Cold sunshine. Bits of nonsense.

 It’s been a fine but cold day. We began with blue sky and sunshine and continued that way until well into the afternoon.

Our son is on his way here from London, being collected by his sister in Manchester. Then we’ll get most of the family together for dinner. There’s a family event going on in Southport tomorrow and so he is making a flying visit.

Here’s a bit of travel nonsense. There has been a train from Manchester to London for ages apparently, leaving Piccadilly at 7.00 am. It’s been popular with commuters apparently. Now a decision has been taken to scrap it, sort of! The 7.00 am train disappears off the timetable but workers who staff the train need to be in London to man a train making the journey in the opposite direction. So the train will continue to run but without any passengers! I wonder at what point someone will notice the contradiction! 

Here’s some more nonsense, art-related his time. In 1985 married artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris in fabric. 

Now an artist apparently know as JR plans to emulate them.

In 2021 Christo and Jeanne-Claude created another art installation, L’Arc de Triomphe Empaqueté. 

Fancy ideas but is it really art? And can the people who crochet all sorts of things to go on the top of post boxes claim to be creating art?  

And here is a link to an article about artists who have “recreated” trash in such a way that cleaners at the art galleries threw them away.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Giving into the sickness season. Margaret Atwood giving her opinions. Changes. Rage rooms.

 Another grey day. But another day when I managed to run round the village before the rain set in. I suspect that the rain is here to stay for today. We shall see.

As Phil and I seem to have been attacked by germs brought here by the grandchildren, here is a cartoon by Sarah Akinterinwa on surviving sickness season:

The writer Margaret Atkinson was 86 last week, still writing stuff, still giving her opinions, the freedom of being a writer (as she says, she can’t get sacked) make her fearless in speaking, still an example to us all. Asked how she feels about her body, something we all have to consider as we grow older, I suppose, she says:

“It’s old. Stuff wears out. But compared with the bodies of some of my contemporaries, and despite the pacemaker, it’s not doing too badly. I still have kneecaps, I can still touch my toes and walk 10,000 steps a day. Just not as fast as formerly. (“Still” is a much-used word among us.)

Young doctor: “Compared with most people in your demographic, your hearing is quite good.”

Me: “That’s because most people in my demographic are dead. They aren’t hearing anything.”

Him: (puzzled shock)”

As I just said, still not afraid to express her opinions, still outrageous. 

Asked about the mist significant changes she has seen in her lifetime, she lists the following: 

1. In 1939 there was hardly any plastic. The first big wave of it broke in the early 50s. Everyone thought it was great.

2. The switch from coal to oil in the 50s.

3. The advent of television, also in the 50s. Before that it was radio, with families gathered around the set, ears flapping.

4. The advent of antibiotics – magic! – and more vaccines, including polio. My generation of children had a lot of “childhood diseases”, including diphtheria, which killed young children. Four of my cousins died of it.

5. My generation was all about work ethic. You were just expected to work hard. We thought the 60s hippies were, well, lazy.

6. Civil rights in the 60s, however. We approved of that.

7. The advent of the pill for public consumption, in the 60s, around the same time as pantyhose, followed by the miniskirt and shortly after that by second-wave feminism. A huge change, hardly possible before the pill.

8. With Reagan (1980), the beginning of the end of the New Deal and the rise of the “religious right” as a political force, thus The Handmaid’s Tale, which many then thought would be impossible in the liberal, free‑world leader, the United States.

9. The collapse of the USSR and its bloc, 1989-90. Far‑reaching consequences not apparent at the time. Move one chess piece and all are affected.

10. Did I say media changes – in music, from vinyl LPs to tape cassettes and then CDs, and then the advent of the internet and smartphones and social media? 

What she didn’t include was the more recent change to downloading everything - music, podcasts, youtube stuff, films, tv series - and the fact that the younger generation seems to watch everything on their phones. This despite there being huge TV sets in most houses, usually conveniently placed so that you can’t miss noticing them as you run past. Also, the consequent loss of family TV time, when the family would sit round the YV set to watch the latest episode of some serial or other. This has been replaced to some extent to a “Family Film Night”, when you sit down to watch a (downloaded) film together, with popcorn, of course, and the lights dimmed, emulating a cinema experience! 

Here’s another new development! “rage rooms”.

“If you find it hard to count to 10 when anger bubbles up, a new trend offers a more hands-on approach. Rage rooms are cropping up across the UK, allowing punters to smash seven bells out of old TVs, plates and furniture.

Such pay-to-destroy ventures are thought to have originated in Japan in 2008, but have since gone global. In the UK alone venues can be found in locations from Birmingham to Brighton, with many promoting destruction as a stress-relieving experience.

According to Smash It Rage Rooms in south-east London, where a 30-minute solo session costs £50, “each smash is a cathartic release, a burst of pure, primal joy”.

“We are at capacity – we were looking for another venue because we can’t keep up with demand,” said Amelia Smewing, who set up the business with her husband after exploring ways to help their son cope with PTSD.”

I suppose it was inevitable in the age of sharing your emotions with all and sundry that someone would find a way to make money out of it.  It sounds like an expensive way to vent your feelings. Perhaps it’s not socially acceptable to go out into the garden and scream! 

In an article about young women not wanting to get married I came across a new word: a“situationship”, defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “a romantic relationship between two people who do not yet consider themselves a couple but who have more than a friendship”. A central feature of such arrangements is that only one party tends to consider it a “yet”.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Coughs and sneezes. Strange weather. Israel and Hong Kong still in the news. Environmemtal stuff.

 Last Sunday the family came to dinner. The smallest in the family passed on to most of us their sore throats and sniffles. Their older sisters succumbed on Monday. Phil and I waited until Tuesday. In my case I think things were exacerbated by having to stand outside our GP’s surgery for a good half hour in the freezing cold on Wednesday morning. Yesterday I sort of hit crisis point, with aches and pains, coughs and sneezes, and general weariness. Today I seem to have mostly bounced back. 

For the first time in living memory Phil’s chess club was cancelled last night. We have never known that to happen before. It’s strictly a ‘We Never Close’ institution but yesterday the venue was accidentally double-booked and the flower arrangers (I think that’s who it was) somehow took priority. How rude! In a way this is just as well as it meant that Phil did not go out in the damp and cold. Today he seems to have hit crisis in his cold and after breakfast took himself back to bed! So it goes.

Today has seen the whole gamut of November weather: windy and damp but not raining first thing, strong winds later, heavy rain moving on to torrential (Granddaughter Number One reports thatvthey had sleet and snow in her bit of Oldham!), and now, mid-afternoon, mostly blue sky and sunshine. I blame Mrs Tharptcher - see the link to an article about environmentalist Paul Brown lower down!

In today’s news: 

“Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier.

The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under justice ministry review, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who declared that “terrorists must die”.”

Also in today’s news:

”The death toll from the Hong Kong apartment complex fire that began on Wednesday has risen to 128 with as many as 200 missing, officials have said, as rescue operations were declared over.

Firefighters had been combing through the high-rises on Friday, attempting to find anyone alive after the massive fire that spread to seven of eight towers in one of the city’s deadliest blazes.

Authorities said they had recovered 108 bodies from the buildings, but 16 were still inside. Four people died of injuries in hospital, Chris Tang, the city’s security secretary told the media on Friday afternoon. Another 79 people, including 11 firefighters, had been injured. About 200 people were still unaccounted for, and 89 of the bodies had not yet been identified.

The head of the fire services, Andy Yeung, confirmed what many residents had been claiming for days: that no fire alarms went off in any of the eight towers. “We will take enforcement actions against the contractors responsible,” he said.”

Here’s a link to an article about  Paul Brown, environmental correspondent extraordinaire..he tells us that Margaret Thatcher was seemingly instrumental in making us aware of the hole in the ozone layer and from that climate change. Who knew we had anything to thank her for?’ He explains that apparently the scientist in her won out over the politician at that point. However, the politician won out over the scientist when it came to doing anything serious to improve matters it seems.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Milder weather? Coughs and colds. Still chaotic in Palestine. Pensioner terrorists.

Yesterday began bright and sunny and very cold. Today began grey and damp and less cold. Somehow, though, the crisp cold is preferable to the damp less cold, no matter how much the weathermen congratulate us on having milder weather. 

So I ran round the village in the damp, noting  Christmas decorations along the way. Maybe the early putting up of Christmas trees is a way people have of cheering up this rather dull time of year. 

Most of the family seems to have given in to sniffles and coughs, possibly spread by the smallest grandchildren. On a Thursday I collect said smallest grandchildren from school and we all have tea together before Phil is given a lift to chess club. In recent weeks I have had to concoct something Granddaughter number Two will eat as she spurns the scrambled eggs on offer to everyone else. Today she declares herself too ill to come visiting - no sausages and chips today! 

Earlier this week our prime minister visited a primary school and inadvertently, or perhaps advertently if such a term exists, set a class of children off on six-seven uproar. Maybe he was setting out to prove he has a less serious side before Rachel Reeves got into the budget. Here’s a link to what happened.

In Hong Kong they’re still seeking survivors from the horrific skyscraper fires. Apparently the residential blocks were clad in bamboo, which surely  must burn easily. Latest reports tell of 55 dead, many injured and hundreds missing. Fire and flood, two elements we have not conquered yet. 

In Palestine, in other words Gaza and The West Bank, chaos continues. The ceasefire seems very shaky, to say the least. Here in the UK pensioners are still being arrested for supporting Palestine Action, or at least protesting at the organisation being deemed a terrorist movement. And according to this article the high court is being told the ban should be lifted: 

“On the first day of a legal challenge to the ban brought by co-founder Huda Ammori, her lawyer said the group had been engaged in an “honourable tradition” of direct action and civil disobedience prior to proscription.

Raza Husain KC told the court in London on Wednesday: “There are reasons of profound importance as to why, in the 32 executive orders that have been made adding organisations to proscribed lists, no direct action civil disobedience organisation appears.

“Such proscription is repugnant to the tradition of the common law and contrary to the European convention on human rights.””

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Early morning stuff. Protecting languages … and living rooms … from extinction.

 This morning I got up in the dark, something I have not done for while. The various arrangements and rearrangements to see my doctor for a routine appointment had ended up with my having an appointment at 7.45 this morning. So I duly climbed out of my warm nest in the dark, got washed and dressed and headed out in the fading dark to the bus stop at the crossroads. I had calculated that if I caught the bus that goes all around the houses, through just about every out of the way twist and turn, at the crossroads at around 7.15, I should arrive in Uppermill in time to stroll comfortably up to the clinic without having to wait around for long in the cold. Because, boy! was it cold! My weather app said -3°! The bus arrived on time - so far so good - but at the usual left turn towards Dobcross centre it carried straight on. It turns out that there are roadworks on one of the more distant bits of the bus route and they were just not going there. 

Consequently I was in Uppermill centre before 7.30 and it was still very cold! I walked round the block a few times to keep warm and then went and paced around by the entrance to the surgery. 7.45 came … and went … and the surgery remained firmly closed with only the merest light right at the back. 

Meanwhile there were some very colourful clouds i the sky as the sun struggled to rise.

The doors eventually opened at 7.55. Minimal apologies from my GP but all was well. Mind you, it seems to me that if they are going to send you a text, received yesterday, reminding you to arrive promptly for your appointment, the least they can do is let you in out of the arctic cold conditions. 

Afterwards I walked to Tesco in nearby Greenfield, bought various odds and ends and made my way back to  Uppermill, where by that time the fishman had set up his stall at the market and I was able to buy fish and catch the next bus home in time for a mid-morning breakfast.

The other day I wrote about Iceland and their fears that their language might disappear. Today I read that an organisation called the European Language Equality Network organised a conference in Barcelona, attended by representatives of around 60 minority languages to discuss what it means to lose a language, and what it takes to save it. The speakers of those languages do not regard them as “minority”, by the way, but “minoritised”, hardly surprising as many of them have been banned in the past. The different attitudes to these languages, on the part of the speakers themselves, is interesting and varied. All recognise the importance of keeping their specific culture alive but some regard it as a holy thing fixed in time, like a fly caught in amber, that must be preserved intact and pure, allowing no influences from outside while others recognise that it is a living thing and must evolve, as do all the majority languages.  Here’s a link to an article about it. 

Something else in danger of extinction is, apparently, the living room. How can that be? Many young, and increasingly not so very young, certainly past student age, people rent a single room in a house, usually at an extortionate price. In these shared dwellings it is very hard for the housemates to become true housemates as there is no communal area, other than maybe a small kitchen, too small for true social interaction. And so isolation and depression set in. Problems of modern living! Here’s a link to an article about it.

Sometimes it’s a relief, no, a privilege, to have been young when we were!

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

Perceptions of cold weather. National ideas of politeness. National food dishes.

Today is bright and crisp and sunny … and cold! The BBC weather app tells me it’s 5° but my personal temperature gauge says it’s colder. It could be that when the temperature reaches a certain low level I don’t notice the difference any more. Anyway, the BBC forecast us freezing and just below by early evening. 

Facebook’s ‘memory’ suggests it may have been even colder eight years ago.

In our online Italian conversation class yesterday we talked about politeness: what we expect, the different standards in different countries and so on. Our Italian friend tells us that her British husband finds Italian drivers’ inability to express gratitude when, for example, another driver gives way to them when they want to change lanes more than a little annoying. A simple wave or raised hand will suffice, he rants. Instead, what usually happens is that other drivers get angry and pip their horns or make rude gestures! Cultural differences! Mind you, I have had Spanish friends tell me that we British say thank you far too frequently.  The same applies to saying excuse me, and I’m sorry! 

A recent addition to our British over-politeness is wishing people a nice day. I’m sure we never used to wish everyone a nice day but nowadays as I get off a bus I thank the driver and wish him a nice day, I pay for goods in a shop (cash as often as possible in my personal campaign to keep cash alive and to keep my details off the system as far as possible by bot using my credit card if it can be avoided) I thank the cashier and wish them a good day. And here’s a link to Adrian Chiles describing his experience of the cashier who wished customers not just a nice but a WONDERFUL day. He thinks it may be an American import.

For next week’s Italian class we are asked to do some research into Christmas food in different parts of Italy. Here in the UK we have turkey ( surely an import from the USA!), Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, mince pies, pigs in blankets (I don’t think we had those when I was a child) and inevitably Brussel sprouts (to which I add chestnuts).  I suppose traditional food is an important part of every country’s culture but here in the UK we borrow and adopt from other places all the time. And so we add Italian pannetone and Spanish jamón serrano to our Christmas fayre. Even our sprouts must have originated in Brussels!

At the end of the now almost legendary summer of 1976, when the sun shone from the middle of June until early September, the weather broke just as a young Frenchman arrived to spend a year as a foreign language assistant at the secondary school where I was working. It rained so much in the early weeks of his stay that he expressed the belief that we had totally invented the myth of the wonderful summer we had just had. One day I invited him to come and spend  an evening with Phil and me in our flat. I was less ambitious in my cooking in those days, and I was still a red meat eater at the time. So I served up steak and chips and peas and was congratulated on making a “very French dinner”. “Steak frites” is still a “very French dinner” and here is a link to an article about the search for the best place to eat ‘steak frites” in Paris. Plus ça change … and all that sort of thing!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Rain. Oversleeping. Packaging. Sand dunes. Environmental stuff.

So this morning I woke up to the sound of rain on the skylight windows, switched off my alarm (having snoozed it once already) lay back to listen to the rain and woke up about an hour and a half later!! Well, I reckon I must have needed the extra sleep but it changed my usual start to the day. And it was still raining!

By midday the sky was clear and the sun was even shining. Maybe I’ll get out for a walk to make up for not going for a run.

Packaging is a big feature in modern life where so many of us order large amounts of stuff online. What often happens is that one small item arrives in a rather large box, the small item cushioned by scrunched up brown paper. It seems that most companies have one standard size box that they use for everything. It’s probably been carefully calculated in a time and motion study, no time wasted on selecting a suitable size of box for the item to be dispensed! And we, the recipients, then recycle the box and the brown paper packaging into the paper and cardboard recycling … assuming that we are good environmentalists.

Here’s another aspect of the same problem: Granddaughter Number One has been ordering underwear online from Marks and Spencer - noted for the quality of their underwear. She did make a foray to an actual M & S shop but they didn’t have her size and so she resorted to online ordering and found what she wanted. There’s a delivery charge. And of course there is packaging. If she orders two items, possibly two identical or near identical items, she says, there will be two packages and two delivery charges! Come on, M & S! You can do better than that! 

On a broader scale the whole problem of waste disposal is getting out of hand. Fly-tipping, dumping your waste products in some out of the way spot in the countryside, still goes on. Walking back from the village the other day I noticed an old bath tub, neatly cut into two halves, at the side of the roadway through the local industrial estate. I am hoping that this is on its way to a proper waste disposal place and has not just been abandoned when someone from the nearby housing estate has had a bathroom update! Here’s link to an article about the waste disposal problem in the UK.

While I’m on an environmental roll, here’s a link to an article about sand dunes in Chad, and the struggle to prevent those sand dunes from further engulfing the oases which keep old traditional ways of life viable in the changing world. 

Sand dunes are fickle creatures, changing landscapes and shore lines. We’ve recently returned from Figueira da Foz on the coast of Portugal, where you walk miles, well, long distances, to reach the Atlantic. I have seen old photos, dating back to the early twentieth century, showing the sea coming up close to the promenade which ai have run along on many occasions. Not so much the work of sand dunes there as the gradual depositing of sand and the withdrawal of the ocean. Just a reminder that we don’t control our environment … we can only try to do so.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Different degrees of dampness. When is a ceasefire not a ceasefire? Christmas trees

 I ran in the rain this morning. It’s actually quite a while since I have done that, partly because on days when the rain has been coming down in proverbial ‘stair rods’ I have simply chickened out and stayed indoors. Today it was not raining when I set out but the promise of rain on my weather app was enough to persuade me to put a rain jacket on. The rain I ran in was what the weathermen refer to as ‘light rain’, which presumably means it takes rather longer to soak you through than the ‘heavy’ variety.  That came some time after I had returned home, some truly torrential rain, provoking protests on our group chat from Granddaughter Number One who had to take her dog out in it as her housemate is away on a family visit to the USA. It’s a hard life! 

The torrential stuff had eased off by midday and now we have simply returned to cloudy and damp! Crisp and cold was more cheerful but did demand more effort to keep warm. 

I should not complain about the weather. At least we have a warm and dry home to return to. In Gaza and other places there are people living in makeshift tents with rain and wind making life extra difficult. Bad enough having to go on a daily hunt for water in warmer seasons, it must be horrific in freezing conditions. And how do you dry the clothes which got soaked in the rain? 

As this article tells us, the ceasefire is making precious little difference to life in Gaza. Air strikes continue, people are still being killed, there is is still not enough food despite some (insufficient) supplies being allowed in, and to make a bad situation worse, basic medical necessities are still in short supply. Medics told the Guardian on Sunday that stocks of gauze, antiseptics, thermometers and antibiotics were running low. Mohammed Saqr, the director of nursing at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said: “We are still suffering a severe lack of most of our supplies and medicines. We have daily crises, and the same shortages and deficiencies in supplies, and we are still exhausted as we are still receiving lots of casualties.

“There isn’t much difference from the period before the ceasefire. Unfortunately, the bombing is still going on … We don’t feel there is a big change.”

And yet reports still tell us that despite the continuing violence in Gaza having strained the ceasefire, both sides say they are committed to the agreement. Aid is still needed. We must not forget that.

Gaza hospitals running out of supplies as airstrikes continue, medics say | Gaza | The Guardian

Here in Delph, some gardens are already decorated with model reindeer and some homes are already displaying large Christmas trees in their windows. I am resolutely resisting the temptation to break out the Christmas ear rings. After all, it isn’t December … yet! In the village centre the tree which was erected yesterday morning, and which was even bedecked with lights by late afternoon, had disappeared. Goodness! Had someone stolen it! There hadn’t been a storm or even strong winds to blow it over. Someone in the co-op told me that they (whoever ‘they’ are) had decided it was too tall and the farmer (whoever that is) had had to take it away reduce its height. So it goes. By the time I came out of the co-op they were already re-erecting the abbreviated tree. Let’s hope it’s satisfactory this time.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!