Matters meteorological, dental, political, artistic and grammatical.

Well, for the last few days the wet weather seems to have stopped and has been replaced by crisp and cold. The frost may not have shifted from the back garden in two days but at least it has been mostly bright and clear. A big improvement.

We have had visitors over the weekend, preventing any real chance to take advantage of the fine weather and go for long walks as our visitors are not great walkers. While Phil took one of them off to play in a chess tournament yesterday - winning a nice prize in the process - I entertained the other half of the couple, only abandoning her briefly to go and buy us a newspaper so that she had the crossword to work at.

This morning I was up bright and early to see our visitors on their way and to phone my dentist and arrange to go for an emergency consultation. A crown fell out of my mouth and into my breakfast yesterday morning. Nothing like a gap-toothed smile to make you feel good! Fortunately I was able to arrange an appointment for early afternoon. So I will be able to go for a walk in the crisp and cold snd bright with my daughter and her little ones and she can then drop me off at the dentist’s, hopefully to simply stick the crown back in place.

Meanwhile the general election approaches and arguments flood back and forth about this and that. Boris Johnson’s family situation gets an airing from time to time, his refusal, or perhaps inability, to say how many children he has being held up as an example of his unreliability. Personally I don’t really care how many children he has fathered. Neither do I really see that it is any of our business. However, he shouldn’t be passing judgement on the way other people live, particularly single mothers, unless he is squeaky clean himself.

And then there is the terrorist attack in London. Inevitably this has been used as an opportunity for the Conservatives to blame Labour for yet another thing. One news report tells us:

“Boris Johnson has been accused of trying to create political capital out of the deaths of two people in the London Bridge terror attack. The prime minister was accused of twisting the facts of the London Bridge terror attack in a “distasteful” attempt to turn it into an election issue.
Despite the family of Jack Merritt, one of the victims, calling for the murder not to be exploited for political gain, Johnson sought to push a perceived political advantage on the issue, claiming that “a lefty government” was responsible for Usman Khan being freed.”

So it goes.

On to other matters.

I have never heard of the Danish artist Tal R but apparently he is “esteemed by experts”. These last are the words of Dann Thorleifsson who, with Arne Leivsgard, has a company that produces luxury wristwatches. They bought a painting by Tal R for £70,000 and plan to cut it up to make the decorative faces for a line of watches which will sell for around £1,500 each. The painting will make the backing for between 200 and 300 watches. Do the maths!

“We needed an artist that was esteemed by experts because we also needed to get a reaction,” Thorleifsson said. “If we just took a $100 canvas, no one would really care. It needed to be a true masterpiece.” It seems a shame to cut a paining up into tiny pieces, so small they will not be recognisable as anything. Would it not be possible to cut up a print of the painting and sell the watches for a little less? But who am Into comment on such things? I would not spend that kind of money on a watch anyway. A Danish court now has to decide whether the pair, described as “art provocaters” have the right to destroy the work of art.

Still on an art theme, of sorts, it seems that Amazon has been selling Christmas ornaments decorated with images of the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The museum at the site of the former camp in southern Poland has ctiticsed Amazon for this tasteless marketing. “Selling ‘Christmas ornaments’ with images of Auschwitz does not seem appropriate. Auschwitz on a bottle opener is rather disturbing and disrespectful,” the museum tweeted. It added later that Amazon appeared to have removed the items – but then posted a follow-up saying it had discovered others. 

The mind boggles!

I have been known to rant and rave about matters grammatical or punctuational, especially regarding the apostrophe. I was unaware that there was such a thing as the Apostrophe Protection Society but it seems it was started in 2001 by a retired journalist called John Richards. And now that I am aware of its existence it is closing down. Mr Richards has now announced: “With regret I have to announce that, after some 18 years, I have decided to close the Apostrophe Protection Society.
There are two reasons for this. One is that at 96 I am cutting back on my commitments and the second is that fewer organisations and individuals are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English Language."

Now,  Phil and I have been known in years gone by to sneak out and change notices outside the local pub, removing rogue apostrophes. The Apostrophe Protection Society may be no more but we shall continue in our small way to fight for its ideals.