Travelling home thoughts.

We’re at the airport in Porto, making use if their very efficient free wifi, waiting for our flight to Liverpool. The weather, of course, improved considerably today as we leave the Iberian Peninsula. So it goes.

As the newspapers predict a big outbreak of coronavirus in the UK , it crosses our mind that perhaps we should have stayed in Galicia. But then, we are on our way now and, besides, is anywhere going to be clear of it. I hear that the chaos continues in Italy.

I read yesterday about a 64 year old becoming the oldest woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean.  What springs to my mind is the question: WHY? It strikes me that almost running out of food and having to row for an hour and a half at a time in huge seas with very little sleep is a rather drastic way to keep your weight under control. But then, we are all crazy in our own way, I suppose.

And here we go again on the oddities of the modern world.Woody Allen’s family/step family/adopted family have accused him of abuse. None of us really know the truth of this matter. The publishing company Hachette bought his autobiography but have now decided not to publish after all, largely because of protests from Dylan and Ronan Farrow. Whatever the truth of the abuse scandal, I find myself agreeing with Jo Glanville, who wrote the Opinion piece for newspaper, when she (or maybe he) writes this:-

 “The staff at Hachette who walked out were not behaving like publishers, they were acting as censors. I have been watching Woody Allen films since I was a child and I would like to read his book. I would even want to read his book if he were found guilty, because I am interested in the man, his work and his life. I do not check up on the moral purity or criminal record of a writer before I read them. I would have to strip my bookshelves of many of the writers I love the most if I were going to start to apply the principles of the Hachette staff. TS Eliot and Roald Dahl for a start, as antisemites. In fact most of the English canon would have to be chucked on that basis.”

Then there is the apparent ignorance of the modern world. Here is Jess Cartner-Morley on Paris fashion week:-

  “A great leap forward calls for sturdy footwear. The days when Parisian chic required dainty courts are over. The word on the ground from Paris is that sturdy boots are the new trainers: at Hermès and Dior, chunky riding boots ruled. Virginie Viard called her flat, biker-meets-wellie-style Chanel footwear “seven-league boots”, after the kind that Lagerfeld used to wear. (In Charles Perrault’s fairytales, a seven-league boot allows the wearer to travel seven leagues – around 21 miles – in each stride.) The 2020 version of French chic is surely its most practical incarnation ever. This look is a fashion-week dream that works for real life. Too good not to copy, frankly. I am proud to call myself a faux-Parisian.”

My point is that she feels obliged to explain seven league boots! Do people no longer read fairy stories?