Fixing stuff.

There's a feature in the Observer magazine on a Sunday called "Things We Love". Basically it's a series of photos of stuff someone has selected as desirable bits and pieces to have about the home. I wonder if they receive free samples or if the producers of all this stuff pay the paper for giving them a mention. Anyway, the latest edition included something called Hokan bowls, which look like black Tupperware. 

The description says, "Not only are these bowls ideal for January leftovers, they are also perfect for cooking baking and serving". At £87 for three bowls these seem to me to be rather expensive containers. What's wrong with ice cream tubs? So I looked up Hokan and found this: 

"The Hokan /ˈhoʊkæn/ language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California. 

The term is often used as a convenient label to simplify one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world. The name Hokan is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan languages: *xwak in Proto-Yuman, c-oocj (pronounced [koːkx]) in Seri, ha'k in Achumawi, etc. 

These languages are spoken by Native American communities around and east of Mount Shasta, others near Lake Tahoe, the Pomo on the California coast, and the Yuman peoples along the lower Colorado River." 

It went on quite a lot more but enough is enough. Hokan would seem, then, to be some kind of Native American thing. Something mainly linguistic. So I wondered if the advertised bowls were somehow related to Native American crafts and had a further hunt on the internet. Of course, when you go on the hokanbowls webpage it turns out not be tupperware at all: 

"New and unique; innovative kitchen ware that you can cook with, bake with, store in and serve from, providing real help in the kitchen. Exclusively launched through this website only. Premium quality cookware specially designed and produced to be a robust and durable kitchen aid for everyday use; from the fridge, to oven, to table, and back again! 

The set comprises of 3 stoneware bowls with stoneware lids; small (400ml), medium (600ml) and large (1000ml) glazed in a deep Cobalt Blue. Designed to stack one on top of the other saving precious fridge space. 

High fired deep glazed stoneware to last a lifetime. Oven safe, Microwave safe, Dishwasher and Freezer safe." 

Lovely, undoubtedly the kind of thing you would love to have in your kitchen but what does it have to do with the languages of California? No idea! Life is too short and too full of other things to do to spend any more time fretting about it. 

Here are some things that I have decided need fixing:- 

Water everywhere! Ever since the great rains started we have had a lively stream of water flowing down our street. Some time just before Christmas workmen came and had a look at it. They dug holes, they removed grid covers and poked around. Then they put a temporary fence around the hole and went away. They came and had another look on New Year's Eve and went away once more. We are very fortunate that it has not been icy cold, for our road would surely have been turned into a skating rink. I said as much yesterday morning to the workman who was digging out the hole they made just before Christmas. He told me the rain is the problem. If it would stop raining then they could fix the drains which are getting silted up with sand and gravel and such washed down by the rain. I could have told him that the rain was the problem myself but I thanked him politely, wished him every success and went off to continue my run. It needs fixing though.

Holes! First there is the growing hole, not dug by workmen, where the water running down the road has eroded the top surface of the tarmac. This is not the only hole around here. My running route, or at any rate one of my running routes, takes me along a path by an old mill pond. Over the weekend a huge hole has appeared in the path. I thought at first it might be a sink hole - there has been a spate of sink holes, far bigger than my little specimen, around the Greater Manchester area in recent months - because I could not see where the contents of the hole had gone to. Then I realised that a little further up the path the layer of gravel has grown extra thick. Someone needs to fix it. 

Guns! President Obama is trying to fix the problem of guns by tightening up on the background security checks on people who buy guns at gun shows. He has been getting very agitated about it all and has finally decided that something must be done. I might start by restricting gun shows. Gun shows? For heaven's sake! Who goes to gun shows? Who buys all these guns? Why does anyone who is not running an army need machine guns and hand held rocket launchers. That bit of craziness needs fixing! 

Certain attitudes in Northern Ireland! Medical staff in Northern Ireland are supposed to report to the police women who ask for help after having bought miscarriage-inducing pills over the internet. Staff who are discovered not to have reported such cases face legal problems themselves. Midwives are worried about women who buy such pills and work on the assumption that if you are eight weeks pregnant you take two a day for a week, then if you are sixteen weeks pregnant you can just take double the dose. The consequences are scary. The whole things is scary! How can somewhere that is part of the UK have such different laws? 

Priorities! A village in china has built a huge statue of chairman Mao. Vast amounts of money has been spent on it, money that could gave been spent feeding the hungry or improving the social infrastructure. Fix it! 

And finally, praising photos of drunken people in Manchester on New Year's Eve! There has been a lot of tweeting and twittering during which the photo has been compared to renaissance paintings. The balance of the composition is described as artistically perfect. Now as for me, it reminds me of some of Grayson Perry's tapestries, "The vanity of Small Differences". The difference of course is that he deliberately chose the placing of the elements in his picture whereas the photographer had to snap people where they fell. 

Or did he? Maybe he fixed it.