Summer. Late ducklings. Victims of violence.

Summer seems to have decided to stay here for another day at least. As I have been out and about today people have been telling me the weather is due to break soon. We shall see. I must say, it’s very pleasant cycling to the Wednesday market in the sunshine rather than the drizzle. That’s two Wednesdays on the run I’ve been able to do that.

I left an empty milk bottle for the milkman and a bag full of bottle tops, which I have been saving up to return to him since he told me there was no need to put the screw top on the bottle to return it - just throw it out, he suggested. However, my recycling head thought that maybe if he had a large number returned at once it might be worth his while to re-sterilise them. Anyway, he seems to have taken them away. But, perhaps overwhelmed by receiving so many bottle tops, he forgot to leave me a bottle of milk! So it goes!

So later in the day I walked into the village to buy milk. I walked the long way round, past the old mill ponds. On one of them there were tiny ducklings. It seems late in the year to have new ducklings but an acquaintance who lives close to the millpond told me Mrs Duck had lost one brood earlier in the year, possibly eaten by the heron we see around here. He suggested that this was a replacement. Maybe so!

I doubt that the duck in question is really consciously trying to replace her brood; more likely nature has decided that duck population needs a boost!

The lost children who are victims of disturbed young men armed with knives or of vengeful soldiers firing missiles at schools and hospitals can’t be replaced quite so easily.

And now it looks as though Israel is targeting other places, apparently determined to have a wider war. We shall see. The world has gone crazy.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Road trips. Medal for cycling. That Last Supper thing.

 Yesterday my daughter and I went adventuring with the small people. Ideally we would have set off quite early in the morning but my daughter and Granddaughter Number Two had dental checkups in the late morning. Any hopes we had that leaving late would mean that the motorways would be less busy were just that - vain hopes! We never actually came to a halt but we slowed down rather more, and rather more frequently, than we would have liked. Consequently the outward journey took a good deal longer than our return journey later in the day.

For the first part of the journey it was like a flashback to when I had to chug along in slow moving traffic every weekday morning on my way to work in Salford.

But yesterday we by-passed Salford and continued westward. 

We were on our way to the Red Squirrel reserve at Freshfield/Formby.

We saw no squirrels. Instead we told the children tales of squirrel adventures in our past while we ate a picnic lunch. 

Then we prepared ourselves to tackle the sand dunes and get onto the beach where there was some splendid kite-flying going on. 

We could see the Welsh mountains and an impressive wind farm in one direction and a very faint Blackpool tower in the other. There were lots of people on the beach but nothing like the crowded conditions I saw in a recent photo of Brighton beach where it looked like standing room only.

The small people messed about in “lagoons”, hollows filled by the incoming tide, or possibly left by the outgoing tide. The water was positively warm. My daughter and I joined them and we walked down to the tideline, where the water was also warm. It’s the Irish sea of course, so always warmer than the Atlantic. This is the sea I remember from my childhood. But I read recently that the sea all around Great Britain is considerably warmer now than it was a couple of decades ago. Climate change. 

As we left the beach, I spotted this Hitchcockian moment near the carpark. 

Was this start of an attack on the ice cream van?

Now, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist commenting on cycling some more. I mentioned wet roads for the time trial. One cyclist ended up in hospital as a result of speed cycling on slippery, wet roads. Australian Olympic cyclist Lucas Plapp in hospital after crash on slick Paris road | Paris Olympic Games 2024 | The Guardian

And today I see that Tom Pidcock has won a gold medal for us, for mountain bike racing! (When did a wild kids’ adventure activity become an Olympic sport?) I read that he was booed, something to do with having rushed through a space to overtake a French rider, I think. Such, I guess is the nature of mountain biking. I also read that he saves all his winning bikes, race numbers and winning jerseys! 

Then there is that supposed “Last Supper” representation. According to one source, it was not the Last Supper at all but a depiction of an ancient Greek Bacchanal, because, of course, the Olympic Games originated in Greece. There you go.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Medals. Linguistic annoyance. Pictures and representation of pictures. Different kinds of reactions.

 Well, Belgium has done allright for Olympic cycling medals so far: Remco Evenepoel won gold and Wout van Aert won silver for the cycle time trial. It can’t have been much fun cycling at speed around Paris in the rain though. That might be my last cycling comment for a while … but you never know! 

On the subject of medals, here’s a bit of linguistic stuff. In various odds and ends about the Olympics yesterday I note that someone called Bob Hughes has been getting agitated: “To ‘medal’ is clearly wrong,” he writes  “but I’m getting used to it. On my train yesterday, however, the guard said the rear carriages had ‘not platformed’”

Oh, boy! This caused someone else (Andrew Benton - another unknown-to-me name) to comment: “… your ‘medal’ point has set me off...why-oh-why-oh-why is everything these days about ‘impact’ in writing on the web? What’s wrong with ‘effect’ and ‘affect’? And ‘upcoming’ too, there is a perfectly good word that has been around for ages that we should be using much more, and it’s called ‘forthcoming’ (as used in the Guardian). Many, many times ‘upcoming’ is redundant in a sentence online, such as an ‘upcoming event in August’ - you don’t need upcoming as August is clearly in the future! Seethe, seethe.... Nice that English is so responsive and dynamic though.”

Quite so! 

Here’s an anecdote related to the opening ceremony:

“High jumper Gianmarco Tamberi issued a profuse apology to his wife on Saturday after his wedding ring slipped off his finger while he was serving as Italy’s flag bearer on a boat in the Seine River during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. “Too much water, too many kilos lost in the last few months or maybe the irrepressible enthusiasm of what we were doing,” Tamberi, who won gold at the Tokyo Games, wrote on Instagram in a post directed at his wife, Chiara Bontempi Tamberi.

“Probably all three things, the fact remains that I felt it (my ring) slip away, I saw it fly.... I followed it with my gaze until I saw it bounce inside the boat.”

Tamberi said that his wedding ring then bounced into the waters of the Seine in what he described as “a few moments that lasted forever.”

“But if it really had to happen, if I really had to lose it, I couldn’t imagine a better place,” Tamberi added. “It will remain forever in the riverbed of the City of Love.”

Tamberi said the mishap would be an excuse to renew vows and get married again, and perhaps serve as an impetus to earn more Olympic hardware.

“May it be a good omen to return home with an even bigger gold!” he wrote.”

It seems that the opening ceremony upset some Christians by including a parody of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous fresco ‘The Last Supper’ featuring drag queens.

in the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris has sparked fury among the Catholic church and far-right politicians, while supporters praised its message of tolerance. 

The Catholic church in France criticised the segment.

“This ceremony has unfortunately included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity, which we very deeply deplore,” the Conference of French bishops said in a statement.

Far-right politicians in France and elsewhere took to social media to express their disgust.

More left-wing apparently observers praised France’s tolerance, inclusivity and creativity - it’s all that “laicité” but really they should have known that feathers would be ruffled.

Here’s more serious stuff about pictures: one of Michael Rosen’s The King and his Tutor pieces:

'How do you feel about pictures, tutor?' said the King to his tutor.

'I think pictures of you or me are fine, sir,' said the King's tutor.

'No, tutor,' said the King, 'I was thinking of pictures of the battefield.'

'Ah yes,' said the tutor, 'that's a very different matter. Whose pictures are these?'

'Well,' said the King, 'I understand that one or two of the pictures are ours, but there are pictures being painted by people friendly to the enemy.'

'So I understand,' said the tutor. 'Well, what we say,' the tutor added, 'is that all pictures painted by the enemy should be doubted.'

'Doubted?' said the King.

'Yes,' said the tutor, 'we have to make it clear that everything and anything that the enemy do by way of producing pictures might not be true.'

'But what if they are true?' said the King.

'This may be the case,' said the tutor, 'but we have to ensure that people wonder if they're true. At which point, they will wonder if everything else the enemy says is true. And that will be good for us.'

'So we say, 'The pictures are not true,'?' said the King.

'We do,' said the tutor.

'That's very clear,' said the King.

A German friend of mine tells me that Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has condemned the rocket attack on Saturday that killed 12 people at a football ground in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, writing on X, “It is appalling that children and young people who simply wanted to play football were killed.”

She added in a follow-up tweet:

"For months, Israeli citizens have been under fire from Hezbollah and other extremists. The perfidious attacks must stop immediately. It is now time to act with cool head. Far too many people have already died in this conflict."

My friend wonders if Germany’s foreign  minister is going to issue one of these statements every time now a school or school yard is bombed? She (my friend) has not seen any of those clear condemnations when it was the IDF bombing schools and football-playing kids in yards in Gaza yet, but she would happy to see some...!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Pomp and circumstance ignored. The melding of real and digital worlds.

 We didn’t watch yesterday’s opening ceremony to the Paris Olympic Games. I’ve seen the odd photo but that’s all. I hear it was all rather kitsch.

Someone has suggested that this is the best bit of opening ceremony ever:

You have to hand it to Her Late Majesty, she had a sense of fun. Maybe its all the income from the crown estate that makes it all possible. If so, then should we expect examples of His Present Majesty’s sense of fun? I hear the crown estate contributes quite a lot to his upkeep so surely he can afford some fun. 

Anyway, we didn’t watch yesterday’s offering. I’m not a great fan of Lady Gaga or Céline Dion, so I don’t feel that I have missed out. I read that Zinedine Zidane also participated: does he also sing? Or did he give a demonstration of old football skills? 

In the film Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain there is a scene which shows how Mme Poulain, mother of the aforementioned Amélie, likes to empty her capacious handbag, clean it pir and then put all the contents back neatly in place. Well, I seem to have been in Mme Poulain mode over the last couple of days. It began yesterday when I cleared everything moveable out of the bathroom, scrubbed all the surfaces and then put everything back neatly in place.

Later I went to get something oqut of the freezer and found that it was rapidly turning into a sort of frost mountain. Like quite a lot of equipment in our house, it is getting old and cranky and from time to time, if drawers have not been absolutely, utterly and completely closed on just the right fashion, it goes into overdrive and sort of freezes itself up. The only remedy is to switch it off (that of itself being an awkward operation as the plug and an-off switch are not easily accessible), put all the contents in freezer bags and let the collected frost and ice melt. Which is what I did, and I put everything back, more neatly, in its rightful place. 

Having completed the operation this morning, I trotted off to the supermarket. Planning to put stuff away, I looked in the fridge to check the available space. Chaos! So once more I took everything out, washed and dried the shelves, replaced them and put all the contents and the newly acquired bits and pieces from shopping neatly in their place. 

I am now resisting the temptation to continue taking things out of cupboards and off shelves (in almost every room of the house) in order to dust and polish. It needs doing but I am resisting womanfully. There are other things to do - more creative things.

Our smaller grandchildrnen like to create “worlds” on Minecraft on their tablets. Aged 4 and 7, they are quite adept at manoeuvring the digital worlds. Theyvplaybother similar games where each of them has a “world” on their own tablet but can “visit” each other’s places digitally. I am astounded!

During term time, the seven year goes to an after school club on some afternoon, when both parents are working a little too late to collect her directly at the end of the school day. Quite often she returns home with a “creation” she has made, a complex mix of model buildings made of paper and stuck on a sheet of card. She has several of these now and she has also created tiny paper figures to inhabit these “world”. And so she has introduced her small brother to the game of worlds, where paper characters can move between worlds and interact with on another. The games they play on their tablets have transferred into a 3D reality! 

Amazing! Life copies art - or if not art, then at least the digital world.

Similarly, when I was out and about I overheard some teenage boys talking about games they play on the computer. One of them asked if the others had seen ‘that film’ - a film based on one of the popular games! Cinematic art imitates gaming art! The name of both the game and the film were completely unkown to me. It’s a generational thing! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

A wobbly start to the Paris Olympics?

 It’s almost time for the Olympic Games but according to this article there is still some concern about how enthusiastic or not Parisians are about the whole business. Some Parisians, of course, will be more interested in getting away from the capital as it’s almost time for le grand départ when those who can go away for most of August. And then today we have news of arson attacks on part of the TGV network, causing havoc for train services in and out of the capital. Even Eurostar has been affected and holiday makers and other travellers planning to go to Paris from the UK by train are facing delays and cancellations. 

It’s rather like a French version of our local problem of the tram service between Oldham and Rochdale being suspended, on a bigger scale, of course, and ours was the result of natural causes (a landslip apparently) rather than deliberate vandalism and possible terrorist activity. The French problem sounds like deliberate disruption. 

Some people argue that politics should be kept out of sport, but I read that a spectacular boat procession down the Seine at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games could be used by national delegations seeking to show “solidarity” with the Palestinian cause.

Around 90 vessels carrying 10,500 athletes and officials are due to float in convoy through Paris tonight, including a delegation from Israel. Pro-Palestine organisers said discussions were taking place about a high-profile demonstration.

A “show of solidarity” could involve some unnamed national delegations flying the Palestinian flag or wearing messages on clothing, sources said, as part of a policy of those opposed to Israel’s involvement in the Games to target open-air events over the next three weeks.

A spokesman for Team Israel said that none of their athletes had opted out of taking part in the boat procession. 

However, Stephanie Adam, a campaigner with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said: “While the International Olympic Committee and host country France would like to hide the dissent, including through repressive and underhanded tactics, the strong popular opposition to genocidal Israel’s presence in the Olympics made itself heard and seen at the Israel-Mali Olympic football match on Wednesday. The dissent will only grow during the Games.

“We call on participating delegations to join calls for a ceasefire now and to stop Israel’s Gaza genocide. We urge Olympic athletes to use their platform to take a stand for Palestinian rights.”

There you go. Personally I am not getting excited about the games. My sports enthusiasm seems to have evaporated after the end of the Tour! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Presidential activity. Overseas territories. Strange “sports”.

Joe Biden is no longer running for a second term in office. This gives people chance to write about what a good bloke he is really and all the supposedly good things he has done. So far, nobody seems to have stood up and said he shouldn’t continue as president until the end of his current term. And so he has welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spoken at length to Congress and received a ridiculous number of standing ovations! The world is an oddly dangerous place.

French Polynesia was in the news recently, reminding me that France still has “pays d’outre-mer” - overseas countries. I still find it strange that in the 21st century France “owns” places so far away and still maintains control over justice, security and public order, currency, defence and foreign policy. But then we have the Falkland Islands. As a British overseas territory, the Falklands have internal self-governance, but the United Kingdom takes responsibility for their defence and foreign affairs. So let’s not get all  huffy about Franc controlling a place so far away

What got me started on this was reading this article about Teahupo’o, Tahiti, which will host the 2024 Paris Olympic surfing event. Not exactly Paris but, hey! what’s in a name. I suppose it would be hard to recreate Teahupo’o’s “magical” tunnel wave on the River Seine.And presumably the places where surfers go off the coast of France don’t quite fit the bill.

The village has changed over decades from fishing village to aa surfing place because of their wave. Some local people, such as Léon Estall, 33, a professional fisher, cannot see the economic benefits for the village. “It’s not the local population here who are making much money from this,” he says, while working his side job selling coconuts to tourists on the roadside. “Unfortunately, the money is going elsewhere. We’re a bit heartbroken about that.”

That seems to be increasingly the cry of people who love in tourist places, mostly not quite so remote as Teahupo’o. So much for progress!

Besides, who even knew that surfing was an Olympic sport. But it seems to me that if beach volleyball is an Olympic sport (which apparently is the  case) then why not surfing?

Thinking of competitive sport, here’s a link to an article about a young man who is known as the ‘Godfather of Competitive Eating’. What a strange way to seek fame and fortune. Come to that, what a strange way to earn a living, let along grow rich! And yet, Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi is described as competitive eating’s first elite athlete and can eat 50 hot dogs in 10 minutes. Quite why anyone would want to (unless the prize money is very good) defeats me. Besides he suffers from arthritis of the jaw from so much chewing!

The world is crazy in many ways!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Breakfast in the park. Chaos in the side street. Rebellion in the Commons - quickly punished! And not taking part in the Olympics.

 I try to ride my bike on actual roads, especially main roads, as little as possible, preferring bridle paths and smaller lanes. This morning as I swooped down the last section of Den Lane, about to turn into Uppermill high street, I spotted familiar figures crossing the bottom of the lane: my daughter and her smallest child. They had just dropped Granddaughter Number Four at school and were having a stroll round Uppermill before deciding what to do with the rest of the day. So I picked up some pains au chocolat at the co-op store, did my usual run around the market and went and joined them in the park for an open air breakfast/snack.

There was a little moment of chaos in the side street next to the co-op store as the co-op lorry tried to park in his usual place to make his deliveries, rather hampered by a car parked on double yellow lines at the corner! I suppose it could have been someone who doesn’t frequent Uppermill on a Wednesday and wasn’t expecting a huge delivery lorry  but anyone with an ounce of common sense and rather less sense of entitlement to do what they like would have parked elsewhere. 

Granddaughter Number Four doesn’t finish school for summer until tomorrow. I think the local secondary school finished yesterday. My daughter finished her training sessions yesterday and is now officially on holiday: hence her being able to walk the small boy through Uppermill this morning. She still has stuff to organise before school resumes in September but she was looking relaxed this morning. Having spent all my working life in educational establishments one kind or another I remember that feeling of freedom with the whole of summer stretching out ahead of you. It doesn’t last long and you quickly realise you have a million things you want/need to do in the  limited time available. 

And we need a bit more sunshine! It’s quite warm out there today but the morning sun has withdrawn behind the clouds. But at least it’s not raining!

One of my young heroines, Zarah Sultana MP - not my actual MP but still a good person to follow - has had the parliamentary whip withdrawn from her for voting for an amendment to the King’s speech, proposed by the SNP. This is what she wrote on social media:

“i have been informed by the Chief Whip and the Labour Party leadership that the whip has been withdrawn from me for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, which would lift 330,000 children put of poverty. 

I will always stand up for the most vulnerable in our society.”

And there’s more: 

“A couple of years ago I proposed a law in Parliament to introduce free school meals for all.

This would tackle child poverty and guarantee every primary school pupil has a hot healthy meal each day.

Today I joined campaigners in Westminster to renew this call.”

The House of Commons voted 363 to 103 to reject the amendment about the child benefit cap, tabled in the name of the SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn.

Zarah Sultana was informed by email last night about the decision to withdraw the whip. She’s not alone: The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the former business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, along with Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, and Imran Hussain have also been suspended. Most Labour MPs toed the party line. Independent thinking is clearly discouraged. At least it is in this case but it’s not consistently been the case

According to Owen Jones, writing in the Guardian, “Such parliamentary rebellions are scattered through our democratic history, and are accepted almost as a convention of government. Boris Johnson suspended multiple Brexit rebels in 2019 and it was rightly seen as an aberration. He did not, for example, exact the same punishment when five Tory MPs backed a Labour motion extending free school meals in 2020. When it comes to Labour history, even Tony Blair never resorted to such petty authoritarianism. Forty-seven Labour MPs rebelled over a cut to the lone parent benefit in 1997 – none had the whip removed.

There isn’t the money available, we are told. The price tag is £1.7bn, a pittance given annual government expenditure is £1.2tr. According to the Sunday Times rich list, the 350 wealthiest British households have a combined fortune of £795bn: is leaving their taxes at the same level more important than parents skipping hot meals to feed their little ones? When Starmer told Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the UK would give Ukraine £3bn a year “for as long as it takes” he acknowledged there is money available for what the government considers a priority. This Labour government simply does not regard child poverty as a priority.”

Also among the headlines in the news this morning, not a main headline but still there, was the news that King Charles is to get a pay rise. The sovereign grant will rise to £132m for 2025-26. Now, of course I know all the arguments about how the money is needed for upkeep of estates and renovation of the palace and such like. And I know we have standards to maintain and all that kind of thing but it does rather smack of rubbing struggling families’ noses in it. Mind you, Charles was sensible: he only had two children!

This weekend another event to take our minds off serious matters kicks off: the Paris Olympics. One of our bright hopes for winning lots of medals, equestrian Charlotte Dujardin, has had to withdraw as she has been provisionally banned for six months by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports for mistreating a horse during training. I’ve already commented on the fact that Slovenia won’t be represented by Tadej Pogacar on his bike. One factor in his decision is apparently the fact that his equally successful cyclist girlfriend has not been selected! Oops!  

And here’s a link to an article about “false news” reports that the Olympic athletes have to sleep on cardboard ‘no-sex’ bed. Various athletes, from a range of disciplines, have tested the beds in no-sex but vigorous ways and have demonstrated how sturdy they are! 

It must be the silly season. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!