Mist. Sunshine. Spiders. Vaccination. Assassination attempt?

 In contrast to yesterday today is bright and sunny. This was not the case when I ventured out at around 8.30. At that time everywhere was covered in fog. Well, not really fog, not a proper peasouper such as I remember from my 1950s childhood. This was more the sort of stuff John Keats wrote about in his Ode to Autumn - “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” and all that sort of thing. We seem to be having the mist but I have my doubts about the “mellow fruitfulness”. The blackberry brambles that seemed to promise a good harvest this year have not come to much. The apple tree that grows in the wooded area between our two millponds has a lot of fruit but the apples are almost all the size of small plums. Very disappointing!

In one of the plant pots in the front garden I spotted a very well-made spiderweb, made extra visible because of the rain drops suspended from it. A proper fairy-story web but with a rather gaudy spider in the centre, not very big (half a centimetre?) but not the kind of visitor you want in your home.

I’ve mentioned the grandchildren’s near-paranoia regarding spiders. Well, Granddaughter Number Two has declared herself seriously impressed by one of her new housemates at university, someone capable of catching large spiders in her bare hands and throwing them outside. This is a skill Granddaughter Number Two needs to work on.

Mid-morning we walked into the village to the local doctors’ surgery to be vaccinated against RSV - respiratory syncytial virus. As I understand it this is supposed to protect us against all kinds or respiratory ailments and the vaccination is free to people our age. The surgery was like a Darby and Joan Club with a growing collection of couples our age turning up together for a free vaccination. 

Incidentally, Darby and Joan were real people, John Darby and his wife, the eponymous Joan who were the subject of a poem in the 18th century::

Old Darby, with Joan by his side
You've often regarded with wonder.

 That’s just a tiny sample, of course. Even Lord Byron referred to them in  a letter to a friend:

“Master William Harness and I have recommenced a most fiery correspondence; I like him as Euripides liked Agatho, or Darby admired Joan, as much for the past as the present.”

The GPs’ surgery we went to, by the way, was refurbished very nicely some time before Covid but, apart from occasionally being used for delivery of vaccines, it has mostly stood empty since then. Consultations have all taken place at the climic in Uppermill. However, Phil has managed to make an appointment at the Delph surgery, albeit in about a month’s time, so maybe change is coming.

Across the ocean, it seems that someone took a pot shot at Donald Trump as he played golf at his Mar a Lago golf course. There is speculation that the shooter mistakenly believed he was somehow supporting Ukraine (how?) while others suggest it was staged to attract sympathy for the Republican candidate. Years ago we used to read Astérix books in which Obélix was often heard to state, “Ils sont fous ces romains!” - There Romans are crazy. Maybe Americans are the new Romans - “Ils sont fous ces américains!”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Leaving your clutter behind. Posh frocks. The significance of what you wear.

 Granddaughter Number Two returned to university yesterday. The plan for the day kept changing as the day progressed. Initially they were setting off in the morning, picking up en route the mass of stuff left in our attic bedroom. Then they were setting off a bit later and did I fancy a road trip to York? Departure was delayed because they discovered that there was going to be nobody in the house Granddaughter Number Two was sharing with a group of friends until late afternoon. She didn’t at that point have a key to the house. So they would set off mid afternoon and, oh, by the way, could they leave Grandson Number Two at our house because they needed the space in the car for all the clutter she was taking with her? Well, of course!

It’s a big car, seven-seater if all the seats are unfolded. It was packed to the gunnels (which by the way is a corruption of “gunwales”, the highest point on the sides of an old sailing ship) and the seat where the small boy would have sat was packed with pots and pans! So I got to play with a lava kraken and an ice-bug - mysterious creatures made of plastic - before enlisting the small boy’s help in chopping up vegetables. He’s a dab hand at peeling carrots although there is often rather more peel than carrot by the time he has finished! 

Checking up in the attic bedroom later, I discovered a duvet, a fitted sheet, a blanket and sundry odds and ends, all of which Granddaughter Number Two assures me via Messenger this morning are “for the tip. Mum knows”. We’ll see how long it takes for that to disappear! This is how you lose the battle against clutter! 

I try to avoid articles about the royal family. Headlines are enough. It really doesn’t matter to me whether or not they send birthday greetings to the errant Harry. But I accidentally opened and skimmed one about Kate Middleton and the dress she wore for her end-of-therapy video. Described as a “Veronica Beard boho” peasant dress, it cost £595 and has apparently sold out since the royal video was released. So lots of people can afford expensive frocks! No austerity for them! 

According to Barbara Ellen, writing in the Guardian, the release of the video is all to do with making the Prince and Princess of Wales and family look like an “ordinary middle class family”: 

“Most strikingly, the video seems to be about class. In that, there’s a firm muting of William’s royal aspect and a reclaiming of Kate’s middle-class centre ground. Yes, the wealthy upper-middle (let’s not go overboard), and probably to market themselves as the perfect ordinary family (the video hums with “just like you” soft power).”

An ordinary middle class family who can afford expensive frocks. Further investigation into that dress leads into an analysis of her choice of colours.

“It has now been speculated that the choice of blue dresses was a deliberate nod to the princess’s commitment to her family. 

Royal author Elizabeth Holmes told Vogue magazine: “I think it’s worth considering Catherine’s commitment to blue.”

“For the first official pictures of her as a royal bride-to-be, she wore a vivid blue wrap dress to match the famous sapphire and diamond engagement ring that had belonged to Princess Diana.”

“[Kate] has since worn every shade of blue, from a soft and pale (one might even call it Cinderella blue) to a deep navy.”

It has therefore been speculated that the colour of Kate’s dress was a deliberate choice to reflect the unity of the Wales family – and her commitment to herself.””

Goodness! Who knew that choice of outfit was sooooo important and significant. And some people must have scrutinised that video in depth - some people need to get a life! 

But I suppose it gives us something to think about other than the possibility of Ukraine flinging missiles into the heart of Russia and maybe plunging us all into a wider war! Shades of bread and circuses - with more emphasis on the circuses. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Out and about around here. A good funeral. A writer’s childhood ambition. Cats and dogs.

. 

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, we went for a walk down the Forest Path, a path through a patch of woodland, a path our son called the “secret path” when he was a child but which now has an official name and sports those noticeboards telling you what trees and plants and birds you can expect to see

We came back up the hill to Dobcross, stopping to admire the garden of one of my nodding acquaintances - we chat at the market on Wednesdays and even on one rainy Wednesday she offered me a lift home as her husband was collecting her but we have never introduced ourselves. Altogether a fine, crisp September afternoon/evening.

This morning I saw a deer in our closer-to-hand bit of woodland between the two millponds on my regular running route. He was bounding along on the other side of the stream, too fast for me to get my phone out to take a picture. A good sight on a fine morning. 

There was an article in today’s Guardian about the funeral of former England Manager Sven-Göran Eriksson. Oddly the headline made it sound as though the most important thing was the importance of Devid Beckham being there: “David Beckham joins mourners at Sven-Göran Eriksson’s funeral in Sweden”. But i n fact there was just a lot of stuff about the man himself.

It seems he “would often choose to wear a suit as a teenager but was also known to post a sign on his bedroom door saying “no entry – homework in progress”, to give himself extra time to read detective novels in bed.”

He sounds like a fine person. His daughter, Lina, said that her father had wanted a funeral “full of joy, music and happiness”. She added: “In Dad’s own words, ‘Don’t be sorry, smile, take of yourself and take care of your life and live it because life is beautiful.’” And music there was: a brass band played “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, remembering his fondness for Liverpool; there was Elton John’s “Candle in he Wind” and Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”. A nice send-off by-all accounts!

I also came across an interview with the writer Anne Enright. She revealed that, “When I was seven I wanted to be a nun. When I was eight, I wanted to be a boy so that I could be anything I wanted. Also, of course, I wanted to be Samantha in Bewitched.” It’s a good nob nobody took her childhood ambitions seriously and took action on them. Mind you, quite what anyone could have done to give her the power to twitch her nose and work magic spells remains a mystery. 

In answer to the question, “What is the worst job you’ve done?” She replied, “When I was 17 I took on a class of six-year-olds for a week. When the Angelus rang at noon, they stood up in silence and I realised I was supposed to recite the prayer, which I did not know. I said: “There will be no Angelus today because of that child fidgeting at the back.””

Across the pond, the Trump Harris debate continues to provoke comment and other more serious reactions. Following all the crazy stuff about them eating the dogs and cats, Haitian residents in the town of Springfield have reported receiving severe threats and harassment.

Here’s First Dog on the Moon’s commentary on the debate:

The world is more than a little crazy.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Friday 13th stuff. Out and about. Christmas is coming … early. And something about wealth.

 It’s Friday the 13th. So far nothing bad has happened as far as I know but I’m whispering that, just in case! 

I was up early to catch a bus so that I could go and get my hair done. Amazingly all my buses and trams co-ordinated nicely although I had to walk from Victoria Station in Manchester as the tram was not gong any further along that line, because of a derailment - maybe that was the Friday 13th thing! 

Before leaving the hairdresser’s, I made an appointment for mid-December, by which time the highlights will have faded some, because I worked out that by then appointments will be hard to come by and, besides, it’s become really difficult to get through to them by phone. I made today’s appointment by popping into the salon when I was out and about the other day. By mid-December they’ll be busy with people wanting to be tarted up for Christmas socials.

Which brings me to Christmas. It’s the 13th of September. That’s right: September! We’ve not yet had Hallowe’en or Bonfire Night, although I have seen the odd witch’s hat on sale, but no broomsticks, pumpkins or fireworks. It’s about three and half months until Christmas. So why did I see mince pies on sale in Tesco? I can just about, grudgingly, accept that we now have hot cross buns all year round and not just for Good Friday, but mince pies should not be on sale until the week before Christmas.

It’s not just mince pies either. Large tins of Christmas chocolate selections are also on sale, the sort that mysteriously appear in staff rooms all over the country in the run-up to Christmas, encouraging staff to over indulge. So much for the government’s plans to make us all healthier!

As well as sweet comestibles, novelty Christmas ear-rings, reindeer- and robni-festooned socks and such like are also displayed in shops and supermarkets. Maybe it’s because summer has been declared dead and buried here. After all, the Manchester Evening News has been publishing a warning that colder weather is approaching, maybe even snow in some parts of the country in the coming week. An approaching Arctic Blast is the responsible party apparently. I’ll believe that when I see it, but everything seems to be possible in this time of climate change.

We keep on seeing items about the very rich (a minority of the world population own far more than the rest of the world put together. One of them is about to become a trillionaire. I don’t remember which butbit doesn’t really matter. The fact is he will have more money than he can spend in his lifetime, I should think. We can all think of how that wealth could be redistributed. Occasionally comes a story of one of the rich helping others. Here’s a link to one such story.  Apparently Jon Bon Jovi talked a woman out of throwing herself off a bridge in Nashville. The article ends with this information:

“Bon Jovi is known for his social conscience: as a philanthropist he has helped those on low incomes, opening four outlets of his Soul Kitchen restaurant with a pay-what-you-can scheme, as well as funding housing and health initiatives.”

There you go. It’s not all bad news.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

A bit of a rant about grammar, and about change.

 I went out for lunch yesterday, as I have already said in yesterday’s post, with a couple of friends, former work colleagues, both former teachers of modern languages, as am I. You get three linguists together and at some point you get some strong opinions expressed about the question of teaching grammar. We all three agreed that detailed teaching of grammar (i.e. making children learn the names of parts of speech and grammatical constructions) is largely unnecessary beyond some very basic stuff. Correcting ungrammatical stuff - I were and we was corrected to I was and we were - is good, encouraging the use of more complex language is good but there really is no need to teach the subjunctive. Come to that, I have met Spaniards who can’t explain the use of the subjunctive despite using it all the time! 

Really you only need to know grammatical terms as a shortcut when learning foreign languages. It makes life a lot easier if you know that “the bit of the verb that means ‘to do something’, the title of he verb as it were, is called the infinitive. But as a native speaker, you don’t need to know that in order to speak, read or even write English well. However, reading a lot of stuff helps. 

So this morning I was amused and exasperated to read Adrian Chiles talking about “possessive determiners” in an article in the Guardian. He was expressing his annoyance at people, mostly medical or social work professionals, omitting the possessive adjective when talking about his mother. “It’s in the context of health or social care that it really starts to niggle. If a doctor, nurse or carer of some kind refers to “Mum” or “Dad”, I appreciate it comes from a good place. I suppose the informality is there to imply a gentle shared concern. But for me it strikes the wrong note, the tone cloying yet impersonal,” he writes. “I mean, if it’s a friend making the inquiry about a parent, then fine. Grates a bit, but no bother. Otherwise, the only people entitled to drop the my/your/our in reference to my mum and dad are me and my brother.”

I quite agree with his feelings on this. Especially when referring to one’s aged parents, it sounds a little as though said parents are reduced to a kind of infantile state. 

But it was his use of the grammatical terminology that most struck me. He began his article by saying: “It turns out that I have strong views on the use of possessive determiners, which is odd because I’ve only just found out that’s what they are called.” Great! I wouldn’t expect him to know the term! Except that whenever I have taught this aspect of grammar “my”, “your”, “his”, her”, etc, I have always called them “possessive adjectives”. And “this”, that”, these” and “those” have always been “demonstrative adjectives” as far as I was concerned. In gender-based languages, all the Latin-based languages for example, it’s useful to see them that way as, like plain, unadorned adjectives, they have to agree with the noun they accompany. 

So when did “possessive adjectives” become “possessive determiners”? I did wonder if someone had invented the term along with “fronted adverbials”, a term by the way that one of my linguist friends had never heard of. But no, it’s been around for a while. Well, the term “determiner” has been around for a while:

“The linguistics term "determiner" was coined by Leonard Bloomfield in 1933. Bloomfield observed that in English, nouns often require a qualifying word such as an article or adjective. He proposed that such words belong to a distinct class which he called "determiners".”

There you go, I stand corrected! However, I stand by my right to use the terminology I have always taught.

Things change! 

The Guardian has run an article about the Islas Cíes, the beautiful islands in the Atlantic, opposite Vigo bay, protecting that city at times from the worst Atlantic storms. Quite a lot of tourist-popular cities want to restrict entry to their cities as they are becoming overwhelmed. Because it is nature reserve, only accessible by boat, the management of the Islas  Cíes has been able to the numbers of visitors to the islands at any one time. 

There have been changes  though, since ai last went here. The cost of the boat trip from Vigo has at least doubled. And then there is this: 

“People used to reserve their places on the day, but now they reserve them three months in advance. They really plan their visits. People are also coming all year round, when it used to be just July and August.”

There you go!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Meeting old friends. Some thoughts on surviving.

This morning I caught a bus to the tram stop in Oldham. I was going to meet a couple of friends for lunch, finally having no immediate family commitments. As my bus made its way towards Oldham I observed an elderly couple get on and sit on the seat across the aisle from mine. After a moment or two I realised that the elderly gentleman’s profile was remarkably familiar. So I sneaked a look past him at his good lady. Yes, I was right. This was the gentleman who had been deputy head at the first school I worked at and his lady was a colleague in the Modern Languages Department, whose position as second on the department I had taken over some years later when she went on maternity leave. 

Over the years since we all moved on to other things (she took over my position as second in the department when I left have my son) we have come across each other at various times. As well as becoming a well!known and respected head teacher in Greater Manchester, closer to home he was a big wheel in our local film society. We would meet at various social events. Occasionally I ran into them at the supermarket. But it had been years since I last came across them, on that occasion also on a bus going to Oldham. 

We talked about this and that, a lot of reminiscing and they proudly pointed out that they are now 94. 94 years old and still getting out and about on the bus, making good use of their bus pass. Still in possession of all their marbles, by all accounts. Being good left wingers, lifelong members of the Labour Party, good activists in the local branch of the National Union of Teachers (even if we didn’t always agree on everything) must be good for a body! 

They don’t get out much now, they told me. Today’s outing to a big hardware shop in the town centre was the height of excitement for this week! But still - 94, still active and totally compos mentis! Not at all bad!

We said good bye at the tram and bus interchange and went our separate ways.

I met my friends in Manchester. We had a good catch-up, ate pizza and had a glass or two of wine. One of my friends told us how she had recently had a brush with cancer without even realising it until it was all over. What she thought was an infected mosquito bite from a visit to Venice developed into a small but growing lump. After a couple of visits to her local pharmacist, then to her GP and eventually to A&E, she was advised to see someone in dermatology. That was when she discovered that there was a 18 months’ to 2 years’ wait to see a dermatologist, unless, her GP suggested, they declared that they thought it might be cancerous. 

Not for a moment believing that cancer might be involved, she went along with this subterfuge. Within a week she was in hospital having the lump removed and sent off for biopsy. The results came back: yes, it was a cancerous tumour but everything was now removed. However, they would like to check up on her every six months. She felt she’d had a narrow escape!

I thought of the news that has just come out that Catherine, Princess of Wales, has completed her course of chemotherapy. And I thought of this article which I read this morning, in which a certain Hilary Osborne expresses some of the thoughts that went through my head when I saw the various photos and video clips of a very healthy-looking, glossy-haired, bright-faced recoveree. Now I’ve not had personal experience of chemotherapy but I am acquainted with several people who have and mostly they still looked pretty sick for quite a while. Maybe she had superior treatment.

Not that I begrudge her such an apparently wonderful recovery. I hope it’s the truth. And I hope her videos do give cancer sufferers some hope of seeing light at the end of that tunnel.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

The end of summer. La rentrée. Business as usual … but not everywhere. And weapons.

 I ran in the rain … again! Later, it seemed brighter so I thought I might hang some washing to dry in the garden. Despite the sunshine, it was still raining. There must be a rainbow somewhere. We need some rainbows! In the meantime there’s a lot of washing drying in the spare room!

The French word “rentrée” refers much more than the start of the new school year. People come back from long August holidays. All sorts of institutions re-open and, yes, children go back to school. Our shops here in the UK start advertising “Back to School” clothing and equipment a matter of days after the schools (and parliament) break up for the summer. We need a term equivalent to “la rentrée” to indicate that, like schools, government is up and running (in its fashion) after the summer break. Quite why they need a long summer break puzzles me as MPs as a rule no longer have the kind of estates where they need to go and supervise the harvest. Maybe they could operate like most companies do with employees booking their holidays in a staggered way so that the place can still operate. Just a thought, but instead, like schoolchildren, they return for the start of the autumn term.

But not all children everywhere have returned to school this year. Here’s a Guardian Update, posted by a friend of mine, yesterday I think:

"As we reported in an earlier post, the new school year in the Palestinian territories officially began on Monday. But all schools in Gaza are shut after 11 months of Israel’s war and no sign of an immediate ceasefire.

In addition to the 625,000 Palestinians already registered for school who would be missing classes, another 58,000 six-year-olds should have registered to start first grade this year, the education ministry said.

ActionAid have spoken to schoolchildren whose education has been disrupted because of the devastating impacts of the war.

Arwa said:

[I am] an 11-year-old student in the fifth grade. I lost my right of going to school as displaced people need to live there. Most schools were destroyed, burnt down or bombarded as a result of the ongoing war. I really miss my school. I miss my friends and my teachers very much.

Maryam said:

My house was bombed, and I now live in my school. I wish to go back home. I wish for the war to be over. I don’t want to live in my school. I want to learn in it. I miss my friends and my teachers … My books were burnt to ashes. My bag was torn, and my notebooks are gone … I wish to go back home. I wish to get back to learning. I want to put on my school uniform and get ready for school. And to buy my school supplies.

Raed, aged 9, said:

I really miss my school and wish to go back [to] learn. I haven’t been in school, nor have I studied for 10 months now.

Mona, aged 7, said:

I miss my school and my friends a lot. I miss holding a pen and writing. I miss writing and learning my alphabet."

(Guardian update: 13:55)

And now there is also Jenin.

Here’s a bit of armaments make-believe, courtesy of Michael Rosen: 

“'We have excellent weapons, don't we tutor?' said the King.

'Indeed we do,' said the King's tutor.

'Remind me of what we've got,' said the King, 'I have to admit, it makes me feel very proud of our nation and our history, when you tell me about such things.'

'Well, sir,' said the tutor, 'I would like to tell you about our greatest  weapon of all.'

'What's that?' said the King.

'It's an extraordinary spear,' said the tutor, 'once launched, it only kills enemy soldiers.'

'But what if there are people who are not soldiers who are in its way?' said the King.

'Good point,' said the tutor. 'And indeed, it's the whole point. As this spear flies towards a soldier, and if there's a non-soldier in the way, this spear will fly round the non-soldier and head on towards the enemy soldier. It will miss the non-soldier altogether.'

'That's amazing,' said the King. 

'Not only amazing,' said the tutor, 'it shows what sort of people we are.'

'How so?' said the King.

'It shows that we are good, kind and humane people,' said the tutor. 

'Oh good,' said the King.”

If only … 

Here’s a much older bit of wisdom about war, courtesy of Bob Dylan:  

“Come you masters of war. You that build all the guns. You that build the death planes.

You that build all the big bombs.

You that hide behind walls.

You that hide behind desks.

I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

Let me ask you one question, Is your money that good?

Will it buy you forgiveness, do you think that it could?

I think you will find, when your death takes its toll, all the money you made, will never buy back your soul”

And here’s another kind of protest: 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!