Out and about.

Last week I had several shoe incidents. On Tuesday I discovered that my toe was poking through the top of my running shoe. On Thursday I went out to meet our grandson from school; walking up the hill to the school I looked down and noted that I was wearing one running shoe and one walking shoe, both trainer style shoes, but even so! And not even matching colours! Then on Friday I set off running and realised half way round that I was wearing my walking shoes. So it goes. 

Having discovered the hole in my running shoe, I thought it was time I treated myself to a new pair. So yesterday I went to the running shop in Manchester and explained what I wanted. A friendly, helpful young man offered to see what kind of innersoles would be best in my case, if I had about twenty minutes to spare. So I stood on a fancy glass affair that took a picture of the underside of my foot to show up how flat-footed (or not) I might be. Then the computer went to work and I had to stand on another kind of device which moulded innersoles to the shape of my foot. After this, with a fancy innersole in one shoe and an ordinary one in the other I ran on a treadmill while my running style was videoed. All this so that the charming, helpful, friendly young man could point out how much better, more balanced and so on was the leg with the special innersole shoe on the end of it. 

Eventually, after I had selected a pair of shoes he said, almost as an aside, that there was, of course, an extra charge for the innersoles. How much? £45. £45!!!??? 

So inevitably I opted for ordinary innersoles! And, amazingly, the shoes work really well. I don't run any faster than I did before but I doubt if that would have happened with fancy innersoles either. And do I really care? Well, no! 

I ran in early morning chilly sunshine today. It was fine. The day went off a little after that but picked up again in time for Phil's brother to come round and visit. 


We have established a tradition for his visits. After briefly catching up over a cup of tea we set off for a walk over the hill to Diggle. There we call in at Diggle chippie, the smallest fish and chip shop in the world. Actually I don't know if that is truly the case but it is tiny, located in a small shed, possibly what used to be someone's wooden garage years ago. If you were to try to set it up now you would probably get tied up in all sorts of planning approval difficulties but there it is, a fait accompli. A small wooden chippie, decorated with ancient photos of the area dating back 100 years, if not more. 
 
 And so we sat by Diggle duck pond eating fish and chips in the autumn sunshine. 

 Not a bad life.

Wheels on the road!

The hoverboard has been declared illegal: too unsafe to use on the road, as well as not meeting any of the criteria for licensing for road use, and too fast and dangerous for use on the pavement. When, I find myself wondering, is someone going to say that bicycles are too fast and dangerous for use on the pavement? Anyway, from now on you can only use your hoverboard on your own turf! 

Predictably, our ten-year-old grandson would like a hoverboard but he thinks they cost around £200 and this is beyond his budget. I have no idea if his idea of the price is correct or not, although his assessment that a hoverboard is beyond his means is undoubtedly correct. Instead he has spent some £12 of his savings on his first skateboard and is trying to master that. He would like to go straight to performing fancy tricks in a skateboard park but his practice session in the factory yard yesterday revealed that he needs to be a little patient and has some way to go before he can perform tricks. He learnt to ride a bike with no problems whatsoever, getting his balance at age two on one of those pedal-less bikes they produce nowadays and moving quickly onto a proper bike without stabilisers. Consequently he is a little cross to find that a skateboard is not quite so easy as he had thought. 

Well, now I can tell him there is no point in his saving for a hoverboard. I fail to understand how anyone can seriously consider it a means of transport. It doesn't even hover! It's more of a toy than anything else: a toy for people, usually men, with money to waste. It has developed, according to what I have read, from the segway, an equally silly means of transport, a kind of motorised scooter which can reach a speed of 12.5 miles an hour. The hoverboard seems to be essentially the same thing but without a handle to hold onto and steer by. In other words, a toy! And one that can only be used in your own garden from now on. 

Mind you, I also have concerns about mobility scooters. I see these being driven on the road close to the centre of Oldham and wonder at the sanity of some of the people driving them. These most definitely should be on the pavement. After all, they are only one step up from motorised wheelchairs. I find the idea of driving one of those in major road traffic, with buses and lorries going past and possibly not seeing you, more than a little frightening! Rather like that film by David Lynch, "The Straight Story", where an old man drives a lawn-mower-tractor affair from one state to another in the USA. 

I mentioned bikes on the pavement earlier. Well, the cycle debate continues in a couple of areas: helmets and cycle paths/cycle safety. I read this morning that in Seattle, USA, you can be fined $102, that's £67, if you cycle without a helmet. Meanwhile in Amsterdam the only people who wear helmets are foreign tourists and the cyclists of Amsterdam find it really amusing and scorn them. However, their city is one of the safest in the world for cycling and you are very unlikely to be crushed by a lorry there. I would still wear a helmet though. If you fall of your bike, for whatever reason, and land on your head you are a lot less likely to be brain-damaged if your brain is protected by a helmet. 

The people who collect statistics about such things tell us that in places where many people cycle there are fewer car-bike accidents. For one thing, the cyclists are more visible just because there are plenty of them and drivers are more accustomed to taking them into account. Also, in such places, car drivers are more likely to be cyclists as well. There is, of course, a kind of catch 22 thing going on here: if more people cycled there would be fewer accidents but while there are still lots of accidents fewer people cycle. And many of those who do cycle do so on the ****** pavement. 

Interestingly, statistics show that car drivers give a wider berth to cyclists without helmets, although I am not sure how they work that out. And Boris Johnson is concerned that cycling in London is seen as a predominantly middle class activity. One commentator said that London cyclists tend to be "Somebody who is quite environmentally friendly, quite independent, maybe a bit of a leftie, vegetarian". There's a sweeping generalisation for you! Boris has stated, "I want more women cycling, more older people cycling, more black and ethnic minority people cycling, more cyclists of all social backgrounds - without which truly mass participation cannot come about." 

All very admirable and I must say I agree with him. Fancy agreeing with Boris Johnson!!

The strangeness of things.

Despite predictions by a bunch of religious fatalists, who said that the world would end on Wednesday, here we still are. This was a continuation of the blood moon predictions from a few weeks ago. When the world didn't end at that point they did a recalculation and said that God had been calculating which of the churchgoers deserved to get into heaven but needed a bit more time to sort out those of us who no longer set foot in his places of worship. The mind boggles! Truly! 

So here we still are and, according to the World Health Organisation, getting fatter by the day. By 2025 they estimate that there will be one billion obese adults, not just overweight but actually diagnosed as obese. Some experts even think there have been metabolic changes. They have done comparisons between people having a certain calorific intake and a certain rate of exercise and worked out that in the 1960s and 1970s those people lost more weight than they do now. 

Personally I feel that it may because we babyboomers are not just the fortunate generation (free university education, maintenance grants, jobs aplenty when we graduated, etc, etc) but in fact we are a special little super-race who just do things more efficiently! 

I have been reading about a strange phenomenon in Argentina. Young people there are not getting married. Well, fewer of them do so now than ever before and a group of friends decided, when they realised that it had been a long time since they had been to a good wedding party, to stage a "falsa boda". This false wedding, at which friends got all dressed up, oohed and aahed at the pretend bride and then had a good knees up to celebrate, was so successful that they have now started to do it professionally. And so they stage weddings with a twist. A third party will turn up, an ex, a spurned lover, someone who knows a secret, and events take a dramatic turn. People pay around £30 to attend these events, probably a lot cheaper than paying for stag and hen parties, wedding gifts and the like. And an added spin-off is that it provides a wonderful venue for hardworking single people to meet possible future spouses! Fact is stranger than fiction! 

Clive James, Australian poet, writer, "personality", has been apologising for not being dead. Last year he wrote a poem, Japanese Maple, stating that his leukaemia would have finished him off by the time the maple turned red for the autumn. New medication has kept him alive to see another autumn. Another who has avoided the end of the world! 

Out running this morning, I stopped to chat to Jack and his little dog Rosie. A huge lorry stopped and the driver asked us the way to a local small industry. We were happy to oblige and as the lorry went on its way we talked about sat navs. Jack said he might need to get one after, despite a quite lengthy resistance. Yesterday he set off to Christie's Hospital for a check up (he is another who has cheated the end of the world) and got lost. One way systems, changes to buildings over the last year and who knows what else got him confused and he ended up in the middle of nowhere. And missed his appointment to boot. For the return journey he opted to do M60 and M62, coming off up the road from here at Denshaw. In retrospect this was a mistake as he took the long way round the M60 and finally got home at around 4 in the afternoon, having left home at 10 in the morning. Goodness knows how many miles and how much petrol he consumed! 

Life is more complicated than fiction!

Words and opinions.

Yesterday I learnt an Italian slang expression for calm down: "Camomilati". Mixture of the actual Italian for calm down, "calmati" and "camomila", the herb used to make a calming infusion. I have to confess that I find camomile tea quite revolting but continental Europeans swear by it. The French give it to colicky babies to settle their stomachs. My stomach, however, is thoroughly upset by this herb. Nonetheless, the Italian expression is very pleasing. 

When you look out and despair of the rain falling down and the river rushing by in spate, just tell yourself, "camomilati", and all will be well! 

Words were clearly in the air yesterday. Later, over a glass of wine, out of nowhere Phil suddenly commented, "Why are people who make hats called milliners?" So, of course, I had to Google it. Back in the 14th century, I discovered, the best hat makers came from Milan. In Middle English people from Milan were called "Miliners". And so today we still have milliners and millinery. with a slight spelling change. 

 This led me to think about haberdashers. Back to Google I went. It's another word of old Middle English origin with a bit of French thrown in. Back in the day, in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, "small goods", caps and ribbons and such, were called "hapertas". Sellers of "small goods" were called haberdashers as a result. And so the name was created. Sometime in the 17th century someone tried to make a verb "to haberdash" but it never caught on. but we still have the haberdashers. 

There you go. 

 There's an American who has visited England and tweeted, I think, his impressions of the country. However it was he put his opinions out there, it all went viral and a friend of mine posted it on Facebook. Here are a few of his opinions and impressions: 

"Everyone is very polite. 
There are no guns. (This was reiterated - several times!) 
Everything is just a little bit different. 
Pubs are not bars, they are community living rooms. 
People don't seem to be afraid of their neighbours or the government. 
Refrigerators and washing machines are very small. 
Everyone has a washing machine but driers are rare. 
There are hardly any cops or police cars. 
When you do see police they seem to be in males and female pairs and often smiling. (He obviously went to nice safe parts of England! I have friends who view our police in a different light.) 
The reason they drive on the left is because their cars are built backwards. 
Black people are just people, they didn't quite do slavery here. (Hmmm!?) 
Obama is considered a hero. Bush is considered an idiot. 
They eat with their forks upside down. 
It's not unusual to see people dressed different and speaking different languages. 
Everyone knows more about our history than we do."

I could go on and on. His comments say as much about his own country as about ours. 

I just found the whole thing quite fascinating!

Trouble shooting.

In Texas an eleven year old boy looked out of his window and asked his eight year old neighbour if he could look at the puppies he had heard she had just got. When she said no he went and got his father's shotgun and shot her in the chest. They tried to save her life but failed. Who teaches an eleven year old to respond with such an action? What was his father doing leaving a gun where his son could get hold of it? 

Some police shootings of civilians in the USA are being described as "suicide by cop". The "suicidal" civilian provokes the police into a standoff, does not actually fire a shot but causes the police to shoot him. What happened to disarming or shooting to disable? 

I find these reported events quite disturbing! In many ways these people, who speak the same language as us, are amazingly alien. 

Having said that, I was equally disturbed by photos of sharp shooters on the tops of buildings in Manchester observing Sunday's protest demonstrations against the Tories and their conference. One excuse was that you get a better view of the crowd through the sights of a gun than you do through binoculars. Really? No suggestion that they might pick off trouble makers and frighten the rest into going home? 

(I was tied up with family obligations and did not take part in the rallies. A large number of my friends did though. Huge numbers turned out and the protests still continue today. In Manchester this afternoon I did not see anybody famous, or indeed anybody obviously connected with the conference. Mind you, I didn't go very near the conference venue so it's not really surprising. There was a helicopter hovering over the conference venue but you didn't need to get very close to see that.) 

On the other end of the gun question, Jessica Valenti was writing in the Guardian about a question her daughter asked. They have this routine at bedtime where the little girl can ask about anything that worries her. In this case it was guns. Do guns exist "in real life" the worried five year old wanted to know, as if she thought, or maybe hoped, they were only for the baddies in stories. So they had a little talk about it and the questions only got harder from there. The little girl, quite logically, wanted to know why, if guns hurt people, they were “allowed.” She wanted to know if only the good guys have guns, and if cops are good guys. Still living in a fairy tale situation! 

I remember trying to put off the day when my children would have toy guns. I didn't think they were appropriate. (Mind you, I didn't think Barbie dolls were appropriate either!) My children grew up with very little television. We didn't have a set and so they only saw it occasionally at other people's houses. And yet they still learnt to shape their little fists into gun shapes and play shooting games. Eventually, after watching them make guns out of stickle bricks, among other things, and after my young brother in law bought them water pistols one summer's afternoon, I gave in. But we did have some conversations about the rights and wrongs of it. 

How much harder must that be in a country where it is accepted that quite ordinary people own guns?

The silliness of things.

We only ever buy newspapers at the weekend. Well, occasionally, if we are travelling by train in the UK we buy one to read on the train. This is especially so if Phil spots one that offers a free bottle of water. Otherwise, as I said, only at the weekend. Life is too short to read a whole newspaper every day of the week. So, today being Sunday, when I ran through the village this morning I stopped at the Co-op to buy the paper, among other things. 

It was only as the cashier totted stuff up that I realised that I had accidentally picked up two copies. The cashier was gaily ringing up two copies without a concern in the world. I suppose it was conceivable that I was picking up a paper for a neighbour but you would have thought she might have asked if I really planned on reading the same paper twice. Fortunately I noticed in time! 

Looking at the magazine section over breakfast I spotted some things about fashion. First of all, in an item called "We love", one of those features that selects things you might possible covet, there was a coat that looked as if it was made up of rejects from the kind of rugs my grandmother used to make. In reality, I think it was made up of sections of lambskin dyed in a range of colours and patchworked together. Part of an exclusive collection by Net-a-porter, it had a ridiculous price tag. Sorry, fashionistas, for just over £1,500 I expect more than something that looks like my grandmother's old rug! 

Then there was a so-called teddy bear being sold by Harrods. This is the Burberry Thomas bear, another exclusive item, made of cashmere (woven fabric, not even fur!) and retailing at £425. Who buys these things? You couldn't give it to a child to cuddle and chew and drop in its breakfast Weetabix! 

I moved on to "10 things we learned at London Fashion Week. The first thing I learned is that the models all look androgynous and miserable. Are they not allowed to smile at all? Is it like passport photos? Nothing else of great import was included in the article. One fashion designer is promoting the wearing of bumbags. Not, however, the kind that make you look, to quote the article "as though you are an American tourist in fear of being mugged for your passport" but an enormous thing with "room for everything in there from your supersized mobile phone to a spare pair of shoes". There are two odd things there: mobile phones, which everyone wanted to be as small as possible, are getting bigger and people expect to carry spare shoes around with them! How odd!! 

Later I found an article called "What does this dog say about me?" It featured a young lady called Nicola who owns a Pomeranian, the same kind of small dog that our granddaughter turned up with recently. This young lady is 22 and works as an administrator for Dior. What exactly does a 22 year old administrator do? Anyway, she has this dog and apparently people often tell her, "That's not a real dog - it's a teddy bear." Which is also my reaction. The other bit of my reaction is that it might be cheaper to have a teddy bear, even one of those exclusive Harrods teddy bears. 

The journalist writing the column was quite impressed at one so young as Nicola owning a dog at all. According to her it shows commitment and the ability to love something other than herself. She also commented that you can tell Nicola works in the fashion industry as "she's wearing one of those weird no-sleeved coats which are supposedly cool at the moment. Nobody non-fashion wears those, because they're silly". I second that ! 

Here's my final bit of silliness for today, a sad bit of silliness: a friend of mine posted on Facebook an item about the shooting in Oregon. A gun shop owner in the USA has been stocking up on assault rifles. Why? Because "there is always a rush after a shooting". 

What can I say?

Another week comes to a close.

And so the weekend comes around again. The end of a remarkably sunny week. It has been very pleasant strolling around catching up with people in the sunshine. Monday doesn't count as it was only the dentist. Tuesday it was my Italian classmates and Wednesday lunch with a couple of former work colleagues. All good stuff. 

Yesterday I took an old friend for a walk around Dovestone reservoir. There were a fair few people there but not as many as you might see if it had been Saturday. Mind you, today - Saturday - is grey and gloomy and not a good day for strolling round reservoirs and having picnics in the sunshine. 

Having been taught by my daughter in the summer how to take panoramic photos with my phone, I just had to take a couple of the view from the path between the two reservoirs. 

  

Apart from people's dogs we saw no interesting wildlife, not even the odd rabbit or pheasant. Unlike the other day. Out walking on Monday, Phil drew my attention to something on the hillside opposite: two young deer! A number of people have told me about deer around here but until then I had never seen them. I have no idea where they came from. In the late 1970s, early 1980s we lived in a house in the valley between Delph and Denshaw. From what people tell me, that valley is teeming with deer now. Back then there were none! Strange! 

No animal life to speak of up at Dovestone, but we did see some fine views. 
 
Now, imagine making your way of the tube station and coming across this view. 

Apparently it is street art. Of a most spectacular kind, I must say. Here is a link to more examples of the same kind of thing.

 Life is just full of interesting stuff!