Yesterday we were up closer to the crack of dawn than we have been for a while. Well, in fact the last time was even closer, on the day when we flew out to Portugal and had a taxi booked for 4.30 in the morning. Yesterday we were up at 7.00 so that we could shower and have some breakfast before a coach arrived to take us and a number of international chess players to Porto airport. Our flight wasn’t due to leave until 2.49 in the afternoon but others needed to be there earlier and, besides, it was a free ride.
It was all good. We got through security in record time - compared with Manchester airport where they wanted to look inside both our suitcases AND Phil’s rucksack. Porto airport has the added advantage of no longer requiring you to get your electrical out of your bags. This is a big advantage. It was all good, except that the pasta and tomato sauce we ordered for lunch was decidedly inferior. But still it was all good until we discovered that our flight was delayed because the incoming plane had been late leaving Manchester because it had been late leaving Sweden before that! All this because of high winds and possibly Storm Debi. I am losing track of the named storms!
Most of the flight was fine but we had a rather bumpy final descent into Manchester. The pilot only bounced us two or three times as he landed and he got a round of applause. Then we all had to leave the plane by the front door as it was too windy to open the back door of the aircraft. Between that and the mayhem of passengers trying to find their cases in the overhead lockers (we were fortunate in that we were among the first to board and had found places for our small cases close to our seats; others had oversized hand-luggage cases, taking up more space and yet others had stowed small rucksacks and coats in the overhead lockets - a total fiasco!) leaving the plane was a lengthy business.
But finally we were down, our electronic passports were read and we only had to walk about a couple of miles to the tram station. The tram-ride into Manchester centre is long and tedious but eventually we made home.
A final comment on our hotel: using our key cards to open our hotel room door was rather like the old days of having to dial for a connection tominternet. Some days we were lucky to get in on the fifth try.
Cone to that, connecting to internet in our room was llike the old days of dialling for a connection. Some days it was fine. Other days we had to go down to the foyer.
We have come home to the news that Suella Braverman has been sacked, replaced as Home Secretary by James Cleverly, replaced in turn as a foreign Secretary by David Cameron. Wait a minute! He’s not an MP any longer. Ah yes, he’s been bumped onto the Lords as Lord Cameron. That’s okay then: an unelected PM appoints an unelected Foreign Secretary. What could be more logical? As to that, well Netanyahu asking for Tony Blair to be a “humanitarian coordinator” in Gaza. We are told that “Mr Blair has an office in Israel and has continued to work on issues regarding Israel and the Palestinians. He is discussing the situation obviously with a number of people in the region and elsewhere to see what can be done. But there is no ‘role’ offered or taken.”
Well, all the old rascals are being reinstated!
And here’s some nonsense of a different (politically correct) kind:
“For centuries Ferdinand Magellan has been accorded a rare privilege. The explorer’s name has been written in the stars. Two satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way, which sparkle conspicuously over the southern hemisphere, are labelled the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
Now astronomers want to erase this celestial distinction. They say that Magellan, the16th century Portuguese sailor, was a murderer who enslaved and burned down the homes of indigenous peoples during his leadership of the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. They insist his name should no longer be honoured by being associated with the clouds.
“Magellan committed horrific acts. In what became Guam and the Philippines, he and his men burned villages and killed their inhabitants,” says the astronomer Mia de los Reyes, of Amherst College in Massachusetts. Magellan led the 1519 Spanish expedition that achieved the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific, but died in a battle, in 1521, with Indigenous people in present-day Philippines.
In an article in the journal APS Physics, Reyes calls for the International Astronomical Union – the body in charge of naming astronomical objects – to rename the Magellanic Clouds. “I and many other astronomers believe that astronomical objects and facilities should not be named after Magellan, or after anyone else with a violent colonialist legacy.”
It is not just Magellan’s actions that should lead to his name being stripped from the skies, argues Prof David Hogg, of New York University. “The primary issue is that the clouds aren’t his discovery,” he has told the website Space.com.”
No decision has been made yet. No new names have been chosen. But there are also requests for things more recently (i.e. in the 20th century) named after the likes of Hitler and Mussolini to be renamed. Fair enough.
In future, greater care will have to be taken in naming stars or species, say scientists, with many arguing these should no longer recall individuals. They point to Nasa’s Mars robot rovers – Curiosity, Perseverance and Spirit – which instead honour ideals.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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