Travelling light. And this and that.

As my last day in Vigo for a while has dawned fine and sunny but a little cool, I reflect on summer’s oddness. It is highly likely that, as in other years, the weather will radically improve as soon as I leave and they will have a brilliant September and even October. We always used to have brilliant Septembers in the Northwest of England back when I was teaching full time. The sun would usually shine on enrolment for sixth form college day and continue to do so for the first three or four weeks of term.

This often led to an invasion of wasps in the classroom. It is astounding how shrill and squealy 16 year old girls, and boys for that matter, can be when a wasp is around. They were equally shrill and squealy when I rolled up a magazine and dispatched the wasps to wasp heaven. Quite what they expected me to do I have no idea.

Since I retired Autumn in the UK has generally not provided the same kind of Indian summer. So it goes. I can live in hope. And maybe it will work and I can get my bike out once again. Unlike the cycling lady I see most days at the Wednesday market in Uppermill, I am very much a fair weather cyclist. Running in the rain is one thing. Cycling in the rain is a different matter.

So my bag (a very small bag as the extra cost of taking a larger one made the price of my return ticket quite astronomical) is packed and I am ready to go.

Here is an odd item of news I gleaned yesterday:-

A customer fatally shot a waiter at a pizzeria on the outskirts of Paris, apparently enraged at being made to wait for a sandwich, according to witnesses.

Goodness, had he not heard of the complaints book. I have heard of, indeed witnessed, road rage but restaurant rage is something else again!

The gunman, who a witness said lost his temper “as his sandwich wasn’t prepared quickly enough”, fled the scene. Police have opened a murder investigation. With the shooter still on the run on Saturday, shocked residents gathered outside the pizza and sandwich eatery. “He was killed for a sandwich?” one asked, unbelievingly. “It is sad,” said a 29-year-old woman. “It’s a quiet restaurant, without any problems. It just opened a few months ago.” Others noted high crime levels in the area, notably drug-dealing and public drunkenness. Amazing

This article talks about the decline, or lack of decline depending on your point of view, of the English language.

As a person who moans a lot about the way some people speak and write, I know I can be a bit of a pedant, but I found the article interesting. I particularly lliked this bit:-

 “This is what the author Douglas Adams had to say about technology. Adapted slightly, it could apply to language, too:

– Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

– Anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary.

– Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.”

 That could also apply to how we feel about fashion - the shortness of girls’ shorts, tattoos, multiple piercings - or music or art. Anything in fact! Even the weather, I expect!

 We grow older and try not to grow more intolerant. Sometimes it is difficult.