Disappointing moon. Manchester bees. Job titles. Food.

Well, as I predicted, we did not see hide nor hair of the moon last night. Too much cloud. So no views of the much talked-about blood moon. No sightings of the eclipse. All in all, a big let down.

The last time there was an eclipse of the sun in the UK it was a fine day. I was out running and kept seeing the sun with a chunk missing out of the corner of my eye. It was very hard not to look at it although I knew that it was dangerous to do so. When I got home I had fun following some instructions I found online about casting shadows onto the floor through something with holes in it, such as a colander, and seeing interesting patterns showing the progress of the eclipse. Why did we never do stuff like that in science when I was a kid in school?

But, as I said, the total eclipse of the moon was a big disappointment. The same thing happens back home whenever they say that there will be a meteorite shower. The cloud moves in and there is no chance of even trying to catch a falling star!

The bee is a symbol of Manchester. I was never aware of this before the Arena bombing after the Ariana Grande concert. Then suddenly everyone was sporting bee symbols on their cars, getting bee tattoos and generally showing off their bee-affiliation to the city. Here is a link to photos of bee statues that have apparently been put up all over the city centre.

Here is a link to yet another article about women’s size and body image and so on. It has a lot of the usual stuff that you can’t argue with about how important it is for people not to be pressurised to conform to social pressures. A couple of things struck me as I read it.


Firstly, describing a young woman featured in the article it said:

“This year, for the first time, she wore a bikini on holiday. When she posted photos of herself by the pool, she received vicious abuse, but the freedom was revelatory, and the memory of it continues to make her smile.”

Now, here in Spain I see women of all shapes and sizes, and ages for that matter, wearing bikinis. (That’s another thing: there is a kind of unstated belief that beyond a certain age you should stop wearing a bikini!) Do Spanish women not post photos of themselves in bikinis? Or does nobody worry about it and so the abuse does not happen? Or is it just that I have not heard about it?

Secondly, I came across the description of someone as a “certified eating counsellor”. Not just a nutritionist but a certified eating counsellor. This approach apparently “rejects restricted eating in favour of recognising the body’s own signs for hunger and satiety”. Presumably this means learning to recognise when you have had enough to eat rather than alternately binging and starving. Eating sensibly in other words. But, what a curious job description!

On the subject of nutrition, I found some facts about how the heatwave is affecting food production in the UK.

Lettuce is struggling, wilting, you might say! Average wholesale prices for lettuce are up nearly 22% year on year as the long spell of warm weather has lifted demand by 40%, while yields are down by 25%. Lettuces stop growing in high temperatures and the heads can be damaged by heat. Wholesalers and farmers have been forced to fly in supplies from abroad to meet contracts with supermarkets. Yet here, in the Mercadona supermarket next door, iceberg lettuce still sells for €1 here, in fact down to 70 céntimos yesterday.

Apple growers would like some rain but the long sunny spell will mean sweeter fruit. However, they might need to negotiate with supermarkets to persuade to accept smaller fruit. We have all grown too accustomed to standard sizes for our fruit.

Dairy farmers are having to use fodder intended to feed their cattle later in the year as the hot weather has made much of the grass dry up. And as a result milk yields are lower than usual.

On the plus side raspberries are having a longer season than expected, making up,for a late start with the slow start to spring. And cherries are having a bumper crop.

It’s not all bad then!