Some Saint George’s Day thoughts!

Today is Saint George’s Day. He’s about the only Saint whose day I remember and that is only because 40 years ago when I was very pregnant someone said to me, “Get that baby born today and you can call him George!” That baby was born the next day and we did not call her George ... or even Georgina for that matter!

Today is also the Day of Sant Jordi, patron saint of Catalonia. I think the tradition is to give roses and books.

It’s also the day of San Giorgio in Sicily. But he is properly celebrated during the last week of May. We saw his celebrations in Ragusa Ibla last year. We should have been going again this year but a certain virus has rather kiboshed our travel plan!

Saint George of course never actually came to slay dragons in England. He was almost certainly born in Turkey. Here is an article all about him.

I love the footnote to the article, which reads: “This article was amended on 23 April 2020. The past tense of slay is slew, not slayed as we originally had.” A linguistic nicety.

Here is a little cartoon about George.

Today is also Shakespeare’s birthday - he’s quite old now!

Some of the newspapers have been making much of the fact that it is also the second birthday of Prince Louis of Cambridge (is he fourth in line for the throne?) but I am not posting any photos. It’s rather a pity Kate and William already had a child called George or they could have given that name to this one, born on the correct day, unlike his older brother! Maybe they should have swopped the names around. After all the royal family seems to do that with surnames quite often.

While I have children on my mind, here is something about the surprisingly titled “Lego Professor of Play” at the University of Cambridge:-

“He warns that formalised education appears to be creeping down the age range, and he is not convinced that didactic learning environments for young children offer long-term benefits. “I don’t think there’s any evidence it does anybody any great good. I think we ought to be stopping and potentially reversing it.” Opportunities for unstructured play in the early years are really important and expecting young children to sit and learn in structured environments for long periods does not fit with their developmental needs, he adds. “I haven’t yet seen any evidence that kids in systems that formalise education later do any worse. So I lean towards thinking we should formalise education a little later.””

At the other end of the educational scale there is apparently a bit of a row going on in the UK between examination boards, schools, the government and anyone else interested, all about whether pupils who are unhappy with their assessed grades for GCSE and A-Levels should have the chance to sit the exams in the autumn. This was seemingly promised to them but now the exam boards are not happy with the idea of paying for exam papers to be set when only a handful of pupils might sit them. Now, as a retired teacher, I was under the impression that the exams for this year would already have been set, and possibly even the actual papers printed. So why can those not be used?

I wonder what the Spanish are doing about the “oposiciones” exams.

Still on children, over in Spain restrictions on children going out to play have been lifted. Well, a little bit lifted. There was a fair bit of protest at the first idea that children could accompany a parent to buy food or medicine. The latest ruling seems to be this:-

“From Sunday, children who are 14 or under will be allowed out to walk and play in the streets for an hour a day between 9am and 9pm. They will need to stay within one kilometre of their homes and be accompanied at all times by an adult, who will be permitted to take a maximum of three children out at a time. Parks and communal play areas will remain out of bounds because of the risk of infection, but children will be allowed to take toys, balls and scooters with them.”

And children who live in rural areas will be able to go for walks in the countryside and in the woods ... maintaining social distancing, of course!

“Children will be allowed to run and jump and do exercise, but social distancing must always be observed.” So said the deputy PM. Hey ho! The sun is still shining here, not quite so brightly and the sky is not so uniformly blue but it’s still cheerful.

On the menu today we have tagliatelle with a homemade tomato sauce, now that I have tinned tomatoes once more!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!