Cold weather. What to wear. What fashion dictates. And the cost of crowning kings.

 Today began with crisp bright sunshine but by mid afternoon the cloud had moved in. It doesn’t feel significantly warmer/less cold thought. In fact, if anything it feels colder with the damper air. According to my weather app the temperature is 2° as compared with -1° at 8.30 this morning. It also tells me that it’s snowing, which is not true but may be well happening in other, possibly higher, bits of Saddleworth. 

Considering that the cold snap is apparently going to be around for a few more days, I have dug out thermal underwear and a pair of fleecy lined leggings that I purchased last winter. According to Marks and Spencer, these are not leggings but footless tights, the kind of thing that ballerinas used to wear, at least in all the girls’ magazine stories about ballerinas. 

I’ve also found my wooly bobble hats. But according to fashion writers, this year we should be wearing “micro beanies”. These are little wooly hats, with the main part rolled up so that the hat sits above your ears. “Worn high across the forehead, these bijou beanies are purposely rolled up by wearers, leaving their ears exposed to the elements. With roots in maritime and military settings – they were originally rolled up to avoid any obstruction to hearing – they are sometimes called fisherman or watch caps. But rather than being worn on the high seas, they are now sported by creative types in offices and coffee shops from London to Lancaster.”

“Bijou beanies” indeed! What a load of nonsense. Surely the whole point of a wooly hat is to keep your head warm, your whole head, including your ears, not just the top of your head. In fact, out running over the last few days I have worn a beanie and then pulled up the hood of my warm running-top! We were advised long ago by the chess player David Bronstein about the importance of keeping your head warm. 

Personally, I think it equally important to keep your feet warm and to that end I have been filling hot water bottles before we go to bed. 

But fashion dictates what we should wear and sometimes we dress to impress rather than to be sensible. I wonder if that was the case with the young man I saw in our local Tesco wearing very short shorts, showing off his tanned legs. Maybe he had been playing football but I think that is unlikely as the football pitches around here are still covered on snow. 

Apparently some people are getting agitated about the money that was spent of the coronation of King Charles: at least £72m. The cost of policing the ceremony was £21.7m, with a further £50.3m in costs racked up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Quite how the Department for Culture, Media and Sport managed to spend that extra I have no idea, but there it is. 

I seem to remember that when Juan Carlos abdicated in favour of his son, now King Felipe of Spain, that there was very little ceremony. However, it appears that our Charles insisted on having a big parade. Mind you, I suppose that if you have waited until you are in your seventies to become king, then you might want to make a big thing of it. 

The coronation has been described as a “once-in-a-generation moment” that enabled the “entire country to come together in celebration”, as well as offering “a unique opportunity to celebrate and strengthen our national identity and showcase the UK to the world”. A bit of British showing-off, in other words. 

Needless to say, we didn’t watch it.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Avoiding the news. Thinking about phobias instead.

It’s a perfectly fine, sunny day here … but extremely cold. One of the advantages of being a retired person is that I can enjoy days like this without having to worry about scraping frost off my windscreen before setting off the commute to work. 

And because it has not rained or snowed overnight, the pavements were dry and not slippery when I went for run. The bridle paths are no longer elongated mid puddles but have frozen solid, as has the mill pond. I watched geese land indignantly on the frozen millpond, looking extremely surprised as they skidded rather than splashed down. 

News from the various conflict zones continues as bad as ever. i can understand people not watching the news … altogether too depressing! 

So here are a few oddities that have made me smile. 

Every so often Facebook throws up posts which contain recipes, sometimes interesting,sometimes not. I suppose it’s because I occasionally stop to look at one in more detail that they keep popping up - the algorithms are  watching us. Anyway, just before a recipe for things to do with courgettes, there was this introductory statement, which struck me as amusingly odd:  

“Thanks to this dinner, I lost 10 kilograms. I will never get tired of this zucchini recipe!”

Was the recipe so awful that the commentator could not stand to eat it and so lost weight? If she expected to “never get tired’ of it, surely she would put on weight rather than lose weight. 

In an article about phobias, I came across two new words:

koumpounophobia = fear of buttons

coulrophobia = fear of clowns

I know quite a lot of people who are afraid of clowns; maybe it’s the combination of crazy antics with the sad-face make-up which makes them so disturbing. But a fear of buttons, where does that come from? And just imagine how difficult life must bebif you have to arrange all your clothing to have zips or velcro fastening.

One of the oddest phobias mentioned was a fear of bananas! What threat do bananas pose? Apparently it’s more than just a dislike, more like an odd kind of allergy. People who suffer from this type of fructophobia don’t just dislike bananas but suffer anxiety and nausea if they find themselves close to the fruit. Two Swedish politicians, Paulina Brandberg and Teresa Carvalho both suffer from it, the former, Sweden’s gender equality minister, going so far as to ask for rooms to be checked for the possible presence of this menace!m

Here are some of the main causes of Fructophobia.

• Traumatic experience or negative association with fruits.
• Learned behavior from family or peers.
• Genetic predisposition or family history of anxiety disorders.
• Overprotective parenting or excessive fear reinforcement.
• Cultural or societal influences.
• Underlying anxiety or sensory processing issues.
• Previous allergic reaction or aversive experience with fruits

In our family Granddaughter Number Two is fructophobic and lachanophobic (having an irrational fear of vegetables). Asking her to pass a dish of broccoli across the dinner table can lead to black looks and sometimes downright refusal to do so. It’s amusing, however, to watch her tentatively lift a dish and hold it as far from herself as possible. We think she once had a traumatic experience with a soggy strawberry, a fruit she used to devour with glee as a toddler!

People can be a little crazy, and some of them reach important positions. There’s this:

“Power in the United States will soon be shared between people who believe they will ascend to sit at the right hand of God, perhaps after a cleansing apocalypse, and people who believe their consciousness will be uploaded on to machines in a great Singularity.

The Christian rapture and the tech rapture* are essentially the same belief. Both are examples of “substance dualism”: the idea that the mind or soul can exist in a realm separate from the body. This idea often drives a desire to escape from the grubby immanence of life on Earth. Once the rapture is achieved, there will be no need for a living planet.”

*Tech rapture: NEW YORK — By 2045, humans will achieve digital immortality by uploading their minds to computers — or at least that's what some futurists believe. This notion formed the basis for the Global Future 2045 International Congress, a futuristic conference held here June 15-16.

Oh boy!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Season of mist … and cold! The race between war and pollution to finish us off. And children reading.

Today began with mist. I walked over Dobcross and down to the market in Uppermill in a very closed in world. The hills had been swallowed up. 

As I arrived home, the sun was just coming up over the hill.

By midday the sky was blue.  It’s rather cold though. 

I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to find a post I saw earlier in which my German friend commented on her country’s warning to its citizens to be ready for World War III. Instead here’s a post from Michael Rosen this morning:

”So we're living at a time when the US is giving missiles to a country so that it fires them at Russia?  Those of us who lived through the Cold War, were told that 'mutually assured destruction' ensured that this wouldn't happen.  What now?”

It’s not just the USA. “Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, while diplomatic sources briefed they expected other European countries to follow the US lead.”

So it seems we’re all busily contributing to the possibility/probability of World War III. And the UK is doing its bit. We’re writing to our MP. We would like there still to he a world for grandchildren to grow up in.

 Of course, that’s assuming we haven’t disappeared under plastic waste, or indeed ingested so much microplastic that we’re no longer fully human. Here’s a link to an article about AEPW, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, an organisation set up in 2019 by a group of some of the world’s biggest producers of plastic. They’re producing more plastic waste than the organisation is managing to reduce. Its a bit like the bullies volunteering to stop bullying from happening in the playground, or the “firemen” in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” who don’t put fires out but burn any books that are found.

We recycle as much of everything as we can, separating our rubbish into bins of different colours according to the type of waste. It can be difficult as our local council recycling plant doesn’t accept all kinds of plastic. Some types of plastic containers simply have to go into general waste, which annoys me. Then I read this he other day: 

“Plastic bottles are reviled for polluting the oceans, leaching chemicals, into drinks and being a source of microplastics in the human body.

They even cause problems with recycling. When plastic bottles are mixed with cardboard in recycling bins, in the wet winter months the sodden cardboard wraps around the plastic bottles and trays, causing havoc at recycling plants.

New figures now suggest that plastic contamination in paper and card jumps by 40% between November and March and as a result the UK sends an extra 5,000 tonnes of plastic waste to landfill or incineration.

The government is expected to signal in the next few weeks whether it will continue a Conservative policy which planned to allow councils to collect “co-mingled” recycling or if it will insist that paper, plastic, glass, metal, food and garden waste should be separated at source.”

It rather defeats the object of having separate bins if everything ends up in landfill anyway. 

And while I’m ranting about recycling and rubbish and such, I want to complain about screw tops on plastic bottles and  those plastic-aluminum foil-paperboard laminated cartons of fruit juices. The are attached by a plastic link which can make them difficult to unscrew when you open the bottle or carton for the first time and then they are a pain to fasten up again as they need to be correctly clicked into place. And I’m sure most people, like us, want to store their cartons of fruit juice in the fridge without fear of the juice spilling everywhere. Okay! Rant over! 

I’ve talked a bit about what we want for our grandchildren. Here’s Michael Rosen’s reading manifesto, which seems perfectly sensible and logical to me:

1. Reading books helps children make the most of what school and the world offer them.

2. Books give children language, thoughts, ideas and feelings.

3. Books show them places and times and cultures very near and dear to them.

4. Books show them places and times and cultures they may not have come across before.

5. Books help children walk in other people’s shoes, seeing things from someone else’s point of view.

6. Books help children see that they are not alone.

7. We have to do what we can to put books into children’s hands.

8. We have to do what we can to find space and time for children to talk about books.

9. We have to celebrate children’s books.

10. Children’s books are for everyone because we are all children at some time or another.

And to finish off, as Christmas rushes towards us, here”s Ben Jennings cartoon on Santa’s dilemma this Christmas:- 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Home again. Suddenly it’s winter! And Christmas! A shock to the system!

 After a week of mostly sunny weather in Figueira da Foz, with temperatures in the 20 - 25°, it was something of a shock to the system to watch rain turning to sleet turning to snow early yesterday evening. 

We had left our hotel at 11.00 am, with our fingers crossed that we didn’t meet heavy traffic, as our flight was scheduled to leave at 14.15 and getting through security could be time-consuming. As it was we made good time but there was still not enough time to sit down to lunch in the airport before we departed. Never mind, we thought, we can get a sandwich on the plane. However, almost the first announcement on the plane was an apology for there being no hot food available. Never mind, we thought, a sandwich will suffice. No sandwiches either. Only chocolate and crisps and drinks! The plane had not been properly restocked! 

When we got to Manchester I had to resort to buying us an overpriced sandwich from W.H. Smith as we waited for our daughter to collect us from the airport. Manchester’s Terminal 3, by the way is just about the most confusing and confused place at which to arrive. Finding the pick-up point was difficult, to say the least. Sign posts to the place petered out. Even when we found out approximately where it was, we had to cross muddy and grassy areas, with annoying kerbstones, as well as walking through a carpark: altogether difficult, sometimes dangerous and goodness knows how people with mobility problems deal with it! 

But we got home safely, stopping off to buy bread en route, took some soup out of the freezer and settled in for the rest of the evening. 

This morning we woke up to this view from the skylight window. 

Rather different from yesterday’s early morning picture.

I took a look at the pavements and decided it looked dry enough to run. It was fine but cold. The weather could deteriorate later, so that was the moment to go. It was a little like running through a Christmas card at times.

Talking of Christmas, I read this morning that in Birmingham they opened up their German-style Christmas markets on November 1st, barely taking the time to remove all the Hallowe’en decorations. NOVEMBER FIRST!! That seems a little early to me. Surely there is a limit to the number of times you want to run around drinking gluhwein and eating wurst on the city streets. Not everyone who works in the city is happy with this. “It’s just not the same any more. It’s too commercial. It starts too early, and it’s got too expensive,” said Kate Jones, 46, walking through the market on her way home from work. “I’ve been working here for 20 years, and I’ve seen it get so much bigger. It’s not as intimate. I never really go any more, and I think a lot of people who live and work here feel like that.”

Personally, I’m not a fan of the Christmas markets, as I have explained at least three or four times who my Italian friend who gets very excited about them. There’s a prodigious amount of tat on sale - repeated tat on various stalls. They bring visitors into the city centre though. A spokesperson for Birmingham city council said: “The Frankfurt Christmas market brings millions of visitors into the city each year, providing a huge economic boost and we are proud that the market also provides jobs for over 350 local people working alongside German staff.”

Manchester city centre also opened the markets on Friday and seem very pleased with them. “We’re very proud that Manchester Christmas markets are the biggest Christmas markets in the country and are really pleased that since opening last Friday they have broken all attendance records,” said Pat Karney, a local councillor. “The intoxicating Christmas atmosphere across our markets is free for everyone to enjoy with no requirement to buy anything.”

Local bars and restaurants and cafes are less pleased as they lose customers. I am less pleased because it becomes hard to make your way along King Street, for example, a pleasant pedestrian street that is just about wide enough in normal times. It will be hard to window shop there next time I go to the centre of town! 

So here we are, home again from our travels and suddenly having to think about Christmas! 

It was nice to get back to a decent cup of coffee for breakfast. I have to say the breakfast coffee in our hotel was quite execrable. It came from one of those machines where you select an option: small black coffee, Americano, coffee with milk, cappuccino. We tried them all, individually and in combinations with each other. All rather weak and watery and in one case rather chocolatey, which was strange. So it was with great pleasure that I had two cups of coffee made with our trusty Italian style Bonka coffee maker. 

In all other respects our hotel was excellent with friendly, helpful staff, some of them remembering us from last year (when the coffee was equally bad, so we should have known better!) Maybe next year we’ll have to go for hot chocolate or green tea!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Christmas giving. Contrasting weather. Bits of pedantic and consumerist nonsense.,

This morning I spotted a Christmas tree with parcels beneath it. Getting closer, I could see that these parcels were items of clothing, wrapped in plastic bags to protect them from the weather, second hand items, aka “pre-loved”, being donated to the needy. A good idea! 

This week such donations have hardly needed protection from the weather here. We’ve mostly had sunshine. Today is forecast to reach 23° - not bad for mid-November. It will be a shock to the system to get back to cold weather tomorrow. Granddaughter Number Two tells me that snow is forecast early in the coming week for York where she is studying. One part of her loves the picturesque quality snowy scenes. Another part of her relished cold weather as she likes to curl up in a duvet to read. But, more importantly, another part of her doesn’t want to have to trudge half an hour across campus to lectures and seminars.

Weather-wise and eating-wise (despite some of our favourite restaurants being closed) this week has been good. Chess-wise, less so. But you can’t have everything. 

Grandson Number One, earning a good salary at the age of 19, and having very few outgoings beyond paying a token contribution to the family home, recently asked me to admire the watch he had acquired: close on £200 pounds worth of timepiece. This seems a bit excessive to me but he really hankers after something even more expensive. And anyway, I was under the impression that young people didn’t bother to wear watches but preferred to look at their phones. 

I thought of this when I read today that a gold pocket watch presented to the captain of a steamship which rescued more than 700 passengers from the Titanic has sold for a record-breaking £1.56m. The sum – the highest amount ever paid for Titanic memorabilia – was paid by a private collector in the US, said auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son of Devizes, Wiltshire. The previous record was set in April, when another gold pocket watch, recovered from the body of the richest man on the ship, John Jacob Astor, sold for £1.175m.

I have commented on more than one occasion on the fact that collecting expensive memorabilia has taken over from collecting religious relics, saints bones and bits of the true cross and so on. 

Now for a bit of pedantic nonsense, posted by a friend: 

“Proper Shepherd’s Pie. Americans tend to call cottage pie, shepherd’s pie. A proper Shepherd’s pie is made with lamb. If ground beef is the protein, it is a cottage pie.”

I suppose it’s logical that “real” shepherd’s pie should be made with lamb rather than beef.

And here’s a new word, new to me anyway: lalochezia - the emotional relief gained from using abusive or profane language. Perfectly understandable, in my opinion. I have long felt that nowadays people swear too much. Swearing should be reserved for occasions when you really need to vent some emotion or other. According to something I read recently, people from the north of England are more likely to swear than those from the south. It was some judge ruling on somebody’s use of abusive language in the workplace. The accused, he said, was less likely to have has real malicious intent as swearing was second-nature to northerners. There you go: a bit of North-South divide stereotyping!

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!