We flew home yesterday, after spending a silly amount of time at Faro airport. Our taxi was booked for rather earlier than strictly necessary and then the driver seemed to be trying for a record on how quickly to reach the airport! So we had just over three hours to kill in the airport. There was some fear that flights might be delayed because of bad weather -it was certainly very windy! - but all seemed okay, until we sat for about half an hour on he plane waiting for a departure slot. We had stood outside in a queue waiting to board, which we managed to do just as it started to rain!
It wasn’t raining when we arrived in Manchester. Our daughter met us at the airport and we all went for a family meal at a local Italian restaurant. All good!
Back in the UK, I got up and ran this morning for the first time since we set off for ten days in Portugal. I just didn’t find a running route to my liking. Portuguese cobble-stone pavements are not to my liking in running shoes. Also, I like to run first thing in the morning, then shower and organise my day and finally have breakfast. In our hotel they stopped serving breakfast at 10.00, not terribly early but early enough to demand that I get up a bit earlier than I chose. So that’s how it was. I did, however, walk up and down the hill where Silves castle and cathedral stood on a regular basis, sometimes more than once a day! So it goes.
And today I am trying to get back into my normal routine. I ran, as usual, past the cricket club, down to the fists mill pond, through the trees to the second and back through the village to home. I greeted the heron as I went past.
For the first time this year I have hung washing out to dry in the garden. It has been a fine and sunny day so far, rather better if anything than some of the weather we had in the Algarve!
Here’s a headline from this morning’s newspaper: “‘Something magical is happening’: sales boom for children’s comics creating young readers of the future.” And here’s a link to the article.
I am rather amused that they appear to have only just discovered this. Most of my generation, or at least all of my friends, grew up reading comics. My family used to help out at the church jumble sales and my siblings and I would ensconce ourselves behind one of the stalls reading our way through back issues of The Dandy and The Beano. Our father did not allow these particular comics in our house - pure rubbish! he declared them. We had more worthy comics such as The Swift, Girl and The Eagle. And most of us progressed quite sensibly onto “proper books”. Of course, we didn’t have tablets and iPads and iPhones to distract us. Television was limited to a couple of channels and children’s television even more limited.
On the subject of children’s “entertainment”, here’s a link to an article about someone whose 8-year-old daughter spent a huge amount at the Apple store of money on her iPhone. Seemingly she didn’t realise she was spending real money! But what was an 8-year old doing with her own iPhone? And did her parents not teach her to ask permission before buying stuff. Our 5-year-old grandson knows he must ask if games can be bought for his tablet and, besides, he has no facility to do on his own initiative!
In London, a man who climbed Big Ben with a Palestinian flag was eventually brought down after more than 16 hours.
“The barefoot man had made his way on to a ledge several metres up the tower at the Palace of Westminster on Saturday morning.
He had been heard telling negotiators he would come down on his "own terms".
Emergency crews went up in a crane to negotiate with him, and the intruder eventually came down in the cherry picker after Big Ben struck midnight.
He had filmed his climb and said that he was protesting against "police repression and state violence".”
He has been arrested. Presumably he won’t, however, receive a flogging as did Iranian singer Mehdi Yarrahi - 74 lashes for sining a protest song! So much for the 21st century!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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