Braving the storm. Thoughts about growing older positively.

 Storm Amy rattled around the house all night it seems. When I woke this morning she was still going strong. I heard the rain lashing down and the wind howling and so I switched off my alarm, turned over in bed and went back to sleep for a while. No running round the village this morning.

I read that all eight of London’s royal parks, including Hyde Park and Richmond Park, will be closed on Saturday because of strong winds during Storm Amy

I’m quite glad not to live close to the sea. 

Or in the Isle of Man where they have flooding or Ireland where around 100,000 properties were reported to be without electricity this morning! 

It’s the sort of day when you want to curl up by the fire with a good book. So my crazy Granddaughter Number One has gone out for a drive because her equally crazy housemate wants to drive!  I might venture out to buy bread later if the weather clears up at all but maybe I’ll just stay in. 

We braved the weather yesterday to go to our old friend’s funeral. Funerals are sad-happy reunions of friends and family. Another friend says she would like to know when she will die so that she can organise a ‘party’ that she can also go to. The old friend we celebrated yesterday would appreciate that sentiment. Even her daughter said that she would have loved being the centre of attention at yesterday’s event. She was the kind of person who loved trying new things, be it food, music, activities, whatever. So she would have enjoyed reading what actress recently deceased Patricia Routledge wrote not long before her 95th birthday:

“I’ll be turning 95 this coming Monday. In my younger years, I was often filled with worry — worry that I wasn’t quite good enough, that no one would cast me again, that I wouldn’t live up to my mother’s hopes. But these days begin in peace, and end in gratitude.”

My life didn’t quite take shape until my forties. I had worked steadily — on provincial stages, in radio plays, in West End productions — but I often felt adrift, as though I was searching for a home within myself that I hadn’t quite found.

At 50, I accepted a television role that many would later associate me with — Hyacinth Bucket, of Keeping Up Appearances. I thought it would be a small part in a little series. I never imagined that it would take me into people’s living rooms and hearts around the world. And truthfully, that role taught me to accept my own quirks. It healed something in me.

At 60, I began learning Italian — not for work, but so I could sing opera in its native language. I also learned how to live alone without feeling lonely. I read poetry aloud each evening, not to perfect my diction, but to quiet my soul.

At 70, I returned to the Shakespearean stage — something I once believed I had aged out of. But this time, I had nothing to prove. I stood on those boards with stillness, and audiences felt that. I was no longer performing. I was simply being.

At 80, I took up watercolor painting. I painted flowers from my garden, old hats from my youth, and faces I remembered from the London Underground. Each painting was a quiet memory made visible.

Now, at 95, I write letters by hand. I’m learning to bake rye bread. I still breathe deeply every morning. I still adore laughter — though I no longer try to make anyone laugh. I love the quiet more than ever.

I’m writing this to tell you something simple:

Growing older is not the closing act. It can be the most exquisite chapter — if you let yourself bloom again.

Let these years ahead be your treasure years.
You don’t need to be famous. You don’t need to be flawless.
You only need to show up — fully — for the life that is still yours.”

Well said, Mrs Bucket!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

The significance of colours. Police with guns. Bears in pools.

Sadly, today we are going to the funeral of an old friend. As she was always a fierce supporter of women’s liberation, fighting for equality, standing up for what is right, it has been suggested that we should wear purple, green and white, the colours of the suffragettes! Just a few weeks ago I went to the funeral of another old friend. On that occasion we were asked to wear Palestinian colours, reflecting her support for the Palestinian people, standing in regular protest outside her MP’s office. Another way of celebrating the person and what they believed in. 

Reports today suggest that one of the people killed in yesterday’s attack on the synagogue in Crumpsall may have been the result of police shooting. I knew we had armed police, or rather police who are trained to have and use firearms, but somehow I never expected them to go into a conflict situation in such a way that innocent people could be shot. Surely there should be a way to contain or restrain people without going in with guns blazing. Surely it would be better to be able to question the perpetrator as to their motivation. 

Here’s a link to an article about Lee Lawrence, whose mother Grace was shot and paralysed during that was described as a “botched raid” on their home when he was still just a child. That was in 1985, so police use of guns was already relatively common even then, and not just a recent “americanisation” of our policing. But it still strikes me that if we grow accustomed to armed police then we can expect those who commit crimes to be more likely to be armed. Just a thought!

On a less gloomy note, the other day I wrote about my repulsion at the idea of dogs in swimming pools. I was reminded of a number of reports I have read over the last year or so a number of reports of bears in swimming pools. This has been, of course, in the USA. While it’s very entertaining for us, safely ensconced in a country where large bears, or even small bears for that matter, roam free, I imagine it must be quite disturbing, not to say frightening, to look out and see bears in your pool! Even if the media describe them as “adorable”. Again I wonder if the owners of said pools have them cleaned before using them again.

I have swum in pools in Spain, by the way, where seagulls come and bob about on the water! 

And here’s a link to an article about Katmai national park in Alaska where they have been voting to decide which was the biggest Fat Bear! Strange! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Flags - expensive items! Superfoods! Making pasta in the open air!

I wrote recently about my Italian friend’s surprise on returning from a summer spent in Sicily to find bridges over the motorway festooned with flags. Today I read about the amount of money spent on flags for Mr Trump’s recent visit to the UK. Apparently when there is a visit from some foreign dignitary any of that country’s flags to be used during said visit have to be approved by their embassy. Fair enough, I suppose. It turns out that the flags submitted by the UK for approval by the US embassy were rejected because the stripes were the wrong shade of red! So 66 new hand-sewn flags were made at an estimated cost of £52,800!!! 

Wow!!! 

That’s £800 per flag!!

Paid for out of public funds too!

What if it had rained on them? 

The whole flag business seems to me to have got a little out of control but I had no idea they could be so expensive!

I don’t suppose the flags I see hanging from people’s windows or from lamp-posts are hand-sewn super-expensive objects but still, anyone who makes flags must be rubbing their hands together in glee at the moment. 

Now for something about food.

Adrian Chiles wrote in today’s online newspaper about “aztec broccoli”. He claims it’s a new superfood, called “huauzontle” in its native Mexico and “chenopoiuam mnuttalliae is it Latin name. He says a huge panful boils down to small amount, rather the way spinach does, and finishes his article with this invitation: “if you do fancy a try, bring a large van round to mine and I’ll happily give you enough to make at least one dinner.”

I’m often a little suspicious of so-called superfoods. Maybe they should be called ‘superfads’. In some cases their great popularity with the chattering class (the twittering class?) leads to people who have long regarded that food as a staple part of their diet can no longer afford to eat it. However, I keep finding interesting things to do with spinach ( Popeye’s favourite) and with lentils.

And here are some photos of pasta being made and sold in the streets of Bari. On the “via delle orecchiettel, aka Strada Arco Basso, the ladies demonstrate their skill at making “orecchiette” which tourists can buy from them. 

Personally I would be a bit suspicious of eating stuff made on wooden tables outdoors and left to dry in the sun but maybe that’s just me. I feel the same about sweets and fudge and such sold on street markets and displayed in huge open tubs with a scoop so that passers-by-by can serve themselves and pay for the privilege of doing so. 

Anyway, there has, it seems been a bit of a controversy as some of the “nonne”, the grandmothers who make the pasts, are suspected of cheating and purchasing ready made commercially produced orecchiette to sell as their own hand. This is because the demand from tourists has been so great! Victims of their own success.

One of the ‘nonne’, it seems, travels all over the world demonstrating her skill and promoting Italian produce. 

All part of the strangeness of the modern world!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Seasons changing! Poets disappearing! New terminology for a nanny state. Dogs and their entitled owners.

 I walked to Uppermill in the drizzle this morning - damp but not particularly cold. Jokers tell us we have 12 seasons in Manchester:

Winter

fool’s Spring

Second Winter

Spring of Deception

Third Winter

Actual Spring

The Pollening

Summer

Hell

False Autumn

Second Summer

Actual Autumn —- THIS IS WHERE WE ARE NOW! 

Leonard Cohen sang about the Tower of Song. The best singer/songwriters are poets and deserve their place up there in that tower. What about poets? Their words are themselves a kind of music. Are they welcome in the Tower of Song? If so, the tower should have a couple of new residents: Tony Harrison and Brian Patten who have both just died. The latter was one of the Liverpool Poets who taught us that poetry doesn’t have to follow set rules and can be about almost anything - bits of beauty everywhere!

Here’s an interesting bit of terminology: pregnancy-related crime! It’s in a report from the USA:

“In the first two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, prosecutors in 16 states charged more than 400 people with pregnancy-related crimes, new research released on Tuesday found.”

In the absence of an actual national database of arrests and prosecutions, the report tells us, the numbers could well be higher. This isn’t solely about abortion, apparently. Drug use / abuse comes into it. In one case, after a woman gave birth the hospital tested her umbilical card for drugs. The tests came back positive for marijuana (the woman had a medical marijuana card - a state-issued identification card  that shows a doctor has recommended the use of marijuana) and she was arrested … for felony child neglect … neglect before the child was born. Of course, I don’t know any details of the woman’s history of drug use or childcare - maybe her story is more complicated - but it all smacks of the state being rather too intrusive. 

It’s also part of what I hear referred to as the ‘fetal personhood movement’, which seeks to give embryos and fetuses the same rights as a child who has already been born. Thus laws intended to protect children can be used against pregnant women. And somehow terms like ‘personhood’ and ‘pregnancy-related crime’ make it all sound legal and impersonal. And more than a little dystopian! 

I have ranted on more than one occasion about dog-owners who like to decorate trees and bushes with little bags of dog poo! ‘Entitled dog owners’, as columnist Arwa Mahdawi refers to them, “expecting some sort of poop fairy to magically clean up after them”.  Here’s a possible solution from Italy: 

“Starting next year, the northern Italian city of Bolzano will charge tourists with dogs in tow a small daily tax of €1.50 (£1.30). Local owners are also being asked to cough up an annual tax of €100 (£87) a dog to help cover the cost of street-cleaning. Bolzano, by the way, has form when it comes to keeping pet owners on a tight leash. Last year it made DNA tests for dogs compulsory so that any abandoned excrement could be tested, and its owner then tracked down and fined.”

It’s an idea! However, it might be necessary to go back to having a dog licence in order to enforce such a requirement. And there are already enough people getting hot under the collar at the prospect of ID cards being (re-)introduced to the UK, let alone reintroducing dog licences!

While on the subject of dogs, I read yesterday about outdoor swimming pools and lidos allowing dog owners to bring their dogs for a swim and splash-about in said pools. My first reaction when I saw the headline was one of horror but it turns out the plan was to do so on the last day of such places being open before closing down for the end of summer. After that the pools would be drained and cleaned. So my feeling of revulsion at swimming in a pool where dogs had been bathing was unjustified. 

My apologies, dog-owners! I recognise that you love your pets but I don’t want to share seats on buses or restaurants with them and I certainly don’t want to swim with them!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Local birdlife. Mr Trump and prizes and guns. Drinking in Manchester.

The other day I saw swifts or swallows - I wasn’t close enough to see clearly and, besides, I’m not sure I’d know the difference - massed on a telephone wire. Were they waiting to migrate to wherever they go for the winter?

Then I frightened a pheasant and caused it to fly up onto someone’s roof.

Today it was the turn of the heron, in the ford near one of the millponds, an unusual place to see him. 

As I approached for a closer photo he took off, demonstrating his huge wingspan for me. 

Right, that’s the bird-spotting done for today.

Here’s a Ben Jennings cartoon about Mr Trump and his claims to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

The progress towards peace in Gaza still seems to take staggering steps forward, only to be knocked backwards by one or other party disagreeing with details or simply not being fully involved in discussions. 

Maybe Mr Trump should turn his attention inwards in the USA and do something about guns. Here’s a report of a shooting in a Mormon church in Michigan. Of course, we’ll never find out what the shooter had against the Mormons as he was shot dead by the police.

Here’s a little item about Manchester city centre pubs, not necessarily the cheapest places to go drinking but often picturesque:- 

 “Manchester is packed full of some of the oldest pubs in the UK, and whilst there’s nothing we love more than a pint, a Guinness is even better. Luckily for us, there are plenty of amazing Irish pubs offering the black stuff, and one is The Shamrock in Ancoats – which has been officially given a new name.

As work now begins on a  £1.8 million refurbishment of The Shamrock, it will now be called ‘The Spinners Rest‘, after owners Joseph Holt invited locals to make the choice. The name was selected through a public vote and pays tribute to the mill workers who once lived and worked in the area.”

I wonder how long people will continue to call it The Shamrock though.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Coffee. Crowds at sports events. The loss of restraint. Can you support Reform and not be racist?

As I drank my second cup of breakfast coffee this morning I skimmed an article where columnist Emma Beddington bemoaned the fact that people pay £6.50 for a cup of coffee, something my Italian friend also finds incomprehensible. Indeed British coffee culture is a mystery to her and she misses being able to order an espresso for a probable maximum €2 and drink it standing at the bar. The columnist declared her desire to return to instant coffee as she can’t stand the snobbery around the different types of coffee people prefer (what level/method of roasting and which country of origin, which hints of ‘interesting flavour’ they discern) and even the complication of the coffee machine she has in her kitchen.

For a while we had a complicated coffee machine. I think we gave it away in the end and reverted to our Italian style coffee maker, the sort that apparently almost every Italian household uses. Although how long that will be the case if Starbucks manage to invade Italy. (We have several sizes of this useful but simple device.)

We’ve not travelled as much in the last year as we usually do but when we have I have noticed that in airports such as Oporto there has been a creeping invasion by chains such as Costa and Caffe Nero, with the usual range of oddly flavoured coffee. Personally I don’t want my coffee to be flavoured (adulterated) with caramel, vanilla, fruits flavours or anything else. 

But, sorry Emma Beddington, I couldn’t go back to instant coffee. I’ve become a coffee snob. 

I’ve never been a fan of golf. It’s often seemed like an unnecessarily complicated way of going for a walk with a load of equipment you need to carry around - or have someone else carry around for you. But whenever I have seen news reports of golf tournaments they have always seemed very polite affairs, with spectators standing politely, rather in awe of the skill of the professional at getting that little ball to go where they choose to send it. Like tennis it has always seemed like a ‘refined’ kind if sporting activity - and one where you probably need enough money to pay for the equipment and the membership of the clubs where the sport is played. I think of Wimbledon and in my head I hear the umpire calling out “Quiet please” as the first serve of a match is played. And the crowd goes silent!

Football crowds sing and shout in support of their teams but somehow we expect golf and tennis crowds to be more restrained. So what has been going on at the Ryder Cup in New York this week? Spectators shouting abuse at the UK team, presumably because they were defeating the USA team, which they eventually did. Rory McIlroy says his wife was struck by a flying beer bottle! “I don’t think we should ever accept that in golf,” said McIlroy. “I think golf should be held to a higher standard than what was seen out there this week. Golf has the ability to unite people. Golf teaches you very good life lessons. It teaches you etiquette. It teaches you how to play by the rules. It teaches you how to respect people. Sometimes this week we didn’t see that.”

Quite so! 

Maybe it’s indicative of the odd state the modern world has got into. Not only are people quick to criticise, and abuse, on social media but there seems a greater willingness to get into actual verbal and physical abuse in real life situations. 

Have we lost our British politeness and restraint?

I keep hearing reports of people afraid to walk through the streets in some big city areas. Is that because of a kind of licence to be rude and aggressive! I’m glad we live in a quieter place!

Despite Reform UK having few MPs there is a growing fear that they could not only win more seats but even become powerful in parliament, some say even become the leaders. Even Rachel Reeves seems quite understanding about people being persuaded to support Reform UK. And she believes that you do ‘t have to be a racist to support Reform’s racist ideas and policies. Here’s the report of an interview with broadcaster Nicolo Ferrari:

“Reeves says people can support racist policy without being racist, in reference to PM's comment about Reform UK

Ferrari asks about what Keir Starmer said yesterday about Reform UK’s plan to end indefinite leave to remain being racist.

Q: Does supporting that policy make someone racist?

No, says Reeves.

Q: So you can support a racist policy but not be racist.

Reeves says it is a racist policy.

Q: But how can you support a racist policy and not be racist?

Reeves says people support Reform UK for all sorts of reasons.

Ferrari says he does not see how you can support a racist policy and not be racist.

Reeves says she is not sure lots of people do support this policy. She says:

I think there are lots of people who back Reform would be horrified by the thought that people who came to this country legally, are working and contributing, will be deported from this country. And we had to call out Reform for their policies. And this is a racist policy, and it’s a bad for our country, and we need to call that out.”

It’s time to provide an acceptable alternative.

To finish off, here is a Tom Gould cartoon about banning books: 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!