Wind, rain and work experience!

Yesterday, with high winds forecast and the possibility of heavy rain, I carried my big, strong umbrella round Manchester like a talisman to keep the rain away. Small, more portable, folding umbrellas are no use in the wind; they just blow inside out and end up wrecked. The talisman/lucky charm element of my umbrella worked; it stopped the rain falling on me anyway. I just carted it around and tried to leave it in only one place. As a rule when I have the big umbrella with me, I end up having to run back to shops I have been in to retrieve it from where it has been propped next to the till while I pay. 

I was out and about for the day, well the afternoon and evening, which is more or less the whole day when you take travelling into account: Italian class in the afternoon and Stanza poetry group in the Stalybridge Railway Station Buffet in the evening. Consequently, there being no time to go home between events, I ended up snacking in Waterstone's Bookshop Cafe before going to the station for the train to Stalybridge. I now have yet another loyalty card to add to my collection. If I remember to get it stamped each time I have a coffee in the bookshop cafe, eventually I can claim a free coffee. The difficult thing is remembering where you have put all the loyalty cards. 

 In the cafe, earwigging on an earnest conversation in Spanish on one table and a very camp conversation about studying acting on another, I skimmed the newspapers online. There I read that the Spanish bullfighter Francisco Rivera is being investigated by the child protection agency in his native Andalucía after he posted a picture online of him fighting a bull with his five-month-old daughter, Carmen, in his arms. As expected, animal rights groups came out to say how awful he is and bullfighting aficionados praised him – some even nominating him “father of the year”. As María José Sánchez Rubio, the equality minister, said on the radio: “A fireman wouldn’t dream of taking a child to put out a fire, nor would a football player run around with a child in their arms during a match.” 

But Rivera denied he had put the child at risk. “It’s outrageous to say I put my child in danger,” he said. “There is no safer place for her to be than in my arms. This is Carmen’s debut, the fifth bullfighting generation in my family. My grandfather did the same with my father, my father with me, and me with my daughters Cayetana and now Carmen.” Other bullfighters, such as El Cordobés, posted photos of themselves with their children in the bullring. Crazy people! But I suppose you have to be a bit crazy to enter such a profession. 

You can't even say, "only in Spain". There are aficionados of fox hunting who take small children out with the hunt. It would seem that if you are keen on a potentially dangerous and definitely harmful-to-animals sport, you feel that children should be initiated into it as soon as possible. 

And then there was Steve Irwin, the Australian wildlife enthusiast. He grew up in a wildlife park run by his parents and later made a series of TV shows about wild animals. Both my granddaughter and a former student of mine, when asked what they wanted be when they grew up, would tell me, "I want to be Steve Irwin". My granddaughter was only six or seven at the time; my student was sixteen going on seventeen! Anyway, Steve Irwin used to take his daughter to work with him. He was criticised for putting her at risk when she was only a toddler and, like the bullfighters, declared that she was perfectly safe with him. It gives a whole new way of looking at "Take your Child to Work Day"! 

Today dawned windy and grey but dry. So I followed my Wednesday routine for non-rainy days and jogged to Uppermill to buy stuff at the weekly market. Imagine my surprise when I found the square empty apart from the fish van. The young lady who helps the fishman said that it had been pouring with rain and blowing a gale in Fleetwood when they set off and wondered if the weatherman's promise that such weather would come our way might have put the other stall holders off. Who knows? One of life's little mysteries. 

The promised wind and rain did arrive later in the morning, proving once again that you have to get up early to get the best of the day!