Stormy weather. Calm stitxhing. Odd animals.

 It seems to be storm season. Storm Austen has battered Cornwall. Storm Adam has flooded some places in eastern Spain and storm something else is apparently on its way to Scotland.  We had heavy rain in the night but not really what you would call a storm … yet. Round here this week it’s mostly dull and damp season.

Yesterday afternoon I picked the smallest grandchildren up from school as usual. At some point after we had arrived home, Grandson Number Two discovered a hole in his sock. Could I fix it? he asked. Well, yes, I could and almost certainly should in order to prevent him from deliberately making it any larger. So we found the sewing kit and my grandmother’s darning mushroom. Every child should see a darning mushroom at some point! 

And then, after rooting about in my sewing kit, he declared that he wanted to do some stitching, if I could find him some fabric. His sister joined in: she too wanted to stitch. Well, that would have to wait until after we had eaten and his mother had taken Grandad to chess club. Over dinner, the small boy demonstrated his creativity by raiding the fruit bowl to make a fruit salad. A rather diminished fruit salad: tangerines, which he could peel himself, grapes and apple -if I could make apple slices which he would then chop into smaller pieces. What? No nectarines? All the nectarines I have bought lately have been disappointing. It’s no longer soft-fruit season. So he made do with what he had, carefully wielding the fruit-paring knife. This gave his much older sister, 23 year old Granddaughter Number Two, a panic attack but he and I explained that he had been told exactly what he could and could not do with said knife.

I was rather hoping that fruit-salad making would cancel out stitching but it was not be. So I found my collection of felt squares and the two small people set to work. The small boy designed a frog toy he wanted to create, a cuddly frog, provided I had stuffing, which I did,

He insisted on cutting the felt himself to the shape he wanted and managed to do he major part of the stitching round the body of the ‘frog’. We stuffed it - with strong words about how the stuffing was NOT to be thrown round my living room! While I did the complicated but of stitching the top to keep the stuffing in, he drew and cut out hands and feet in a contrasting green, and a pink tongue. With a little help from his friend(ly grandma) he successfully attached these to the body. 

Time was slipping past. Mummy had returned from taking Grandad to chess club, she had had a sandwich and some coffee and wanted to head for home. So I was requested/instructed to embroider eyes (we had considered large beads but we had no black ones and besides, he agreed, large beads would reduce the cuddlability of the frog) and stitched the tongue in place. Result: an odd but very satisfactory frog.

His 10 year old sister meanwhile had been busily making a little felt bag, with some help from her older sister, quite a proficient stitcher.

It was amazing how quiet it was with two small people stitching!

To finish off, here are a couple of interesting animal pictures.

Snakes on a plane … these are just a few of the 55 lizards discovered in the baggage of a man travelling to Cologne from Mexico City, along with 37 live venomous snakes, stuffed into shampoo bottles, plastic containers and balled-up socks. He claimed he had brought the animals back as a favour for a Brazilian friend, but customs officials were not convinced, and he was denied entry to Germany

Last week a black bear wandered through a library in Mammoth Lakes, California, US. The bear reportedly checked out the new releases, raided the snacks and helped itself to a jar of honey. A spokesperson from the education department said: “We can only assume the new Li-BEAR-ian was looking for a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh, published 100 years ago today!”

That’s one of he things that can happen if you live near bears.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone! 

Orson Welles and Leonardo DiCaprio. Having a “beach body”. Patti Smith winning prizes.

When Leonardo DiCaprio first appeared on the big screen Phil and I commented that he looked very much as though he could be the child of Orson Welles. Nothing in gossip columns or social media has suggested that there is any truth in such an idea.

Orson Welles

 Leonardo DiCaprio

    

Now according to this article Leonardo DiCaprio, now 51 years old, once a youthful heartthrob, has been photographed on the beach showing off his less than toned body and by all accounts does not seem too bothered about it. There are apparently more important things in life than spending hours in the gym to have a perfect body.

The media criticism of his “letting himself go” can be taken as proof that men (well, actors anyway) as well as women are expected to keep themselves in perfect condition or be mocked. But if Leonardo DiCaprio is having some weight problems it made me think again about Orson Welles. According one source, “Orson Welles struggled with his weight throughout his life, particularly in his later years when he became "perilously fat." 

There you go. It’s a hard life living in the public eye! 

As Harry and Meghan can tell us.

The singer Patti Smith has been awarded the Pricipessa de Asturias 2026 Award for Arts. 

“”Having become a cultural icon over the last five decades, Patti Smith’s career has, according to experts, transcended the limits of the strictly musical to become a multidisciplinary and iconoclastic communicator through different forms of artistic expression such as poetry, photography, performance and video installation. Endowed with extraordinary charisma, Smith has also linked her proposals to her commitment to different political and social causes and is considered an icon of activism and the fight for civil rights.”

Being the Prince or Princess of Asturias is pretty much the Spanish equivalent of being the Prince of Wales. It signifies that that person will become a ruling monarch eventually. Princess of Wales seems to be reserved to the wife of the Prince of Wales because we still have that rule of Male Preference Primogeniture. And so the late Queen Elizabeth was never Princess of Wales because her parents might have suddenly had a son who would have overtaken her in the race to be heir to the throne. As far as I know Spain also has the principle of Male Preference Primogeniture but Felipe and Letitia have two daughters and no sons so it’s all rather academic. 

The Prince or Princess of Austurias Awards are a series of annual prizes awarded in Spain to individuals, entities or organizations from around the world who make notable achievements in the sciences, humanities, and public affairs. They are presented every October in a ceremony at Teatro Campoamor in Oviedo, the capital of the Principality of Asturias. Leaonard Cohen received the award years ago too. Patti Smith receives it for "her impetuous creativity that connects rock, symbolist poetry and the spirit of the counterculture with great expressive power". 

Good for her.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Wednesday runaround. A few cartoon comments.

Today, Wednesday, i got up and went to Uppermill as usual. I had not intended to do this but we needed to replenish our supply of breakfast cereals and porridge and such. And since I hadn’t been able to find what I wanted in the local Co-op store, I decided to follow the advice of the loud pessimist lady who was in the shop yesterday. Maybe she would be correct and I could vet whatever I wanted in the Uppermill Co-op. 

Well, yes and no. Some things were easily located but in place of the cereals ai wanted was a notice saying they had been withdrawn by the manufacturer because of a scare about flour beetle. flour beetle! So it goes.

I was home in record time, just time for the washing ai had put in the machine before setting off to be about to complete its cycle. Sometimes my efficiency amazes me!

Later in the day I went to catch a bus to Greenfield so that I could be the family representative at the small grandchildren’s school harvest festival. An hour of children singing songs about harvest and autumn and tractors and combine harvesters in the local church. Each year group had an item to perform. It’s a long time for children to sit still. Our own little fidget, 7 year old Grandson Number Two was conveniently seated in the pew in front of mine and just behind his teacher. Between us we were able to remind him to whisper to bis little friends rather than speak in a normal voice. His teacher recognises his fidgetiness and allows him to  bring a small whiteboard and pen to assemblies and church services. It keeps him busy but has the drawback of his wanting to tell the story of his creations to his almost equally fidgety mates!

Afterwards, the small people and I caught the bus home where I fed them snacks until their mother eventually arrived to collect them.

Consequently I haven”t concentrated much on what’s going on in the wider world. But here are a couple of cartoons about the French situation:

And here’s one about early release from prison and those ever-increasing energy bills.

Life goes on. Stay safe-and well, everyone!

Staying in bed. Protests and curfews and arrests. And remembering Aberfan.

 Having got up early yesterday, today I woke, heard the rain on the windows and went back to sleep for a while! The rain stopped in the late morning but the day remains dull and damp. I walked into the village to buy some essentials. The local pessimist was in the Co-op, talking mostly to herself but for everyone to hear, complaining loudly that she can never find anything she wants in “this rubbish shop”. On other days I have heard her on the main street telling us all how bad the local bus service is. Maybe she just needs to voice her protest on a kind of rolling programme.

In France the violent protests and looting have escalated to the point where some of the major cities and parts of Paris have had a curfew imposed. 

Marseille, for example, plans to to introduce nightly curfew for under-18s until Friday to stop violent protests

It seems that Belgium, Albania and Italy have been following France’s example. Milan has used military force to protect its shopping centres. Some stores have removed good from display and others have boarded up their windows. 

Various groups have been “blamed” for encouraging the violence: a combination of left-wingers and Islamists, according to some of the papers, Russian and China, say others, and Hamas, according to Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Meanwhile, according to this article, a small number of settlers have been arrested in the West Bank. This follows separate assaults by settlers on a US photojournalist and a group of international diplomats visiting a Palestinian olive grove. 

It’s sixty years since 100,000 tonnes of coal waste slid down and buried the primary school in Aberfan, killing more than 100 children and close to 30 adults.  Here’s a link to an article about it.

Even though a 1967 tribunal found the National Coal Board was to blame for not heeding warnings that the tip was unstable, no directors or employees were ever prosecuted. And there are still 2,000 disused coal tips in the south Wales valleys that pose a significant safety and environmental threat. That’s sixty years of our knowing such tips are dangerous! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Stations. Going out for the day. Onsomnia. Harmful alternative medecine.

 It was still dark when I got up this morning. Granddaughter Number Two had organised a day out in York for us. I was going to get on a train at Greenfield station, a train she would have caught at the previous station down the road, Stalybridge. The train would be at Greenfield at 9.22. I had a choice of two buses: one at 8:30 and one half an hour later. At a pinch the later bus would do … but if that bus was late it might not reach the station in time. And our bus service follows a long route, with lots of traffic lights and roadworks along the way! One way to miss a train! 

So I opted for the earlier bus and got up while it was still dark. I was hoping to buy a takeaway coffee at thebcafe opposite the station but the cafe was closed. No coffee for me. I trudged over the bridge that crosses the lines and went to sit in the gloomy waiting room. There’s a notice on the door which reads: “This waiting room will be locked when the ticket office is closed”. Well, the ticket office is manned (or womanned?) in the morning only, so anyone catching a train towards Yorkshire and beyond in the afternoon or evening just has to stand on the platform. Or they could wait under the shelter on the other platform and scuttle over the bridge when their train is due. 

It was drizzling nicely when I set out to catch my early bus. I’m not up to scuttling over bridges these days and so I appreciated having even a gloomy waiting room to sit in. By then the rain, forecast to be “light”, was falling rather heavily! Hurrah for gloomy waiting rooms. Eventually my train arrived, I found Granddaughter Number Two and we travelled to York together. Arrived at our destination we had a coffee and by the time we felt prepared to face the day properly, the rain had stopped. We had a fine, if rather grey, day walking round the city, popping in and out of bookshops and examining craft stalls until it was time for lunch. All in all, a good day was had by all. 

I don’t usually have insomnia, not as such. Occasionally it can take me a while to fall asleep, which can be ironic if I have perviously been dropping off while watching  a TV programme. Anyway, here is a cartoon about insomnia.

Some time ago I read about an organisation which advised pregnant women to shun hospitals and midwives but to give birth in a “natural’ way. Inevitably women and babies died, fortunately not too many of them but still too:many to justify regarding medical intervention as harmful. Well, here’s a link to an article about someone, an influencer, who,organises “wellness events” and advises people to ignore doctors, refuse vaccination, turn down antibiotics and other such medication. “Sometimes scans are not right,” she tells people and suggests treatments such as a castor oil compress to treat unusual lumps and swellings.

I suppose that when people are frightened of what a medical diagnosis might reveal, they turn to remedies that sound like medieval magic or the kind of stuff snake-oils sellers provided. But we’re a quarter of the way into the 21st century and we should know better.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Family stuff. French chaos. More books banned. A 100 year old bear.

 It’s another fine bright autumn day. 

The family seem to be coming to dinner for a change; lately our daughter has been too busy with her new post as assistant head of a local primary school to have time to bring everyone over for dinner. Depending on what time people arrive we might even manage a family walk. That could be last late afternoon walk of the year without torches as the clocks change next weekend and we gain an hour in bed but lose an hour in the afternoon. The nights are drawing in. Winter is coming!

In France what began as lycée student protests have progressed to general protests against the rising cost of living and poor public services. In French fashion this is not done in a half-hearted way; buildings are being attacked, vehicles are being set alight, chaos has ensued! It is to be hopes that nobody wants to copy these actions here in the UK. In France more than 1,800 protestors have been arrested. Protestors are still being arrested here but most of them are peaceful and many of them rather old. Mind you, I did see a headline about defence buildings being attacked! 

I have already commented about Sally Rooney’s books being withdrawn from sale in the UK. Yesterday I found this posted by someone called Anya Darr on Facebook:

“FF this is getting very serious now. All manner of books now being banned or side-lined. We WILL find ways around it. I suggest everyone buys one for Christmas at least...why not treat the whole family! Some good titles in the link below.

This story is bigger than a book simply being cancelled. 

Penguin Random House pulled Alana Hadid and Jenan Matari’s book about the Palestinian experience after clashing with them over how to tell Palestine’s story.

Apparently, even a children’s book about Palestine needs a disclaimer making sure everyone knows October 7 was illegal, while the Nakba, occupation and decades of dispossession are up for editorial debate.

 Alana and Jenin eventually walked away rather than publish a version they couldn’t stand behind. 

Imagine having to fight a publisher just to tell your own people’s story. 

Thankfully, Palestinian-owned Interlink Books will publish it in 2027.”

It’s never good to see books being banned one way or another. 

Meanwhile, I read that European diplomats visiting lands belonging to the Christian town of Taybeh on the West Bank along with the French consul general in Jerusalem, his wife and other diplomats, and the Belgian and Polish consuls have come under attack from settlers determined to prevent the olive harvest. And so it goes on!

On a more cheerful note, we should be wishing Winnie the Pooh a happy birthday. It seems he is now 100 years old. The Royal Mail has issued special stamps in commemoration.

I have read though that A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin Milne were not happy about the success of the Pooh stories. The author felt that the success rather overshadowed the more serious career he wanted to pursue as a playwright. And poor Christopher Robin felt thatvhis childhood had been stolen from him. 

Sometimes life is hard! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

First frost. Taking people’s names in vain. Work-out wear. Respecting women. Food crisis.

When I went to catch a bus into Uppermill to take some stuff to the charity shop and to go to the GP’s surgery for a routine blood test, my phone told me it was 4°. It wasn’t even all that early, already going on for 10.00. On the bus I met a friend who told me that when she walked her dog at around 8.00 there was frost on the grass. The nurse who took my blood confirmed that she had had to scrape frost off her car to get to work. The first frost of the season! 

I read this article this morning about a writer called Linda Geddes, author of scientific works, which I why I have to admit to never having heard of her before. It’s all about how someone used her name to have scientific articles published in magazines and the like.  She’s not the only one., as she discovered when she did a bit of a dive into how this was happening. I was struck by how easy it seems to be for fraudsters of this kind to have material published. Does nobody do any kind of identity checks in such cases? After all, whenever I receive notification of a message from my GP I have to jump through a range of hoops to prove that I am me! Different levelsi of security! 

When I used to go to aerobics classes, many years ago now, I was always amazed at the fashion show element. You would hear cries of, “What a lovely leotard!” And “Where did you get that outfit ”. As for me, I just wore basic black tights and leotard, not having much money to spend on the rainbow-hued sportswear that suddenly was available. According to Emma Beddington in this article, some of that is still continuing. Indeed,  a comedian, male of course, has apparently been making bad jokes about what women wear or don’t wear to go to the gym. Emma Beddington defends women’s right to wear whatever they like when they exercise and their right to be able to look into the mirror at the gym and think, ‘Yes, this exercise stuff is working and I’m looking good!” Quite so!

I suppose that kind of joking is another aspect of men trying to control women one way or another. Here’s a cartoon from social media by someone who calls himself Naked Pastor on Facebook,”

He explains: “This is my cartoon print Women and the Resurrection. If you read the gospels with open eyes, you can see that the women in Jesus' life played a major role, including being the first to witness his resurrection and report it. So why don’t women get the credit and limelight they deserve?”

After I had finished giving my blood sample this morning, I walked on from Uppermill to the Tesco store in Greenfield. Even though this a relatively small supermarket, I managed to find everything I needed.Maybe I am fortunate or maybe I am quite undemanding. All sorts of ‘experts’ keep warning us of the need to stock up on long-lasting tinned good and bottles of water, for the food crisis which they say is looming. Between the problems caused by the warmongers, making the importing of foods more difficult and expensive, and the risk of hackers turning up the temperatures in supermarket fridges, as happened in France last weekend, leading to frozen goods going to waste, feeding the family is likely to be a problem.

Maybe we need to get back a simpler mindset, one that doesn’t expect all foodstuffs to be available all year-round and accepts that food can be seasonal, maybe making life more interesting!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!