It would seem that today is Apple Day. Who knew?
“Apple Day, 21 October, was launched in 1990 by Common Ground. The aspiration was to create a calendar custom, an autumn holiday. From the start, Apple Day was intended to be both a celebration and a demonstration of the variety we are in danger of losing, not simply in apples, but in the richness and diversity of landscape, ecology and culture too. It has also played a part in raising awareness in the provenance and traceability of food
The success of Apple Day has shown what the apple means to us and how much we need local celebrations in which, year after year, everyone can be involved. In city, town and country, Apple Day events have fostered local pride, celebrated and deepened interest in local distinctiveness. We would still like Apple Day to become the autumn holiday in Britain. Apple Day is now an integral part of the calendar of many villages, local authorities and city markets. It is a focus for activities organised by the Women’s Institute, National Trust properties, Wildlife Trusts, museums and galleries, horticultural societies, shops and restaurants as well as for schools, colleges and environmental study centres.The first Apple Day celebrations, in the old Apple Market in London’s Covent Garden, brought fruit to the market after 16 years’ absence. Forty stalls were taken. Fruit growers and nurseries producing and selling a wide variety of apples and trees rubbed shoulders with juice-and cider-makers, as well as writers and illustrators with their apple books.”
There you go!
I wrote yesterday about the Amazon “outage”. Today I read about some of the odd consequences. People working in Amazon warehouses, usually running round sorting out orders and organising deleiveriesa, found themselves with a quiet day. Amazon delivery people on zero hours contracts were worried that they might not be paid. People who rely on Alexa had some problems:-
“I use Alexa-enabled smart plugs to control the lamps in my room,” Christina, who uses crutches to get around, told CNN. “During the outage my smart plugs became unresponsive. Before I realised why the plug wasn’t working, I tried unsuccessfully to reset one of them. Now I can’t get it to work at all.”
Her complaint was serious, others less so:-
“Due to the Amazon outage, Alexa wasn’t working this morning, so I had to stumble out of bed in the dark, find my way to the kitchen, and turn the coffee-maker on MANUALLY. I can’t live like this. You guys go on without me,” one X user posted.
My favourite moaning reaction comes from users of Duolingo, afraid that their “streaks” (the records of how many consecutive days they have practised) might be disrupted or even wiped out completely:-
“Some threatened to “riot” if their streak was lost, others complained their 900+ day streak had reset to zero, while one poster on X took aim at Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos. “If I lose my 1,300-day Duolingo streak because of the pissing AWS [Amazon Web Services] outage, I will personally throw an egg at Bezos’ bald head.”
However, Duolingo has since reassured customers that their streaks will be safe. What a relief!
Nesrine Malik has been writing about the demands being put on migrants who seek citizenship of the UK. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood has seemingly said that some migrants must be able to speak English to A-level standard because, “it is unacceptable for migrants to come here without learning our language, unable to contribute to our national life”.
I think that there are large numbers of non-immigrant people who don’t speak English to A-level standard!
Some twenty years ago there was an attempt to introduce a ‘Use of English’ exam into sixth form studies. Inwonder what happened to that.
But it’s a good job Shabana Mahmood has only specified A-level standard and not beyond. After all, Kemi Badenoch classes studying English at university one of the ‘rip-off degrees’ that she would like to abolish.
Hmmm!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!