Odd seasons. Old friends. Intolerance in football.

 Yeaterday began with torrential rain. I set off for Manchester in my raincoat to meet some old friends for lunch. By he time I reached the tram stop in Oldham the rain had more or less stopped. By the time I got to Manchester the sun was trying to shine.

I met my old friends, we put the world to rights and made our way to an Italian trattoria that one of my friends had noticed on her way to our meeting point in Waterstone’s cafe. We had some very good pasta and a glass or two of wine while we reminisced and put the world a little more to rights. 

When we left the trattoria in the mid-afternoon we all felt decided overdressed with our raincoats. Girls were out and about in cropped tops and shorts. Goodness, this was the last day of September.

After I returned hoe, Phil and I went for an early-evening stroll round the village, admiring the blue sky.

And then as the sun disappeared over the hill, the temperature plummeted. We need a new name for the season as it seems to include summer and autumn - possibly sumtober- not to:mention hints of winter in the late evening!

I hear that Jurgen Klopp is disgusted by suggestions that his German team is “not white enough”. Oh boy!

“The barrage of racist and generally offensive commentaries on social media followed Germany’s 1-0 defeat by Greece last Sunday, in the Nations League, marking the first time Greece had beaten Germany.

It is also reflective of plenty of utterances from MPs of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, who have repeatedly and consistently criticised the diversity and ethnic makeup of the national team, often referring to the squad in derogatory terms such as a “politically correct mercenary force”.”

But he has been quite restrained. 

“Asked to respond to the debate as to whether the national team were “not German enough” or “not white enough”, he said: “There is absolutely no reason to pay attention to these people. You won’t get my thoughts on this. I have little time in everyday life for idiocy – and even less on social media.

“The great crux of our lives is that everyone is allowed to express their opinion … it’s insane when something like that exists.””

The world grows crazier by the day.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Invited out to breakfast. Anti-immigration riots - an old problem!

 Granddaughter Number Two treated me to breakfast this morning. From time to time she likes to organise some kind of grandmother-granddaughter event. She’s been trying to organise us a day out In York but the train service from here to York has been disrupted lately. So last night she phoned and proposed that I hop on the bus at the crossroads, the bus she would be travelling on from her house, and we could go to a local farm that has branched out into a cafe and a farm-shop. So that’s what we did. 

She had a bacon sandwich, one of her favourite things, while I had a toasted fruit teacake. I had my usual coffee whereas she had a strange concoction with caramel and maple syrup, calling itself a latter! I tried it. It was quite tasty as hot drinks go but definitely should not be included in a list of “coffees”!  

I bought local honey in the farm-shop and spotted items I must go back for as possible Christmas presents for various members of the family. Christmas fever has started earlier than ever this year. Pubs have notices reminding people to book for Christmas dinners and a travel agency in Uppermill has a big notice advertising a day trip to York to visit the Christmas markets. York gets crowded with tourists at the best of times so the prospect of Christmas markets as well is quite horrific. 

As you can tell, I am not a great fan of christmas markets! 

Here’s a story, from this article, which demonstrates how long-standing the problem of immigration has always been:

“On 30 April 1517, the eve of the annual May Day festival, an angry crowd of more than 1,000 people marched through London protesting at the city’s immigrant population. Xenophobia was rife in Tudor England. Although foreigners, known as “strangers”, made up just 6% of the city’s population, they were often considered a malign presence: “Libertynes, drunkards, murderers, thieves and Conspirators,” in the words of one chronicler.

As darkness fell, the mood turned ugly. Thomas More, under-sheriff of London, appealed to the crowd to turn back. But his entreaties went unheard. The mob surged through the streets sacking the shops and houses of French, Italian and Flemish merchants and craftsmen. Only after an army was called out, leading to scores of arrests and over a dozen executions, was order returned.

Evil May Day, as the riot came to be known, was not quickly forgotten.”

Shakespeare may have written about in a play called Sir Thomas More, a collaboratively written play that survives only in a single manuscript. The play is thought to have been written primarily by Anthony Munday, perhaps, some scholars think, aided by Henry Chettle, in the 1590s, with somewhat later contributions from Thomas Dekker, perhaps from William Shakespeare, and just possibly from Thomas Heywood.

Sir Isn McKellen Introduced a monologue from the play, a momologue cloed The Strangers’ Case, with these words:

“It’s all happening 400 years ago. In London, there’s a riot happening. There’s a mob out in the streets and they’re complaining about the the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who’ve arrived there. And they’re shouting the odds and complaining and saying that the immigrants should be sent back home wherever they came from. And the authorities send out this young lawyer, Thomas More, to put down the riot, which he does in two ways. One by saying that you can’t riot like this. It’s against the law. So, shut up, be quiet. And also, being by Shakespeare, with an appeal to their humanity.”

And now I’ve found the speech, I think:

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise

Hath chid down all the majesty of England;

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,

Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silent by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled; and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an agèd man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

[...]

Say now the king,

As he is clement if th’offender mourn,

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whither would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbor?

Go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,

Nay, anywhere that not adheresto England,

Why, you must needs be strangers: 

would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But chartered unto them, what would you think

To be thus used? 

This is the strangers’ case;

And this your mountainish inhumanity.

Maybe we need another Shakespeare to plead the case for a little more  tolerance and humanity in the modern world.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Reflecting on life and its contradictions.

It’s another fine September day here. First thing this morning it was so still that the local millponds were busily reflecting the beauty of the world.

This did not make it any easier to get out of bed - somehow you can always sleep beautifully after the alarm has rung - but I made a supreme effort and went for my morning run.

Life is full of little contradictions … or maybe not so little.

Nigel Farage (yes, there he is again!) has posted this:

“I have been warning both on and out of Parliament for many months about Iranian agents coming into the UK via small boats across the Channel.

We deserve to be told the truth about the Fairford bomb plotters identities.”

And now it turns out that the suspects are all young UK citizens, from London! Oops!

Didn’t something similar happen about the attack on the children’s dance class in Southport?

And, besides, quite when has Mr Farage been in Parliament often enough to give repeated warnings about anything? 

Then there’s Ed Milliband declaring to Conference that Labour was mistaken in its stance of Israel and Palestine.

“The Guardian understands Miliband will say in his speech that the sanctions marked a definitive change in how Labour will approach the situation in the Middle East.

“I want to say to the millions of people in this country and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: we hear you, you were right,” he will say.

“And under Andy’s leadership, we have reset our approach. We call out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank. We call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza. We call out Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. And we match words with actions.””

Meanwhile proPalestine protestors were still being arrested outside the conference in Liverpool. Here’s a link to some film of police action. 

On Thursday Netanyahu said that the people who walked out of his speech to the UN were “moral cowards”.  The next day Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, foreign minister for Iceland said, “We have heard the words ‘moral cowards’ from this podium. To me, moral cowards are those leaders around the world who refuse to sit down and negotiate a just and lasting peace, those who deny access to humanitarian aid for people in desperate need. And moral cowards are those leaders who repeatedly go against and disrespect international law.”

It took somebody’s daughter to stand up and say that. I love Icelandic surnames that allow you to be somebody’s daughter! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

September stormy weather. Ash over Etna. Rubble over Gaza. Homelessness. The selfishness of the world.

 It’s one of those windy Sunday September mornings. I woke up to the sound of rain and turned over and had a bit more snoozing time but I hadn’t realised how blustery it was. When I went out later, taking advantage of one of the periods of sunshine between the rain showers, I realised how windy it was and how blustery it mist have been overnight. There were snapped-off small branches all over the paths. 

The blustery night did for my sunflower too, decapitating the poor thing completely. I had been hoping to continue to document its decline photographically and then into an art project I have got underway. The windy weather has put paid to that! 

Elsewhere in the world, Etna is still causing problems for Catania airport. 

• Flights at Catania’s airport will be remain suspended on Sunday due to Mount Etna ash in the region.
• The airport was closed on Saturday amid ongoing volcanic activity, and it has now been confirmed that flights will be suspended until 21:59 GMT on Sunday.

Somehow photos of plumes of ash are never so impressive as photos of lava pouring down the side of the volcano.

Then there is this:

“61m tonnes of rubble: Gaza aid workers face delicate task of clearing ruins concealing up to 10,000 bodies

Removal of war debris, in which lives, memories and unexploded Israeli bombs lie buried, is one of largest clearance operations in modern history.”

How will they ever deal with such a mess. Whole families are under there, many with nobody left to identify them or mourn for them.

“To make things more difficult, the Israeli authorities have banned the necessary equipment from entering Gaza on the grounds that almost any aid that is not food or medicine could be ‘dual use’ and could somehow benefit Hamas.”

Well, that sounds like an excuse if ever ai heard one!

i was reading about an old lady in Madrid who has been evicted from her flat, the flat where she has lived for 71 years. The flat was originally in her father’s name. On his death, the contract transferred to her mother and later to Maricarmen herself. The whole building was bought by a developer and she was offered the chance to buy the apartment for €247,000 (£212,000), not feasible for an old lady on monthly state pension of €1,350. Then they raised her rent from €500 to €1,650 per month. And lawyers found a way of saying the contract in her name was not truly valid! You can see where that was going! 

Lots of people have protested, including the actor Carlos Bardem, brother of the more internationally famous Javier Bardem, and the singer and actor Ana Belén. But it doesn’t seem to have made any difference. 

And now I find myself wondering what the rent would be nowadays for the flat we used to rent in Vigo for €550 a month, if my memory serves me well. No doubt our departure allowed the owner to raise that rent.

Finally, here’s a cartoon reflecting on the selfishness of the modern world.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Blocking the press. Being English. Living in Gaza.

 If you have watched The West Wing, which I have more than once, than you will be familiar with those scenes where CJ talks to the assembled mass of the press corps on Air Force One. Well, how about this?

“The White House has blocked CNN from traveling aboard Air Force One on Saturday, impeding its TV press pool duties in the latest escalation of the administration’s battle with the news media.

CNN had been scheduled to fly with Donald Trump to Tennessee for a college football game, the network said on Friday The White House confirmed CNN’s exclusion when it did not list the network on guidance sent to the press corps regarding Trump’s schedule for Saturday.

CNN’s exclusion from Air Force One was first reported by the Washington Post. The White House did not immediately return the Guardian’s request for comment.

The incident comes a week after Trump, a vocal critic of what he deems the “fake news media”, revoked White House access for CNN, Politico, and MS Now, citing unfavorable reports about his presidency.”

There must be better ways of keeping the media on your side!

Isn’t it odd that so many people go on holidays where they stretch out on the beach and toast themselves to a nice shade of brown, or spend money to lie on a sun-bed and toast themselves? It’s odd because so much importance is so often given to being white. I listened to something about Italians emigrating. The broadcaster said that Northern Italians found it easier to integrate into American society, for example, than Southern Italians. Southern Italians, he said, were considered inferior because they were more swarthy. So here’s a link to an article about some folk thinking you can’t really be English if you’re not white.

Some people might prefer us all to descended from some pure ENGLISH race, which is rather difficult as we are a proper mongrel race having been invaded and taken over by various groups forever! As the writer points out, we might question the Englishness of the king as his father was born in Greece. (MInd you all the various royal families have been intermarrying for so long that they are all related to each other and it must be hard to say what nationality the various members belong to.) And, as the writer also points out, it was easy to say English = White and White = English before we had second- and third (etc)-generation immigrants being English without being white! 

Maybe that’s one reason why so many people are investigating their ancestry. My family should be okay, by the way, as my mother always said that her family could be traced back to Bosworth Field (as in the Battle of …) . It may be true but it never benefitted us in any way! 

Maybe it’s time we stated to be citizens of the world! No more nationalist nonsense! And no more class nonsense!

Here’s a link to another article, this time about the lives of five people living in Gaza and the difficulty of carrying out everyday tasks that we take for granted. When everything in your life os controlled by powerful authorities, something as simple as making a cup of tea is extremely hard. You have limited supplies of gas, which you need for cooking main meals, and so you need to scrabble round for wood to make a fire to boil water for tea. Obtaining enough clean water for the family’s daily needs is a major problem and then you moght not even have tea in the first place. And here we just thoughtlessly pop the kettle on! There is a fundamental unfairness there!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!