I walked through the bluebell woods to collect the small boy from pre-school yesterday. We considered walking home that way too but in the end opted for the bus. We’ll go adventuring through the trees another day. On a particularly windy stretch the small boy told me the wind was blowing dandruff away. Dandruff, he explained every seriously, is when he skin under your hair gets very dry and flaky, it blows up into the air and way up into the sky where it turns into stars! That’s quite a bit of whimsy for a small boy who is usually more scientific than creative in his approach to life, the universe and everything!
On other occasions he has “corrected” me, telling me that the dinosaur I have mistakenly called a “velociraptor” is in fact a “felosiraptor”, which I sometimes hear as a “philosoraptor” and imagine a dinosaur Socrates or Plato. The small boy assures me he is right because he “knows everything”! Ah, the confidence of four-year-olds!
By the time his mother and sister arrived he had decided that playing in he garden was the order of the day, despite an earlier desire to watch Octonauts on DVD. It was a positively balmy late afternoon and the children happily made “potions” in the water barrel. Of course, that might have been summer. It’s a good job we took advantage of it.
As a consequence of collecting small people, organising tea for everyone, getting the chess-player on his way, I didn’t get around to voting until after 7.00pm. I remembered to take my bus pass with me for photo-identification. It’s still just about recognisably me.
Boris Johnson, on the other hand, was turned away from the polling booth yesterday for failing to produce photo identification! His own legislation! Rumour has it that he took an envelope with his name on it. Perhaps he assumed he is so recognisably Boris Johnson that nobody would question him.
Earlier in the day yesterday, on Co-op Radio, which you can’t avoid listening to if you go into our local coop store, they were getting very excited about a comoetition to win free tickets for concerts at the new Co-op Live Arena, next to the Etihad stadium, a huge new concert venue, scheduled to be able to hold 23,500 people. Unfortunately, the evening becore the news had been full of disappointed teenagers who had been about to go and watch someone I’ve never heard of, only to have it cancelled at the last minute. Oops!
This is the third grand opening of the venue that has been cancelled at the last minute over the last weekmor so. Those of us in the queue, and the young woman on the till laughed quite a lot at this turn of events.
In an article this morning in praise of Premier Inn breakfast:
“there’s a theory that you can just wander into a Premier Inn and eat without paying. I wouldn’t endorse it, but it’s certainly come up on Fesshole, where people confess anonymously to doing so. Perhaps that’s why Whitbread are closing so many restaurants? If 100 people stole a £10.99 breakfast at each of the 850 Premier Inns, that would be nearly a £1 million in breakfast fraud a day.”
Apparently breakfasts at Premier Inn works on an “eat as much as want” basis, with endless repeat supplies of cereal, toast, fruit juice, coffee and pastries, as well hot food, including freshly scrambled eggs! And breakfasters walk away with their pockets full of croissants and pain au chocolat! Who knew!
Now for some more serious stuff about the ongoing USA protests. I have heard that more than 2,000 protestors had been arrested by this morning. Two different views.
On the one hand:-
“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” said Joe Biden. “But,” he continued, “order must prevail.”
“Violent protest is not protected – peaceful protest is,” he said. Biden criticized what he called “violent” protests.
“Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said in a brief statement on Thursday morning.
“There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos,” the US president said. In response to a reporter’s question, he said he did not think it was the right time to call the national guard.
And on the other:-
Police cleared out a protest camp at UCLA in the early hours of Thursday, and arrested at least 200 demonstrators. The police operation followed a brutal hours-long attack on the encampment on Tuesday night by masked “instigators” who came to campus and assaulted students with projectiles and chemical agents, while campus security and police retreated or stood by without intervening.
At least 1,000 people gathered on UCLA’s campus late on Wednesday night, before police moved in, tearing down plywood and pallets that protesters had used to reinforce their encampment. Students described again being attacked with projectiles, fireworks and chemical agents. The chaotic operation lasted into the early hours of the morning.”
News reports talk about the “pro-Palestinian” protestors, which is another misnomer, like the one about their being Muslim students on one side and Jewish students on the other. The protestors, a very mixed bunch of people, are not so much “pro-Palestine”, although no doubt some are, as they are “anti-genocide”. There is a difference!
Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!
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