other two managed to keep their second and third places! Astoundingly impressive!

Next year’s Tour should be interesting. And there will be the Eritrean Biniam Girmay to watch as well. I might have to watch the Giro d’Italia too. 

So that’s that.

Today I have entertained the small boy once again, his time with a bus ride to Uppermill to visit the museum. The museum was closed until midafternoon and so we played in the park and treated ourselves to ice creams instead. And we had to hunt for interesting bugs and mess about in the river as well.

Tomorrow should be less busy and maybe I’ll get a proper look at the news. 

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

A slow start to school summer holidays. Photographers finding beauty in chaos.

 Summer continues along its haphazard path here. When the cloud cover thins the temperature rises; when the cloud moves back in it’s quite chilly. It’s very hard to decide what is the best way to dress - layers I think! 

So when I took the small boy (who arrived at 8.00 this morning  as primary school Mummy has INSET (which was really not so much training as a chance to prepare the teaching rooms for next year) today and tomorrow and everyone else in the immediate family is working, we took waterproofs in my small rucksack. We’ll do a re-run tomorrow. 

His older sister’s school does not finish until Thursday, which seems really late. And then summer can begin properly for them! However, the school has sent out mixed messages. Some parents think school closes on Wednesday, others think Thursday. No doubt some children will be absent on Thursday as family set off on pre-booked holidays. Oh dear! 

In the wider world, Joe Biden has bowed to the pressure to stand down as the Diplomatic Party’s presidential candidate. Some praise is going to Kamala Harris as a possible replacement. We shall see. And Israel is still causing havoc in the middle east. Other places still have  starving people but they are not getting so mush publicity. 

Back in April 2019 we watched the cathedral of Note Dame in Paris burning. Even those of us with no particular religious connection to it were shocked. President Macron promised that it would be put back to rights by the end of 2024 and a date is now set for December of this year. Here’s a link to an article about the people who have been fixing it. How fortunate to be able to find people with those skills. It’s probably good that it’s happening in December rather than getting lost in the Olympic Games stuff. 

I’m amazed at the beauty photographers can manage to create out of moments of chaos, like this photo of the interior of the cathedral on the morning after the fire. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

What happened to Saturday’s blogpost.

 Well, yesterday didn’t quite go according to plan. It’s not that there is always a plan for the day but yesterday when I came back from my run, I had decided that after breakfast and after loading the washing machine, I would catch the bus to the local small Tesco, quickly pick up a couple of things, and catch the next bus back in time to listen to the lunchtime news, write my blog and then persuade Phil to go for a longish walk as Friday’s very hot weather had morphed into Saturday’s fine and warm but not too hot conditions. 

I was in the supermarket when my daughter phoned me: could she drop Grandson Number Two at our house while she and her partner went to do some sorting at a house they have been renting out but now want to sell. Granddaughter Number Two had already volunteered her services but Grandson Number Two was complaining that his older sister wouldn’t want to play dinosaurs with him. His seven year old sister, usually the ideal playmate for whatever imaginative games one or other of them comes up with, was going to play at a friend’s house. His 21 year old sister apparently won’t or doesn’t know how to play dinosaurs! Consequently Grandma, well known for her ability to get down at floor level and join in the game narrative (“You can be this dinosaur, Grandma. Your dinosaur does this… Your dinosaur says that…” and so on), supplied of course by the small boy, was the next port of call. 

As luck, or coincidence or serendipity would have it, the friend the seven year old was going to spend the afternoon with lived close to the supermarket. They could pick me up with my shopping. Suddenly my shopping list increased in length and I put into my trolley some heavier items which I would not have wanted to carry home on the bus.

Of course, I then had to wait outside the supermarket until my “I am just setting off now” daughter turned up. And so I arrived home a little later than planned, with a little more shopping than planned and with an unplanned small boy.

As I hung the washing out in the garden to dry, the small boy turned stones over to see what was beneath them - slugs, woodlice, a millipede (supposedly) and, the best find, a fat earthworm. All these were put into a plastic box and examined carefully. Actually, I suspect that the worm may have been lightly but unintentionally tortured, all in the interests of scientific investigation. 

We went indoors for a snack. The hands that had closely examined insect were thoroughly washed. We planned to make cakes but  “After we’ve played dinosaurs, Grandma!”. So we organised dinosaur adventures and built dinosaur homes and enclosures. Then we made cakes. We played dinosaurs some more. We iced cakes and added sprinkles. We did craft activities, cutting and sticking and making snakes. 

At some point I persuaded the small boy to eat something other than cake mix and then cakes.

Quite some time later his parents showed up, needing coffee and a chat. The seven year old, collected from her friend’s house, joined her small brother in craft activities. The afternoon turned into evening. Fortunately I had half of a Spanish tortilla in the fridge. So we removed the craft stuff from the table and replaced it with tortilla, salad, hummus and ham and such - an improvised family meal! 

Eventually somewhere close to 9.00pm the family set off for a quick evening stroll before taking the small home to bed. We were invited to accompany them but decided to stay home and tidy up instead. Some ten minutes later my phone rang once more: they had not got far on their stroll when the heavens opened and they had had to run for the car and were now heady home soaked to the skin! 

So it goes. And the blogpost never got written. 

Had it been written it would have included a bit of Michael Rosen’s “The King and his Tutor”:

'I've heard that some judges somewhere or another have said that we shouldn't be in the corner over there,' said the King to his tutor.

'Oh judges!' said the King's tutor, 'they'll say anything that they're paid to say.'

'It does bother me somewhat though,' said the King.

'It shouldn't,' said the tutor, 'remember that that corner over there is ours.'

'Is it?' said the King, 'I thought we were in that corner over there in order to keep us safe over here.'

'Yes,' said the tutor, 'it's what we said, but in fact, that corner over there has belonged to us for thousands of years.'

'Apart from the times when we weren't there, perhaps?' said the King.

"Good point,' said the tutor, 'we were indeed ejected from that corner over there some time or another a long, long time ago. That's why we're back in the corner over there.'

'Hmm, that sounds very good,' said the King, 'but I went there once and there were some people there who aren't our people.'

'Exactly,' said the tutor, 'and our job is to make sure that they aren't there.'

'How will we do that?' said the King.

'We have very good horses and carts,' said the tutor.

'And we put these people on the carts?' said the King.

'Exactly,' said the tutor.

'That's very good,' said the King, 'I thought you'd think of something. You always do.'

'Thank you, sir,' said the tutor.

And there would have been this photo of some crazy Americans putting plasters on their ears out of solidarity with their ‘hero’ Donald Trump!

The mind boggles!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.