World Book Day. UK’s National Year of Reading.

Today is World Book Day, aka The Day When School Teachers Go to Work in Fancy Dress! We had a text message yesterday from our daughter asking if her father had a waistcoat and possibly a hat she could borrow. It transpired that she was putting together a Fagin outfit. Her primary school class have been working on Oliver Twist and it seemed appropriate that she, as their teacher, should go to work dressed as Fagin. We didn’t have a waistcoat to offer but I did find a suitable hat and a muffler, oh, and an old pair of woolly gloves whose finger-ends she could cut off, creating suitable fingerless gloves. A Fagin costume was coming into being!

Her own children’s school does not allow the children to dress up as characters from their favourite story book, which may be quite a relief to some parents, feeling harassed about finding a suitable costume. Instead the children are asked to bring a dressing gown and slippers, which they will don at some point in the day to read stories. It’s all to do with feeling comfortable, snuggled in your dressing gown and slippers with a good book. Personally I don’t need to be wrapped up cosily to enjoy reading; I can feel quite comfortable reading my book anywhere and dressed any old way. If I were still commuting to work Unwound be like those people you see standing in the tube train, balancing a book in one hand while trying to stay upright. 

The idea of any kind of book day began in 1922 when a certain Vicente Clavel, director of the Cervantes publishing house in Barcelona wanted to honour Miguel de Cervantes, writer of Don Quijote, and incidentally to boost sales of books. He chose October 7th, the writer’s birthday, in 1926 to launch his project. Now, April 23rd just happens to be the Saint George’s Day and Saint George (Sant Jordi) is the patron saint of Catalonia. Nice coincidence! So on April 2rd the Catalans traditionally give each other a book and a red rose.

Here we have World Book Day today, coinciding with the publication of special editions of selected books for children, aimed at encouraging a love of reading. There is another annual celebration on 23 April: World Book Night, an event organized by independent charity The Reading Agency. Presumably that’s for the grownups.

This year is also the UK’s National Year of Reading, aimed at encouraging all of us, not just children, to read for pleasure. It has been recognised that in general we don’t read enough. Reading for pleasure is a disappearing activity, its demise usually blamed on the smartphone. Research has shown that even the presence of a phone in the room reduces people’s ability to concentrate and to lose themselves in a book! Oddly though, smartphones have grown bigger, after decades of mobile phones growing smaller and smaller, and they have grown bigger because people use them to watch films and YouTube videos, and occasionally as a kindle! Such is modern life! So they want us to read more. 

And maybe we need to escape more into a good book, given the continuing parlous state of the world. War continues. There are debates about the likelihood of “accidental” bombings of schools given the accuracy of modern drone warfare. And people trying to flee the Middle East are having some difficulty doing so with rescue flights cancelled. All in all, a mess!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Getting up in the morning. The ongoing madness of the world. Whuppity Scoorie.

 Unlike other mornings, on Wednesdays I can get out of bed having snoozed the alarm only once. In that way I can organise myself to leave the house in time to walk a good way down the road, catch a bus at some point on the way to Uppermill, buy fresh fish at the diminishing market, fruit from the Italian greengrocery and maybe the odd item from the co-op, and be on the bus for home with my purchases just after 9.30. It’s good to know I am not a total slugabed! This was a good morning for a brisk walk first thing: blue sky and sunshine make everything more cheerful.

Amidst the ongoing madness of the world Donald Trump has declared he will have no more trade dealings with Spain as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won’t let him use Spanish airbases to facilitate attacks on Iran. Good for Señor Sánchez! Our own prime minister is still doing a bit of fence-sitting. Despite he fierce Kemi Badenoch urging him to let the RAF attack Iran, he won’t agree to that. “What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the UK to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable, thought through plan,” he says. “That remains my position.” However, he also says the government is taking action by sending reinforcements to Cyprus and allowing the US to use British airfields. Ben Jennings’ cartoon suggests that Mr Trump is not entirely satisfied.

Another bit of madness is the fact that US military commanders are reported to be encouraging their troops to take action against Iran with enthusiasm because it’s ‘all part of God’s divine plan’. One noncommissioned officer, complaining to the watchdog group the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ”. “He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added.

Bring on Armageddon! Good grief!

In a lighter vein, I read about an alternative to Carnival in Lanark Cross in Scotland. 0n Ash Wednesday when the church bell rings 6.00pm a crowd of children, and more than a few adults, run three times clockwise round the church, swinging homemade balls of paper on string above their heads as they run. A bit of craft work there, making the paper balls - all good - and some healthy but seemingly harmless outdoor activity. Having fun without the need to hire expensive carnival outfits. Hurrah! It’s called Whuppity Scoorie, a traditional festivity dating from the early 19th century to celebrate the start of spring. It is no longer a competitive race, a change made to allow younger children to join in the fun safely.

0n Ash Wednesday when the church bell rings 6.00pm a crowd of children, and more than a few adults, run three times clockwise round the church, swinging homemade balls of paper on string above their heads as they run. A bit of craft work there, making the paper balls - all good - and some healthy but seemingly harmless outdoor activity. Having fun without the need to hire expensive carnival outfits. Hurrah! 

It’s called Whuppity Scoorie, a traditional festivity dating from the early 19th century to celebrate the start of spring. It is no longer a competitive race, a change made to allow younger children to join in the fun safely.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Ongoing conflicts - and consequences. The need for tolerance. Mediaeval-style carnivals.

 Today is bright and sunny here. It’s rather a pity the world doesn’t also feel bright and sunny. The various conflicts go on and on, with some (supposedly)unforeseen consequences:

The US embassy in Riyadh has been struck by Iranian drones. Did nobody expect that kind of retaliation?

Zelensky has said that the war with Iran is slowing down the supply of weapons to Ukraine. I suppose that was inevitable; even the USA does not have an unlimited supply of armaments. 

And Gaza is running out of food because “Israel closed all crossings into Gaza indefinitely when it attacked Iran, imposing a siege that has already pushed up food prices and threatens to plunge 2 million people into a new hunger crisis.

After more than two years of war, and with Israeli forces in control of about 60% of the territory, almost all of Gaza’s food must be brought in.

Humanitarian groups feeding much of the population say the supplies they had on Saturday, when the war began, will only last a few more days.

“If [the borders] stay closed, World Central Kitchen will run out of food this week,” said the organisation’s founder and chief, José Andrés, in a post on social media.”

That consequence was probably the most foreseeable. It’s just that Gaza has slipped down the ranking of newsworthy stories. And yet it’s still going on, as if the Palestinian people have been locked in a prison and just left to starve. Here’s a link to the whole article about it.

With conflict escalating in the world and apparent increasing intolerance in this country - apparently Moslem footballers were booed because a game was paused so that they could break their Ramadan fast - we need reminders of how much we all depend on each other. So here’s a cartoon I found some time ago underling how much we all depend on each other.

Some places have been escaping the nastiness of the world by getting into carnival mode. Not all carnival is just colour and dancing and processions. This article tells of places in southern France where their carnival remains a misogynistic throwback to medieval times with men dressed in rather frightening costumes, chasing women through the streets and lashing them with wine-soaked “whips”.  In some cases they don’t want publicity. In the village of Cournonterral, for example, smartphones and cameras are banned; the village’s official website states that spectators are not welcome.

You would think that women’s groups would object and in some places they are demanding a more active role on organising events. But not all women agree with this. Tradition is a way of holding onto your cultural identity, they feel. Beatrice Barbara, who is from a “carnival family”, explains this approach. “People from the outside don’t understand what the carnival means to us. For most of the year, the village seems empty. We wait all year for this moment to come around. People take a week off work, and people who have moved away come back. During carnival, we again become proud of who we are. We don’t want to change it.”

And this is the 21st century! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Thinking about the ongoing conflict. And some unusual words.

Another grey day this morning as another week gets under way. 

As the conflict continues / escalates in the Middle East, our prime minister has agreed that UK military bases over there can be used by the US to attack Iranian missile sites. This despite saying the Uk is not getting involved in the conflict. It sounds rather like involvement to me. And it seems to be being interpreted that way as a drone attack struck an RAF base in Cyprus. 

Britons living and working in the Middle East are being evacuated. Yvette Cooper says it’s being organised.

Meanwhile President Trump has said that the possibility of American troops in Iran is not entirely off the table.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground – like every president says ‘there will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Donald Trump told the Washington Post. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’” 

I had to look up “the yips”, a new expression to me. The internet tells me this:

The yips are a sudden and unexplained loss of ability to execute certain skills in experienced performers such as athletes. Symptoms of the yips are losing fine motor skills and psychological issues that impact the muscle memory and decision-making, leaving them unable to perform basic skills.

The exact cause of the yips is still not fully understood.”

What a strange expression for Mr Trump to use! 

I doubt that the American public want their boys to be boots on the ground.

I also read that the Pentagon is “lethalitymaxxing”. Investigating that I discovered the following definition: 

“Maxxing, a suffix that means optimizing for whatever word you slap “-maxx” onto, e.g., “looksmaxxing” for improving one’s physical appearance, “jestermaxxing“ for acting silly to get laughs, or “lethalitymaxxing” if you’re an official US Department of Defense X account.”

Interesting times give interesting words.

Names are also interesting. I came across an article written by someone called Micklewright. Now, I know that the name Cartwright has its origin in someone who made carts, as does Wainwright, wain being another word for cart or wagon. So what does a micklewright make. One definition says mickle means great or large. Another source says that mickle is an old Irish word for a coin. Does a micklewright make coins?

Then there is the expression “many a mickle makes a muckle”. A muckle is an old cockney term for a bundle. So maybe “many a mickle makes a muckle” is an odd version of that other expression, “look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”.

And since mickle is an Irish word for a coin, it links us to taking the mick, to tease or make a fool of someone. One source says that 'to take the mick' is from that same Irish word 'mickle' - to take the 'mickle'/ to take the 'penny' (i.e. to fool or deceive someone of their money).

Then here’s the name Micklethwaite. As a surname it comes, of course from a place name and there are a number of Micklethwaites around the country. One of those Micklethwaites originated as a Viking settlement in the 10th century, and according to the Domesday Book was called ‘Muceltoit’ (which is Norse for ‘great clearing’). Which brings us back to “mickle” meaning great or large. 

That’s enough ramblings for today.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

Comparing saints. Getting out and about. The dramatic chaos of the modern world.

 Happy Saint David’s Day to any Welsh people out there. It’s an odd thing that all sorts of people celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day while not having the least connection to Ireland but poor old Saint David is largely ignored. Maybe it’s the amount of alcohol consumed on Saint Patrick”s Day

Patrick is supposed to have driven  snakes out Ireland: quite impressive. But David’s best-known miracle is said to have taken place when he was preaching in the middle of a large crowd at the Synod of Brefi: the village of Llanddewi Brefi stands on the spot where the ground on which he stood is reputed to have risen up to form a small hill. A white dove, which became his emblem, was seen settling on his shoulder. Welsh historian John Davies notes that one can scarcely "conceive of any miracle more superfluous" in that part of Wales than the creation of a new hill. 

There was a Welsh musician on BBC Radio 3 last night reminiscing about St David’s Day traditions. Girls got to wear daffodils but boys were supposed to wear leeks. The big challenge was to have your leek survive intact to the end of the day, at which point you were supposed to eat it … raw. He didn’t say whether the girls had to eat their daffodil.

There was no drama on my run round the village this morning, for which I am quite grateful. I enjoy being out and about early. What I don’t enjoy is getting out of bed to go out and about. My alarm rings, I snooze it and spend some time putting off going out and about. Maybe it will be easier as the morning grow brighter earlier but somehow I doubt it. As it’s now March I took another photo of what we laughingly refer to as “my” tree. I plan to post a picture each mont this year. Its March photo is not significantly different, however, from its February or even its January picture.

No drama here, but plenty elsewhere. 

Iranian media and officials are reporting that a joint US-Israel attack on Iran struck a girls' primary school in the southern part of the country, killing 85 people.

The IRNA news agency said the majority of the casualties are children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh all-girls’ school in Minab. Dozens more are unaccounted for, the state-run news agency said.

A local Iranian prosecutor was quoted in the IRNA report. Reuters could not independently confirm the reports. US and Israeli military forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I get a nasty feeling of déja vu.

In return, Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.

Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.

 

And so it goes on.

There’s also Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Israeli settlers are still creating havoc in the West Bank.

Here’s a reminder of the wrongness of it all. Bob Dylan’s words from all those hears agp still ring true.

Come you masters of war.

You that build all the guns.

You that build the death planes.

You that build all the big bombs.

You that hide behind walls.

You that hide behind desks.

I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Let me ask you one question, Is your money that good?

Will it buy you forgiveness, do you think that it could?

I think you will find, when your death takes its toll, all the money you made, will never buy back your soul.

President Trump no doubt dismisses him as ‘just a singer’.

Meanwhile, anyone wanting to flee the Middle East conflict zone will have problems. Hundreds of thousands of travellers were either stranded or diverted to other airports after Israel, Qatar, Syria, ItanI, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain closed their airspace. There were also no flights over the United Arab Emirates, the flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said, after the government announced a “temporary and partial closure” of its airspace.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Horses and cyclists and changing my running route. Things on the wall. Dangerous times.

 This morning I varied my running route slightly. When I reached the point where the quiet lane I follow crosses the main road into the village, still called a lane and not much wider or busier than the lane that crosses it, I greeted a young woman on a horse. We quite often see horses on the back roads around here, away from the major roads. Saturday morning is a good time for horse spotting. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere came a speeding cyclist. The horse, about to do a right turn into the lane that leads to the millponds, was spooked, speeded up, skidded on his turn and almost went down. Fortunately his rider was able to calm him. The cyclist went on bis oblivious way, not acknowledging that he had done anything. Maybe he didn’t even realise he had almost caused a major problem. Saturday morning is also a favourite time for cyclists to get out and about. 

The horse and his rider, after we had a bit of a chat about irresponsible cyclists, went on their way towards the millponds. I decided that maybe an already spooked horse might not appreciate a runner dogging his footsteps, even a slow runner like me. So I turned onto the lane that leads back into the village. On my way down the hill I ran into a nodding acquaintance walking his dog. Well, he’s really a bit more than a nodding acquaintance now as we have stopped and chatted many times and I know his wife from long ago. Embarrassingly he always remembers my name but I cannot for the life of me remember his. 

We chatted so long that the horse and rider had completed the circuit past the millponds and was making her way back up the hill. All was well, she assured us. She thanked me for not further frightening her young horse and told us she hoped he was not permanently afraid of bicycles. They had seen baby deer by the millpond. Had I gone that way I might have seen them and photographed them. It’s a while since I saw deer round there.

As I got close to home I spotted a wood pigeon sitting on the wall. Unexpectedly he didn’t fly off as I approached. Then I realised he was injured. My squeamishness prevented me from doing anything to help. Later in the day when I set off for Tesco there were feathers all over the road; something had finished him off. Nature can be cruel!

Also on the wall, on a different bit of wall, there was glass, a straight glass that you might have a half pint of beer in. It was not chipped or broken so I took it into the house to join the collection of abandoned glasses that I have found from time to time. There have always been a few left behind by followers of the Whit Friday Band Contest. And at the time when the Covid restrictions lifted somewhat and people could drink outside pubs, so long as they kept to their small groups, I would find one from time to time. But who are the people on a February evening who walk along the road from the pub a hundred yards from our house, finishing off their beer and depositing the glass not on the pub wall but on our garden wall? The world is full of strange people.

Some of the strange people are also dangerous. I woke this morning to the news that the US and Israel have attacked Iran, despite supposed peace talks supposedly going well. We wait to see what the repercussions will be.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Signs of spring. Putting judgemental labels on people. And fashion as a statement of all sorts of things.

 It might still be grey and damp as February rushes to its end but there are increasing signs that spring is not too far away. This morning I saw the first almost-open daffodils on my running route. Other parts of the country may well have glorious displays of daffs by now but, apart from clumps of miniature daffodils, these are the first I have seen around her. 

The Green Party has won the Gorton and Denton by-election, which is good. A worryingly large number of people voted for Reform. It is to be hoped that this was a protest vote rather than an indication that people have been taken in by grinning Farage. 

Nazir Afzal, chancellor of the University of Manchester and a former chief prosecutor, wrote this article for the Guardian’s Opinion column. He makes the interesting point that in so many aspects of his life he is just himself, without an identified religious label. He is not the MUSLIM chancellor of the University of Manchester, for example. But as chief prosecutor for North-west England suddenly he was the “Muslim prosecutor” and investigating grooming gangs he was the “Muslim decision maker”. We live in a multicultural country, whether the far right likes it or not. If we look back at our history most of us are descended from immigrants of one kind or another. We need to accept people as they are, without putting labels on anyone, especially labels which are intended to divide us. 

Fashion is a strange thing. We are all of us judged one way or another for the way we look, the way we dress, how we style our hair, whether we wear lots of makeup and paint our nails, or indeed add long extensions to those nails! We look at people and make snap judgements about their political views, whether they are left- or right-leaning, whether we need to feel threatened by them, whether we can feel comfortable talking to them.

Justine Picardie, former editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK has written a book called “Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict and Couture”, maintaining that what the members of our royal family wear is a political statement of sorts. And according to this article the appearance of King Charles at the opening of London Fashion Week and that the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Baftas was a sign that the royal family was going about business as usual, despite the much-publicised misbehaviour of a certain former prince. 

And even the fact that Catherine had worn her Bafta dress on another occasion was a sign that she is taking a sustainable approach and showing restraint. Goodness! I can remember a time when Queen Letitia of Spain got press for wearing the same outfit twice.

It’s been going on forever it seems, this political statement via fashion. Justine Picardie, points out that the “after the crisis of the abdication in 1936, when Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) was dressed by Norman Hartnell in an idealised vision of traditional Englishness, to counteract the hard chic of the pro-Nazi Duke and Duchess of Windsor.”

Even the fabric used for clothes can be significant. “Picardie notes an example from 1947 when, in the aftermath of the second world war, then prime minister Clement Attlee expressed his concern over whether the silk for Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress had been produced by Japanese or Italian silk worms. Thankfully, the fabric was made in China.”

Hmmm! Would Chinese silk be acceptable nowadays? I wonder.

The late queen’s outfits were often scrutinised for political messages: the Brexit hat, the choice of jewellery and so on. The royal family is supposed to stay out of politics so maybe choosing your clothing to match the occasion you have to attend is one way of making a statement. Who knew! 

It’s there in all our lives too. We can show solidarity by way we dress. In recent months I have attended a funeral where we were asked to wear the colours of Palestine and another where we were asked to wear suffragette colours. 

Choose your outfit with care!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!