Alternative views of rice, climate change, aid to Gaza and Islamist extremists.

 Rice is rice is rice … or is it? When I was a child rice was something you used to make rice pudding. School dinner rice pudding was quite disgusting as a rule but my mother made the best rice pudding possible. Nowadays, however, it would never occur to me to make rice pudding or order it if it popped up on a menu somewhere. 

A friend of mine tells the story of how her mother, always prepared to try something new, to be in the vanguard of whatever was happening, rather like my friend in fact, discovered long grain rice. This was sometime in the 1960s I think. Previously, like my mother, she had used the round grain rice, then only one available for much of our childhood, to make puddings. But someone had told of this “new” kind of rice, long grain and meant to be more of a savoury than a sweet thing apparently. So she proudly announced to her family one mealtime that she had something new for them to try and brought to the table a steaming dish of boiled rice. So the family duly ate it, declared that it filled a space but they were puzzled as to why such a fuss was being made about it. After all, it was a bit bland! I suppose you have to be in the right mood to enjoy eating boiled rice without any accompanying dish, be it meat or vegetables. 

As I said, I don’t eat rice pudding. Rice is something I use in savoury dishes, added to stir fried vegetables, or in risottos. I probably break a whole lot of Italian culinary rules by using whichever rice I have to hand when I make a risotto, instead of using proper risotto rice. And now I read that one of the odd consequences of global warming is leading to a shortage and putting risotto at risk of extinction. 

Italy is Europe’s largest rice producer, growing about 50% of the rice produced in the EU. Most of its rice fields are in the Po valley, which stretches across much of the north of the country. It is in these fields that the unique risotto rice varieties, such as carnaroli and arborio, are grown. 

I remember writing some time last year about the dangerously low levels of the River Po. I wish we could send them some of our rain! A contributory factor is reduced snowfall in the Alps. When we hear about reduced snowfall it’s usually because of problems for the tourist industry, specifically for ski resorts. But apparently the rice fields depend a lot on snowmelt sinking into the ground and helping to maintain water levels in rivers such as the Po, and incidentally keeping paddy fields nicely soggy. 

There you go. The interconnectedness of everything and unexpected twists to already existing problems.

Here’s another odd twisted fact. Amidst stories of rising crime there is  this: 

 

Nearly 1,000 people a week, 70% of them women, are prosecuted for TV licence fee evasion. It is the most common crime in the country, apart from driving offences. A fifth of all criminal prosecutions brought against women are by TV Licensing, which has extraordinary explicit powers – it can apply for a warrant to search a property, for instance.

Who knew? Surely the justice system has better things to occupy itself with.

On the subject of unusual twists on existing problems, here’s another: 

Israel has stopped issuing visas for international staff of humanitarian organisations that work in occupied Palestinian territories, hampering efforts to get food and other vital supplies into Gaza.

Dozens of foreign aid workers, including heads of organisations, have had to leave Israel and the Palestinian territories, or are overstaying their visas and risking deportation so they can continue working, an alliance of aid groups has warned.

A spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, when asked about why the visa process had been halted, said “this issue is being looked into by governmental authorities”. The interior ministry and welfare ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, aid is not reaching starving people. This morning I read that Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says at least 70 people were killed in an attack on a crowd of Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza City. This is higher than the death toll of 50 reported previously by AP. Health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said another 280 were injured in the attack early on Thursday.

According to Reuters, an Israeli military spokesperson said there was no knowledge of any Israeli shelling there when asked about Palestinian casualties near Gaza City.

There are conflicting reports on the newwires as to whether the attack was a shooting or shelling.

And still our government fails to vote on calling for a cease fire, hiding at the moment behind scare stories of the country being in danger of being controlled by Islamist extremists. We seem to be in danger of our government stirring up problems. Here’s an article by Peter Oborne on that subject.

And here’s an article from today’s Guardian maintaining that London and other major cities are more diverse than the government would have us believe. 

Oh, and here’s another by Torsten Bell, pointing out that Suella Braverman’s view of ghettoised Britain is mistaken. 

But we are where we are and old terminology like “racial prejudice” is being increasingly replaced by talk of “race hatred”. Hatred is a very strong word for a very strong emotion. We should try to avoid it.  

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Problems with the weather gods, as usual. Heartthrobs with personal weapons stores. And Israelis who don’t want to fight.

 Today I got around to doing something I have been planning to do for at least a couple of weeks now, or at any rate I made a start on it - tidying up the front garden. Tall grass, almost but not quite pampas grass, from last year, now dry but still droopily tall, rose briars trying to extend all over the little plot, the flowering bush making a bid to fill the place as well were all trying to hide new, and more attractive, growth. There are bluebells populating one corner, fighting with the bossy rosebush, and I would like them to be more visible when they come into flower. And I wanted to tidy things up before the wild aquilegia and poppies spring up, giving the garden its brief moment of glory. People actually stop and admire it … or maybe they just stop and exclaim at how unkempt my garden is! 

Anyway, as the morning was fine - fine enough and blowy enough anyway for me to hang washing to dry in the back garden - I decided that today was the day. Over the last few days the rain has held off or has been thin drizzly stuff, so that the garden was not too  squidgy underfoot and the taller plants were not dripping wet.

But the weather was still against me. I think I managed maybe three quarters of an hour before it started to rain. Most of the tall grass and brambles have been trimmed back but the bush in the middle now looks decidedly lopsided. Everything had to be abandoned, though, so that I could scuttle into the back garden to bring in the washing, the sight of which blowing on the wind probably provoked the weather gods into sending rain rather earlier than originally predicted. So it goes!

One-time heartthrob Alain Delon (full name amazingly Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon - how many names does a heartthrob need?) is 88. As is the way with heartthrobs of yesteryear we’ve not heard much of him lately - last major appearance was at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival where he received a Palme  d’Or d’Honneur, a lifetime achievement award, and then, less publicly, at the funeral of his friend and fellow star Jean-Paul Belmondo in September 2021. He’s not been well and it seems his family have been bickering over who might or might not be exploiting his frailty. A court-appointed official had to visit his home in connection with this, spotted a weapon and alerted a judge. And now they have seized 72 firearms from his home as he doesn’t have a permit for any of them. They also found 3,000 rounds of ammunition and a shooting range. Monsieur Delon did play gun-toting gangsters on some of his films but, oops, he “has no authorisation that would allow him to own a firearm”, according to the local prosecutor Jean-Cédric Gaux. I wonder why he had such an arsenal - maybe a sort of collector’s obsession or maybe to protect his fortune. Who knows? 

On the subject of weapons and fighting and such, here’s an odd twist on the Israel-Palestine conflict, a report yesterday from Another Angry Voice: 

“Israel wants to force Orthodox Jews to participate in occupation and genocide

Israel wants to force orthodox Jews to betray their religious beliefs by conscripting them to participate in occupation and genocide, and they're using heavy handed tactics to smash resistance.

Orthodox Jews make up about 13% of the population of Israel and until recently they’ve been been allowed to claim exemption from mandatory conscription into Israel’s military if they study at religious schools (Torato Umanuto) or undertake civilian conscription (Sherut Leumi) instead, but Israel is trying to change that and force religious Jews to participate in occupation and genocide against the Palestinians.

As the Israeli Supreme Court has been debating whether to end the exemption from conscription for Orthodox Jews, Israeli security forces have been brutally repressing protests outside.

Let’s not fall into the trap of generalising about why Orthodox Jews reject conscription. 

There are pacifist Orthodox Jews who vehemently object to the occupation and Israeli Apartheid against Palestinians, and there are several staunchly Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish groups (Satmar, the Charedi Council, Neturei Karta …), but then there are Orthodox Jewish settlements in the stolen and illegally occupied Palestinian territories too, and Benjamin Netenyahu’s barbaric extreme-right government is propped up by several Orthodox political parties. 

It would be as absurd and ridiculous to generalise that all Israeli Orthodox Jews oppose Israeli occupation, Apartheid, and genocide on principle, as it would be to nod along with the obscene racist fiction that all British Jews support such Israeli atrocities.

However it’s absolutely clear that very many Orthodox Jews refuse to participate in Israeli atrocities for religious reasons, and that they should be supported in their efforts to prevent the Israeli state from stripping them of their right to conscientiously object.

If someone feels so strongly that they would rather die than participate in violent occupation, they should have the sympathy of all decent people.

However there is a great deal of resentment in wider Israeli society at this conscription exemption for Orthodox Jews, conveyed by the leaders of the counter-protest in favour of forced conscription who said "The prolonged war in Gaza teaches us the critical need to expand recruitment to all parts of Israeli society".

It’s interesting that the framing isn’t 'why are we committing genocide in Gaza?' but rather 'why are Orthodox Jews given exemption from committing genocide in Gaza?'.

When the Israeli state is brutally repressing Jewish people who say they would rather die than abandon their faith to participate in occupation and genocide, it certainly raises important questions, like what kind of “Jewish state" seeks to force devoutly religious Jews into betraying their religious beliefs?”

Hmm! Food for thought!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Being a friend. Listening to a rant about protests against protesting.

 I began the day with a phone call to a German friend. Well, no, the day began as usual with my reluctantly leaving my warm bed to go out for a run around the village, despite there being snow forecast - which did not materialise, by the way. However the first thing I did on my return was to phone my German friend. 

She had sent me a message last night asking me to take a look at something she had written, just to check that her English was clear. Phil and I were in the middle of watching something on TV and so I fobbed her off with a promise to look at it this morning. It was only this morning that I realised it was not some long document, a letter to her MP or something of that kind, but just a post on Facebook. Besides, her English is faultless! 

So I wanted to apologise for not being a better friend last night. It was time we had a chat anyway. We’ve been trying for ages to arrange to go for a long walk together but weather, family visits, other commitments have been getting in the way. 

Basically, this time she wanted to rant about her home country, promoted by the German authorities response to events at the film festival, the Berlinale. Apparently pro-Palestinian supporters had protested outside the venue on Sunday and about 50 people entered the ground floor of the main atrium shouting, "Stop the genocide", while large banners were unfurled from the galleries above bearing the message "Lights, Camera, Genocide" with an image of a clapperboard dripping in blood.

But it was the onstage criticism of Israel’s Gaza conduct which provoked the authorities. During the awards ceremony, Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra accepted an award for his documentary about the West Bank and called on Germany to stop sending weapons to Israel, in remarks that were met with applause and cheers from the audience.

"It is very hard for me to celebrate when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza," said Adra, whose film "No Other Land" depicts the Israeli settler displacement of Palestinians in villages in the West Bank. So Culture Minister Claudia Roth said Berlin's Mayor Kai Wegner and the city's government, who share responsibility for the Berlinale, "will now investigate the incidents at the award ceremony”. The aim is to find out whether the Berlinale lived up to its claim of being a place for diversity, different perspectives and dialogue, the minister said, and to see "how it can be ensured in future that the Berlinale is a place that is free from hatred, hate speech, anti-Semitism, racism, hostility towards Muslims and all forms of bigotry."

Indeed several filmmakers used the festival's stage to protest the war in Gaza, and the investigation aims to ensure the Berlinale will be free from hate speech in the future, while maintaining that 'expressions of opinion at cultural events should not be fundamentally prevented'.

And German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday condemned the statements criticizing Israel's mass bombing of the Gaza Strip. According to deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann, Scholz agrees "that such a one-sided position cannot be allowed to stand”.

However, Germany is among Israel's staunchest allies, and political leaders in Berlin have repeatedly stated that Israel has a right to self-defense. German arms exports to Israel peaked in 2023 with $353 million worth of weapons, including 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons and 500,000 rounds of ammunition for firearms, being approved - 10 times as much as in the previous year.

My German friend declared herself angry with and ashamed of her country, which seemingly has a whole lot of laws preventing people from criticising Israel. Mind you, we are not a great deal better here. The singer Charlotte Church has been facing criticism for singing an “antisemitc” song at a Sing for Palestine charity event. She led the Côr Cochion choir in Caerphilly, South Wales, in a protest chant at the pro-Palestine concert, with footage online showing Church singing along to From the River to the Sea, a song now deemed antisemitic. But so far nobody has obliged her to apologise!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Acronymically speaking (and writing)!

A young friend, son of an old friend, posted this on Facebook: 

“TFW you go to the allotment and your friend is already waiting for you. No I don’t have any idea how she managed to get in the greenhouse!”

It was accompanied by a picture of a bird, maybe a thrush, inside his greenhouse. 

His mother, the old friend, commented this:

“Tell Dill I had to Google what TFW meant, she’ll be either amused or despairing!” 

Dill is the young friend’s twelve year old daughter, by the way (btw). 

I replied to my old friend’s comment, “So did I!” Then I noticed that another old friend had done the same. TFW (that feeling when) you realise that you’re out of touch with the acronyms (aka Initialisms) of the day. It’s a generational thing! 

Really we should differentiate between acronyms proper and initialisms. I worked for years and years in MFL (Modern Foreign Language) teaching but M F L was always a collection of letters, never a word. Hunting for examples of this sort of thing  (which I had to do because my mind went blank once I tried to list them for myself) I discovered that “scuba”, which we always think of as a word in its own right, comes from "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus."

Some we use all the time and have been using for ever, even people like my old friend and me, such as ASAP. Others we have learnt in more recent media-savvy, text-messaging times: TBH - to be honest, FOMO - fear of missing out, LOL - laugh out loud, BTW - by the way. Some I just plain won’t use: IDK - I don’t know, IMO - in my opinion, LMK - let me know. TBH, I don’t use LOL at all and some of the others only very rarely! 

The one I find most annoying is just one letter: V for versus. I have no objection to written announcements about football matches- United v City. But I find it really annoying when commentators and pundits on Match of the Day (MotD) talk about players going one v one. For some reason it makes my hackles rise. Once again, it’s probably a generational thing!

  And then there is TED- Tell me, Explain to me, Describe to me - which has puzzled me every time I have heard someone refer to a TED talk! 

And finally, we have one of our very own: IADH. When we walk up the hill to Dobcross there comes a point where we know we have reached the highest point and one of is is bound to give a cheer and declare IADH - It’s All Down Hill! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

On being punctual - or not! Going to York! Bookshops! Food likes and dislikes.

Despite my comments the other day about my reluctance (serious unwillingness!) to get out of bed in the morning, yesterday I only snoozed my alarm once and then get up straight away and went for a run round the village. My daughter was coming to pick me up, supposedly before 10, and I wanted to be able to go for a run beforehand and still have time to shower and get organised. In the even she didn’t turn up until after 10.30. She blamed her partner for this. He had been told quite specifically, she said, that she wanted to be at my house for 10 and so he needed to return from his run in plenty of time. Of course he didn’t return in time because he didn’t set off in time. Consequently none of us set off in time. So it goes! 

We were going to drive to York to visit Granddaughter Number Two, take her a few items to her student residence, have a wander round York and then go and eat pizza in Pizza Express - the usual pattern for our visit to Granddaughter Number Two. Our wander round York was somewhat curtailed, not just because of our late departure from home and consequent later than intended arrival in York, but because the aforementioned Granddaughter Number Two and I disappeared into a second-hand bookshop at an early stage in our wanderings and spent quite some time there. We”re both rather addicted to books, although she gives in more readily to temptation than I do.

The bookshop was delightful, a tall narrow building, obviously an ordinary dwelling at some time in the past, with what would have been bedrooms now dedicated to different categories of books: art, architecture, music, local history, British history, European history, religion, witchcraft ( Yes! witchcraft!) to,mention but a few! All these sections were accessed via a very narrow set of staircases, not wide enough for two people to pass each other comfortably and sometimes encumbered with piles of books, but with a small landing as a passing place, with a book-lined room off to each side. You could have got lost in there for weeks! Groups of people did a shuffle-dance on each landing, many clutching bargains they had found.

In the meantime my daughter, Granddaughters Numbers One and Four and Grandson Number Two had been exploring a shop selling beautiful Oriental and Indian fabrics, yoga-related items and nicknacks such as lucky Chinese cats with arms that wave, one of which Granddaughter Number Four and Grandson Number Two both acquired. I am surprised that Granddaughter Number One had not bought a mass of craft materials. I would have happily gone exploring his shop but we were running out of time - a project for our next visit!

So we headed for Pizza Express, where Granddaughter Number Two had booked a table for us. She is becoming a very good social organiser. 

 

 

 

 

 

There was just time en route for a look at the swollen River Ouse and a brisk stroll through the park before we went to eat pizza, which was fine. 

 

 

Then I surprised everyone by turning down the offer to share tiramisu with my daughter. Hands were help up in horror - Grandma doesn’t like tiramisu! how can that be? But, like limoncello, it is one of the few Italian foods I turn my nose up at. Come to that, I am not a great fan of cannoli either. Some people assume that because I like Italy, and perhaps especially Sicily, I should love those typical products. No, not my thing at all! But then neither are churros even though I also love Spain! 

 

Anyway, here are some more photos of our visit to York.

 

 

This morning, by the way, I only snoozed my alarm once but the semi-dozed for a further 20 minutes before dragging myself out of bed! So it goes!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

The soporific effects of falling rain. Keeping cities cool. And fire in Spain.

Granddaughter Number Two tells me she plays a recording of gently falling rain to help her fall asleep at night. I blame her mother who has long been a believer in white noise as an aid to getting babies to fall asleep. To a certain extent I would agree that the sound of rain on the roof, provided it is not too torrential can be soporific. It is certainly not conducive, however, to getting put of bed in the morning. I waited until it had stopped battering the skylight windows this morning before deciding to go for a run, rather later than originally planned. And then it still rained on me during the first part of my run. 

 

 

Even when it stopped raining it was looking extremely grey over towards Yorkshire, even though it was getting brighter over our village in the last stages of my return homewards. 

It doesn’t have to be raining for me to be reluctant to get out of bed in the morning. The snooze button on the alarm is a very dangerous thing. Broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Adrian Chiles had this to say the other day about wasting time on a regular basis in the morning:

“I thought I would get up early to write this, like I think I’ll get up early to do something every morning. I set the alarm, full of sincere intentions, but when it goes off I just lie there for about half an hour. It has been this way every morning for 40 years. I’m not resting, I’m not rising, I’m not doing anything worthwhile, unless you consider doomscrolling while listening to the radio worthwhile.

What an appalling waste of time. Forty years multiplied by 365 days multiplied by 30 minutes comes to 438,000 minutes, which is 7,300 hours, or 304 days. Scandalous. Nigh-on a year of my life thrown away neither sleeping nor doing anything useful.”

Of course, he’s lucky to have been able to do that for so long. I certainly didn’t snooze my alarm when I knew I had to be up and in my car and on the road in order to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic. A five minute delay in setting off could mean at least an extra half hour of sitting in traffic. Yes, the time could be put to some use: I listened to rather a lot of audio books and learnt a good deal of Italian listening to Michel Thomas CDs as I trundled along. It’s only since I retired that I have the luxury of rolling over and ignoring the alarm. I do, however, sometimes resent the loss of my morning, even though I may have put a load of washing in the machine before setting off and then stopped to do some shopping on my way back. And I can still get up early when I absolutely have to! 

Now, according to this article, the best way to keep city streets cool during heatwaves is to have green spaces. Well, we knew that already but it goes a little further and says that while parks and trees and even children’s playgrounds, provided I suppose that they have some grass and other greenery as well as concrete, are good, the best thing is botanical gardens. Which is why it’s even more of a shame that Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens is now a horrid concrete jungle and not then flowerbed filled space it used to be long ago.  

Nothing to do with heatwaves but in Valencia, Spain, they have had a horrendous fire in a residential tower block. Not so huge as the Grenfell Tower disaster, but still four people are confirmed dead and maybe 15 are reported missing. I wonder if that building had the same problem with cladding as Grenfell. Another bunch of people who have lost so much. I doubt if a visit from politicians makes up for it. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!