It’s Monday, a new week and I’m trying to get back into my normal routine. I seemed to spend a large part of last week catching up with various jobs around the house. So here I am. I’ve been out for my run first thing, in reasonably dry but rather chilly weather. Granddaughter Number Two has been complaining about how cold it is in York where she had to get up early to go for training to be a Student Ambassador, basically someone who shoes prospective students around the university - not bad for a first term, first year student! She’s back in her digs now, eating cereal for lunch. As for me, I’ve finally completed my preparation for my Italian class this afternoon.
Elsewhere, football is underway in Qatar. Various countries’ football organisations have decided last minute not to wear armbands that might convey a message the regime does not approve of. Somebody on the radio has just described FIFA’s statement about this as “word salad”. And suddenly football is very political despite the fact that Emmanuel Macron says we should not politicise sport. But really it’s been political for a long time. Even the fact that some cities have two football teams, often one Catholic and one Protestant, or as I think happens in Madrid, one left wing and one right wing. And there was of course the whole matter of taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter. And now it seems that Iranian players were not singing their national anthem at the start of the Iran-England match. Iranian born Shappi Khorsandi is getting quite emotional about it all on the radio news programme. She has pointed out that if the issue were not Iranian homophobia but a racist issue of one kind or another our team might not be playing there. She can’t bear to watch the match.mShe talked of the freedoms we still have here in the UK. We must make sure we keep them.
Less seriously, Emma Beddington in the Guardian has been writing about taking photos on holiday:
“”I think you should take a picture of me,” I say to my husband, with slightly gruff embarrassment. We are on a long-planned, once-in-a-lifetime trip to Venice, undertaking a self-devised initiation rite for the empty nest stage of our lives: working and living in a single room for a month with our mildly demented dog.
I can’t stop taking pictures – 263 so far, and counting. Everything is beautiful: the luminous green water against faded yellow and terracotta, the bridges topped with smart Venetians looking at their phones, the glitter of sun or low-lying morning mist on water. I have to capture the joyful decorative flourishes: a stone camel here, a brass lion there, the five-tiered Murano glass chandelier surrounded by plaster daisies in the library where I’m working. My phone is packed with boats, a woman walking nine chihuahuas and countless gulls.”
I know just how she feels. My own reaction to Venice was much the same. While I get quite scornful of those who walk around places like Venice glued to their cine-cameras, I do take a lot of pictures.
She goes on:
“My husband is not taking pictures. When he does, it’s an event, not a habit: I think he has taken five since we arrived. But we are walking along a particularly fetching canal in the sun and the dog, falling apart but still elegant, like the city, is at my side. I have lots of my husband (OK, more of gulls); wouldn’t it be nice to have a few of me? He obliges happily, but I look self-conscious and awkward. It shows I had to ask.”
Yes, I see that as well. Intake few photos of Phil because he usually refuses to cooperate. Occasionally I ask him to take one of me, or he even gets inspired to do so. This usually ends up being a picture of some monument or a picturesque view with a tiny little me somewhere in the photo!
Ms Beddington continues:
}Men don’t take photos. There are countless talented male photographers, but most men don’t seem to take phone pictures the way women do: candid, constant ones of their partners and families. I am in hardly any family pictures, except posed ones taken by friends or relatives.”
Yes, that sounds like me!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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