Some thoughts about freedom.

 Free the beavers! 

Sadiq Khan is calling for beavers to be released into the wild across the country. If we get a Labour government, he believes his party should make that a policy. At the moment they can only be released into large enclosures, whatever that means. And I wonder how you ensure they don’t just follow the waterways and spread out through the country. After all, they seem like pretty clever creatures and they are very good for the environment, keeping rivers clean, preventing flooding, helping increase fish stocks and so on. Besides, they are very attractive and amusing to watch. I think it was beavers I saw at Whipsnade recently but, of course, they may have been otters. Sadiq Khan has been involved in releasing beavers into an ‘enclosed area’ and has this to say: “I challenge you not to smile, when you see these beavers swimming around, in that lovely park in Ealing, and I want other people to enjoy just watching wildlife and having a smile.”

The current Environment Secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has said her department would not be legalising beaver releases as she had “other priorities”.  We don’t know what Labour would plan to do. Sources say the shadow Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) team is still writing its nature manifesto. That could mean anything at all. We’ll have to wait and see. 

In the meantime:  Free The Beavers! - nobody, not even beavers, should be restricted to a small area and prevented from leaving! 

Thinking of animals, here’s a link to an article about animals in zoos, arguing that zoos are bad for animals. 

This probably has some truth in it, but I still find myself thinking that they serve a good purpose if they make our children aware of the plight of some of the world’s creatures. (The children’s TV series “Octonauts” does a good job at that too, by the way. The smallest grandson and ai have learnt a lot from that series.) And for most us it’s the only chance we get to see some magnificent animals in the flesh. Personally, I love to see the elephants at Chester Zoo!

Getting back to the article about zoos, I was amused by the story of the chimpanzees’ tea parties at London Zoo in the 1970s. When the chimps learned how to pour tea properly instead of throwing stuff around, the public was disappointed. The apes were retrained to spill the tea, throw food around, drink from the teapot’s spout. Being fast learners, they excelled at this, too – establishing a routine with comic flair, popping the cups in the teapot when the keeper’s back was turned. The ruse worked. Contemporary newspapers reported the animals behaving with their “usual unselfconscious abandon”.

When our children were little, we used to take them to a small zoo in Southport, incongruously placed next to the funfair, which must have been rather stressful for the few animals they kept there. In spite of this, they were known as a place that hand reared young chimps rejected by their mothers. Our children were fascinated by these toddler chimps who would come and interact with small humans, putting their hands against the glass of their enclosure in a kind of high-five gesture. 

Rather sadder was the older chimp, reportedly either retired tea-party chimpanzee or maybe a “pet” who had become aggressive and unmanageable as he grew older. He too used to perform for the public, jumping around, shouting angrily until he drew a largish crowd. At that point he would disappear into the covered area at the rear of his enclosure and re-emerge to throw handfuls of excrement at the laughing, and then squealing, crowd! He knew how to get his revenge! 

Desperate situations lead to desperate measures!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Escapism and nostalgia all in one day.

 This morning I listened to the rain on the roof and decided I wasn’t running anywhere. Maybe I would go out later, I thought. (I didn’t!) So, instead, I got up and got organised to put some washing in the machine. It’s just as well I didn’t go anywhere because not long after that I received a message from Granddaughter Number Two: “Oops, I forgot to text you to tell you I’m on the bus to your house. I’m just going through Bottom Mossley!” That put her about 15 minutes away.

The plan had been that she would come round mid-morning to do some baking: - “Show me how to make your lemon icing, please!” Actually I think she wanted to escape from being asked to do things like take the dog for a walk, accept a delivery from the supermarket and so on. With her mother out at work and her stepfather and brother working from home, she would be the go-to person to do such tasks. In fact she plans to come again on Wednesday armed with her laptop so that she can work on some assignments: - “Its too noisy in my house”.

So this morning I fed her coffee and cheese toasties for breakfast and we got on with the day. 

She was banished to the living room while I did my Itakian conversation class by zoom in the kitchen. We had a nostalgic chat about that magical time The 1970s, supposedly to practise the imperfect tense but mostly good fun. We all agreed that back then we thought we could change the world for the better. 

We are rather less optimistic now. 

The chaos continues in Palestine. The huge numbers of people demonstrating in favour of a ceasefire are being described as potentially encouraging terrorist attacks. Some / many of the people at the top are not listening. 

To cheer us up from the doom and gloom, here is a little something from an article about learning to speak Yorkshire dialect:

Test thisen wi’ these Yorkshire phrases:

1. Sumbdy’s got ter keep band in t’ nick.

2. Ah’ve bin laikin fer awmost a wick.

3. Just hark at that! Asta ivver heard owt ser daft?

4. Tha dunt expect mi ter eyt that – it’s clap-cowd.

5. Ah wor flayed ter deeath at fust.

Answers:

1. Somebody has to keep things running smoothly.

2. I’ve been laid off for almost a week.

3. Just listen to that! Have you ever heard anything so daft?

4. You don’t expect me to eat that – it’s stone cold.

5. I was frightened to death at first.

I suspect that there are numerous versions of Yorkshire dialect just as there there are numerous versions of the Manchester accent. 

The evening is getting on. I’ll probably come back to Yorkshire dialect tomorrow. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Some thoughts about mobile phones. How do we manage without them?

 Yesterday Granddaughter Number Two’s mobile phone more or less died on her. She’s known for a while it was ailing and due for an upgrade but yesterday the decline accelerated: the battery kept running out, certain apps stopped working and all in all it really wasn’t a well phone. Fortunately we had planned to go to the phone shop to renegotiate her contract, trade in the old model and get a newer one. For various reasons the contract on her phone is in my name - something to do with her not having an accessible bank account when she got the now ailing phone - so I needed to accompany her.

We found a very helpful young man who offered a suitable deal and seemed to know what he had to do to transfer all her data from the old phone to the new one. As it was going to take a while, Granddaughter Number Two and I went off to look in shops and have a coffee. When we went back the young man discovered that the new phone was not cooperating. He consulted with a colleague. It transpired that that particular model had caused similar problems for other customers. Maybe it’s because this was the iPhone 13, a well-documented unlucky number. So we negotiated going up a number, paid out a bit more money and all seemed to go well. But that’s several hours of our life we won’t get back.  

I was mildly amused to see the near panic when Granddaughter Number Two was separated from her phone. Not really panic, just a sort of reaching for it to do something and being miffed to find it not there. 

I must confess to feeling slightly underdressed if I go out and forget to take my phone with me. We have all come to rely on being connected with the wider world on a permanent basis.  So how must it have felt to be in Gaza under bombardment, without electricity, without internet and without a method of quickly communicating with family to check they were still alive? Even more important, unable to call for an ambulance and direct the medical staff to the injured!

The world has gone mad, even madder than before.,

Here’s something from the estimable Michael Rosen:

“The King's tutor said

'You must keep telling the people that it's going to be good very soon.'

'I know,' said the King, 'I've been doing that for years. Won't they notice that all the time I've been saying it's going to be good, it hasn't been good?'

'Some people notice,' said the tutor, 'but we'll call them names and people will hate them. That way, everyone will be rowing about whether people are good or bad and not about whether things are good or not.'

'Is there a name for this?' said the King.

'Yes,' said the tutor, 'it comes from grammar. We call it the 'future present'. We arrange it so that everyone lives in the future present.'”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Thinking about Black History Month.

 It’s Black History Month, something that is also called African-American History Month in the USA, where it is celebrated in February. It’s a fairly recent thing in the UK, and is celebrated in October - so the month is almost over. I did a bit of research into it. 

It started as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. Before there was Black History Month, as far back as 1926 in the USA there was Negro History Week, created by historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. They chose the second week in February because it coincided with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, February 12th, and that of Frederick Douglass, American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman, February 14th. Both these birthdays had been celebrated in Black communities since the late 19th century.

Over a century of celebrating noteworthy people and still prejudice is around!

Black History Month was first celebrated here in the UK in October 1987, the year of the 150th anniversary of Caribbean emancipation and the 25th anniversary of the Organisation of African Unity, an institution dedicated to advancing the progress of African states. The first Black History Month celebration in the UK was held in London on October 1, 1987, when Dr. Maulana Karenga from the USA was invited to an event by the Greater London Council about Black people's contributions to history.

Some institutions have faced criticism for supporting Black History Month with images of people from British Asian backgrounds, using the term "black" to refer to “political blackness” an idea that arose in 1970s as a way of referring to anyone in the UK who was likely to experience discrimination based on the colour of their skin, in other words anyone who was not white. 

Back in the 1970s we were very optimistic and felt that things could only get better and that we would all,become more tolerant and accepting - well, quite a lot of us felt that way. Some of us feel a bit more pessimistic nowadays but hope our children and grandchildren might keep fighting for a better world. 

Anyway, it’s Black History Month, or almost the end of Black History Month, and here is a link to an article about some people’s recommendations of black people whose faces should appear on our postage stamps, with reasons why they should be so celebrated.

Here’s an example, by writer Bernardine Evaristo: 

“Beryl Gilroy, born in 1924, is the unsung heroine of the Windrush generation of writers. She arrived in Britain from Guyana in 1951 and worked as a schoolteacher in London for many years, eventually becoming a headteacher.

Her wonderful, groundbreaking memoir, Black Teacher (1976), is an account of her early years as a teacher in the 1950s and the racism she encountered and overcame, always with great humour and dignity in the face of extreme ignorance.

Unlike the book’s male counterpart, To Sir, With Love, by fellow Guyanese writer ER Braithwaite, which was turned into a Hollywood film starring Sidney Poitier, Black Teacher was shamefully overlooked. In 2021 Faber & Faber republished it and I was honoured to write an introduction.

Gilroy went on to write many fiction books for children and adults. She died in 2001, leaving behind two children, one of whom is the renowned scholar Paul Gilroy.”

And at this time when the world seems to be dissolving into into intolerant chaos and violence, I felt the need to write about something more positive. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Modern university life. Modern working life.

This morning I got up early and walked to Greenfield railway station to meet Granddaughter Number Two who has come home from university for a week. It’s supposed to be a “reading week” but she and quite a few of her friends are treating it like a half term holiday and heading for home.  I don’t remember us having “reading weeks” when we were university students. In fact, I’m pretty sure we were expected to read all the time. 

It’s not the only thing that’s different. She and her mates have been rather miffed to discover that attendance at lectures was being monitored (but  monitored electronically so they decided ways to cheat the system). Then they discovered that the monitoring is not for disciplinary purposes but for “well being”. If a student was noted to be missing too many lectures and seminars someone would go and check up on their physical and mental health. Probably a good idea. 

Originally she was going to stay on the train to Stalybridge where her  other would meet her in the car at about 9.00  but her mother and partner and the smaller siblings have decided to spend some of the half term break in the North East, admiring the Angel of the North and hunting for sea-glass on the beaches there. Granddaughter Number Two had set her heart on breakfast at her favourite cafe, Scona in Greenfield,  and so when she found out that her train would stop at Greenfield we decided to meet there and have breakfast together. 

We were early enough to secure our favourite table at Scona, the corner table with sofas, vaguely reminiscent of the sofa in Central Perk, the cafe in Friends. We sort of set the world to rights. She bought a slice of everyone’s favourite chocolate Guinness cake for her younger brother, the 18 year old, also abandoned by his mother for a few days and left in charge of the dog. Then a quick trip to Tesco before catching a bus to my house, to further set the world to rights conversationally. Eventually she headed for home to order pizza for her brother and herself - student discount on Domino’s pizza! Not a bad life!

As far as I know Granddaughter Number One has also been travelling today. She works from home but about once a month has to travel (reluctantly) to Preston to attend a face to face meeting. Earlier on the week she had been asking of any of us had a Covid testing kit as she was supposed to test before going. We found a kit between us. She tested negative. Such is modern working life. 

I found this item about someone called Ash Jones, the founder it seems of Great Influence - The Talent Agency For Entrepreneurs & Business Leader. He told us this: 

“1 year ago we introduced a “Life Admin Half-Day” where once a month the team gets half a day off, fully paid.

The half-day off comes with one rule - you have to use it to do all the personal things you’ve been putting off. 

Go to the dentist.

Clean your house.

Send your parcels.

The last thing anyone wants to do on the weekend is life admin.

But getting that life admin done is huge for feeling like you can relax in your downtime.

A small idea with a big impact!”

A nice idea. Even better is a regular shorter working week, the 35 hour week that France tried to introduce years ago, for example. Instead, most places seem to want to squeeze as much work out of employees as possible. 

Granddaughter Number One has to organise her dental appointments, for example, for after 4.00, and then has to get permission to log off early. The same applies to physiotherapy sessions.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Going to the pictures. Feminist stuff. Some thoughts on Christmas starting too early and Hallowe’en nonsense..

 I went to the cinema the other evening. It’s a while since I saw a film on the big screen rather than on television.  Probably the last time was  a couple of years ago when Granddaughter Number Two and I went to see Spielberg’s reworking of West Side Story, a rather brilliant reworking in my opinion. This latest cinema visit was to see an Italian film, Mia Madre, directed by Nanni Moretti, which I went to see as part of a course on Significant Women in Italian Cinema which I am taking at the moment. 

It’s the story of a female film director going through a crisis for a variety of reasons:

• Her mother is dying in hospital, with heart and lung problems and moments of dementia interspersed with moments of clarity when she rails against her own decline
• At the same time she’s making a film about an industrial dispute and it’s not going quite according to plan
• Consequently she’s having a bit of a crisis of confidence which makes her occasionally bossy and snappy
• And she feels guilty for not taking more responsibility for her ailing mother but letting her brother bear the brunt of all that
• Her teenage daughter is going that stroppy that teenagers do so well
• The American actor flown in to play the industrialist in her film is a pain in the neck, sometimes understands Italian and sometimes doesn’t, forgets his lines, charming but loud

All in all it’s a sad but sometimes funny story. John Turturro, playing the difficult American actor steals the scene on occasion, the brother, played by Nanni Moretti is going through something of a midlife crisis of his own but most of our attention is on the film director, played by Margherita Buy, breaking down a little more each day. A look at a woman being pulled in all directions at once. 

At next Tuesday’s session we get to discuss the film. Interesting stuff. 

After the film, walking back to the tram stop at St Peter’s Square, next to Manchester’s lovely round central library, my friend and I chatted about the film but also about other stuff. He remarked at one point that he can’t understand people getting worked up about the shops being full of Christmas stuff already. After all, he said, it allows people to budget, buying Christmas stuff now little by little and putting it away. A food theory, I responded, but what about mince pies? Are people really buying them a few at a time and putting them in the freezer until closer to the big day? 

Besides, we have to get Hallowe’en over and done with first of all. I am already heartily sick of the sight of carved pumpkins and houses and gardens bedecked with scare-crow-like witches and ghosts and, even worse those pretend cobwebs that apparently are death traps for birds! My friend told me he and his wife only bother about Hallowe’en for their grandchild, who is about 2 years old if I remember correctly. Surely that’s a bit young for trick-or-treating? But then, a friend and former student of mine has been busily posting pictures of her 2 month old, dressed as a pumpkin and “enjoying his first Hallowe’en!!” No further comment on that!

Then today I found an article about an English tradition that predates Hallowe’en: 

“English Heritage is this weekend reviving the medieval tradition of souling, in which people go from door to door, singing and saying prayers for souls in exchange for a small round treat called a soul cake, or soulmass-cake.”

Apparently it might go back as far as the year 1000. It gets a mention in Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona”and somewhere in the late 17th century  a man called John Aubrey noted it was the custom in Shropshire, “and not just among the Papists”, to pile a “high heap of soule cakes set on a table and visitors would take one, with the rhyme, ‘a soule cake, a soule cake, have mercy on all Christian soules for a soule cake.’”

But I bet that in the 17th century they didn’t drape their gardens with ghoulish decorations.

And I still think it’s too early to be eating mince pies! 

I’m off to make a big pan of vegetable soup. That’s what autumn weather makes me do. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Minor panic with a cycle lock - the magic that is WD40 - and the need for rational reactions to speeches!

I cycled to the market in bright sunshine this morning. There was a clear blue sky, brilliant sun and very, very chilly air! I am going to need to seek out my warmer cycling gloves - quite thickly padded and fluorescent green to match my cycling helmet. I rode blindly along the Donkey Line bridle path, with the low sun flashing through the trees reducing visibility, hoping against hope that nobody was approaching at speed in the opposite direction and that I didn’t ride over anyone’s small dog.

Safely and uneventfully in Uppermill, I locked my bike up outside the coop while I went in for a few odds and ends, including lemon juice so we can make our patent lemon and honey drink to fight off Phil’s ongoing cold and cough! When I came out and put the key in the bike lock it would not turn!! It doesn’t need to turn far, just a quick click and the lock springs open… usually. But it’s a fairly heavy duty cycle lock with the kind of cable you can’t just chop through easily. After several minutes of trying the key in and out and turning it over to try it the other way up, I had a brainwave. 

Two minutes from the coop store is a hardware shop. So I went a bought a small can of magical WD40, with a little, plastic straw to attach to the spray nozzle. I stuck the other end of the straw in the lock mechanism and gave it a little squirt. I crossed my finger, held my breath, counted to 10 and tried the key again. The magic worked and the lock sprang open. Phew! What a relief! I was not going to have to work out how to detach my bike from the lock-up post! But I was a little wary and crossed my fingers once again when I locked it to a drainpipe outside the greengrocery and to one of those strange cages they put around trees down in the market square. 

Thinking back, last week on my return from the market, I had used the neighbours’ hosepipe to sluice the weeks of collected mud off my bike. Maybe water had got into the lock and semi-frozen, causing problems for me. Who knows? Anyway, I now have a little can of magical WD40 in my panniers - ready for any eventuality. 

Jenny the Biscuit was back at the market, very happy not to have to contend with blustery weather. So I replenished our supply of tasty  biscuits; the family will be pleased. The chap who sells shoes and slippers and, incongruously, second hand books and assorted vitamin supplements, bent my ear about his progress in Spanish, largely wanting me to explain the use of the subjunctive in expressions such as “¡Que mejores pronto!” (Get well soon!) and “¡Que descanses!” (Have a good rest!). Free mini-language lessons in the market! 

An interesting start to the day! 

Out in the wider world the madness continues:-

“German police have responded to a rise in antisemitism by pre-emptively banning most rallies expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Last week education authorities in Berlin went further, telling schools that they could ban students from wearing the Palestinian flag, kufiya scarf and “free Palestine” stickers.”

And Israel has responded to Antonio Guterres’s reasoned arguments in his speech in Cairo:

“Israel says it has refused a visa to UN humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths as a result of comments at the UN by secretary-general António Guterres.

Israeli media reports that Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said on army radio:

Due to his remarks we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives. We have already refused a visa for under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Martin Griffiths. The time has come to teach them a lesson.

Israel has called on UN secretary general Guterres to resign after he said that the “appalling attacks” by Hamas against Israel on 7 October cannot justify the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people”, and spoke of “the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.”

Guterres had said “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets. All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions.””

Oh boy! Being pro-Palestine doesn’t mean you are pro-Hamas just as being anti-Zion does not mean you are anti-Semitic. You don’t even need to be pro-one side or the other, but surely the situation can be discussed rationally.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!