Environmental this and that. Birds in legends. Where Thursday went.

 I wrote recently about toxic seaweed in Brittany, a problem exacerbated by our overuse of fertilisers in agriculture. Well, here’s a link to an article about the pesticides which are probably present in your average roast dinner in a pub, according to a recent report. Basically we’ve messed the world up!

On the positive side of our environmental problems there comes the news that choughs have returned to Tintagel Castle in Cornwall! No, I had no idea either what choughs were, apart from the fact that they are birds and a useful addition to a make-yourself-fall-asleep routine where you name as many birds as possible in alphabetical order, and certainly not what they look like. Or that they were legends.

It turns out  they slightly resemble a crow but with red legs and feet and beak. They’re important to Tintagel because of good old King Arthur, he of the round table. They have red extremities because they paddles in the blood of Arthur when he died in his battle against Mordred. And Tintagel is said to be his castle. And choughs have always lived there, except that for decades they have not. But now they have returned. Whoopee! Another theory about their red legs and feet and beak is that they paddled in the blood of Thomas Beckett when he was murdered in the 12th century. Altogether a rather gory sort of bird!

 

I started to write this post this morning. Then Granddaughter Number Two arrived, as she often does on a Thursday, to sit and do work for university and chat to me about anything and everything. And suddenly if was time to go and collect her small siblings from school. After Phil went to chess club, the children got involved in various craft activities. And now at 9.39pm all is quiet again. I have tidied up, whizzed the vacuum cleaner around the place, got some beer out for when Phil returns, and that’s my Thursday sorted!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Rainy weather. And some market nostalgia.

 It rained in the night. It rained cats and dogs, or more likely elephants and hippos! It was still bucketing down when I went out to catch a bus into the town centre to collect a new pair of glasses. The sun was shining when I made my homeward journey but it didn’t last long. Clearly the warm and sunny weather of a few weeks ago and the relatively dry, if gloomy weather of the last week or so were intended to lull us into a false sense of security. Winter cold and wet is back! It’s cold. I have taken to wearing layers of clothing and I’ve dug out the winter weight socks that Input away a few weeks ago. So it goes!

I took the opportunity of being in the town centre to visit the recently opened  new venue for Oldham Market at one end of the Spindles shopping centre. On the bus I heard people commenting on the new market which opened at the end of March. While people seemed generally satisfied, there was an air of nostalgia for a flourishing outdoor market now disappeared and an indoor market of character replaced by something not quite so special. But most of the stalls seem to have moved successfully. There’s a good fresh fish stall. Looking at a map of the market, however, it looks as though the shoe repair stall has gone, as has the stall selling knitting patterns and yarn. Maybe people don’t have shoes re-soled any more but I was given to to understand that knitting had made a comeback. 

Anyway, here’s some information from the internet!

“Oldham has had a market since 1788. The original market was held on land owned by Thomas Whittaker, near Albion Street — and over time that land became known simply as Tommyfield. A name that became synonymous with community, commerce, and a good Saturday morning out.

In 1860, Tommyfield gained national fame as the first place in Britain to sell fried chips and there's a blue plaque to prove it.”

(One soirce said Thomas Whittaker was a pig farmer, known kocally as “Owd Tommy”, hence the name Tommyfield.)

“At its height, the indoor Victoria Market was among the largest of its kind in the country, home to around 500 stalls. When fire destroyed it in 1974, the council had traders back in a temporary building within four months. That's how much this market meant to Oldham.

The Tommyfield site served the town for over two centuries. But as part of Oldham's £450m town centre regeneration, the market has moved — around 200 metres down the road — into a purpose-built home inside The Spindles. The traders who made Tommyfield special are still here. They've just got a space that does them justice.

And the Tommyfield name lives on — in the new five-acre Tommyfield Park taking shape nearby, a green space for the next generation of Oldham people to call their own.”

The old Tommyfield Market, or maybe the indoor market hall, was reputed to be the home of the first fish and chip shop in England. How true that is has been questioned but there was once a blue plaque to that effect. I wonder what has become of the plaque.

Once the old indoor market has been demolished I hear that it is to become a town centre car park. Is this progress? We shall see.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Toxic seaweed. Obesity. And a bit of nostalgia.

 When I passed my driving test in the ear.y 1970s it took some time before I plucked up courage to drive on the motorway.  And the motorways were not as crowded then as they are now so goodness knows how I would cope if I were a newly qualified driver nowadays. Of course I grew accustomed to it and throughout the latter part of my working life I would happily trundle back and forth on the motorway system around greater Manchester.

However it was my reluctance to face driving through London - before the ring-road existed - that led to our discovering Brittany. Rather than do the Dover - Calais crossing we opted for Southampton - Cherbourg. Well, as the driver I chose our route: a long drive down to Southampton and then a longish drive up the Cherbourg peninsula. And Brittany is a nice place to visit. We ate seafood and we tried savoury buckwheat pancakes. We used one visit to check out the campsite we planned to go to with a bunch of school pupils later in the year. 

 Driving along Breton roads on our bright red 2CV with the roof rolled back, waving to other 2CV drivers, getting a suntan on my forearms, we had a great time. Our son had his first birthday on the beach at Saint Pabu. We continued to go to campsites in Brittany with our son and his younger sister, who may well have been conceived in Saint Pabu, for years and years.

Today I read this long article about killer seaweed on Brittany’s beaches. Ulva armoricana piles up on beaches, rots and releases dangerous hydrogen sulphide. There seems to have been reluctance to recognise the problem but people have died, one man’s horse died, wild boar have died - what would Astérix and Obélix have to say about that? Now they try to clear beaches, taking the seaweed away before it rots but there is the inevitable dilemma: when to close beaches and still keep the tourist industry flourishing? 

Even back in the 1980s we would see, and sometimes smell, large amounts of seaweed but nothing like the current problem. Ironically enough this is a problem of our own making - well not mine personally but humankind: 

“What lies behind this explosion of seaweed are the high levels of nitrates in the water, which come from industrial farming’s intensive use of synthetic fertilisers and nitrogen-rich animal feed. Brittany is the agricultural heartland of France. On just 5% of the country’s surface, it crowds more than half of its pig population.”

And that’s the result of postwar “modernisation”, small farms giving way to big industrial farming, hedgerows disappearing - the usual story. 

We are struggling to feed the world and in the process of finding ways to feed the increasing world population we are destroying the world. It’s rather like a science fiction story. We”re living longer (well, some of us are living longer but not everyone! ) and it seems to me we’re eating more. Which brings us on to the problem of obesity. It’s not just the adult population either.mHere’s a link to an article about childhood obesity. 

It used to be that a chubby baby was considered to be a “bonny baby” but now overweight toddlers and small children are a problem. There have always been “fat kids” but when I look back at old class photos from the 1950s it seems to me that most of us were pretty skinny. 

Of course, we didn’t have fast food. Most of us had limited access to sweets and snacks. People in general didn’t walk along the street drinking take-away coffee and eating do-nuts or other snacks. 

Somewhere along the way we have taken some wrong turnings.

I’m beginning to sound like a grumpy old nostalgia freak. I’d better stop.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

On banning advertising, travel restrictions, prepping and looking for bits of beauty.

Because we have been resisting paying a fee to watch television series without advertisements we find ourselves subjected to incomprehensibly strange adverts for Domino pizza, Tui holidays, various makes of car and so on. Guardian columnist Emma Beddington has had a bit of a rant, link here, calling for adverts for gambling to be banned, as adverts for tobacco products were banned back in 2002, as Amsterdam has apparently banned adverts for meat and fossil fuel products. I am in total agreement with her. Are people really taken in by the glamourous world portrayed in adverts for gambling? I suppose people are still seduced by the chance of winning “the big one”. 

If anything I am even more mystified by the adverts for bingo. I am aware that bingo seems to have become an exciting leisure activity but for me it remains the domain of elderly ladies in headscarves, not young women dolled up to the nines. And then, for me as a former modern foreign languages teacher it remains a game to be used with younger pupils to help them practise numbers in whichever language they have been studying.

On the subject of bans, here is a link to an article about the RyanAir boss calling for airports to stop selling alcohol outside of normal licensing hours. Some people, a disturbing large number of people, still believe that holiday binge drinking begins in the airport departure lounge, even if your flight is leaving at 8.00 in the morning or earlier. Consequently they are more than a little merry when they board the plane. Mr O’Leary reckons that his airline is having to divert an average of nearly one flight a day because of bad behaviour onboard, up from one a week 10 years ago. Oh dear!

Mind you, if the Iran-Israel/US conflict continues, the whole international travel business could well be disrupted. I read that Heathrow has already seen a drop in passenger numbers.

Will we find ourselves restricted to holidays in the UK, a prospect which seemed less inviting this morning when I went out running in a temperature os 5°! Decidedly “nippy”, as one of my nodding acquaintances commented.

Another problem on the horizon is the supply of foods from around the world, and the supply of the fertiliser needed to grow food in this country. Here’s a link to an article first published a couple of year ago about people needing to stockpile food and equipment in preparation for shortages. 

And here’s a link to a more recent article on the same topic. Faced with climate change, war, social unrest, maybe we should all become “preppers”. Already Phil keeps suggesting items we should be buying in bulk when I do a supermarket shop. Maybe I should clear out cupboard space to store canned good and dried food. Maybe I should hunt out our old camping gas stove - stored in the shed since the last time we went camping when our offspring, now in their 40s, were teenagers! 

In the meantime we continue with our daily routines, seeking out bits of beauty to distract us from the current chaotic state of the world. To that end, we made another expedition to the bluebell woods yesterday - in the rather warmer sunshine than we have today! We were rewarded with some rather fine displays.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Weather. Flowers. The price of power jackets. AI. The importance of learning the langauge and culture of others.

It was a fine sunny morning for a run today, quite a contrast to yesterday’s damp gloom. It’s still not warm though.

Time was I counted on going barefoot-and-sandals from May to September but this year I am still reaching for warm socks. Mind you I have been misled before. I still remember setting out one May morning wearing sandals and a very light jacket only to find that by mid-afternoon it was snowing! Mind you, that was Leeds, which possible has a special Yorkshire climate! 

On the subject of jackets, a fashion item in yesterday’s Guardian commented on the fact that Victoria Starmer chose to wear a cream blazer when she accompanied her husband to the polling station on Thursday. “She follows in a long line of women who have mobilised the power blazer at high-stakes moments.” The jacket was described as looking like a £1,690 ivory Alexander McQueen crepe design. Wow! Do people really pay that sort of money for a jacket? More to the point, does the wife of a Labour prime minister look as though she has any link to the working people of the country if she pays prices like that for her clothes? 

Getting back to the weather and the fact that this is supposed to be spring, my garden has been invaded by poppies, looking rather fine among the bluebells and forget-me-nots. I expect buttercups will be next.

Our ubiquitous poppies are all yellow or orange.

My Spanish sister has protested in the past that poppies are supposed to be red. This is because the poppies that grew in the garden of our childhood - wild poppies like my yellow and orange ones - were always red. There is a house further up the road here that will soon have a fine display of cultivated poppies, deep red and looking as though they should produce opium. 

I’ve been seeing articles about language - language learning, AI, and minority languages disappearing. Here’s a link to an article about AI and language provision by Diego Marani, Italian novelist and former interpreter at the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. While AI programmes that translate and interpret have improved by leaps and bounds, they may cause us to lose contact with the culture of other countries that we need to trade with or have diplomatic relations with. Understanding other cultures is big part of diplomacy and helps in the peace-making process. We still need the human touch. Indeed, we still need to learn other nations’ languages. 

And here’s a link to an article about disappearing languages. It seems that at least 244 languages have disappeared since 1950. Once again it’s a cultural thing. When the last speaker of a minority language dies, a lot of racial memories and culture also die. Understanding how certain customs developed helps us make the world a better place. Now, I have been known to scoff at those who insist on schools in Galicia or Catalonia delivering at least some of their lessons in Gallego or Catalán but in fact they are perhaps on the right track. We need to keep all those influences from other or former cultures available to future generations. They are likely to be the ones who have to sort out the mess we’ve been making of the world.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Out and about in the rain. The cleverness of foxes. The boldness of birds. What’s in a name?

This morning I went running in the rain. This was not intentional. It wasn’t raining when I set out. My weather app suggested there would be drizzle in the next hour. Drizzle! I reckoned I could cope with that and left my raincoat at home. About half way round my route it started. Drizzle? No, proper rain! It could have been harder but it was rain nonetheless. I met a couple of indignant dog-walkers who had obviously also taken the promise of drizzle at its word and had neglected to prepare for actual rain. The sensible dog-walkers had stayed at home. There was just me, the foolish dog-walkers and the sheep out in the rain. 

Tim Dowling writes about urban foxes in his column today.l

“A fox eating from a bin. I watched him tip it gently on its side. Then he undid the latch with one paw and pulled the bag out with his teeth. Then he spread the contents out across the road, and now he’s helping himself.”

Urban foxes learn quickly how to adapt to “our” world. They also become bolder and less shy. Tim Dowling goes on:

“That evening, armed with a list with beer at the top, I put on a jacket and head to the shops. Halfway down the road I see the fox at a distance coming up the pavement toward me. I don’t deviate from my path; neither does he. I pull out my phone and look at it casually, glancing up only as the fox draws near.

“All right?” I say as we pass one another.

The fox gives me a look that says: can’t complain.”

Granddaughter Number One thinks she has had a fox in her garden, possible hoping to help himself to quail for supper from the enclosure in her garden. 

I’ve not seen foxes - I’m not out and about at the right time these days - but this morning I passed within feet of a bird, possibly a young rook or jay or even jackdaw, admiring his reflection in a puddle and occasionally drinking the contents of the puddle. He didn’t flinch as I walked within a few feet of him.

The Guardian “Life and Style” does a regular weekend mini interview with a famous person, asking what is their greatest fear, what they are most proud of, who they most admire and such like. Today the famous person was an actress called Tuppence Middleton. I don’t seem to have seen her in any film or TV series but maybe I just watch the wrong things. However I wondered about her name. Surely this is a stage name. Surely nobody really calls their offspring Tuppence. So I googled her and discovered that she was named Tuppence in honour of her grandmother who gave her mother the name as a nickname, rather like Harry and Meghan calling their child Lilibet, which was what Harry’s grandmother Elizabeth was supposedly called by her immediate family. 

But really? Tuppence? I have heard people address children as “Tuppence”, a term of endearment, but never as an actual name? I suppose it’s the same kind of thing as naming a child after the place where they were conceived. 

Incidentally, asked who she most admired, Tuppence replied, “Anyone who can pick up a house spider with their bare hands.” I have granddaughters who would echo that sentiment. The fuss that ensues when a spider is spotted indoors is quite amazing! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Now the voting is done - for the time being. Superheroes. Art work. Blossom related lore.

Well, Reform UK did disappointingly better than some of us us - many of us - hoped in the local elections. The Greens are suffering from the various media attacks on Zack Polanski. Here’s a link to an article about him. The Labour Party continues to suffer. All that remains is to mop up the tears and do some planning!

Last night, over the tea table three of the grandchildren had a discussion about superheroes, antiheroes, villains, Marvel characters and all sorts of stuff that left us, their grandparents, quite mystified. It’s all come a long way since Clark Kent was Superman! We were all rather amazed at how knowledgeable six year old Grandson Number Two was on this topic. He revealed that before a YouTube ban was instituted for the small people in the family he used to watch all sorts of stuff which was really not intended for such a young age. 

After tea he produced this work of art, which is apparently a character who goes by the name of Venom!

His nine year old sister produced a much more abstract piece of art work.

Out and about the cherry blossom has been blown away but it has been replaced by horse chestnut ‘candles’ 

and hawthorn blossom. A week ago the hawthorn here barely had leaves and now blossom is everywhere.

I came across a bit of hawthorn folklore. 

“Tree of Boundaries and Beings. The Tree You Do Not Cut.

The hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) is not just a tree, it is a guardian. Growing at the edges of fields, near wells, or alone on ancient tracks, it marks thresholds between this world and the next. It is said that to cut a lone hawthorn is to offend the ælfar, the fae, the hidden ones, who dwell in its boughs or beneath its roots.

"Cut a hawthorn, and you'll cut your luck."

Many rural people believed that to fell or even prune a hawthorn could bring sickness, sudden death, or misfortune upon a household. This taboo is strongest around lone hawthorns, especially those on old sites like barrows, crossroads, or ringforts, places where the veil is thought to be thin.

Fairy Trees: In Irish and British folklore, hawthorns are frequently seen as "fairy trees." In Ireland, roads have famously been rerouted to avoid damaging a lone hawthorn believed to be protected by the Aos Sí (fairy folk). The same idea exists in parts of Britain, especially in the West Country, the Borders, and the Downs.

"The tree chooses its place, not you."

It was believed hawthorns grew where the land needed guarding, at thresholds, leys, or where spirits moved. To interfere was to break an old pact.”

Apparently you should never bring hawthorn blossom indoors, because it is said to ‘bring the dead’. “Bringing hawthorn bloom into the home was said to invite the fae indoors, unbidden. Once inside, they could cause illness, madness, or mischief, steal children, tangle dreams, or sour milk.”

I must confess to having tempted fate on more than one occasion by bringing the blossom indoors, especially when I come across pink hawthorn blossom. So far nothing untoward has resulted from it - crossing fingers and touching wood! 

Oddly enough, it was lilac that my mother would never allow in her house - another highly scented blossom with possible graveyard connotations. 

Be careful with those flowers! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!