It seems that we are suffering from a tomato shortage. There are reports of supermarkets rationing how many tomatoes each customer can buy. On the other hand, in the Netherlands, according to something I read, they have a tomato glut. This is because they have traditionally exported lots of tomatoes to the UK but with all the paperwork now involved and the ensuing delays transport companies are refusing to have anything to do with driving lorry loads of tomatoes to us. Nothing to do with Brexit, of course! Some politician suggested we should switch to eating turnips, a good British vegetable, but somehow a mixed salad with slices of turnip doesn’t seem quite right.
It was Thérèse Coffey, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who made the suggestion about turnips. I did wonder if she might have a French connection because of the spelling of her name but the internet tells me she was born in St Helens, Merseyside, of perfectly English parents, so maybe it was some affectation on their part to put those accents on her name. (In similar fashion I know someone whose daughters are called Amélie and Esmée, with no more continental connection than the fact that their mother studied French for A-Level.)
Today I read that Ms Coffey has also suggested that if people can’t afford to buy food they should work extra hours. This is rich coming from an MP with a decent salary and subsidised meals available at the House of Commons. Someone should remind her that there are only so many hours in a day and that rather a lot of people are already working at two jobs in an attempt to make ends meet.
Then there is the difficulty of being a working mother, as is explained in this article. Here’s a little extract from what the writer of the article, Abi Wilkinson, has to say:
“Personally, I’d like to work. Ideally just evenings and weekends to begin with, to avoid my entire income disappearing on childcare costs, and potentially full-time once my oldest starts school. Since the term after she turned three, she’s been eligible for some funded nursery hours, but the subsidy doesn’t stretch as far as you may think. The much-touted “30 hours of free childcare” for working parents is term-time only, so over a full year it averages out at 22 hours a week. Factor in travel, and that’s less than half of what you need to hold down a full-time job.”
Looking back, I was fortunate enough to be able to do just that when our children were tiny. As a qualified Modern Foreign Languages teacher I was able to teach evening classes to adults who wanted to learn some holiday Spanish or French. It meant that we had to reorganise our time, quite often with me going out not long as after Phil returned home. Also it meant our family evenings were somewhat restricted but Phil was a good reader of stories to small children and so it all worked out. Gradually, as the children started school, I was able to accept daytime classes at adult learning centres, fitting work in around school times. Before- and after-school clubs were still a thing of the future, at least in our neck of the woods but we parents organised reciprocal pick-ups of groups of children.
It’s all got rather more complicated and formalised since then.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
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