Rain and riots and stuff.

I have been rather neglecting this blog in the last week or so.

Partly this has been because I have been busy in an uninteresting kind of way, just getting on with things and helping offspring number two get some decorating done. All in all, not really the stuff of blogs.

Then we had a major internet problem. There was a quite impressive electric storm one day and it appears that our BT internet box might have suffered from a power surge when an enormous thunderclap went off right overhead. Either that or the law of coincidences came into play. Either way, the box was as dead as a dodo and our internet connection went bust. We did manage to piggyback onto the pub next door but the connection was very, very slow.

Eventually the new box arrived and all was back to normal. However, I was still running around cleaning and painting and getting stuff done.

In the middle of all this, total mayhem broke out in London, leaving us in some concern about offspring number one who has made the capital city his home for a good few years now. He was fine, of course, just rather angry at what was being done to “his” city. Understandable I suppose. After all, he had visited some of the restaurants targeted by the mob and that does make it all feel a little more personal. And there were some fine old buildings destroyed; they survived two world wars and disappeared in one night of rioting more or less.

On Tuesday night the madness spread to our own city of Manchester with semi-organised gangs running the police ragged and stealing designer goods from what looked like selected stores. I’ve had an ongoing Facebook conversation with a friend of mine who maintains that this is the deprived underclass striking back. Maybe ... but I note that among those arrested are an army recruit, a graphic designer, a classroom assistant, a university graduate ... shouldn’t these people be a bit more responsible?

Anyway, yesterday I had planned to meet an old friend in Liverpool. We planned to take in the art galleries, have lunch and catch up with our news. It was with some trepidation that I set off to cross two cities which had suffered problems from rioters and looters but there really wasn’t any difficulty. Liverpool looked just the same as it did last time I went, just rather wetter. On my return to Manchester, I walked the length of Deansgate (still in the pouring rain), taking in St Ann’s Square en route. It was all rather sad with boarded up shops and many more taking the precaution of closing early. The place looked rather like a very wet ghost town. I hope it gets back to normal soon.

Travelling to Liverpool from Manchester by train is quite enjoyable, if only for the names of the places you go through. I suppose Eccles is reasonable enough although it does have you thinking of the old Goon Show. But where do names like Patricroft and Whiston come from? Then there is Earlestown which sounds as though it should be in an old western or maybe in a Sprinsgteen song about the working man.

The most appropriately named place, given the weather, is probably Rainhill. It has certainly rained all around here for days and days and days. There were veritable rivers running down Deansgate as I walked along there yesterday. Summer seems to have gone awol once again in the northwest of England. I spotted an article in La Voz de Galicia last week complaining that the summer was rather poor over there as well with temperatures 3° lower than usual, if that’s any consolation for us here. Mind you, I’ve checked the weather online and I see that Vigo is still managing temperatures in the upper 20s so I think it’s rather warmer than here. So it goes.

Finally, a little comment on automation and the job situation. On the train yesterday I read a little item in the newspaper about a town called Hombourg-Haut in the north of France, near the German border. An enterprising chap there has made an automatic baguette-dispenser. Instead of queuing up in the baker’s shop and chatting with the boulangère about the terrible weather we are having, you put some money in a slot and the machine pops out a steaming hot loaf of bread. Some 4,500 loaves were sold that way in July of this year.

What about all the jobs in bread shops? Will they disappear of this new automatic way of selling bread becomes the norm.