Sentiment.

I gave been spending time helping our daughter move house, going through piles of stuff, throwing out piles of paper, half used colouring books and broken toys. I remember those half-used colouring books from my childhood. You begin a new book, full of enthusiasm, and produce some apparent masterpieces. The book is set aside at some point and when you find it again weeks, or even months, later it has somehow lost its appeal and you no longer want to colour in the pictures. And yet it seems wrong to throw it away. After all, it has so many unused pages!

The teenager in the family is the worst offender. Like her mother and, indeed, her grandmother, she is something of a stationery fan. We all three happily walk around stationery shops admiring notebooks and finding a reason to buy just one more. We all three have collections of notebooks set aside for a rainy day. Forcing the teenager to go through her stuff, I came across piles of old exercise books from high school. Was she emotionally attached to these? Not especially. So why were they kept? Well, they all have substantial sections of unused pages which might come in useful to jot down ideas for stories; she is an inveterate story-writer, submitting them to Internet forums and the like. I had to work hard to persuade her to cull at least some of these. 

And then there are the soft toys. There is a huge dustbin bag full of them in a corner of her room. Surely she can do without some of them. Her younger sister is almost as bad, although she has agreed to send a good number of soft toys to charity shops, provided they are not pandas. She is very fond of pandas! The youngest of the family, a boy, has cheerfully said that almost all his soft toys can be got rid of. And then I heard his mother telling him that he should keep a certain teddy bear as it was the first soft toy he ever received. You can see where his sisters' sentimentality comes from. Their mother has everyone's first pair of shoes, not to mention her son's first football kit. 

People grow attached to things from their past. Sometimes it doesn't even need to be a past they have really lived through. Recently there has been the case of a woman who divorced her husband years ago. Or maybe he divorced her. Perhaps it was mutual consent. It's immaterial anyway. At the time neither had any money to speak of; no, they had been new-age travellers. In later years he founded a green energy company and made a fortune. Twenty five years along the line, living on benefits, she has gone to court demanding a share of his assets. I believe she has been granted a fairly substantial sum. There was a child but it is not clear how much support the millionaire gave to that child along the way. The child has, however, lived with his father since he was 18 so he's clearly not been cut off without a penny. 

I find myself confused about this case. My feminist self has seriously mixed feelings. Absent fathers should support their offspring, most certainly. Ex-wives who have spent time bringing up children deserve some help. But how far does this support have to go? Doesn't being a feminist also mean taking pride in being independent? This woman was only married to the now-millionaire for a couple of years. Presumably she didn't actually contribute to the creation of the fortune. By the time he was making his fortune, surely their son was old enough for her to go out and find a job. 

It must be a little galling to think that if she had stayed with him she could have shared his good fortune but life is like that. I once knew someone who had been the guitarist with a group who went on to make masses of money only months after he dropped out and got a "proper job". I wonder if he felt he had the right to claim part of their fame and fortune. 

And in the case of the ex-wife claiming from her quarter-of-century-divorced husband, if she had made the fortune and he had lived on benefits, would the courts have granted him a share of the riches?

Weather, walking and talking.

Late last night I googled "Weather in Saddleworth" to get the forecast for today. "Rain/snow - clearing later!" was the gist of what I found out. "Rain/snow"? It's March, for goodness sake, and almost the middle of March as well! I don't expect wall to wall sunshine but I would like a bit better than "rain/snow". 

So this morning when my alarm rang and I contemplated going for a morning run, I looked out of the window and wasn't too surprised, although somewhat disappointed, to see sleety rain coming down at quite a rate. Now, I don't mind running in a bit of drizzle. I don't even moan too much if it starts to rain on me when I'm already out and about. But the prospect of stepping out into that driving nastiness was more than I was prepared to take first thing in the morning. No! I got back into bed and watched the sleety stuff blowing past the window for a while before I got up and did some yoga exercising instead. 

Besides, I walked home from Uppermill last night; it's not as if I was lacking exercise. I had been to a meeting at the chess club about the Manchester end of the chess exchange with Pontevedra that we are helping to organise. Someone offered me a lift back to Uppermill but the driver was a visitor to the area and a little nervous about driving in the dark especially in a place that she didn't know well. therefore she didn't really want to drive all the way to Delph. Anyway, I was happy to be dropped off in Uppermill from where there was a bit more possibility of a bus. But no such luck! Faced with a 45 minute wait, I set off walking. 

Mind you, walking in the dark is quite therapeutic, so long as it isn't raining or too cold. It's something of a zen experience. You are not distracted by fine views (apart from one or two occasions when we have walked home in the small hours of New Year's Day from a friend's house at one of the high points around here - distant lights on a frosty night!) and once you get into the rhythm, one foot in front of the other and so on, you are alone with your thoughts and put the world to rights in your head. Not, however, that I recommend doing this every night. 

So now I am waiting for the promised clear spells so that we can take the air later today. 

In the meantime I have been looking at the papers online. Among other things, I found out that in Naples, working on a new metro station, they came across two Roman ships from the first century. This happens in Rome as well and in some Spanish cities. I find it quite fascinating that you can live in places where there is so much ancient history under your feet. 

And then I saw an article about an actor who has appeared in several things that I have watched on television. Intrigued as to how a person could make himself look so different for these diverse characters, I took a look at the article. Among other stuff, I came across a sentence that began "the old Etonian has played two lords in as many years...". This is an actor called Harry Lloyd. So, another up and coming posh school actor! We have Damien Lewis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic West (Dominic Gerard Francis Eagleton West to give him his full name) and goodness knows how many others, all doing really well on the stage. I have no doubts about their acting skills; it just seems a bit like a takeover. What chance do the kids who have done performing arts courses at ordinary schools and colleges have in the modern world of acting? I wonder! 

And finally, here's a little something to cheer us all up. Everyone thinks that their baby is the most beautiful, the cleverest, the most advanced that ever there was. Here's a link to someone's video of their seven-week-old saying hello. Is the child an early talker? A tiny genius? Or is this the linguistic equivalent of the windy smile from a month-old baby?

These things are sent to try us!

This morning I had an argument, just a mild one, a good-humoured one, with a bus driver. Our buses are not very frequent: one every half hour during the day and one every hour in the evening. They are often late. Occasionally, like this morning's case, they are early. They run at 27 and 57 minutes past the hour during the day. So as I approached the bus stop at the crossroads at ten minutes to the hour, I was expecting to see a bus going up into the village to turn round, not one already on its way out of the village. It was already past the bus stop but I was waving my arms around like a thing demented, signalling to the driver that I wanted to get on. Had I missed it, I would not have arrived in Manchester in time to meet a friend. Some drivers are sticklers for protocol and will not stop and open their doors unless actually at a stop but fortunately this was not one of those. Just a driver with no sense of time. "Are you early?" I asked with my best smile, "I'm sure you're supposed to be here at three minutes to and it's only ten to," "Three minutes to? Here?" he protested, "I don't think so." But I checked the timetable and I was right! These things happen. 

But at least the driver was not controlled by electronic media and gadgets. He was still a human being. I am reading so much about gadgets that monitor our lives that I fear I am becoming a little obsessed by it. I keep reading a lot about the Apple watch and all the things it can do, monitoring your activity to within an inch of your life. It will let you know when and what to eat, provided you have the right APP! It will check that you have exercised sufficiently today. And it will no doubt remind you to do all sorts of things. But mostly it will let you track what you are doing and record your life, if you let it. 

We could end up like those tourists who never actually see the place they visit because they are so busy monitoring and recording. If you walk round Venice, for example, with your video camera fixed to your eye, do you see the sights? And when do you actually get to watch the videos. It's a strange place, the modern world! But some places are fighting back. The Louvre has banned the use of the selfie stick in the museum, as has, I believe, the National Gallery in London. 

After my little contretemps with the bus driver this morning, my travel went super-efficiently. With only a two minute wait for a tram, I was in Manchester within 45 minutes of leaving home. Possibly this was a consequence of the early bus. 

When I returned home from a catch-up lunch with friend I have. It seen since before Christmas, post, or rather, spam was waiting for me, in the shape of a leaflet urging me to "let Jesus in". This was from an organisation calling itself "itsJesus.com". The pedant in me wonders why these people can't punctuate! Surely that should be "it's"? Of course, it may be that web addresses don't accept apostrophes but it offends my inner picky person. 

Similarly, I am upset by sloppy, over-corrected English on other fliers that have come through the door. They are doing some major road resurfacing and were tell us about road closures, appealing to people to please move their cars promptly and so on. Among other bits of advice was this: "... I would advise all residents to check the soles of their shoes for Bitumen and loose chippings before entering one's house". "One's house"? Not "their house"? Oh dear! 

These are the problems I have to deal with!

Invented words, memories and who knows what else.

Invented words are very interesting. I listened to a very articulate young writer on the radio yesterday, telling us that his story is set in the "premath" of the war. Presumably he meant "the years before the war". Reluctantly, I have come to accept the use of the word "prequel". A "sequel" is the story of what happens after the events of a novel or a film are over. A "prequel" tells you what happened before the events of that novel or film - in the premath? But I can't say that this new word pleases me. And anyway, if you have an AFTERmath, should not the new word be BEFOREmath? 

Here's another little oddity. The longer your ring finger compared to your index finger, the more likely you are to cheat on your partner. So now we should all start looking at our partners' hands to see how long their fingers are. The writer of the article where I found this little gem suggested that many marriages fail because people made the wrong choice of partner in the first place. Quite likely I suppose, especially if they didn't measure their fingers? 

She also went on to say that you need to work at a relationship if you want it to last. That's a novel idea! I bet few of us were aware of that!!! Hmmmm! This was part of her advice: 

"Here’s one way to practice: Once a day at least text your partner an appreciation. Tell them something you like about them, that is special and unique to them. Even better, do it in person when you get home." 

It's amazing what scientists start to investigate and make statements about. How about the following for a headline? "Scientists insert happy memories into the brains of sleeping mice." My first reaction was to wonder how they knew that the mice had the happy memories. Did they squeak with smiley faces? Did they wake up jumping for joy? Have they secretly bred speaking mice? None of these possibilities. Somehow they identified the neurons in the mice's brains that help form spatial memories about specific locations. They fed in false memories about getting food from certain places (they were not too clear about how they did that and who made sure that the mice understood English) and when the happy mice awoke they went to those places looking for food. Did they have nightmares if there was no food there after all? Were they confused? If the technique can be developed to be done by remote control, can it be used as a way of getting mice to leave your house instead of infesting your kitchen? Ok, that might be a step too far! 

However, the suggestion that this technique of inserting false (happy) memories could be used to treat depression is one I find rather frightening. Yes, a cure for depression would be a wonderful thing but this smacks of mind control and worries me more than a little.

Perhaps we are approaching the situation you find in science-fiction stories, the ones where a person who wants to learn something new, for example how to speak a foreign language, just goes to a laboratory where they fit on a special helmet and electrodes feed the skill or information into the relevant part of your brain. But who knows what other  reasons they might have for manipulating our memories?

Just a bit frightening!

Doing things the right way!

A decision has been taken. I read about it in the newspaper. The queen will not attend the main VE Day services in May (on the day following the general election) as she usually does. This is in case anyone thinks she might appear to be favouring one party leader or another in the event of a hung parliament and negotiations for coalition having to take place. She might smile at one leader and not at another. She could speak for a longer time to one than to another. Well, excuse me for being a little naïve, but even if she did, would it really make a difference. Protocol? Humbug! 

Some other "senior royal", perhaps Prince Charles, will represent the royal family instead. If it turns out to be Prince Charles, is there not more possibility of his indicating a preference? This is, after all, a man of strong opinions and one who likes to air those opinions. So it goes. I suppose it gives someone something to worry about. After all, the people employed to make sure the royal household runs smoothly must have something to do to justify their existence. 

Last Thursday was World Book Day. (Come to that, there seem to be an awful lot of special "days" at the moment!) In schools all over the place children were encouraged to dress up as characters from their favourite books. A whole host of Harry Potters, Charlies (of Chocolate Factory fame), Annes (of Green Gables), Pippi Longstockings and Cinderellas turned up at school. One little boy dressed up as Christian Grey from Fifty Shades of Grey and was told it was not on, inappropriate and altogether the wrong sort of thing. I do believe he was sent home. 

But is that really one of his favourite characters from one of his favourite books? His mother maintained he had not read it (well, one would rather hope not!) but that he had chosen the character as there is so much publicity about the film at the moment. His mother is apparently a school teacher. Hmmm! It raises all sorts of questions! 

While we were in Vigo on our recent visit, Phil ordered a chess book from a company in Barcelona. They promised delivery within 3 to 4 days. There seemed to be plenty of time. By the time I left on Thursday 26th it hadn't arrived. Nor did it come on the Friday or the Saturday. So Phil set off for England on the Monday without delivery having taken place. Of course, the inevitable happened: they tried, unsuccessfully to deliver on the Monday. He received an email saying that they had been unable to deliver. Then another email came telling him which post office in Vigo would have the parcel, if he cared to go along and collect it. So we forwarded the details to a friend and asked him to pop along and pick it up. So far so good! 

On Friday, the friend emailed to say he had been to the post office but that they had refused to hand over the parcel to him, despite his having details of the order number and such like stuff. So I tried to phone the relevant post office. They must close early on a Friday. I tried again on Saturday morning. Still no answer. Obviously they don't open - or at any rate don't man the phones - on Saturday morning. So this morning bright and early I tried again. At first I got the engaged tone. Progress - of sorts! At least it suggested that someone was there. Ten minutes later I tried again. Success! 

I explained the situation to the chap at the post office. A bit of indignation ensued! Well, of course they wouldn't hand over a parcel to just anyone who turned up asking for one - even if they knew exactly who it was addressed to, the name of the sender, the post office parcel delivery number, and even exactly what was in the parcel! No, it required a signed authorisation document, saying that the person picking up the parcel had been granted the right to do so. And that person would need a copy of the identity document of the parcel destinatee (is that a word or have I invented it?) so that they could check that the signature was the same. Then, with a bit of luck and a following wind, the parcel should be handed over! OK, he didn't say anything about luck and following winds. I exaggerate ... a little. The parcel would be there until Monday 17th March. 

Don't you love bureaucracy? And protocol? And rules and regulations? 

So I invented a Documento de Autorización, which Phil duly printed and signed. We took a photo of it and one of his passport and sent them off to our friend in Vigo. Now we wait with bated breath to see whether the parcel will finally be handed over!

Televisual headaches!

Elections are coming up in the UK in May and so there is a lot of talk on TV about the format of a televised debate between party leaders. I was amazed to hear someone on the radio talking about our "traditional" televised debate. "Traditional revised debate"? When did that become a tradition? I thought there had only ever been one. Clearly it doesn't take much to create a tradition these days. 

Anyway, David Cameron is being accused of cowardice for refusing to have a one-to-one debate with Miliband. He prefers a debate involving all parties at once. That sounds ok to me, except that if UKIP is going to involved then so should the Greens and so on. But I don't want to get started on UKIP. It'll give me a headache and a pain in the neck. 

Which brings me to Nurofen, the painkiller people. In Australia, so I have read, they are taking the producers to task because they market Nurofen Back Pain, Nurofen Period Pain, Nurofen Migraine Pain and Nurofen Tension Headache. The problem is that people think these are different products but in fact they are all the same. Shock! Horror! Maybe if we ask them nicely, they will produce a Nurofen Party Political Broadcast Debate Pain! 

Or perhaps it's too complicated. Someone called Brian Millar was explaining in he newspaper that if things are designed to be easy we stop thinking. Thinking is good for us. Who knew? 

He wrote: "We live in a world where almost everything is designed to be simple. When I work with designers, I often come across a kind of religious belief summed up in the mantra: don’t make me think. Slick web design keeps us in a kind of unthinking trance, where we buy things on Amazon or post photos on Facebook without ever having to stop and consider what we’re doing. While this is great for retailers, it’s also good for fraudsters. Phishing scams rely on our trance-like state: please reset your password. Follow this link. Enter your password. Thank you. Click, click, click, oops. 

Something similar has happened to driving. It’s possible to hurtle down a road at 50 miles an hour without thinking at all – until it’s too late. One of the most successful safety design campaigns of recent years aimed to tackle this. The shared space movement puts ambiguity back into road use, for pedestrians and drivers alike. In South Kensington, all street furniture and crossings have been removed and replaced with ambiguous regions where it isn’t clear who has right of way. Drivers and pedestrians snap out of their trances, cars slow down and the accident rate has fallen by 43%." 

I don't know about making everything complicated. Personally I like my camera, my iPad, my washing machine and other such appliances to be as simple as possible. Our television is immensely complicated and no amount of

 thinking about it stops me needing Nurofen Electrical Appliance Headache painkiller. However, I am all in favour of anything that will make our roads safer!

Travel and words. Progress?

Here we are back in Delph. It may be raining today but at least the snowdrops are there in the garden to cheer things up. 

We arrived in Manchester in the sunshine yesterday. Blue sky and brightness. Very nice. We even managed to catch one of the few buses at does a direct run from Manchester to Delph. Perhaps it was a mistake as it seemed to take forever to reach its destination. Perhaps it was just rush hour. And the driver was grumpy. This was a limited-stop bus, which seemed to mean that the driver could choose where he wanted to stop. On one occasion he warned the passenger who rang the bell that his next stop was at such and such a distance down the road. And someone wanted the stop before ours, the stop where she said she always got off, but he sailed on to the next stop, disregarding her polite protestation. Granted that stop was only just around the corner but even so his manner was far from courteous. 

Travel is a funny thing. Phil and I followed exactly the same itinerary for our return journey from Spain. We just did it on different day. I travelled on Thursday and Phil on Monday. My journey went like clockwork: the plane departed exactly on time and even arrived a little early at London Gatwick, I made my way, albeit lengthily, to the railway station, caught a train within five minutes of getting there and made good connections to tube trains for the rest of the journey. Phil's plane was late arriving at Oporto and, naturally, was late leaving. It made up time during the journey but never really caught up with itself. Consequently, he did not catch the early train into London. And then there had been some kind of incident which caused signal failures all over the London network, his train was held up for ten minutes outside its final station, all the tube trains were disrupted, delayed and disappointingly full. All in all, a nightmare journey that took a good two hours longer than mine had. What a difference the day makes! 

We travelled separately because Phil was playing chess on Saturday while I was booked in to babysit the youngest grandchild. So I have spent the last few days watching said youngest grandchild working hard at learning to walk and talk. The walking has come on fine, a few steps here and there. Next time I see her she will no doubt be running everywhere and running everyone else ragged. The talking developed into extended babble with some new noises. Her proud parents are convinced that she has a number of "real" words, among which is "owl". However, this seems to be less the specific name for a type of bird and more a general term to use when she wants to draw attention to something. Still, progress is being made in the fascinating field of language acquisition. 

 In other areas, it would seem that words are disappearing. I was reading an article by someone called Robert MacFarlane, a nature writer who has been collecting words for landscapes and natural phenomena - from aquabob to zawn, whatever they are. Anyway, some time ago he came across a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary and had discovered that a whole range of words connected with nature had been culled, deemed no longer relevant to modern childhood. The deletions included acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow. How will they m anage without these words? The words taking their places in the new edition included attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail. Children no longer need to know what a blackberry (lower case b) is because there is a greater need to be aware that a Blackberry (upper case B) exists and know how to use one. 

How very sad! Surely technology is supposed to enrich our world, not reduce it, enhance our vocabulary not impoverish it. Or am I just old-fashioned in my outlook?