More rain. Thinking about arts and artists. Evacuating planes.

 I ran (well, actually mostly walked) in the drizzle this morning. Drizzle still gets you wet! I might not have bothered but we needed bread for toast for breakfast. That’s how it goes. By early afternoon the rain/drizzle had mostly abated and the sun even tried to shine. I am told that we might have some fine weather over the weekend.

So today we say farewell to David Hockney, artistic adventurer, the artist who inspired me to experiment with drawing on the iPad, the artist whose work I would love to emulate - fat chance! The news reports are undecided about how old he was, some say 88, some say 89. There we go, another hero departed.

I caught a little bit of a programme where Melvyn Bragg discussed the importance of the arts in modern life - a topical issue considering how funding for the arts has been cut. 

He spoke to Tracey Emin (Dame Tracey Emin, no less) an artist I used to find extremely annoying with all her posturing, but who has grown on me as she has grown older and who seems to be doing good work for the arts in her home town of Margate. 

They made her a freewoman of the town, in a ceremony with robes and a fancy hat. She had a choice of title: Freeman, Freeperson or Freewoman. She opted for the last as she had always wanted to be a free woman of Margate?

She said that this honour made it possible for her to bring influence to bear on the council to get things done for the arts. Well, good for her! 

As we have travelled by plane more than once this year so far, we have had to listen to the onboard safety announcement quite a few times. Like many passengers we have heard it all before and really only give it half an ear. On one occasion the pilot intervened to ask passengers please to be quiet - like unruly children they were chattering away! I have always been struck by the reminder in the event of a loss of cabin pressure to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others + common sense really. The other thing is being told that if we have to make an emergency landing and evaxuate the aircraft we must leave all our hand luggage behind. 

However, I found this interesting bit of information regarding that:

“Research on travellers in the UK, US, Singapore and UAE found that only 61% were aware of the rules. “Four in 10 passengers don’t even realise it’s an expectation to leave their shit behind,” Careen said, speaking at the Iata annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

Evacuations are rare in aviation, with only an estimated 30 annually. Last year at least two-UK bound flights were evacuated on the asphalt before departure after suspicions of fire, with 18 passengers sustaining minor injuries leaving a Ryanair plane at Palma airport last July. Passengers described the evacuation as “utter carnage”.”

You only need to see the chaos that ensues as people try to reclaim their cabin bags from the overhead lockers to disembark when a plane lands normally to be able to image now dangerous it would be to do the same for an emergency landing. Most people are cooperative and helpful to each other while waiting to leave the aircraft but some just forget what manners they might once have had and insist on almost knocking you on the head with their suitcase. Others determinedly push you out of the way as they try to go against the flow in order to retrieve a bag they were obliged to stow in an overhead lockers half a plane-length away from their seat. 

Another problem during emergency evacuations apparently is people stopping to get out their phones to  video what is going on. You have to wonder what goes through their minds. Is an opportunity to get some exciting footage on your Instagram or on a Facebook reel worth risking your life for? But then perhaps it’s the modern version cars slowing down on the motorway to take a look at an accident which has just occurred! 

For a supposedly intelligent species human beings can be very strange!!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Not running in the rain. Beaches. Environmental problems. Weddings disrupting city life.

 I say that I don’t mind running in the rain but what I really mean is that I don’t mind running in the drizzle. Proper rain is a different matter. So when my alarm rang this morning and I heard the rain hammering down , I reset it and went back to sleep. Exercise will have to wait. 

They don’t have a rain problem as a rule in southern Europe. However, a beach  in Sardinia is reported to be banning sun umbrellas for people aged between 10 and 65. They have decided to impose stricter rules in order to preserve the natural beauty of Punta Molentis, which is located within a designated conservation area. Mind you, if you look at photos of the beach full of sun umbrellas there’s not a lot of beach to see, just a lot of umbrellas.

It’s a strange habit the Italians seem to have of privatising beaches. We first came across it when we went to a language school in Viareggio in Tuscany. The school gave us passes to alllow us to access the beach “owned” by one of the hotels. If you wanted a ‘free’ beach you had to go some distance out of town. Here’s a link to the article about Sardinia.

Here’s another environmental issue and new word for today: “bycatch”. It’s the term used for the accidental capture and killing of non-target species by fishing vessels, and it is having a quite devastating effect on marine species such as dolphins and whales as well as smaller creatures. Modern methods of fishing are causing environmental problems. 

I wrote about actors protesting at audience members using mobile phoes and even laptops during performances. Well, here’s a link to an article about a gurgling baby disrupting a performance by Kenneth Branagh at the RSC. The baby wasn’t crying, just awake and making baby noises, “chirping” as one complainer put it. People queued up to complain and asked that the mother and baby not be allowed back for the second half. 

My, oh, my! 

What was she doing with a baby at the performance is not explained. Long, long ago our son managed to disrupt a friend’s wedding by “chirping” throughout the service. Nobody minded.

On the subject of weddings, the singer Dua Lipa has followed so many celebrities by getting married in Italy, wel, she didn’t actually get married in Italy. The wedding took place in London and she featured in fashion pages for wearing a suit rather than a frothy frock.

But she and her new husband, the actor Callum Turner, held a two- or three-day-long party in Palermo, Sicily, to celebrate. I have an Italian friend who comes from Palermo. She expressed indignation on the part of her fellow Palermitanos (Palermitani?) because whole sections of the city were closed, streets were cut off, public transport was disrupted for the celebrations. People going about their ordinary, but now disrupted, lives, people who had no idea who Dua Lipa is, declared that closing the town for a visit from the Pope was understandable but that this was really not acceptable. Quite so! But I suspect that some people in the catering sector were leased to host them.

Such is modern living.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Butterflies. Times tables. Silliness. World Cup. Bayeux Tapestry

 It may not feel much like summer but according to experts it’s summer enough for us to expect lots of painted lady butterflies this year. Whoopee!

“The painted lady flies north from sub-Saharan Africa at the start of every year. Successive generations breed in north Africa and then the southern Mediterranean before reaching northern Europe later in the summer. In September, the offspring of these migrants fly south again.

In some summers, hardly any reach British shores, but Butterfly Conservation experts said a combination of favourable early spring conditions in southern Europe, the recent heatwave and benign southerly winds had turned 2026 into a once -in-a-decade “painted lady summer”.

Personally I’d be happy see a lot of butterflies of any kind. The presence of butterflies usually indicates that the day is going to be fine. At least that’s my experience. 

During our recent trip to Silves, Portugal, we saw some rather impressive butterflies. 

Today I hold out few hopes of seeing butterflies. In the small hours of the morning I woke up to the sound of torrential rain. Fortunately it had stopped by the time I went out but the River Tame is running rather full through our village.

Scanning the papers over the last few days, I discovered from the letters page that there has been some sort of debate about times tables. Why do times tables, the bane of our lives in 1950s primary schools when we were regularly tested on them, figure in  newspapers? No idea, anyway I came across this bit of correspondence in the Letters page:

 “Your correspondents suggest unnecessarily difficult ways to do the nine times table (Letters, 25 May). The answer always adds up to nine. The first digit is one less than the multiplier and the second is what is what you add to the first to get nine. So 7 x 9 = 63. Simples! 

Jeff Warren

London”

In answer to that someone whose name I failed to note, said:

“Jeff Warren (Letters, 31 May) says that in computing the nine times table, “the answer always adds up to nine”. Eleven nines are 99.”

Well, of course. The first method works if you only learn times tables up to 10 x, rather than 12 x which those of us who had 1950s primary education had to suffer. And we worked on a base of 12 because that was the imperial way: 12 inches to a foot and 12 pennies to a shilling. Of course we had to learn 12 x tables. I personally had no trouble with the 9s, it was the 7s that bugged me. 

Here’s a link to a silly story about people coming out of manholes , like Ninja Turtles, in New York. That’s another sign of summer - silly stories in the news. 

Here’s another one:

N

“Fifa has canceled World Cup tickets issued to about 60 fans who mistakenly got them for free because of a website error, and soccer’s governing body is now asking for them to be paid in full.

The tickets were “allocated at no charge [0 USD] due to a prior payment issue during the checkout process,” Fifa said in a statement Thursday.

“Fifa regrets the error and any inconvenience caused,” it said. “The tickets requested by these fans remain reserved, and the affected fans have been invited to complete payment of the correct amount.””

Imagine the moments of delight some football fans must have had, believing they had free tickets! 

The World Cup keeps popping up in the news for all the wrong reasons too: Somali referee Omar Artan has been denied entry to the USA, presumably because he might be a terrorist. 

And Talal Salah, an Iraqi sports photographer, was refused admission into the US, depriving the team of its official photographer prior to the competition. He is reported to have been held by U.S. immigration officials at Chicago O’Hare International Airport for around ten hours, during which time his electronic devices were checked before he was officially denied entrance. And then he was sent back to Baghdad! 

So it goes!

There have also been some letters about the Bayeux Tapestry again. Experts are questioning the longstanding belief that Good Old Harold dies with an arrow in his eye at the Battle of Hastings. This is what happens when you start examining old stitch-work really closely. I am more amused by those who grow indignant at the suggestion that the Norman invasion marked the birth of the English nation

Is the French minister of culture, Catherine Pégard, accurate in stating that the loan of the Bayeux tapestry would “allow the English people to contemplate on their own soil the act that was the birth of their nation”? If King Æthelstan could be contacted for comment, he may well demur.

Tim Wicks

Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

 Catherine Pégard appears to think that the Norman conquest of 1066 was for “the English people … the birth of their nation”. This is utterly outrageous. Instead of the return of the Bayeux tapestry signalling a new era of mutual understanding between the French and the English, the old French prejudices are clearly alive and well. A little respect for our pre-1066 Anglo-Saxon culture, and the real origins of the English nation, would be welcome from our one-time invaders. Let’s hope that they learn a thing or two from the Sutton Hoo treasures.

Rev Dr John Caperon

Crowborough, East Sussex

So much for entente cordial! 

Life goes on l stay safe and well, everyone!

Early mornings. Strange not-summer weather. The mad mayhem of the modern world goes on.

It may well be officially summer but this is a very strange June weather-wise. This morning I was up extra early because Phil had to go and catch an early bus into Oldham, consequently I was out running just after eight o”clock, running in the windy sunshine. I debated putting on an insurance raincoat but decided that the sky looked clear enough to suggest that there were no showers imminent. I even stood and basked in the sunshine from the shelter of the front porch when I got back. 

Then Granddaughter Number One sent a message, in her inimitable fashion: ‘What IS this weather?” I messaged back our acceptable sunshine and wind, and she sent me a photo and  video of ‘sideways’ hailstones. 

She lives a only few miles away on the other side of the Grains Bar hill but that hill makes all the difference. Rain, hail, snow, thunder - she always experiences it before we do. And, lo and behold, a few minutes later the sun disappeared and we too had hailstones. By midday the sun was back! Odd weather!

I checked up on the Goose Family on the millpond when I was out and about. All doing well,  it seems, but I’m pretty sure there were originally more than two. Nature can be cruel!

Out in the wider world mayhem continues. I should be used to it by now but it still seems odd that people are warned in advance tonleave their homes before a bombardment takes place. I suppose it means the perpetrator can say that if someone is killed or injured it is largely their own fault; they shoule have moved away from the target zone. And it still seems odd to hear news reports about places that for so long were just names in Bible stories?

“Israel issues forced evacuation order for residents of Lebanese city of Tyre

The Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, has issued the latest forced evacuation order for residents of Tyre, Lebanon’s fifth biggest city, ahead of attacks.

“Urgent warning to the residents of the city of Tyre, including the Christian quarter, and the camps and surrounding neighbourhoods,” he wrote, urging residents in the southern Lebanese city to “evacuate immediately” and “move north beyond the Zahrani river”.

And here’s a link to an article about a Palestinian doctor, arrested almost a year and half ago, and now moved into solitary confinement. His crime? Not evacuating patients from his hospital when it was about to be attacked again - continuing to try to save lives. 

Such is the modern reality. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Monday morning moans!

 This morning I didn’t go for a run but I actually got up earlier than usual. We went out after breakfast looking for a dental technician’s place, supposedly situated on a small industrial complex round the corner from home. A noticeboard said it was in unit 13. Unit 13 did not exist. We were told it was in another section of the complex, a few hundred yards down the road. Off we went. No dental technician! Further enquiries sent us another few hundred yards down the road into yet another section. There it was. How do three apparently separate complexes all call themselves by the same name? Very confusing! 

One consequence was that I did get something of a run after all, scuttling along the road trying to keep up with Phil who was striding out at top speed! Not quite how I planned to start the week.

On more than on occasion I have moaned and groaned about security measures which come into force when I try to access messages on the NHS app on my phone. Jumping through technological hoops to read a message that, for example, the GPs’ surgery is closed on such and such a day for training is one of life’s bugbears. However, I am aware that we need security measures.

So here’s a headline from this morning’s paper:

“Starmer says government will legislate if tech companies don't stop children using phones to take naked images”

The item went on to say that Keir Starmer has announced that tech companies must stop children from sending or receiving naked images of themselves. An admirable aim! 

In his speech, he said:

“One issue is the ability for children with phones to send and receive nude images.

For too long, people have been told that is simply the price of modern tech, that nothing can be done, that government is powerless, that parents just have to accept it.

I reject that completely, because tech should adapt to the needs of society, not the other way around.

That is why today I am calling on tech companies operating in this country to introduce device controls that prevent children from sending and receiving sexually explicit images.”

Various groups, such as Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties and privacy campaign group, are expressing concern and outrage at the UK possible ending up with he ‘one of the most auhoritatian internet regimes in the world’. “Protecting children online is vital, but these are outrageous plans that will fail to address the underlying causes of online harm. This will only result in population-wide ID checks for all of us to use our phones, tablets and laptops.

Put simply, the Labour Government is threatening ID checks for the internet. No one in a democracy should need to show their passport just to get online.”

Which brings me back to my moaning and groaning. A solution to the mobile phone and children has to be found, of course, but there’s a bit of me fears that this genie can’t be put back in the bottle. Some of those whom such a measure is intended to protect are precisely the ones who know how to circumvent the security checks. It’s the likes of me, and so many of my generation who will continue to have difficulty recognising the traffic lights on the grid intended to prove I’m not a robot!

Still on technology, I read that actors have been complaining about mobile phones and other such devices in theatres. Rosamund Pike got more than a little cross with someone sending text messages during her performance. Other actors have paused performances to remonstrate with people texting, massaging, taking photos and filming. Journalists have written about visits to the cinema or theatre spoilt by others in the audience chatting and seemingly having a party in the seats behind them. It’s all part of the odd modern phenomenon that says it’s normal to eat and drink through a film. It’s rather different from the days when ice-creams were sold dung the interval by an usherette with a tray suspended from their shoulders! Even watching a film on TV at home, my grandchildren expect popcorn! 

Such is the modern world!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!