Electric scooters. Bicycles - rented, electric, ordinary. Relics of World War II emerging from mud and ashes.

Travelling home from Rochdale the other day with our daughter in her car we stopped at traffic lights, as you do. A young man on an electric scooter wove his way through the waiting vehicles, ignored the red light, moved forward into the junction and waited for an opportunity to take his life into his hands by making a right turn. Madness! But it happens quite often. 

He wasn’t wearing a helmet - another bit of madness - but according to our daughter this is often a deliberate move to prevent the police from pursuing them. Apparently the police are told not to pursue scooterists without helmets in case of accidents which could leave the police open to accusations of malpractice. They can’t win; they’re supposed to stop dangerous scooter-riders but they’re not allowed to pursue them.

Electric scooters are a hazard in modern society, ridden at top speed on pavements and on bridle paths, used as get-aways from robberies and other crimes, as well as weaving through traffic on busy roads and causing accidents. 

Cyclists by the way are also guilty of ignoring the highway code and of riding at speed on pavements and bridle paths. Well, some cyclists are and they give a bad name to more sensible, law-abiding two-wheel travellers. 

Here’s a link to an article about Lime bikes in London. It seems that rental bikes are often used by young people to commute to work in the city. Personally owned bikes are vulnerable to being stolen apparently and rental bikes offer a solution. With the sunny and dry weather we have been having, the writer tells us, “many pubs are enjoying a bike-driven boom on summer nights, with the bright green bikes glowing outside like lurid cocktails before their riders wobble home”. But these cyclists on rented bikes are responsible one third of accidents with pedestrians requiring police intervention, probably as I said before, for riding at speed on pavement.

We don’t see rented bikes around here but we do see far too many cyclists on pavements. I have ranted on more than one occasion about the fact that in my youth “pavement bikes” were for small children and at a certain stage in your cycling life you progressed to a “road bike”. Yes, I know there is more traffic around than in my youth but that’s a different problem. 

Oh, and there is also the question of bells. Cyclists should be aware that creeping up behind you on a pathway and saying quietly “Excuse me” or “I’m behind you” is no substitute for a good loud bell!

The article finishes like this:

“Unless divided, expensive cities such as London build more affordable homes, provide more widely available public transport, and make bicycle ownership less vulnerable to criminals – in other words, make mobility and housing less competitive and hierarchical – the sometimes petty, sometimes dangerous rental bike wars are likely to carry on. But at least we won’t all be stuck in cars.”

Quite so!

Now for something else. 

i’ve mentioned the extremely low water levels in the Danube. It seems that this has led to material from World War II emerging from the depths, including an ancient motorbike. Here are photos of the bike before and after cleaning.

And it seems that wildfires in the UK have led to similar consequences. Dunwich Heath in Suffolk has suffered badly.

Locals and visitors have been kept away from an area of Dunwich Heath because the fire exposed unexploded ordnance from the second world war.

The past is coming back to haunt us.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Sunshine. Net Zero. Ceuta repercussions. Pubs. Vertical drinking. The importance of community.

Another fine day and it’s forecast to remain fine and sunny for a few days ahead. 

Here’s a link to  Sadiq Khan warning about the dangers of ignoring the climate crisis and urging our new prime minister not to abandon Net Zero.

But there are reports that the government might go ahead with approving plans for the jackdaw gasfield and the Rosebank oilfield in the North sea, two projects  granted permission by the Tories and then suspended after a court challenge by environmental groups. Time to move away from fossil fuels!

The Ceuta ‘invasion’ continues to have repercussions. Italy wants Spain removed from Schengen and in retaliation Spain now wants border checks for Italians entering Spain. A cat has definitely been dropped among the pigeons.

Last night we could hear people in the garden of the pub next door chatting and laughing. (It’s not really a garden but a section of the carpark which was converted into an outdoor seating area in the latter days of Covid.) They weren’t especially loud: you could really only hear them if you went outside or if you stood in the bathroom with window open. I suppose some if the drinkers were not seated but were engaged in what I hear is now called “vertical drinking”. 

And apparently the government is trying to stop “vertical drinking” because it leads to rowdiness, brawling and other such antisocial behaviour. Or maybe it’s not the governement as such but Westminster Council. This is from the Guardian:

“No 10 has vowed to confiscate powers from local councils which try to restrict customers from standing up while drinking in pubs or ordering at the bar.

It comes after the Guardian revealed on Thursday that Westminster council in central London recommended not allowing “vertical drinking” or ordering at the bar in its new draft licensing policy.

The draft document, now out for consultation, recommends that pubs applying for new licences allow only table service rather than bar ordering. It also suggests new pubs in popular nightlife areas including Soho call last orders at 10pm, to reduce noise and disturbance.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “Busy pubs full of people talking to each other is not a public nuisance, it is British life, and it is thousands of jobs.”

I found myself wondering what the average Italian would think if a law was introduced that you had to sit a table to drink your coffee - the coffee, the espresso, that so many Italians order and consume quickly, standing at the bar, on their way to or from somewhere. And now I wonder if standing at the bar ordering and drinking a pint or even just a half pint of beer comes from a tradition of working men (and it would be men in the first instance) stopping at the pub to slake their thirst on their way home from work. 

Here’s a link to an article by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian, where he argues that the pub is an important social hub in most communities. It’s a place where people,of all ages and backgrounds can meet and can talk to each other or not bother to do so, as the mood takes them. 

This brings me on to the fuss that is being made in some articles about how Andy Burnham’s Catholic upbringing must have influenced his attitude to community. Here’s a link to some letters to the Guardian about that. I suspect  that it’s not so much the specifically Catholic aspect of his upbringing but a reflection on the times he grew up in. He’s considerably younger than I am but still grew up in a time when their were community activities connected to the church or to other local organisations, when it was likely that most people in a neighbourhood knew the children who were playing in their street and kept an eye on them. We’ve perhaps become more self-centred, more individualistic as a society and have lost some of that sense of community. Yes, I know there are places where “community” still works but we need more of it. The governments of the world need to concentrate on that and not on buying and selling and providing weapons of war!

That’s all.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Reactions to the weather. Some environmental stuff. A bit of linguistic nostalgia.

Out and about this morning, I stopped twice within a short distance on the path through the woods to talk to dog-walking acquaintances. One of them told me that she felt she was overdressed for the weather. She wore a long sleeved top and a light raincoat (because we’re back to you-never-know-if-it-might-rain weather) and was feeling too warm. The second told me she was feeling quite chilly and thought that autumn was already on its way …  much too early! Curious! 

As regards autumn coming too early, well, she may be right. I’ve heard reports of farmers completing harvest ahead of time because of the hot weather we have experienced. Blackberries and rowans are ripening ahead of time, as I have already mentioned before. Here is a link to an article about extreme heat in central and easter Europe. Slovakia has had a record 42° and in Poland they have had to temporarily close down power plants, fossil-fuelled this time, not nuclear, because the rivers are too low to provide sufficient water for cooling the plants. At the same time on Wednesday, the Polish prime minister had urged employers to look after their staff and provide air conditioning and cold water. We need to find another solution to the overheating problem, something other than air conditioning, which uses power and contributes to the global warming crisis! It’s a vicious circle! As a spokesperson for a Polish environmental organisation says in the article “the faster we develop wind and solar power – technologies that require the least water to generate electricity – the better we can protect both energy security and our rivers”.

 

Here’s an interesting linguistic point: we now have a condition known as fire weather – the hot, dry and windy conditions that make it harder to battle blazes when they break out.

Compared with France and Spain it seems that we have come off relatively lightly as regards wildfires. I don’t suppose the firemen who have spent weeks getting local fires under control would agree with me though. However, it can’t be denied that France and Spain have suffered particularly badly. My weather app tells me that air pollution today is low where we live. Certainly because of wind direction we didn’t have the smoke from the wildfires coming our way. But according to this article the quality of air in Britain is going to beaffected by the pollution from those fires in France and Spain. They may seem a long way away but the pollution travels. It’s part of the interconnectedness of everything!

That’s enough environmental stuff for today. Here’s something different.

My friend Colin has a regualr feature in his blog: expressions in English or Spanish which he finds interesting. One of yesterday’s was ‘Asomarse - to look out, peer out’. I was reminded of notices I used to see on trains as I travelled across France and Spain as a student. This was advice about not leaning out of the train window, very prosaic in most languages:

Do not lean out of the window.

Ne pas se pencher au dehors.

Nicht hinauslehnen.

No asomarse.

But quite poetic and musical in Italian, pointing out the danger:

È pericoloso sporgersi.

It was even incorporated into a song, performed here by Serge Reggiani.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Nodding acquaintances. The moon. Rubbish. Smart glasses. The state of the world we live in!

Returning from my morning run round the village this morning, I met one of my regular nodding acquaintances. She’s not a dog walker, just a walker who covers miles every day, rather older than I am, considerably older than some of the dog-walkers we meet. We have never properly introduced ourselves but we often stop and chat. This morning we commented on the cooler weather (we’re British after all and weather is a regular topic for the British!) and the fact that the puddles, which seemed to take weeks of dry weather to dry up, have returned with a vengeance almost overnight after the rain.

As we talked about climate change and fires and such like, she commented on the SpaceX rocket that has crashed into the moon, wondering what effect such events have on tides. NASA assures us that the collision, a 4,000kg piece of a Falcon 9 rocket, poses no i mediate danger to the earth.”No immediate danger!!” However, experts cautioned that it was a reminder of the very real threats that space junk poses to humanity – both on Earth and in space. There is enough junk floating about up there without billionaires discarding their expensive toys in space. 

Surely they could find a more humanitarian use for their excess wealth! Or am I too idealistic!

On the subject of rubbish, here is something from the Consumer Champios feature in the Guardian: 

“I was outside London Waterloo railway station and was looking for a bin to dispose of an empty coffee cup.

The only bin I could see was completely full, but there was a plastic bag containing rubbish at the base.

I put my cup in that bag and was stopped by an enforcement officer, who had been standing at a distance watching the bin. He told me I had violated the law and refused my offer to remove my cup. He asked for my details, including my passport.

After printing out a penalty notice, he remained in the same spot watching the overflowing bin. It seemed like a set-up.

I discovered I had been fined £500, payable within 28 days and reduced to £325 if paid within 14 days. There is no right of appeal, and failure to pay could result in prosecution and a £2,500 penalty. Can you advise me?”

Consumer Champions discovered that councils have a legal right to fine people for littering. There is no standardised system though. The size of the fine varies enormously from one place ro another. The only way to appeal against such a fine is to take the council to court! 

Amazing! 

Maybe a solution could be to provide more litter bins and more regular emptying of litter bins! 

I read that the latest must-have item, replacing your smart phone, is smart glasses with built-in cameras let you take snapshots, make videos and get AI-powered information like translations without taking out your phone. 

The glasses resemble normal eyewear and Meta says it hopes that the design allows users to stay “in the moment” without constantly looking down at a smartphone.

Indeed, Meta has tried hard to make wearing the glasses a mainstream choice, handing out free pairs to popular media influencers and sales of the devices have tripled in the last year, with more than 7m sold worldwide.

However, some pubs and restaurants have more or less banned them, and theatres and concert venues have been asking wearers of smart glasses to remove them. They're easily abused by pick-up artists and outright stalkers who have started using them to secretly take photos and videos of women without their consent.

A Meta spokesperson said in their defence: “People use our glasses because they’re genuinely helpful – from listening to music, to live translation or hands-free calls. For those wearing them and the people around them, trust matters. That’s why we built privacy into our AI glasses from the ground up. For example, every pair has a capture LED that blinks when you take a photo or video that you can save or share, it can’t be turned off, and if someone covers or damages the LED, the camera is disabled.”

Hmm! Another example of the complicated state of modern life.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Rain. Cooler weather. Railway stations in Manchester. And trams then and now.

 Yesterday it rained … rather heavily.

It probably didn’t rain for long enough to replenish any reservoirs but more than enough for my daughter, three of her offspring and a cousin to be soaked to the skin sitting outside a cafe for lunch. They only sat outside because there was no room inside and Granddaughter Number Two reportedly complained at first that it was too hot sitting in the sunshine.  But then the rain came and everyone needed a complete change of clothes when they arrived home.

This morning it was decidedly cooler but not sufficiently so to merit the remark I overheard one lady make in the market: “There’s a nip in the air!” We’ve not quite reached that point yet. However, I did wear my raincoat for the first time in weeks and weeks. And I was right to do so as it protected me from a coolish wind and, besides, it did start to rain, albeit briefly, as I was on my way home from the market.

It’s quite amazing how we have adjusted to having a “proper” summer: my daughter and co out and about without raincoats yesterday and the surprising number of people out and about this morning with bare arms and shoulders, now complaining about feeling cold!

Here is an old photo of Manchester Central Station in its heyday, in the 1950s I think or maybe even earlier. It’s a long time since it was a station - 1969 I think. Nowadays it’s an exhibition and conference centre, known for some time as G-Mex but now called Manchester Central. In 1963, the building was Grade II listed for its special architectural or historic interest, which probably explains how it survived and was not demolished.

In the foreground of the photo tramlines are visible. Apparently horse-drawn trams operated in Manchester from the 1860s.

The system was electrified as early as 1901. 

The network was far more extensive than the modern-day Metrolink. 

By 1949 the system was worn out and would have cost too much to replace. It had already been decided to scrap the trams in 1937, but the war intervened. Consequently, disused routes provide thousands of tons of steel for the war effort.

Construction for Metrolink began in 1992. The old tramlines were long gone and the first line to open ran on existing heavy rail lines. That is from Bury to Victoria station and from Deansgate to Altringham in the South. Furthermore, a street-level line was constructed to link Victoria station with Picadilli and Deansgate/ Castlefield. There you go,

And here’s something about Manchester Piccadilly railway station. I can vouch for the fact that the platforms mentioned are as far as they possibly can be from the station forecourt. So it goes.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Bumper berry crops. Water shortages.

Our son has been sending us photos of the blackberries he has collected from the bottom of his garden. 

I read that there has been a bumper early crop of blackberries in the South, where he lives. Here the berries are mostly still small and green with just a few ripening nicely, not enough yet to go berry-picking. We do, however, have an early crop of rowan berries - not edible for us though. 

Thunderstorms are forecast here for today. I saw a headline that some parts of England could have flash floods if heavy rain comes on ground too dry to absorb it quickly. It did rain briefly overnight but not enough to be of any significance. Here it was already 20° at 9.00 this morning. We’ll see what the rest of the day brings.

Meanwhile, I read that Hungary has had to shut down it’s nuclear power  station because the water levels in the Danube are too low for the cooling systems to operate.  And Romania has been using explosives to create a channel to divert water, also from the Danube, to facilitate cooling of their nuclear reactor. And all over the place concerns are being expressed at the amount of water needed to keep AI data centres properly cooled. Water is a problem all round.

And here’s a link to an article about places where they are being told to build more houses but where there the water supply’s insufficient to provide water to all the proposed new homes. 

The latest heatwave is supposed to end in the next few days. We’ll see whether that comes to pass or if we just get hotter and hotter. 

The world is in a mess. And that’s without wars and bombings! 

And my neighbour and I keep on finding household things and clothing to wash - using more water! - delighting in being able to hang washing to dry in the garden and quietly dreading the day when we have to revert to drying the washing indoors!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!