On vegan runners and young female singers and how we look at things.

I thought I was going to have to run in the rain this morning but in the event the rain had stopped by the time I got myself organised to go out. Sometimes there are advantages to hitting the snooze button on your alarm! My normal running route is a little constricted in places by the strange collections of equipment that the roadworks people have established at various points along the road. Huge concrete pipes are enclosed in makeshift cages as if they are afraid that someone might steal them in the night. On reflection, I suppose it’s more a case of preventing the possibility of some drunken loon deciding to climb on top of them, slipping and hurting themselves and then suing the company for damages. All these things have to be taken into consideration in the modern world!

Skimming through the papers online later, over breakfast, I came across this article about runners and what they should and shouldn’t eat. The meat and protein people reckon that a vegan diet leaves serious deficiencies while the vegans claim that everything can be done the vegan way.

Then there was this:- “In 2004, I was the only vegan in the village,” says Fiona Oakes, a multi-world-record-breaking marathon runner. “But now you see vegan runners everywhere.”

I read that and wondered how you can recognise a vegan. I suppose that when they run they wear vegan running club vests. They are all much more serious runners than I am and have all the gear with logos to promote their cause when they take part in races and marathons. Otherwise, I found myself wondering, is there a special signalling system to let other vegans know you belong to their group, as people always told me existed for Freemasons?

I moved on to a report about music awards. Young Taylor Swift seems to have been doing well. I know very little about that young lady but as singer-songwriter Carole King appears to regard her as a friend and has recorded with her, then she can’t be bad.

In the report I read this:

“Swift, 29, has been embroiled in a high-profile feud with prominent talent manager Scooter Braun and her former record label over the rights to her back catalogue of six albums – a dispute that briefly put her performance at the AMAs under a cloud.
Swift publicly accused Braun last week of refusing permission for her to sing songs from her back catalogue at the awards show, urging her 122 million Instagram fans to let Braun “know how you feel about this”.”

Now, I thought such controlling behaviour by managers and record labels was a thing of the past. Didn’t Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers go,through a huge court case to rectify just such an injustice? And there it is again. I hope she gets it all sorted out.

The report also told us that, “The public spat culminated last week with Braun saying that his family had received “numerous death threats” and that he “would like to find a resolution”.”

Presumably angry fans were tweeting their anger in the form of death threats. Once again, social media makes life a little more dangerous than it should be.

And here’s another article about young female singers, some of whom I have heard, some I have simple heard of and others whose names means nothing to me at all. However it seems that young women are shouting about their rights.

Here’s an odd little fact from the article, concerning a young singer called Billie Eilish:-

“Female musicians have been subject to conflicting moral standards for longer than Eilish has been alive. Madonna, Janet Jackson and TLC knew them well – but the concept of the pop “role model”, expected to set an example to kids, solidified when the Spice Girls became the first female act to be marketed at children.
In the 70s and 80s, idols such as David Cassidy primed girls for a monogamous future. By comparison, the Spice Girls were lunatics conquering the asylum. But, given their fans’ youth – and the sponsors that used the band to reach them – they also had a duty of responsibility. Their real lives – the all-nighters and eating disorders – were hidden so effectively that Eilish, born in 2001, thought the band was made up, actors playing the roles of the group in Spiceworld: The Movie.”

In the days before social media really got going it was possible to hide all sorts of things, in the world of politics and in the world of pop. How things have changed!