Ken Loach - films and opinions. Not going on a cruise. Odd expressions. Royal security nonsense.

 It’s a long time since I last watched Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom, the story of a British communist who travels to Spain expecting a united anti-fascist struggle, only to encounter bitter ideological divisions between competing leftwing factions – tensions Loach believes remain deeply relevant today. I used to show it to my A-Level Spanish students. Strangely I now seem to have two copies of the film on DVD on my shelf. 

Back in 1995 Land and Freedom received prizes: Cannes’ Fipresci international critics prize and the Ecumenical jury prize. Now it has apparently been restored in 4K (a system for giving a sharper, clearer image using more pixels - I looked it up) and will screen in the festival’s Cinéma de la Plage strand on Tuesday, which Loach will be attending. He says the story of the fractured left is important and went a long way to the Spanish Republicans losing the Civil War. He’s been criticising Your Party:

“There was great hope when Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana joined forces; 800,000 people expressed interest – that’s three times the size of a political party,” he said. “But I’m afraid some of the behaviours were very poor and they lost a historic opportunity.”

So it goes! The story of the left!

I have almost certainly expressed my lack of enthusiasm for cruise holidays on more than one occasion. Here’s a link to an article in which Dave Schilling gives his reasons for not being a fn of such holidays. The hantavirus business further convinces me that I don’t want to be trapped on a floating hotel, swapping germs with strangers. Swapping germs on a short flight to Spain or Portugal is  quite enough for me. Another ship has been having problems off Bordeaux in France: stomach upsets rife among the passengers. However, they have allowed passengers without symptoms to disembark and presumably visit the city. I find myself wondering how many them are spreading their germs among the French population. You never know!

Our Granddaughter Number Two has the habit of saying “Bite me” when something annoys her or goes against her opinion. A curious thing to say! I googled it:

“The phrase "bite me" is an idiomatic expression used to convey defiance or dismissal, similar to telling someone to "leave me alone." It can also be a taunting remark indicating that the speaker does not care about the other person's opinion.”

I doubt that I will take it into my own conversational repertoire.

Here’s a little oddity in today’s news:

“Police officers accused of being asleep when they were supposed to be protecting the royal family at Windsor Castle have been placed under investigation.

An unspecified number of officers from the Metropolitan police’s royalty and specialist protection team are being investigated after concerns were raised, the force confirmed. The Sun, which first reported the story, said up to 30 officers were involved.

The allegations include officers leaving posts unattended and sleeping while on duty.”

Well! Who’d have thought it? Not my problem, fortunately.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Remembering the Nakba. And the possible power of music.

Yesterday marked 78 years since the Nakba, when Palestinians were expelled from their homes and the state of Israel was created.

It still goes on. Today I read this article about Palestinians being forced to demolish their own homes to make way for an Israeli theme park, a biblical theme park. 

It’s supposed to be part of an archaeological project, which is quite ironic since Israeli bombs have been responsible for destroying an archaeological warehouse in Gaza.

“Since the beginning of the war, Israel has damaged or destroyed hundreds of protected cultural sites and artefacts,” an archaeological group said in a statement. “The warehouse contained approximately 30 years of archaeological work in the Gaza Strip and housed tens of thousands of items. Some were removed but many were destroyed.”

“The IDF gave Palestinian archaeologists and the French-run École Biblique, which supports the site, three days to empty the warehouse before it was bombed but there was only time to remove some of the artefacts in a single convoy of trucks.

“We couldn’t go back for a second mission because of the lack of trucks and the availability of the people and mainly because of the danger, so some of the artefacts were lost,” an École Biblique official said.

The depot had been seized by Israeli forces in an offensive early last year when, the official said, employees of the Israel Antiquities Authority were allowed to inspect it, in violation of international law. On that occasion a global outcry prevented a plan to remove some of the artefacts.

Some of the objects that archaeologists managed to remove before the bombing were broken while being moved in open trucks, the only kind allowed by the Israeli military. They are now at an undisclosed location where they are open to the elements.”

Presumably these were not the right kind of archaeological artefacts!

Here’s a bit of Banksy art work.

It would be good to think that maybe the children of today could  bring about peace. 

Attempts have been made to use music to bring young people from Arab and Israeli communities together. 

“In 2014, construction began on the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. A joint project Barenboim developed with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the academy was planned as a site for young music students from the Arab world and Israel to study music and humanities in Berlin.[40] It opened its doors on 8 December 2016.”

From an article from 2021, there is this:

“Music is the universal language,” as the saying goes, and Nazareth violinist Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar began putting this into practice in Israel 10 years ago when he co-founded Polyphony, a community of musicians, educators, parents, and students devoted to bringing classical music to underserved students. They also introduce Arabic and Jewish music to students of both cultures, and offer a variety of programs for elementary school students and up.

The Israeli school system is mostly segregated between Arab and Jewish students but Polyphony wants to change that:

“OUR MISSION: Polyphony aims to bridge the divide between Arab and Jewish communities in Israel through music and to serve as a worldwide model for cooperation based on cultural exchange, dialogue and partnership.

They are an inclusive, supportive musical community:

Polyphony uses music to build a new kind of community. A classical music ensemble involves more than […] listening to music. [Polyphony’s] success depends upon the combination of each individual’s discipline and unified teamwork. In this way, each member is committed to the success of the entire ensemble.

This environment distinguishes Polyphony among programs using classical music as a diplomatic tool: Parents, students, teachers, and the community come together to achieve a shared goal of musical communication that transcends political affiliations.”

Feras, a 17-year-old Arab boy, said this about Polyphony: 

“When we Arab and Jewish musicians play together on one stage and read the same music, it makes me feel that maybe we still have hope…it’s possible for things to get better.”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Some odd and interesting posts on social media and in the press.

 It”s been a fine sunny day today but still cold! I’ve spent the afternoon in Manchester where some hardy folk have been going around in shorts but others are still wrapped up in their puffer jackets. I’ve even seen some still wearing gloves! So much for the merry month of May!

Much has been made of Reform UK’s supposed success in the local elections. 

Campaign to Rejoin the EU posts stuff on Facebook.Today someone called Julian Smith posted this”

“The reality is that the Lib Dem’s have over twice the number of councillors that Reform has. That the Greens have nearly as many and Labour have three times the number.”

How true that is I do not know but it may be. However, even if it were true I suspect that mainstream media would take little notice. 

Here’s something from The Poke, also on Facebook:

“An American complained that Keir Starmer had ‘violated the First Amendment’ by banning Tommy Robinson’s mates and the responses will make you proud to be British👇”

You couldn’t make it up!

Here are some comments:

“And our government won’t allow us to have guns and that’s a blatant breach of the Second Amendment 😀”

“And Gladstone for one had more than two terms!”

Here’s another post I saw on social media on a different topic altogether”:

“🎸

The Boss is bringing the E Street Band to MSG, and with tickets finally dropping below $300, now’s your chance to see Bruce Springsteen live before they’re gone.”

I was struck by the words “with tickets finally dropping below $300”. Amazing! It’s a while since I went to a live music concert. Do people really pay such prices? How do people manage to go to a whole string of concerts bybtheir favourite artists?

On the subject of paying silly amounts pf money for stuff, here’s a link to an article about footwear, some remarkably odd-looking footwear.

The writer of the article talks about buying a pair and later discovering thatvthe shoes are niw oit of stock and are being sold for over £3 on the resale site Goat.

Ugly footwear is nothing new. Think of the popularity of Crocs. Here’s an extract from an article from 1018

‘Heinously haute

Do your trainers have fat, lolling tongues and thick, orthopaedic soles? Are they scuffed, yellowing and oversized to the point of comedy? Do they look like shoes you would keep by the back door and slip on to take out the bins? If so, congratulations! You’ve nailed this season’s biggest trend.

In designer fashion, such “ugly” trainers retail for anywhere up to £780.”

Some people clearly have more money than sense!

And now jere’s a pleasing story from John Crace’s Digested Week

“Tuesday

You know how it is. You work hard and no one seems to notice. Most of us have been there. We just suck it up and hope our day will come. But not all of us. Some have greater agency in their lives. Take Florent Montaclair, a French academic. Fed up with his lack of recognition, he decided to award himself a prize. And Florent thought big. He didn’t just go down the high street, buy a trophy and have his name engraved on it. In 2016, he announced to the world that he had become the first French winner of the “Gold Medal of Philology” – that’s the study of language in historical contexts to you and me – an honour he said was the equivalent of a Nobel prize.

He even cited Umberto Eco as a previous winner. And everyone believed him. So much so, that a prize-giving ceremony was arranged at the French national assembly, with MPs, government ministers and Nobel prize winners among the guests. Florent was now a legend in his own lifetime. There was just one problem, there was no “Gold Medal of Philology” before Montclair decided there was. Nor was there an Institute of Philology that Florent said administered the prize. But amazingly no one noticed.

There was even a prize giving the following year when Florent awarded the medal to the American academic, Noam Chomsky, who flew to Paris for the ceremony. The alleged charade only came to light comparatively recently when Florent apparently included the medal on an application for a promotion. If only he had quit when he was ahead. But what an example to us all. Keir Starmer could probably do with an ego boost right now. So why doesn’t he get Mark Rutte to award him a fictitious “Medaille d’Honneur” for services to Nato? It would cost the secretary general nothing and he would be bound to get something in return.”

Amazing!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

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!