Heatwaves. Opening up Diggle Chippy. Putting things right. Reading habits. Walking a tightrope.

Cue for a song: we’re having a heatwave …. Definition of a heatwave from the Met Office: three continuous days of heat exceeding the expected temperatures for the time of year. This has varied over the years so that what might have been considered a heatwave twenty or thirty years ago might not be considered a heatwave nowadays. So say the radio news people. But our summers are changing - hotter and drier! And right now we are having a heatwave … even if it’s expected to end pretty soon.

The news reporter on the radio apologised to the people of Glasgow for talking about hot weather - they are having rain up there, apparently.,

So today being the hottest day so far, we went on our Diggle Chippy Hike. It was hot and sunny - we slathered ourselves with high factor sunscreen - but there was a good breeze so that it was quite pleasant. When we got to the chippy, which for various reasons we have not visited since the end of January, we were pleased to find we could go back inside the funny little wooden hut and admire the old photos which decorate the interior. 

 

 

 

 

For ages and ages it has been necessary to queue outside, pay for your order and then wait round the corner at the back door for your food to be delivered to you. Sensibly they have opted to keep the system of waiting outside the back door for food delivery, avoiding overcrowding and overheating inside the hut. I was impressed that the chippy people remembered my name to put on the bag of food.

We took our fish and chips round to the duck pond as usual, oohing and aahing at the ducklings, admiring the heron and hoping he wasn’t about to feast on the small ducklings. 

Nature can be cruel. 

I highly recommend a trip to Diggle Chippy. 

I’ve commented on more than one occasion about the “infilling” of a Victorian bridge arch at Greater Musgrave in Cumbria. Now it seems it has been decided that the highways Agency will have to spend £124,000 - and maybe more - removing the tons of concrete. Lets hope they manage to do something with the old railway track that went underneath it long ago. Resisting cultural vandalism - I’m all in favour of it. 

Bloomsbury has reported record increases in sales of books. People got into the habit of reading during the pandemic lockdown and have seemingly continued to do so. Hurray! “The surge in reading, which seemed to be one of the only rays of light in the darkest days of the pandemic, is perhaps now being revealed as permanent, with the simple act of reading shedding light and giving joy to millions of people.” So said the chief executive of Bloomsbury. 

As for me, I’ve always been a reader. One of my latest reads involved, among other things, a circus, including a tightrope walker or dancer. Now, if you look up “tight rope” in Spanish you find “cuerda floja” which really means “slack rope”. I wondered if there was a difference between the two.  So I investigated and discovered this: 

Tightrope walking

• A wire on the left, that stabilizes the cable and prevents drastic movement.
• He has a balance pole, and he moves it from side to side to maintain his balance
• Hard to see in this photograph, but the cable is round and made from an ultra-strong low-stretch material like steel or dyneema
• The cable is so tight that there’s either no sag, or the cable is in a gentle arc from its own weight.

Slackline walking

• There are no stabilization wires. Slacklines can swing wildly; it’s part of the fun
• He uses his arms for balance. Balance poles don’t help on a slackline.
• The material is flat and stretchy. It’s not as strong as steel, so a second piece of webbing is installed in case the first breaks
• There’s quite a bit of sag, hence the name.The weight of the walker pulls the line down into a ‘v’ shape.

Then there is this art form from Korea:

“Jultagi” is the Korean tradition of tightrope walking (see the image above), it usually involves music and telling a story through the performance. It can include walking backward, leaping in the air, sitting and lying on the rope, and even pretending to fall. Watch an example here, it’s pretty incredible.

There you go. I have no intention of practising any of these activities. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.