Just as we were considering going out for an after-dinner stroll in the fine evening weather yesterday, the cloud moved in and somehow the prospect was not so appealing after all. It’s amazing what a short memory we have weatherwise and rapidly grow accustomed to fine weather and blue skies and evening sunshine. So it goes.
Today is overcast again but still quite warm, which suggests that the cloud is quite thin. It doesn’t seem to have decided whether it is going to rain later or not. My online weather forecast keeps changing. But we don’t have picnics or barbecues planned so it doesn’t really matter.
Last night I was listening to Neil Young, as you do, and he was revealed to be just a little bit sexist in his song lyrics, in his song Indian Givers:
“Bring back the days when good was good
Lose these imposters on our neighbourhood
Across our farms and through our waters
All at the cost of our sons and daughters
Yes our brave sons and beautiful daughters
.....”
Oh, dear, so our sons are brave and our daughters are beautiful are they? Could it not be the other way round? Maybe they could both be beautiful AND brave! I suppose it’s hard to get rid of conventional imagery, even when you are Neil Young.
I’d already winced at his grammar in Peace Trail:
“Up in the rain ow teepee sky
No one’s looking down on you or I
It’s just a mirror in your eye”.
This was his 36th album, released in 2016. What a busy man! It’s good job I like to listen to him. I guess I can forgive him a bit of bad grammar and I know he’s not really a sexist pig. And his heart is in the right place conservation-wise and human rights-wise.
The pub next door to us has been doing a roaring trade - literally roaring as Saturday evening got underway. Well, happy shouting if not actually roaring - no anger there! Why do people get noisy as they get drunk and happy?
Lots of people are glad to be able to go to restaurants and pubs once again. The people running pubs and restaurants are pleased too but apparently it’s not all plain sailing. I read this:
“And after months of enforced closure, hospitality venues, too, are pleased to have finally been able to reopen both their indoor and outdoor seating areas. But the easing of coronavirus restrictions has brought a fresh set of challenges.
While the customers have returned, many staff members haven’t – leaving the hospitality industry grappling with a severe staffing shortage, just as they set about trying to recoup some of the money lost over the past year.”
It’s not just Wetherspoons who are having problems then!
Possible worst hit are places like the Lake District where local populations are ageing - is a factor there that younger people are being priced out of home there by holiday-home buyers? Those areas don’t have an unemployments problem. Quite the reverse: they can’t recruit because there is nobody to recruit. In the past they relied on season workers from Europe. Brexit has put a stop to that.
The pub next door to us seems to have a mostly young staff so they seem to be okay. In fact I’ve just spoken to the landlord, who came knocking at our door offering us free food from his restaurant, quietly compensating for the noise from yesterday evening. He tells me business is booming, so much so that he might have to bar certain rowdy elements who disturb his regular customers and his neighbours, i.e. us! He’s not really having staffing problems but he could probably do with recruiting more. The problem is he doesn’t have time to train inexperienced staff. Modern problems.
It’s strangely ironic that places that desperately need to stay open as much as possible now to make up for all the lost takings of the last year are sometimes having to restrict opening hours because of staff shortages. Unforeseen consequences! Brexit has thrown up quite a lot of those!
As we have walked about in the fine and sunny weather over the last week we have made sure to have water with us. When we walk around Vigo, in Galicia, we come across “fuentes”, not always fountains but sources of water, often a tap in an opening in a wall. You can drink from it or refill your water bottle. There used to be such things in English cities, the kind of thing where you pressed a button and then had to try to keep your hair out of the way as you got your mouth under the water spray. They’ve disappeared (as have many public toilets, but that’s a different matter). This article describes the problems of restoring ornate Victorian drinking fountains around London. On some cases they are being restored but not as working fountains; the basins are being filled in with concrete, presumably to try to prevent them being filled with rubbish. What a shame! The ones I remember from my youth were nothing like so ornate.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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