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!