Hungry bears. Mistaken travellers. Blue plaques. Witches.

 It would seem that Yogi Bear got off lightly. According to this article, some black bears that broke into someone’s house in Colorado were shot dead. And this after they were persuaded out of the house and climbed up a tree. Apparently it’s standard practice in order to prevent bears from automatically associating people with a source of food. Part of the trouble, of course, is people moving into bears’ territory and building houses there. Now, that sounds like a familiar story. 

Here’s the story of someone who was arrested for getting on the wrong EasyJet plane. How do you manage to get onto the wrong plane? In my experience, they seem to check boarding cards and so on all along the way. 

I hear that there is going to be a Blue Plaque in Birmingham for the poet Benjamin Zephaniah. The unveiling will take place at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery on Wednesday, 16th October 2024, from 2-4pm. There you go. And it seems there will be a museum reopening event on 22 October 2024 which will also be promoting the plaque and related displays about Benjamin and his work.

And I have also read that a fake blue plaque has been erected outside a Tesco in Walthamstow to commemorate the fact that the lettuce that famously outlasted Liz Truss’s premiership was bought there.

At the end of her 49 days as prime minister a wilting 60p iceberg lettuce from Tesco in a blond wig was declared the winner of a race to last longest as she lost her grip on power. As it looked like her time in Downing Street was up, the Daily Star set up a webcam on the lettuce to see if it would have a longer shelf-life than the prime minister. After seven days it duly did. 

Here’s something else. “Three feminist campaigners in the Netherlands want to reclaim the insult “witch” and recognise the innocent victims of Dutch witch-hunts from the 15th to the 17th centuries with a national monument.

Susan Smit, Bregje Hofstede and Manja Bedner, the chair and board members of the National Witches Monument foundation, have raised €35,000 (£29,000) for an official site of memory for about 70,000 people who died during a Satanic panic that swept Europe and the Americas.

“It’s about creating more awareness around this history of, basically, femicide,” Hofstede said. “To this day a witch is still a comic figure. In the Netherlands, every year at the carnaval, people burn effigies of witches … but there’s hardly any knowledge of the actual history of people being burned at the stake.””

Hallowe’en is approaching. How many little girls, and how many not so little girls, will dress up as witches for the occasion? From stuff I’ve read, most so-called witches were either too attractive and attracted too much attention and resentment that way, or knew too much, or got old and wizened - something women really should try hard not to do, it seems.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!