Changing times!

It’s official: the UK is the most obese nation in western Europe, according to figures released by the OECD. Obesity here has gone up by 92% since the 1990s. And all of this despite our becoming more and more of a nanny state.

There’s a bit of me that says the state as such should not really be held responsible for people growing fatter. Oh, I know the government is in charge of education, but I don’t remember vast amounts of time being spent on learning how to be healthy when I was in school. Education was about Maths and English and History and Geography and Modern Foreign Languages and Music and the like.

But of course, the government must be seen to be doing something to counteract an “epidemic” which is affecting so many people and costing the health service money (if, that is, the health service continues to exist. Have we grown more tolerant - possible not the correct word, accepting might be better - of people being fatter? I am reminded of someone I knew, back in 1990s, whose husband would not complain or criticise her for putting on weight; he simply said that she should buy bigger clothes. Has our growing on average fatter been seen as a sign that the nation is being well fed? And then suddenly, it no longer means being well fed but wrongly fed!

I also read today about a mysterious radioactive cloud over Europe, released from some unknown origin during the last week in September. The last week in September!?! And I am just reading about it now!?! I know I have been away from TV news broadcasts for a couple of weeks but even so, I would have expected to hear about it before now. And they are trying to reassure me that this has not been harmful. Radioactive clouds are bad news in my opinion.

Pretty soon I’ll be siding with the conspiracy theorists.

The clouds today all looked remarkably harmless. A fine autumn day, in fact. Mind you, I would not recognise a radioactive cloud if it came and tapped me on the shoulder.

So I have been out and about in this fine, albeit rather chilly, autumn weather. I was on a mission to find fabric. My oldest grandchild has a project - she does this mind of thing at this time of year - to sew a rag doll for her boyfriend’s small niece, who has complained that all the dolls in the shops are the wrong colour for her, a mixed race child. The creative granddaughter was supposed to have located fabric so that we could make a start on the project this weekend. Not a thing has she done! Empty promises!

I was uncertain about finding fabric on sale around here. Back in the 1970s, when I made a lot of my own clothes, fabric shops were all over the place. Like wool shops and haberdashers, they have become elusive. In Spain, I still see them all over the place. For how long? i wonder! The local market seemed like a good place to start. I asked at the wool stall there, not expecting much joy. “The outdoor market”, the stall holder told me, “is full of fabric sellers on a Saturday!”

And so it was. I took a good look around and then joined the serried ranks of ladies buying fabric. It was a strange experience: I swear I was the only non-Asian customer at the stalls I visited.

Does nobody else get their sewing machines out these days? Apart from my granddaughter and me, that is. 

My oldest granddaughter, by the way, was most impressed with my purchases: suitable-coloured fabric for the body and a collection of odds and ends of patterned stuff to create a wardrobe for the doll. Now I just need to pin her down to find a date and time to begin Project Doll in earnest!