When I declared Christmas over and done with yesterday, I forgot to mention that my daughter and I polished off the very last slice of Christmas cake between us. Well, almost no-one else appreciated fruit cake and so it was quite appropriate that we should be the ones to finish it.
This morning there was a message from Granddaughter Number Two: could we make another attempt to have breakfast / brunch at her favourite cafe in Greenfield? Last Friday’s expedition was interesting but not did not quite go according to plan. So after I had been for a run and showered, I got organised to catch a bus to Greenfield to meet her. I left a pot of coffee in the kitchen but didn’t really have time to consume any as I scuttled out with two minutes to spare to catch the bus. By the time we met at Greenfield, she coming on a bus from the opposite direction, all I had consumed was my fizzy vitamins. I was ready for a late breakfast.
So toasted fruit toast was definitely called for along with my coffee. The teenager - soon to be a teenager no longer - consumed a bacon sandwich and chocolate Guinness cake, undecided at first about which to consume first. We had reserved the chocolate Guinness cake on entering the cafe, before we had even found ourselves a table. Indeed we had reserved all the chocolate Guinness cake remaining: one slice for Granddaughter Number Two and one for her mother, who was joining us once the small boy’s musical activity was over and done with, and three slices to take home - another one for Granddaughter Number Two to consume later today , one for her small sister, who was rather cross that we were going to the cafe without her as she is in school today, and one for my daughter’s partner.
It has to be said that the chocolate Guinness cake is extremely good, much better than the inferior version Granddaughter Number Two tried in a different cafe last week! One of her New Year’s resolutions is to venture into the centre of York, when she returns to university there, to try locate a similar small cafe with good cakes!
My Italian teacher has sent us some tasks before we resume online classes next week, one of which is to list our own resolutions for this year. As the years go by it becomes harder to think of worthy tasks and goals to set yourself. I shall have to invent something amusing but not too silly in time for Monday.
That’s enough stuff about cake. Out in the wider world things are going on. Here’s an odd Brexit-related fact:
“More than 2,250 British citizens were ordered to leave EU member states between the end of the Brexit transition period and September last year, according to figures from the bloc’s statistical office.
Quarterly data published late last month by Eurostat shows a total of 2,285 UK nationals were expelled from 1 January 2021, when British citizens lost their free movement rights within the EU, until the third quarter of last year.
Experts cautioned that the data did not specify why people were ordered to leave so not all expulsions may have been related to residency restrictions, but said the figures amounted to “the starkest possible reminder” of the consequences of Brexit.
“British citizens are now third-country nationals in the EU and as such are subject to domestic immigration laws,” said Prof Michaela Benson of Lancaster University, who has co-led several research projects on post-Brexit migration, citizenship and identity.
The Eurostat data, first reported by the Local, showed striking variations between EU member states, with Sweden accounting for nearly half (1,050) of all British citizens ordered to leave over the period and the Netherlands almost a third (615).
Malta told 115 UK nationals to leave its territory, France 95, Belgium 65, Denmark 40, Germany 25 and Austria 10, while some countries with large populations of British residents, including Spain, Portugal and Italy, reported no expulsion orders.”
Either those British residents in places like Spain, Portugal and Italy got their act together to sort out residency or those countries are turning a blind eye to the whole business, knowing they have a source of income from those people. Who knows!
Or maybe they simply can’t do the Maths and need someone like Rishi Sunak to insist they study Maths for a few years more. Granddaughter Number Two reports her best friend expressing her relief at no longer being in sixth form as she could not have stood the idea of being subjected to more Maths after struggling with GCSE level.
Personally I’m in two minds about the whole thing. One part of me approves of the aim to broaden our post-16 curriculum but another part of me remembers being sixteen and knowing that all I really wanted to do was to study modern foreign languages! Either way, I think ad-hoc tinkering is not going to solve anything. It’s been tried so many times before.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment