It rained copiously in the night! It woke me up at one point. Yesterday Phil and I walked along a very dry Donkey Line. Today I cycled along it through re-established mud-puddles. It must have rained even more than I thought as the very few drizzly showers we have had recently made little impression on the surface water.
I was in Uppermill this morning not long after nine. It was very quiet. It’s perhaps extra quiet as the 350 bus service is not running through Uppermill village centre at present because of roadworks on the Delph-Dobcross road. The 350 does a detour that misses out Uppermill altogether. The only public transport covering the Delph-Uppermill section is the 356 which goes from Ashton bus station to Delph bus station via a couple of out of the way estates in Ashton, then through Greenfield, Uppermill, Diggle, Dobcross and Delph, going an even longer way than usual to get to Delph in order to avoid the roadworks. After Delph it goes through Denshaw, Moorside and the Sholver housing estate before finally heading into Oldham centre. The whole route must take over two hours!!
In Uppermill the young woman who sells the Big Issue told me she had seen almost nobody. “I don’t even have a pound in my pocket!” she told me. After I had been in the coop and had some change I gave her a pound to put in her pocket. At least it wasn’t raining on her although the sky looked very full. Amazingly the rain has managed to stay away all morning. There’s even blue sky - quite a lot of it!
They were setting up traffic lights for roadworks in the centre of Uppermill. The lady who runs the deli suggested that the various organisations who need to close and dig up the road should coordinate with each other to minimise the need to dig it up. It seems very wasteful that a hole is drilled and dug in more or less the same place several times a year and then needs covering with fresh tarmac. I suppose it keeps the tarmac people in business.
As I was leaving Uppermill they were beginning to drill the tarmac prior to digging a hole. The peace was shattered!
In the wider world, President Biden plans to send more troops to Europe. NATO appears to be about to expand. It is being said that a lasting peace can only be established if Russia is pushed out of Ukraine and tried for warcrimes. Zelenskyy says he wants the war ended before this year is over. Somehow I don’t see a rapid solution.
We’re not doing well on the global warming front either. Our goal of reaching net zero soon, by 2050 I think, seems to be disappearing. We should have started being energy-efficient long ago. Not to mention insulating our homes.,
All in all, we’re not doing very well.
And then there’s the rumbling abortion debate.
There’s the story Andrea Prudente on holiday in Malta, on what she and her husband called a “babymoon” to celebrate a much wanted pregnancy. In Malta she began to miscarry and the Maltese health people refused to help because the baby’s heart was still beating. Abortion is forbidden in Malta under any circumstances. American Andrea Prudente had the right kind of insurance to enable her to be airlifted to another country for medical treatment. Others in her situation in Malta have to wait until the baby’s heart stops beating, risking haemorrhaging, before any medical intervention can take place.
Before we get too complacent about how free-thinking we are here in the UK there are things we need to remember. In Scotland it seems they need to put safety zones around clinics that perform abortions so that anti-abortion activists don’t harass patients. And MP Stella Creasy wants to add the right to freedom of choice on abortion to be included in the British Bill of Rights: “Most women in the UK do not realise abortion is not a right but there is only a law giving exemption from prosecution in certain circumstances,” she said. “What the US teaches us is that we cannot be complacent about entrenching those rights in law.”
America, of course, is in a state of turmoil as individual states decide which way to go. Pro-choice people protesting against the decision to overturn Roe v Wade are being attacked by anti-abortion people. Police are reacting with violence. And even more frightening things are happening, like this:
“A pickup truck ploughed through protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hospitalizing one woman. The Cedar Rapids police department declined to comment on the incident. The state recently passed a law making it legal for drivers to,hit protestors to with vehicles in certain circumstances. Other states in the US have passed similar laws.”
Another odd report I came across was about period-tracking apps. I didn’t know such apps existed but I’m not surprised. After all my Fitbit keeps asking me to track how much water I drink and what food I consume. Apparently almost a third of American women use such apps. They have helped make women’s lives easier in many ways, from family planning and detecting early signs of health issues to choosing the perfect time for a holiday. I can understand that. And now it appears that many women have recently deleted these apps from their phones, amid fears the data collected by the apps could be used against them in future criminal cases in states where abortion has become illegal.
Oh boy! Dystopia, here we come.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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