Yesterday evening, on our after dinner stroll, we were struck by the strange sunset, with curious rays shooting upwards into the sky. Most impressive.
Earlier in the day I had been on yet another “adventure” with our daughter and the children. The small children have to come along willy nilly but we persuaded to two older daughters, 17 and 23, to join in the fun. Their 15 year old brother was having none of this outdoor activity however. The younger of the two sister was enthusiastic as we planned another walk up to Heights Church, one of the local high spots as its name indicates, because she really likes the old churchyard up there.
The older sister was at first rather reluctant - “What? All the way up to Heights?” - but we dragged her along anyway and her enthusiasm grew as we walked. Once up at the top she spent quite a long time examining old gravestones and exclaiming at brevity of some people’s lives and the sadness of family on the late 1800s who seemed to lose one child after another before the children reached the age of one year old.Sad times indeed!
We go on fairly sedate adventures, admittedly making our way up fairly steep hills and occasionally following rather dubious-looking footpaths.Other people are much more truly adventurous.
I read about a young girl who has aspirations to represent the UK on her skateboard in the next Olympic games. 12 year old Sky Brown has described the film, captured by someone’s mobile phone, of her last skateboarding accident as “cool”:-
“Brown’s arms and legs flail helplessly as if seeking some kind of invisible traction while she plummets 15 feet. The camera drops to the ground as her father runs towards his little girl. She was still only 11 years old and Brown suffered multiple fractures in her skull, lacerations to her lungs and stomach, a broken left arm and busted fingers on her right hand.”
She reckons her helmet saved her life - quite so! Some six weeks later, however, still with limbs in plaster, she was back on her skateboard, not doing flips and somersaults though but still being rather daring. My question is this: what were her parents doing allowing a child with limbs in plaster even look at a skateboard?!
Sky Brown and her younger brother Ocean (yes, Sky and Ocean!) live in California, as you might guess, but she can represent the UK because her father is an Englishman. She would like to be a role model and encourage other girls to take up skateboarding.
In Australia, meanwhile, at least three women have been injured swimming in an area where there are whales and their calves. One of the women, who was on a snorkelling tour at the reef, said, “The calf decided to come check us out and ended up being between us and the mum, so mum went into protective mode and swung back. As she did that to put herself between us and the calf, her fin came out and got me.”
That sounds like a large female animal protecting her young. Once again I have a question: why would you swim in a bay where there are large, protective female mammals with their young?
I wonder, as I have often done before, what motivates some people to engage in dangerous occupations, especially if they don’t add much to the sum of human knowledge.
I am getting a little annoyed with some of the arguments being brought to bear in the discussion about schools opening. I just heard a politician on the radio say that if if we had imposed on supermarkets the conditions demanded by teaching unions for schools there would have been no supermarkets open during the lockdown. Yes, people needed to buy food but, looking at it all realistically, nobody obliges anyone to spend 6 hours or more a day in the supermarket. The important question, as the same politician said, is “What about the kids?”
And so the debate rolls on and on. Some people are finding positives in the lockdown and our continuing social distancing. According to this article “lockdown and physical distancing measures have helped reduce the incidence of flu, colds, bronchitis and a host of viruses other than Covid-19 in England, monitoring suggests.” That sounds fairly logical, given that we have largely not been in buses breathing on each other so much. Even measles and other childhood illnesses were reduced as children were not in nursery and school. Nobody knows whether there will be an explosion of colds and bronchitis as we move out of lockdown and into winter.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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