I should have been cheering our smallest grandson on this afternoon at the Pre-school Sports Day. (Since when do 4 year olds have sports days? Probably as long as nursery schools have graduation ceremonies with tiny mortar boards and primary schools have leavers’ balls! The less said about that the better. I could rant at length!) But yesterday evening I found out it had been cancelled. The field was still too soggy from recent rain and more rain was forecast for today. I don’t think it has rained but it has been dull and gloomy all day and the wind has been blowing the trees around. It would have been a miserable sports day!
Instead I have spent the day doing craft activities with the small boy’s seven year old sister. We considered going for a walk … briefly … but it looked so cold and miserable that we stayed in and beat Grandad at dominoes.
I got indignant again at the end of the afternoon listening to the news on radio. They were talking about a televised election debate which is due to take place this evening. The description tells me that leading figures from the seven biggest political parties in Great Britain face questions on the issues that matter most to voters. Nether Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer will be there but they’re sending along, for the Conservatives Penny Mordaunt, and for LabourAngela Rayner. The Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper will be there, as will, Stephen Flynn from the Scottish National Party, and Rhun ap Iorwerth from Plaid Cymru, and Carla Denyer from the Green Party.
And finally, the thing that made me so indignant, Nigel Farage from Reform UK will be there. I don’t have membership figures in front of me but is Reform UK really one of the seven biggest political parties in Great Britain?
Nigel Farage, who has never been elected to Westminster is invited but not George Galloway, who is the leader of the Workers’Party of Britain, which he founded in 2019, and who has been an MP, maybe rather controversially this last time, elected as MP for Rochdale in the by-election earlier this year. From 1987 to 2010, and from 2012 to 2015, George Galloway served as MP for four constituencies, first for the Labour Party and then from 2005 for the Respect Party, which he led from 2013 until its dissolution in 2016.
Both are controversial and outspoken figures but somehow Reform Uk is more respectable, more acceptable than the Workers’ Party of Britain. Perhaps the latter smacks of socialism and worse - echoes of the Socialist Workers!
Actually, it’s not the exclusion of George Galloway that riles me so much as the inclusion of Farage. Once again he is being given altogether too much attention!
One of the questions that is likely to come up in tonight’s debate (which I have no intention of watching, by the way) will doubtless be RIshi Sunak ducking out of the D-Day commemoration/celebrations. Did nobody warn him about the bad publicity that would be generated by that? Really!?
Getting back to weather questions, a friend of mine responded to one of my moans by telling me, “It's utterly beautifully in Sivota (tiny Greek resort) ...... just sayin' !” On another Greek Island, Symi, one of the media personalities we have enjoyed listening to, Dr Michael Mosley, has been declared missing. Our favourite of his broadcasts has been “Just One Thing”, a series of tips on how to improve the quality of life by doing, as his title says, just one thing, be it a small change in diet, a specific exercise or whatever. He’s been on holiday on that small island - 2,500 inhabitants - and set off for a walk and did not come back.
I’ve checked the weather in the Greek Islands; it’s been up to 40° and more, and tonight’s temperatures are around 24° or 25°. Maybe he’s collapsed with heat stroke. Maybe he has fallen from a cliff top walk into the sea. CCTV has caught images of him in a small village on the island but no one knows where he is. We wondered briefly why they can’t locate him via his mobile phone. After all, in crime series on the TV police find criminals that way all the time. But maybe it’s a myth. Whatever the truth of that matter, he seems to have left his phone in the place where he and his wife have been staying. So much for modern technology. Let’s hope there is good news soon.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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