According to certain rumours the Prime Minister and the First Fiancée are planning to set up crowd funding to finance the refurbishment of their residence above Number Ten. Crowd funding is is an odd modern phenomenon which allows you to ask complete strangers for money, usually to send someone on a long journey to a faraway place for some kind of medical treatment, without any of that old stigma of “asking for charity”. Doing up the PM’s residence doesn”t quite fit the profile. Of course, maybe it’s just an urban myth, but I’m ready to bet there are people willing to contribute. If this fundraising is successful, will it set a precedent? After all Boris Johnson can’t be PM forever! Or can he?
Another story going round is that the WHO is warning that we won’t be rid of Covid by the end of this year. Here we all are, hoping that the vaccine is going to get life back to something like normal for us. But we’ve now got all these new strains of the virus popping up, surprising some people, as if viruses had never before mutated. I tend to feel we should wait and see what happens as all the children go back to school. Personally, I just want to be able to go to see my hairdresser again! We shall see.
On the other side of the Channel there is debate about the rights and wrongs, the benefits or otherwise, of locking down Paris every weekend to prevent the spread of Covid. The mayor Paris has said that such a move would be “inhumane”.
“Very many residents of Paris, and even if it’s not my direct responsibility, areas like Seine-Saint-Denis, live in cramped apartments without any outside space, sometimes even several generations under the same roof. We know that these residents have already paid a heavy price because of this epidemic,” she said.
“We know that the coronavirus is transmitted more in closed and badly ventilated places. Outside, there is less risk of catching Covid, especially if one wears a mask and respects the protection measures.”
It’s a hard decision. Other places in France have done it. Last weekend, Dunkirk, Nice and 63 towns and villages around the Alpes-Maritimes were put under lockdown from 6pm on Friday to 6am on Monday after a surge in Covid-19 infections. Paris, however, is a lot bigger! They need to get going on those vaccinations.
Some time ago there was a suggestion that ballet dancers, for example, should retrain as IT technicians. Here’s a link to an article about musicians who have become delivery drivers. So when your next online purchase arrives, you never know what kind of talented person might be making the delivery.
Now, cultural appropriation and the demands that the “right” people should play certain roles has taken a new twist. I’ve gone on before now about what I see as the silliness that says only gay actors can play gay characters or only disable actors can play disabled characters. The clue is in the name of the profession; it’s all acting! Now it seems the same thing has come into the world of translation.
Amanda Gorman, American poet and activist, who has been America’s Youth Poet Laureate, delivered her poem “The Hill we Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration. A Dutch publishing company planned to translate her latest collection into Dutch. They selected a translator, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Then the trouble started. Amanda Gorman is black. Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is not. Those who objected said a translator who was, like Gorman, a “spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black” should have been chosen. The poet and the proposed translator are pretty much the same age and Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is a published poet. So she should be good with words, which is the important thing. But she’s not black! Anyway, she has now decided not to accept the work. I feel quite indignant on her behalf.
So it goes!
It is still rather cold though.
And the swans are still on the millpond, this morning tipping themselves upside down in the water!
How long will they stay?
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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