Bus travel. Assemblies and awards. High Nhs thatvpeople are remembered for. Maxxing.

 This morning I was out and about in the relative cool, heading for a bus that was supposed to be at 8.27. The bus arrived only a few minutes late which was good. The Bee App (the Bee network link that keeps me up to date with where my bus is and when to expect it) started working again this week, after several weeks of cancelling itself because my phone is not modern enough. Transport for Greater Manchester has finally sorted it out. I am amazed at how quickly I came to rely on being able to check whether my bus was delayed and so on. I felt quite deprived while it did not work. Thus I was able to reassure myself that here was a bus eb route. 

I was heading for the smallest grandchildren’s school in time for a 9.00 assembly at which the little chap was getting a class teacher’s award for working hard at his writing skills. At 6 years old he is what my daughter calls a ‘reluctant writer’ and she should know as she is a primary school teacher and has all the jargon. The little chap just doesn’t see the point of writing to order. In fact he sees little point in doing to order anything he hasn’t chosen to do. The writing he worked hard at was about hopes for next year when they all move up a class. His hope, ironically, is for “craft work all the time”. That figures; he likes nothing better than cutting paper shapes and sticking them together to make a creature of one kind or another. 

I was the family representative at the assembly. My daughter was busybrunning her father to an appointment and was quite miffed, when she received notice that he was due for an award, not to able to attend the assembly. So. In the interests of giving the little chap some moral support I went and sat in a hot school hall while myriad certificates were presented, 

Out in the wider world the heatwave we seem to going through - 29° at midday today and forecast to get hotter - has been causing massive fires in Spain. People are dying. The heat has arrived earlier than expected!

Singer Bonnie Tyler has died, aged 78, remembered for her powerful voice and her songs. Anne Widdecombe has also died, aged 78, a woman with a different kind of powerful voice. The first notice I saw of her death described her a ‘Strictly Star”. Considering that she also had a career in politics and was once a government minister it must be sad to be largely remembered for a reality TV show.

i suppose it’s rather like Alec Guinness being remembered as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, ignoring all his other roles. Or Ian :McKellen only being remembered as Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings. Fame is Fickle!

On the subject of hobbits, I have read about something called hobbitmaxxing:

Hobbitmaxxing. The seven habits of highly effective hobbits include going barefoot, keeping warm, prioritising meals and generally tending to the small things in and around your hobbit hole. To be honest, it’s not that different from being a badger.

According to this article, it is possible to do all sorts of “maxxing” - going all in on a particular trait, habit, quality or pastime. The most dangerous perhaps is this one :

 

Tanmaxxing. Tanning your skin to its maximal darkness by spending longer in the sun and ignoring warnings about what an obviously terrible idea this is.

Which beings us back to the high temperatures. In typical British fashion, people are complaining about it being too hot. I heard it as I queued to get into the school assembly; I heard it in Tesco; I heard it on the bus!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Cutting down trees. Various sporting events. Embroidery versus tapestry - Bayeux? And a bit of feminism.

 I returned from my run around the village this morning to find tree surgeons at the bottom of the garden. Well, not really our bit of the shared garden but the part that belongs to the house next door. I had been reflecting just the other day how nice it was to have the tree hiding the industrial estate behind our houses. And we have all appreciated the shade offered by the tree. And now someone had decided it needed to come down. 

On investigation, I discovered that a wall separating our garden area from the industrial estate had collapsed. There was a council order that the tree had to be removed, roots and all, so that the wall could be rebuilt. Apparently the next door neighbours had been shown all the paperwork. Talking to one of the neighbours later in the morning, I was told that they had been informed about 6 weeks ago that the tree had to come down but she had no recollection of seeing any paperwork. Maybe her husband had seen it, she reflected. They’ve been a bit busy with her having been very ill so maybe things have slipped through the net. However, she would have liked to have been informed that today was the day.

Some years ago trees at the bottom of the garden area were cut down because the industrial estate people said the trees were undermining the wall - that very same wall. Whoever did the job was not very efficient because over the years those tree stumps produced new growth, leading to the current situation. It’s not going to regrow this time. The roots have been excavated! So it goes!

World Cup fever continues apace. I saw this headline this morning:

“England to get bank holiday if team win World Cup, Starmer expected to announce.

Prime minister understood to be poised to give England a day off should the nation’s team bring home the trophy for first time since 1966.”

I wait with bated breath! (Not really!)

The cyclists in the Tour de France continue to cycle in the heat. I’ll catch up withbtem later tonight. Q

I have no idea what’s going on at Wimbledon.

Granddaughter Number Two and I have spent the afternoon at the sports day at the primary school Granddaughter Number Four and Grandson Number Two attend. We moved around watching the two small people’s classes in turn participate in the sprint, the egg (tennis ball) and spoon race, the hurdles, the obstacle race and the javelin (if you can call spears made of foam javelins). It was quite a masterpiece of organisation on the school’s part. All children had to wear sun-hats and carry a bottle of water. Granddaughter Number Two and I had to be very organised also so that one of us was watching one of the children at all times. 

It was very hot. Granddaughter Number Two does not cope well with the heat and complained all afternoon, protesting that it should have been cancelled or at least postponed. When they called for volunteers for a parent’ race while they totted up the scores, I thought she was going to have an apoplectic fit! She just wanted to go home. But eventually we collected the small athletes and headed for home.

To add to her misery there were roadworks outside the primary school and our bus stop was closed. We had to walk some distance to the net stop! Such is life!

Granddaughter Number Two has taken up embroidery, or cross stitch, as a hobby. I am considering buying her a kit to embroider a replica section of the Bayeux Tapestry. This would cover her interest in history as well.

Here is something I found online about the Bayeux Tapestry:

“Picture a woman in Canterbury, sometime in the 1070s, bent over a strip of linen with a needle in her hand.

Her country has just been conquered. The men who did the conquering are the heroes of the scene she's stitching. And she is going to work anyway, because the bishop who commissioned this thing, Odo of Bayeux, is William the Conqueror's half brother, and you don't say no to him.

The Bayeux Tapestry isn't actually a tapestry. A tapestry is woven. This is embroidery, wool thread pulled through linen, about 230 feet of it, telling the story of how the Normans took England in 1066.

Most scholars now agree it was made in England, probably in Kent, by English women. The needlework style matches what Anglo-Saxon embroiderers were famous for across Europe. So the conquered were stitching the story of their own conquest, panel by panel, for the man who helped lead the invasion.

And then there are the borders.

Above and below the main narrative runs a strip of smaller figures. Lions, griffins, farmers plowing, a fox and a crow acting out one of Aesop's fables. In places, naked men and women. A cleric reaching out to touch a woman's face in a scene that has puzzled historians for centuries. Bodies stripped of armor and dignity after battle.

Some of it is decoration. Some of it isn't.

The fables in the margins tend to be stories about trickery, about the strong being fooled by the clever, about promises broken. They sit directly beneath scenes of Norman triumph. Whether the embroiderers chose them or were told to include them, the effect is the same. The official story runs down the middle. Something quieter runs along the edges.

We don't know their names. We don't have a single signature, a single record of who held the needles. The tapestry survived the Reformation, the French Revolution, and Nazi interest during World War II, and it still hangs in Bayeux today.

The men on horseback got the glory.

The women in the margins got the last word.”

A little tribute to the women who stitched the tapestry.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Hot weather. Going shirtless! Gaza. And the wonderful Lemm Sissay.

It was pleasantly warm when I went out at about 8.30 this morning, already feeling as though today was going to be hot. I went out again later in the morning by which time the temperature was up to 27°, which is quite hot enough for me, thank you. It was still nice to be out and about at that point. It may be altogether too hot later.

The cyclists in the Tour de France cycled in 40° heat yesterday. They were all using icepacks stuffed down their cycling tops and drinking lots of water. I wonder how spectators cope with that kind of heat.

Here’s a photo of two shirtless tourists walking past souvenir shops in the old town in Sorrento. Shocking to some local residents. And to me as well actually.

The town now imposes hefty fines for what it describes as ‘widespread indecorous behaviour’. According to this article other places in Italy are also imposing fines. It’s happening in other parts of southern Europe too. There seems to be strange effect of being on holiday which makes (some) people lose all empathy and not consider how the local people might feel about half naked people walking round their usually quiet town. Mind you, judging by the men I occasionally see travelling bare-chested on the bus, some people just don’t have any sense of what others might think!

While World Cup fever rages on all over the place and Cristiano Ronaldo gets emotional about this being the last World  Cup he’ll play in, this popped up on my social media: 

“Today, Egypt played one of the biggest matches in its football history.

In Gaza, Mohammed Al-Waheidi had worked to bring a rare ninety minutes of distraction to displaced families by setting up large screens for people to gather and watch the match together.

He never got to see it. Before the match could even begin, an Israeli strike targeted his car, killing him.

Think about the sheer cruelty of that. While families gathered to share a rare moment of normal life with their children, the reality of the ongoing genocide violently cut it short.

In most of the world, sports are an escape. In Gaza, even trying to watch a match cannot escape the reach of Israeli targeted killings.

The people of Gaza deserve more than fleeting moments of hope. They deserve the right to live, to celebrate, and to dream without the constant threat of being assassinated in their ordinary moments.”

Here’s something to cheers us all up, or at least those of us who live in the North of England. It’s YouTube link to the poet Lemm Sissay reading his poem “The Anthem of theNorth” to graduates when he was presented with an honorary degree at the University of Lancashire in Preston. Worth listening to.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Processions. Tradition. Politicians and sport. Wildfires. Music in Gaza.

 It’s amazing what you can find out about a place where you have lived for 50 odd years.

Either yesterday or Sunday - I’m not sure which but most probably Sunday - there was a religious procession through the centre of Manchester. It was an Italian event: la Festa della Madonna del Rosario.and it is apparently one of the oldest surviving processions in the UK. Who knew? 

The Madonna Del Rosario procession, which was started by the city’s Italian community in 1888, began on George Leigh Street, once known as little Italy after the Italian immigrant community who settled there. I understand it finished in St Ann’e Square.

Although originally started as a celebration of Italian identity, the procession was joined by people from across Manchester’s Catholic churches, reflecting the city’s Irish, Polish, Indian, Philippines and African communities.

It ."celebrates the culture and traditions of families who migrated from Italy, and their contributions to the city. 

This year’s event is supposed to be especially significant with the return of the historic St Michael’s banner, a treasured piece of Manchester’s Italian heritage that has undergone a remarkable restoration by the BBC’s The Repair Shop.

More than 100 years old, the banner has been part of the community’s story for generations, carrying the traditions of Ancoats’ Little Italy through the decades. 

After months of expert conservation work, it was revealed for the first time during the weekend’s procession.

The procession brings together churches, families and communities from across Manchester, reflecting the city’s rich cultural diversity while honouring the Italian community that helped shape Ancoats. 

Participants from Irish, Polish, Indian, Filipino and African Catholic communities will join civic leaders, pipe bands and association members as they make their way through the city centre.)

And adding to the occasion, the BBC’s The Repair Shop team was supposed to be filming throughout the day as part of the banner’s restoration.

And the is has been going on for all those years and I knew nothing about it. 

World Cup fever seems to have been taking hold of our leaders. There’s Mr Trump protesting about a red card … and having it cancelled. This has provoked a number of cartoons.

And our PM did his bit of interfering:

“Keir Starmer intervened to oppose Fifa’s plan to move England kick-off time 

PM stepped in over proposal to shift World Cup match to an earlier time, amid concerns it would benefit Mexico.”

Oh dear! Someone needs to remind them that it’s just football, just sport!

The Tour de France has gone home to fierce wildfires in the South East of the country. Parts of Spain, Italy and Greece have also been also burning. Yesterday’s stage of the Tour went ahead despite the fires but spectators were not allowed at the finish. Tadej Pogacar took the yellow jersey from Jonas Vingegaard. I’ve not yet found out what has gone on today. I’ll watch the summary this evening.  

Meanwhile, here’s a little joy in a troubled world:

Gaza’s musicians reopen bomb-shattered conservatory – in tents

Even though most of their instruments have been destroyed, teachers are restarting classes, using music to give relief to traumatised people

Here’s a link to an article about it.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Birthdays. Socialising. Cycling. Yachts? Football.

 Today is a day of multiple birthdays: our son (48), Granddaughter Number One (29), my Italian friend Guido (age not revealed), and the daughter of a friend of our daughter (23 or 24 I think).  Tomorrow is Granddaughter Number One’s best friend’s birthday (28). Consequently yesterday we did a big family dinner with presents for the two of them and a shared cake. Fun and games all round! Grandson Number Two (6) got very excited and decided he had to show off, the way small boys do when they realise they are not the centre of attention.

For the first time in weeks we had a visit from Grandson Number One (21), in honour presumably of his older sister’s birthday meal. From being a very quiet person who never seemed to go anywhere apart from to the office when he was obliged to do so, suddenly he has developed a lively social life, out drinking with friends and even staying overnight at his girlfriend’s place! So much for all the theories about the younger generation being sad and lonely! 

In the middle of all the fun and games I remembered to set the TV to record the highlights of the Tour de France on Channel 5. There have been some interesting views of Barcelona, some of them repeated as yesterday’s stage finished with the riders doing a number of circuits around Montjuïc. The commentators kept going on about the competition between Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard but in the end it was Pogacar’s teammate, the young Mexican isaac del Toro, who won the stage. Pretty good for his first Tour. Did Pogacar let him win the stage as part of team morale-boosting? There”s so much plotting and scheming behind the cycling!   

I’m reserving judgement on the commentators involved in this year’s coverage of the Tour. We had grown used to hearing Phil Liggett and Gary Imlach discussing the riders that it seems strange to hear different voices. So far there has been no after-stage discussion between the present commentators. Maybe that will come when they move into France. There have been occasional contributions from the Irish former cyclist Sean Kelly. It took us a while to put a name to the Irish accent. 

In the background to some of the views of Barcelona were several cruise ships. These huge floating hotels continue to go around. Not my cup of tea! Here’s a link to something about a protest in Venice against  a visit by the billionaire US ambassador to Italy in his 117-metre superyacht, which they fear he plans to dock in the lagoon city. I’m not sure such a boat can really be called a yacht but there it is.

And England’s football team defeated Mexico’s team in the early hours of this morning. i wonder how many people were late for work or school as a result. Now they face Norway in the next stage. That will be interesting: Harry Kane against Erling Haaland.

So much sport this summer!

Life hoes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!