The state of the world. A bit of nostalgia. Fast cars. More nostalgia.

 Here are some odds and ends I collected from social media over the last few days. 

“My generation really believed peace was possible,” Graham Nash posted recently. “It feels silly sometimes, to hope for peace when everything feels hopeless. Still, I hope because hope is an act of resilience these days. I’m going to keep pushing back every damn day. I hope you will too. – G”

Being of the same generation as Mr Nash, I quite agree with him. As we watch the chaos and cruelty and selfishness of the modern world, we often reflect on the optimism that we felt in the 1969s and 1970s, the feeling that the world could only get more tolerant and inclusive and generally better! 

Here’s a cartoon about 35 years of the Big Issue.

There is still a regular Big Issue seller in the centre of Uppermill and very occasionally one outside the Co-op in the centre of Delph! I have a distinct memory of buying a French equivalent to the Big Issue and using it as the basis for a series of lessons with my AS and A Level French classes. Its name completely escapes me and so far Internet searches bring me no joy.

And here’s Ben Jennings cartoon on tech leaders’ outcry over the dangers of AI.

And here is a bit of Spike Milligan to make us smile wryly. 

George Monbiot, in this article about people - no, usually men - driving fast and dangerously, has given me a new bit of terminology: ‘petro-masculinity’ - a violent, misogynistic, climate-denying version of manhood, expressed through an antisocial driving culture.

As he describes cars roaring noisily through the streets of the Welsh town where once he lived, waking his baby daughter from her sleep, I think of the occasional noisy motorbike or fast car we see around here, fortunately not too often and not on a regular basis. Spotting these usually leads to one or other of us commenting, “There goes the local p****ck!”

Amongst other things he describes a different culture of antisocial driving where he now lives in Devon. Middle aged men in “lifted” pickup trucks” or SUVs modify them to be a loud and smoky as possible, to “roll coal” from twin exhaust towers mounted behind the cab, releasing a dense black cloud of soot when the driver hits the “smoke switch. Amazing! You would think that by middle age they might have grown out of it!

Maybe those men spent their youth watching coming of age films set in the USA where young men raced cars down the main street of small town America! Phil and I reflected back to our late teenage years when not enough of our peers had cars to encourage such practices, the climate didn’t encourage that kind of hanging around on the street trying to impress other teenagers, and besides our main streets were too bendy to encourage that kind of racing! 

I wonder what today’s late teens will find to reminisce about in 50 years time.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Wednesday morning. The oddness of the modern world and of the world of my youth.

 Well, I managed to get up and run at a reasonable time today, a big improvement on yesterday. However, it rained on me, not very heavily but rain nonetheless! Even though it is Wednesday I decided not to go to the market in Uppermill, my usual Wednesday morning event. I already have fish in the freezer and one of my current aims is to keep track properly of just what is in my freezer. It’s easy to forget just what is in there and end up with no more storage space. And  need the space as I have several bags of apples, collected from the wall on the lane where they are left by the anonymous ‘Appleman’. My intention is to peel and cook them and freeze the stewed apples until time comes for another apple pie. 

Now, athough I am a regular Facebook consulted (one of the older granddaughters declares that Facebook is now for older folk like me, keeping me on touch with old friends and reminding me about birthdays) I try to resist downloading extra apps and such things as Spotify and TikTok. Well, I have just come across #ShowerTok.

It seems that #ShowerTok has a number of followers devoted to a trend known as ‘double cleansing’. Apparently you need to shower twice, using a different product each time: “The first cleanser removes sweat, sunscreen, deodorant, excess oil, and odor-causing bacteria and the second provides another level of cleansing while restoring moisture, supporting the skin barrier or delivering an active ingredient,”

One advocate of this procedure assures us,  “Double cleansing will change your life. I think double cleansing is the most effective thing I have added for my shower. I just smell better, feel clean.” Oh boy! She must be quite paranoid about the possibility of smelling bad. I’ve seen advertisements for face-cleaning products, advocating a cleanser to remove your makeup and a lotion to remove all traces of the cleanser.

Maybe you need such things if you wear ‘professional’ level makeup every day but on the whole, like double cleansing in the shower, it all sounds like another excuse to take money off gullible people for lots of products they don’t really need. 

I write all this in total awareness that I have my own collection tried and tested lotions and potions which form part of my daily ablutions routine! But there are limits! 

I am reading singer/songwriter Carly Simon’s memoir, prompting me to go through our vinyl collection and replay her early albums. i have just reached the point where she marries James Taylor, whose early albums I also need to seek out and listen to again. Writing about marrying James Taylor, she says: “looking back, we must have intentionally made our decision to get married only four days before the wedding, leaving us no time to fret about the details. Twenty-four hours before the ceremony, James’s lawyer, Nat Weiss,arranged for the license, the limousine and the Wasserman test …” 

It was the last bit that puzzled me. So I looked up he Wasserman test and found that it was an antibody test for syphilis. “During the mid-20th century, in many jurisdictions, including most US states, applicants for a marriage license were required by law to undergo a Wassermann test.” 

Wow! What a way to take the romance out of running off the get married quietly!

Hey! ho! Life is full of strangeness.

Here’s a little cartoon about the possible future of the world:

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Oversleeping! And AI concerns.

 I woke to the sound of rain on the skylight windows quite early this morning. As it eventually became clear the rain was stopping, I contemplated getting up, switched my alarm off … and woke up again at 9.30!! Ridiculous! So I abandoned the idea of running round the village, got up and did some stretching exercises and got on with the rest of the day. Such is life! 

Now, robots are quite frequently in the news at the moment: humanoid robots achieving athletic feats and something I saw about ‘deliverybots’ being a hazard on pavements.

A “deliverybot’, by the way is defined as an autonomous robot that provides ‘last mile” delivery services (whatever that is). Delivery robots have been used in food delivery, package delivery, hospital delivery, and room service.

An operator may monitor and take control of the robot remotely in certain situations that the robot cannot resolve by itself, such as when it is stuck in an obstacle. 

However, some people are pointing out that on pavements they are a hazard to blind people and to disabled people.

It’s part of a wider recognition/worry that AI is developing more quickly and more dangerously than anyone thought possible. There is talk of AI eliminating humankind! Regulation is being called for!

Here is a photo of humanoid and quadruped robots at a protest calling for the regulation of AI in Warsaw last week

Has nobody read Isaac Asimov’s science fiction stories with the Laws of robotics!!??

“The Three Laws, presented to be from the fictional "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”

Maybe we need something like that.

It’s a strange fact of modern times that stuff that appeared in fiction long years ago is becoming a worrying reality! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Documenting sunflowers. Being pleasantly surprised. Remembering Emmett Till. Thoughtful eating. And tourist taxes.

 It was quite sunny and mildly warm when I ran round the village this morning. It was still sunny when I took a photo of my self-planted sunflower, which has developed quite nicely. I’ve been documenting it’s progress. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts before it starts to fade. 

By lunchtime it was raining.

I have just been surprisingly impressed by our GP practice’s online booking service. As a rule I find this service extremely frustrating but today I submitted a request for a routine appointment with a specific member of the team and received an appointment date and time within five minutes. Result!

It’s 71 years since Emmett Till was tortured and murdered by the family of a woman he whistled at. He was a 14 year old black boy who had the audacity to whistle at a white woman in Mississippi. Here’s a link to an article about an exhibition of photos in memory of that young man.

How sad that what was undoubtedly intended as an expression of admiration should lead to such an outcome. It’s a sad indictment of our society, as is the fact that we need reminding. It’s important to remember events such as the death of Emmett Till in order to fight against such things being allowed to occur again nowadays.

On a less serious note, here’s a link to an article about bananas, and how blending bananas with blueberries in a smoothie may remove the benefits the blueberries might have for our health. I like bananas. I usually have a small banana with my breakfast. Apparently they contain potassium, vitamin B6, vitamin C, manganese and magnesium, along with about 3 grams of fiber per medium fruit. But most of all, a ripe banana is very tasty. 

While we need to be aware of which foods are good for us, or otherwise, it is possible to go overnoard in analysing all the food we eat. I have already stopped eating grapefruit, which I have enjoyed eating for years and years, because they actually prevent adsorption of medication prescribed by my GP. Very annoying! 

We’ve grown used to the fact that tourist destinations abroad impose a tourist tax. Now I’m reading about a tourist tax in the UK. Here’s a bit of imp formation:

“The UK tourist tax is not a single national tax—visitor charges are set locally, with the rules varying by nation and by city. In England, there’s no nationwide tourist tax, but some cities already run voluntary accommodation schemes (like Manchester and Liverpool) and mayors are expected to get new powers to introduce an overnight visitor levy.”

Anyway, here are a couple of cartoons on that subject:

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Some weather and quite a lot of nostalgia.

 I looked out of the window first thing. It looked fine so I got organised to go for a morning run. The weather app on my phone suggested that no rain was forecast in the immediate future. I opened the door. It was raining! I went back inside for a raincoat. 

I began to think Chicken Licken was right and that the sky had indeed fallen in. 

 But there was some reassuring blue as  well.

And so the day has continued with bits of sunshine and intermittent rain showers. 

Here’s a photo of a small town square in southern France, a scene that could come from Marcel Pagnol’s ‘Jean de Florette’ or ‘Manon de Sources’’, a nostalgic view of small village life, just waiting for some older chaps to come out and play a game of ‘boules’. 

Now according to this article the bistro which should be the heart of French village life is disappearing. As small shops close in villages and small towns, in England as well as France, and as more people drive to a supermarket or even have their groceries delivered, the regular chat and exchange of gossip in the shops disappears. And if the bistro goes too, where will people meet to keep up to date with local scandal. It’s another aspect of the isolation of modern life, I suppose. But local people are organising rotas to keep places open.

Our village used to have a butcher’s shop, two greengroceries, two bakeries, a wool-shop-haberdashery a sweetshop (with a strict shopkeeper who only allowed three schoolchildren in at a time) a post office and the Co-op store. Not to mention six pubs. Now we have the post office and the Co-op and a cafe cum gift shop. Oh, and what was the sweetshop, which stood empty for a long time, a couple of years ago reinvented itself as a sort of haberdashery and clothing repair place. The former wool-shop became a wine bar briefly but is now up for sale. The other shops have turned into private houses. 

The people who live here and commute to work elsewhere probably don’t shop locally. I get certain essentials from the Co-op but also regard shopping in nearby Uppermill which still has a bakery and a greengrocery and a butcher’s shop (which I don’t frequent) as ‘shopping locally’.m

Even one of the pubs has turned into a suite of offices; the others serve food and organise tapas evenings and bingo nights to keep going. They come into their own when the Band Contest takes place on Whit Friday. But they keep going. As does the local library, run by volunteers, as is the slightly larger branch in Uppermill, both linked to the main library based in Oldham town centre.

Village life, small town life continues but I get the impression that it’s a mix of older retired folk like us and commuters. But maybe working from home helps keep village life going; there is a theatre behind the library, where a film society still keeps going and there is a ‘Wake Up Delph’ committee. We still have a local primary school but I doubt that the children attending that school will be able to afford houses here when they grow up. 

Since I seem to be on a nostalgia-fest, here’s a link to an article where several famous people reflect on going back to re-visit their childhood homes. It’s interesting that most of them did not want to go inside. One of them commented, “ I realised I did not want to go inside at all. I wanted to preserve the architecture of my memory. Every room held another version of me.” 

I can understand that. As a small child I lived in my grandparent’s house, before my parents qualified for a council house of their own. When my grandmother moved into sheltered old people’s accommodation, we made a council house swop  and moved back to what had been her house. Many years later my parents purchased that house and when my mother became too infirm to live independently she sold the house to my niece and her husband. Now, I have overlaying memories of that house: furnished in my grandmother’s style - a large round table that folded up against the wall, a piano, a heavy sideboard with the budgerigar’s cage on it - reworked by my parents into 1960s -1970s style, and changed again at the turn of the century. It’s quite disconcerting to stand in that living room! My son refuses to go in the house. He wants to remember it as his grandmother’s house. 

Here’s a bit of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy philosophy to finish off this nostalgia-driven post:

Life goes on . Stay safe and well, everyone!

Selective heat waves. Christmas is coming! Transport littering London streets and our river. RNLI. Election bribery.

 I saw a weather report headline that said warm weather was returning to the UK, with temperatures of 25°C in London. The rest of us are likely to have a high of 20°C if we’re lucky. There you go; UK means London and the South East. So it goes.

Even though the weather app on my phone says we have a temperature of 18°, it certainly doesn’t feel like it. But it is September, after all. 

Yes, it is September but not quite half way through September. Christmas is still quite a long way off. And yet our local Co-op store has mince pies on sale. 

A far too sensible friend of mine has commented that some people like to start stocking up early for Christmas! Maybe so! Can you freeze mince pies? I wonder. If not, but the time mince-pie-eating season comes around they’re going to be rather stale! I can almost, but not quite, understand starting to buy presents now and putting them away. I say not quite because I would probably put them in a safe place and forget where I had stored them. 

Here’s something about ebikes: “ London boroughs have seized at least 3,000 ebikes this year, a Guardian investigation has found, as hire companies face growing calls to stop bicycles littering streets and blocking pavements.

Local authorities across the capital have seized 3,393 hazardously parked or abandoned ebikes so far this year, 23% higher than the number seized during all of 2025.”

Our bit of Greater Manchester is too rural to have ebikes for hire. i’ve been quite impressed to see families out on proper bikes on the bridle paths, often including very small children on balance bikes.

We may not have bikes abandoned all over the place but I looked into the River Tame where it goes under the crossroads near our house and saw this:

No, it is not a real, full-size car in the river but a child’e ride-on toy. It’s been there for a few days now. Goodness knows how it got there!

Right wing groups have been accusing the RNLI of wasting resources by rescuing people crossing the channel in small boats.

In fact, only a very small percentage of the RNLI resources go to such rescues. And one of the consequences of the accusations has been an increase in donations to the lifeboat people. Sometime fairness rules. Karma!

Apparently Donald Trump has promised to pay €5000 dollars to all Americans if his party wins the midterm elections. Amazing!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!