Making plans. Praising cyclists. Bits of strangeness.

Yesterday was carefully planned. Well, relatively carefully. I had not bought a present for Granddaughter Number One’s birthday earlier in the week and so we were going to go on a clothes shopping trip. The plan was to go the M&S near Ikea in Ashton in the late morning and then head back to Uppermill where she wanted to go to a yarn shop to replenish her supply of a particular rainbow-coloured wool. All was going well until my daughter, mother of the birthday girl, contacted us and then came to join us for coffee. The plan went downhill from there. It was early evening by the time I got home! 

The cyclists are out in force on this sunny morning. Maybe they have been inspired by the Tour de France. We used to follow the Tour de France almost religiously. We didn’t actually travel around France but we did watch the daily summary of the Tour’s progress on TV. We have been planning to resume this habit this year but have so far failed to do so. My late return from yesterday’s shopping trip contributed to this failure. 

Isle of Man cyclist Mark Cavendish was apparently planning for this to be his last Tour de France and now it seems he has crashed out early. What a shame. Here is a link to an article praising the aforementioned cyclist. 

I read that a mural in a centre for unaccompanied refugee children was ordered to be painted out on the grounds that it made the place too welcoming. Here is Michael Rosen’s poem in response to that action:

I wonder 

if there are any more murals, 

pictures of Micky Mouse 

and the like 

that will be painted over this week 

in refugee centres. 

If there are any children's books 

in these places, 

perhaps they can be burnt.

What a strange country ours seems to have become.

Another example of the strangeness of the modern world is this report:

“The archbishop of York has suggested that opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, recited by Christians all over the world for 2,000 years, may be “problematic” because of their patriarchal association.

In his opening address to a meeting of the Church of England’s ruling body, the General Synod, Stephen Cottrell dwelt on the words “Our Father”, the start of the prayer based on Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4 in the New Testament.

I assume this is also related to the ongoing debate about gender-identity. I was discussing this with my Spanish sister recently. She expressed her surprise at the use of “they” and “them” and “their” in English to talk about non-binary folk. She told me that in Spanish now they have an extra third person pronoun. So there is “él” for masculine, “ella” for feminine and the new “elle” for non binary. She was unable, however, to tell me what happens to agreement of adjectives - an interesting problem for linguists.  

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!