Traditional?

It's strange how traditions are established and become so much a part of our lives that whole industries spring up to "service them". 

Someone writing in the one of the newspapers about Hallowe'en said, "My 12-year-old daughter, Margaret, said she wanted to be the Cheshire Cat this year for Halloween. The grinning, shape-shifting Cheshire Cat, who made his literary debut in Lewis Carroll’s enduring classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland." 

She talked about looking for costumes in Party City. I had never heard of this so I Googled it and found out that it is an American online supplier of costumes for all sorts of occasions. And, of course, Hallowe'en is a very American tradition. Hence the writer's daughter planning in advance what her outfit would be. 

The journalist's main gripe was that she could not find a Hallowe'en costume of any description for a 12 year old girl that was not marketed as being "sexy", as if that was the most important thing for a 12 year old girl. How odd that a tradition that has children, yes, children, going round asking for sweets from their neighbours, should combine that with little girls dressing up to look tarty. As the journalist pointed out, the same criteria do not apply to costumes for boys. 

In the end she purchased some bits and pieces and went, as she often did apparently, to Grandma for some help with sewing a costume to her own standards. 

I wonder about the use of that adjective, "sexy". Looking at the kid of fancy dress outfits you see on sale here, it is clear that girls really are expected to dress up to look as sexually attractive as possible. Sexism raises its ugly head again! On the other hand I have recently heard "sexy" used simply to mean "pretty" or "nice looking". Our 18 year old granddaughter came spluttering into the house recently declaring, " Did she really just tell her dog it was SEXY?" She could not believe that our next door neighbour had just addressed her new puppy, the shug(!), in just that way. I told her, however, that her ears were not playing tricks on her. I had heard the same neighbour telling one of her grandchildren, a tiny boy of about 18 months old, that he was sexy! 

Is the word subtly changing its meaning or is it just my neighbour? 

It's a funny old world.

Reflections on this and that.

I hear that culottes are back in fashion. They do keep on coming around. I have a question: When are culottes not culottes? Surely the answer must be, "When they are just rather too short trousers". Reading a fashion item about culottes, I came across this fashion tip, "Always coordinate tailoring to create a streamlined silhouette and mind the gap between hemline and bootie; no more than three inches". Surely a divided skirt that comes close, but not close enough, to your ankle boots is not a pair of culottes but a sign that you have put on your shorter friend's or sister's trousers by mistake this morning. 

I should stop reading fashion magazines and articles. They just annoy and frustrate me. 

In fact, maybe I should stop reading newspapers as well. 

Today it was another thing about the Mediterranean diet, which apparently slows down the ageing of the brain by up to five years, according to the latest research. I have no arguments with that. I love the Mediterranean diet. One article I read defined it as follows:- 

"The Mediterranean diet typically consists of large amounts of vegetables, pulses, fruit, cereal, fish and monounsaturated fatty acids such as olive oil. It also includes small amounts of meat, poultry, dairy products and saturated fatty acids, plus mild to moderate alcohol consumption." 

And all of that sounds wonderful. Lentil soup, fabada (a kind of bean stew), dishes with chickpeas and all sorts of stuff like that. Then I stop and think about the times we have commented on the wonderful displays of fruits and veg in the shops in Spain and wondered at the fact that so few restaurants serve much in the way of vegetables apart from potatoes and occasionally a bit of salad. 

We must not, of course, forget greens, a staple part of that lovely broth, "caldo gallego". But what happens to all the other vegetables that are on sale in the shops? 

And yes, a lot of wonderful fish is served. We really appreciate it. But I stop and think about the number of people I know in Spain who feel that a meal is not really a meal without copious amounts of meat, good red meat. Perhaps it's all the returnees from Argentina, still craving some Argentinean beef. 

I suppose I will just have to carry on serving up a range of peppers and courgettes and other veg and plenty of fish. Red meat I can pretty well do without. The fish dishes bring their own problems, of course. There's the smell. Getting ahead of myself late this morning, I pre-prepared a fish risotto ready for teatime. All it would need would be the finishing touches. I knew I would be pressed for time as I was going to collect our grandson from school and then feed everyone before Phil went rushing out to chess club. So what happened? A certain amount of moaning about the smell of fish happened! A certain amount of opening windows nice and wide happened! 

You just can't win!!But the risotto was appreciated!

Just a word!

Call me picky but one of my bugbears is incorrect use of language. It doesn't really matter which language; if there's a mistake in it, then it annoys me. I am aware that say this as someone who often types badly and in haste but I do try to proof read and eradicate errors (if I can!). 

I get annoyed when I open a menu in a restaurant in mainland Europe and find that it has been translated into truly execrable and sometimes incomprehensible English. Ten out of ten for effort though. Few English restaurants (well, almost none of those I frequent) bother to put the menu into any other language than English. It's just rather a shame that some of the European ones have not had their efforts checked by a native English speaker or at least an expert before going to the printers. 

Shop signs with glaring errors also arouse my indignation. So you can imagine how pleased I was to come across this sign as I ran through Greenfield in the rain this morning. 

Presumably the florist wanted to make her establishment look a little exotic or sophisticated, while at the same time trying to incorporate the name of the village into her shop name. Splendid idea but incorrectly translated and grammatically wrong! If you plan to be clever, especially in foreign languages, make sure you have it checked before you go public. 

Sometimes, of course, a deliberate misspelling is part of the charm. In Vigo there is a shop called "Mi Leidy" which sells ladies' clothes. If you say the name out loud according to Spanish spelling and pronunciation rules, then the shop's name is "Milady" of "My Lady". Now, I think that works. And, besides, the Spanish have a tradition of "hispanifying" foreign words. 

Hairdressing salons are the best for clever shop names. I know of a ladies' hairdressers called "Shear Perfection". Above it is the gentlemen's barber shop called "A Cut Above". My all time favourite though has to be "Curling you Softly"! 

There's just something about hairdressing that lends itself to a certain amount of playing with the language. 

All these are the kind of thoughts that go through your head when you go running in the Saddleworth drizzle!

Left speechless in Manchester.

I have been into Manchester again today. It has to be said that at the moment central Manchester is a MESS. Work is going on to improve and extend the Metrolink tram service. As a consequence there are huge chunks of road that you cannot even cross, let alone drive on them. In some places, to get from point A to point B is worse than finding your way around a very complex maze. Last week I almost missed a train as I tried to find my way through the roadworks to Victoria Station. 

And then, in the Italian class, discussing this and that, one of our number told us that the Metrolink service is in fact being organised and installed by the city of Paris! I suppose I should not be too surprised. After all, much of the country's electricity is supplied, or at least administered, by a French company, as is quite a lot of our water. So why not our transport system too? Someone else pointed out that one of the bus companies serving Greater Manchester is in fact German. 

What I want to, know is does this mean that I can use my bus pass in Paris and Germany? No, I thought not! 

As well as the road works causing chaos outside, imminent pagan and Christian festivals are causing mayhem indoors. The shops are all trying put up their Christmas displays and start marketing the goods: reindeer jumpers, special crockery you can only use at Christmas and therefore lose between one Christmas and the next and all the other stuff. The problem is that Hallowe'en has not yet come and gone and so the displays of ghoulish stuff are competing for space and importance in the big emporia .... And in the small shops for that matter. The Christmas colour schemes of green and red (very jolly holly) or gold and silver (sophisticated smart) are clashing horribly with the black and orange of All Hallows. 

It's very hard! What is a shopper to do? 

Well, maybe you should take the opportunity to buy something I spotted today in Selfridge's store. 

This very snooty looking place uses half the space of a building that was originally all Marks and Spencer, before that company ran into difficulties and sold half of it off. At least I think that is what happened. Smart and snootily impenetrable doormen stand at the doors. I like to walk through to get to Marks and Spencer, looking at the expensive handbags arranged in neat rows, usually with one selected for special placing on a sort of raised pedestal. I always wonder who buys such things. 

So what was the object I spotted today? 

Tastefully spread put on a glass surface was a selection of hats. Beanie hats! Those pull-on woolly hats that teenage boys wear and that I put on to go running on cold mornings. These were special though. They had veils attached! Yes, veils! Charming bits of net! I stopped to look at the price : £108! 

What more can I say?

Some thoughts about children.

It would seem that there has been a baby show, the biggest baby show ever, in London's Olympia this week. At one time a baby show was a bit like a beauty competition for babies, a "bonny baby" competition, where judges decided which baby was the best looking. Someone has probably decided that such a thing is no longer politically correct and I must say I agree. Everyone's baby is the most beautiful in the world. That's a foregone conclusion. 

No, this was an event to show off all the wonderful equipment you can buy now to make you into better parents. From such things as a baby buggy that converts into a high chair at the press of a button to romper suits that have magnets for fasteners instead of buttons or poppers. It did not say whether the former cleaned itself up after the baby had finished spreading food over it. And the justification for the latter was that it can take up to a minute, yes, a whole minute, to fasten a baby's romper suit and this is a minute you can use for cuddles instead! 

Unless, of course, you are so busy on your mobile phone that you have no time for cuddles. I mention this because there is a Bluetooth wristband (a positive bargain at £44.95) which lets you know if your toddler has wandered off beyond a pre-set distance. Here is what I read about it: 
" "When parents today are out with their kids, they've got their phones going, they're answering texts and checking Facebook -and if the little one darts off, there's this heart-wrenching moment of panic," said Mark Phillips, father of two and the inventor of My Buddy Tag, a wristband that allows you to track your child's movements on a Smartphone app." 
Or, of course, I find myself thinking, you could just put your phone away and interact, a fancy word for talk and play, with your child instead. 

There's a whole lot more stuff that modern parents seem to need. It's amazing. I really do not know how we managed to raise two children. No wonder they say having children is a very expensive business! 

Another aspect of childrearing in the news has once again been the question of letting children play out. Research tells us that children who are driven everywhere and not allowed to roam freely, occasionally getting into difficulty climbing trees and so on, are less likely to grow up to be self sufficient young adults. Apparently this is one explanation for so many young adults still living at home with their parents. And there I was, believing it was something to do with the economic situation, unemployment and the lack of affordable housing! 

Having said that, I am cautiously on the side of those who say that children need to be encouraged to be independent. Yes, children should walk to school and even do so on their own if that is possible. But there are limits. Nostalgia is a fine thing but it sometimes makes people forget that when they walked to school unaccompanied back in the 1950s and 1960s, there were far fewer cars on the road and it actually was less dangerous! 

The grammar police came out in me today. In the Sunday paper there is a feature where a well known person writes about books, films, art exhibitions, restaurants and such like that have impressed him or her over the last week. Today it was the turn of a writer of books for children. I found myself squirming when he talked about a film he and his wife had seen and not been terribly impressed with, only to find that they could not stop thinking about it. "Me and Emms were texting each other for days afterwards ... " he wrote. "Me and Emms" did a number of other things as well. 

Now, I know lots of people speak this way all the time but it grates on me. There's a bit of me that believes that those who do this consider themselves to be more important and are giving themselves centre stage all the time. If you say "Emms and I did this and that", you give Emms pride of place and put yourself humbly after her. (I might even accept "Emms and me did this and that", but only with great reluctance.)

That's my take on it anyway and I really think that someone who has written very successful books for children, formative books for children, should know better.

Supermarket adventures.

Further to my comments yesterday on pets, here are some more. Today in the supermarket I found a whole section devoted to Hallowe'en for cats and dogs and Christmas for cats and dogs. Why not for rabbits, hamsters, budgerigars as well? Or even tarantulas? Well, some people do have pet tarantulas! 

I could just about understand Christmas stockings for pets. Grudgingly, I might admit that the children in a family would love Rover and Kitty to have their own Christmas stocking. But why would you really want to buy doggie treats at an elevated price, just because they are packaged nicely for Christmas day? 

When it comes to advent calendars, though, my sense of the ridiculous rises up and protests. I grew up with advent calendars that simply showed you a Christmas-related picture every time you opened a little paper door. None of this stuff about sweets and chocolates every time you open the door. Or even, going up the scale somewhat, a mini-present every time you open a door! So you can imagine my reaction to advent calendars for cats and dogs. 

Surely there are going to be some confused pets around after Christmas. For 25 days, their beloved owner calls them over once a day and gives them a special treat. After this has gone on just long enough to be implanted in the small animal's idea of what is routine, the whole thing stops! I imagine the owner saying, "Sorry, Tiddles, Christmas is over now. But, never mind, it'll soon be your birthday and I'll bake you a special cake. And I'll buy you a special Easter egg as well!" 

Leaving the supermarket, I saw my bus sailing away down the road. Faced with half an hour to wait for the next one, and not having too much to carry, I set off walking part of the way home. As usual my route went round the side of the supermarket and through the entrance where the delivery vans arrive. So, to save myself a few hundred yards of bag carrying, I pushed my trolley along to the gate and left it there, donning my rucksack in preparation for a bit of a walk. 

Just after I set off a car driver hailed me and asked in a posh voice if that was my trolley. I resisted the temptation to say that in fact it was not mine but belonged to the supermarket and owned up, wondering what he was after. Why was I leaving it there? Once again, I refrained from sarcasm and did not reply that the supermarket does not like you walking off with their trolleys. Instead I reassured him that the supermarket staff would collect it and all would be well. With that he drove away. 

What did he take me for? Some kind of vandal? My soft answer turned away his indignation but he still seemed a little bemused as he set off again.

Dog days!

On the bus the other day I heard two ladies seated behind me discussing, with great enthusiasm, a website one of them had discovered which sold Hallowe'en costumes for dogs. And they were at such bargain prices: only £20!!! 

I could make all kinds of comments about the nonsense that Hallowe'en has become, with the card industry producing a delightful range of gory cards with which you can wish your loved ones a "Happy Hallowe'en (?) and a whole new branch of the tat trade selling special bags in which children can collect the sweets they will be offered when they go "Trick or Treating". These bags are all in black and orange, which appear to have become the colours of Hallowe'en. I blame that on the pumpkins! 

However, I think I have gone on about that at sufficient length. The mere mention of such things is quite enough. 

No, what struck me as especially ridiculous was that these were mature ladies. Now, our eldest granddaughter has a Hallowe'en costume, batwings I think, for her cute but unnecessary little dog but she is still a teenager and can be expected to do silly things. There are far worse things a teenager can get up to than dressing up her little dog. These ladies on the bus, on the other hand, were old enough to know better. 

They went on to talk about Christmas. One of them commented that her daughter, or possibly her granddaughter, had asked what she could buy for the dog for Christmas. Here we go again! It is mid-October, which is already quite early in my opinion for getting worried about what to buy for your friends and relations. In this case, the stressing was about what to buy for the DOG! Oh, I am sure dog lovers everywhere like to give their pets treats on Christmas day but when other members start to enquire about what they should buy for the canine friend, it really is too much. I found myself wondering if the dog gets to write to Santa, signing off his letter with a paw print and sending it away to the North Pole! 

Incidentally, the lady in question suggested that her daughter, or possibly her granddaughter, should by the dog some leads. The dog already has lots of collars in different colours and so some matching leads would be lovely. The dog's owner does love to take the little fellow out in coordinating collar and lead! I do colour co-ordination with the best of them but this is a dog we are talking about here! This is the dog as the ultimate accessory. I imagine some mind of pooch whose fur has been brushed and styled to match its owner's coiffure. 

I am a great believer in dogs being treated as dogs and not as surrogate babies. They should not have ribbons in their hair or fancy coats to wear. Surely dogs have fur coats to keep them warm! Do they truly need an extra coat on top of that? My granddaughter turned up with her little dog wearing a raincoat. She claimed he would not leave the house without it as it was raining! Really? I think we can tell which is the pack leader there! 

Mind you her dog is a fancy breed, a fox-faced Pomeranian or some such thing. The lady in the flat next door has just acquired something called a "shug", which sounds like some light weight item of clothing you put around your shoulders on cool evenings. In fact a "shug" is a cross between a "pug" and a "shitzu". A strangely ugly little thing it is too, although it had my younger granddaughter in paroxysms of delight as she declared how cute it is! 

Where do all these odd creatures come from? When I was a child, people had spaniels and Labradors and boxers and Alsatians and ugly bulldogs. The oddest you usually ever saw was a poodle with its fur cut in that silly way people used to do and possibly dyed a fine shade of peach or apricot. 

But that was as far as it went!