Cold weather - here and elsewhere. Twitter cancellations. Comparing coups. Eccentric pet owners.

It was bright and sunny when I ran along a rather crisp and frozen Donkey Line at around 9.00 this morning. Crisp and bright and sunny and very cold but a good day to be out and about in. Something must have happened while I was in the shower because by the time I emerged the sunshine and blue sky had disappeared and the cloud had moved in. Crisp and dull and dank and very cold and nowhere near as inviting to be out and about in. So it goes. 

It could be worse. As I watched the weather forecast on TV last night I noticed a large snowy mass over much of central Spain. According to this article Storm Filomena moved in and people had to be rescued from their cars stuck in the snow in the Madrid region. Photos in the article look like the pictures we usually see of New York in the snow. To think that there are people here who believe that it is always HOT all over Spain all year round! And, of course, there are those like my Spanish sister who live in the south and think it’s VERY COLD when the temperature dips below 15 degrees.

Onto other things. 

So Twitter has permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account to “prevent further incitement to violence”. There has been a certain amount of outcry, talk of wrongfully restricting freedom of speech and so on. Some people think Trumphas been silenced and that that is wrong. Erin Brockovich, an American legal clerk, consumer advocate, and environmental activist, had this to say about that idea:

“The President has NOT been silenced by the Twitter ban. He has a press room right in his house. He’s more than welcome to step up to the podium, speak and even take some questions. He is NOT a victim.”

In response to suggestions that media giants are deciding who can say what, somebody else, just an ordinary, not at all famous person, pointed out that Twitter is a private company and can choose who,it allows to use it’s facilities. After all, entities like Twitter and Facebook don’t want to find themselves accused of fomenting violence and racism and general intolerance and anti-social behaviour.

I do find myself wondering, however, whether the damage has not already been done. Trump says he is not going to attend Biden’s inauguration but will his supporters choose to be there just to cause chaos? Biden may have won but I don’t think he’s going to have an easy ride.

In this article Giles Tremlett compares Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol with Spain’s 23F - the 23rd of February 1981 when the Spanish Cortes were invaded in an attempt to restore a Franco-style regime. The organisers thought they were doing what King Juan Carlos wanted but he spent the rest of that day and night appealing to army leaders around the country not to put their tanks put on the streets, to maintain calm and to accept the new regime. His young son, now King Felipe, was with him throughout this peacemaking effort. It’s rather a shame that this side of the former king’s story has been so overshadowed by later events in his life. He definitely seemed to go over to the dark side as he grew older but the good he did in former times should not be forgotten. 

Well, that’s what I think anyway. 

That’s enough serious stuff. Now for lighter matters. Our oldest granddaughter has an odd collection of pets, ranging from the perfectly normal to the decidedly odd. There is the recently acquired border collie, young and bouncy and apparently given to barking in the wee, small hours; a cat, nervous, not sure about the dog, and not allowed out of the house except on a lead for fear she might get lost; a bearded dragon, a rather fine, bright orange specimen, who sometimes looks as thought he might like to eat the cat; a small tortoise who has an amazing turn of speed; a small snake, a fussy eater; four fancy rats, extremely smelly, although their owner vehemently denies this is so; some land crabs, a rather scuttling choice of pets; a rescue frog - we “rescued” her from the garden compost pile at the start of summer and she has lived in a tank indoors ever since; and finally some African snails, the most incomprehensible of pets.

I was reminded of this menagerie and Granddaughter Number One’s tendency to argue vehemently that they are all super cute when I read an article about the writer Patricia Highsmith. I think it’s the centenary of her birth or some other significant anniversary. The writer of the article doesn’t paint a terrible appealing picture of the writer:

“she was a hateful person. She was shockingly, unrepentantly racist and antisemitic, even with respect to the era in which she lived. She believed gay people were essentially unfaithful and promiscuous and incapable of true sexual passion; she had a nasty habit of murdering versions of her ex-lovers in her fiction; she believed menstruating women should not be permitted in libraries. This mix of misogyny and homophobia coming from a gay woman might seem surprising; the truth was, while she didn’t like other people, she didn’t much like herself, either.”

But here comes the bit where she reminded me of Granddaughter Number One:-

“Which is not to say that she wasn’t, in her own way, endearing. She was, after all, a genius, a bona fide eccentric. She loved animals, particularly snails, which she kept by the hundred as pets and took to parties clinging to a leaf of lettuce in her handbag. Writer and critic Terry Castle describes how she once “smuggled her cherished pet snails through French customs by hiding six or eight of them under each bosom”.”

When I passed this information on to Granddaughter Number one, her response was simply, “Well, at least I don’t take mine to parties!” And to be fair she doesn’t have hundred, only three or four!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!