Oh dear! Oh, deer! The oddness of the modern world!

Cities in Spain have problems with wild boar wandering into the outskirts - and maybe even the centre. Some places have problems with wolves. A friend of ours in Canada had told us about bears coming into town looking for food and even had one in his own garden.

So what do we get in Manchester? Deer!

A female deer was seen swimming in the canal at the Castlefield end of town yesterday. Goodness knows how she got there, Maybe she fell in in one of the outer districts of Manchester and just kept on swimming. But how far out do you need to go to find deer falling in the canal.

The RSPCA told the BBC: “We received a report from the police that a medium-sized female deer was in the canal in Manchester city centre this afternoon but it managed to get out. We were then told the deer was stranded on some land near the canal but it again managed to get free and ran away before our officers could attend.”

Once out of the canal she ran onto Oxford Road, a busy road full of scary (for a deer) people and even more scary, not to mention dangerous, cars. And then they lost it. No reports of a car-deer crash so we can hope she managed to get away!

We never even used to see deer around here at our end of Greater Manchester, and we are literally minutes away from open country. Now I am told that there are lots of them in the valley between Delph and Denshaw but they must have hidden well when I have walked there. We did see a couple in a field on the edge of the village and one ran across the Donkey Line bridle path in front of me. But we are hardly city centre Manchester.

All part of the oddness of the world!

Here’s some more:-

About twenty years ago now I took my daughter and granddaughter - the one who is now an independent adult of sorts - on a visit to my sister’s house in southern Spain. Her then eight year old son was very proud of a hat they had bought for him at the market. This, I was informed was a “Gran Hermano” hat, a style worn by one of the participants in the TV show. I had never heard of this show. When it was described to me - a selected bunch of people living in a house, pretty much out of contact with the outside world, their every action and interaction filmed and broadcast to a public who would vote on who should be ejected - I was amazed and declared that you would never see such a thing on English TV. “Oh, Mum,” said my daughter, “they are about to start broadcasting ‘Big Brother’ any time now! Do keep up!”

And so it began! Reality TV, showing a reality that most of us don’t want to live. And now we have had the big scandal of the Jeremy Kyle show (where members if the public seem to have family fights and arguments on screen) and its eventual permanent shutdown after a participant allegedly killed himself through humiliation and despair after being subjected ta a lie-detector test on the show.

There are two things I don’t understand :-

 1. why people watch such stuff

 2. why people want to participate.

As for watching it, I suppose people take a kind of delight in their life not being as horrific as that of the participants. And people have always watched others suffer. Think of bear baiting. Or even boxing matches, for that matter.

But surely if you volunteer to take part you must already have an idea of what to expect. Sowhy do it? Does the fifteen minutes of fame really compensate for being made to look a complete idiot.

It simply beggars belief!

And finally here is a bit of mistranslation. I have a French friend who lives in Vigo - both a real friend and a Facebook friend. She regularly posts pictures of the sunset over the sea on Vigo bay or birds in her garden, with the greeting “Amitiés de Vigo” - friendly greeting from Vigo. The other evening the automatic translation system went into gear and translated it to “friendships of Vigo” - each word correctly translated, if they were in a different context, but the whole coming down to a piece of “translationese” gobbledegook.

Humans are not likely to be replaced by machines at this rate!