Back in town and so on.

The first full day back in Galicia, so I get up and run: down to the lighthouse roundabout, left up the hill towards San Joan do Monte, another left round the back of the area, down towards the Carrefour store and a final left to end up at the bread shop and then back to the flat. There was frost on the grass round the back of the area but then it is half way up the hill towards San Joan do Monte, one of the higher places of Vigo where you might expect it to get a little chilly overnight in February. The temperature given on the advertising hoarding down by Carrefour 4 degrees, which is quite cold enough for me. That was at 9.15 this morning before the sun had properly got itself over the top of the hill. 

Out and about yesterday, I noticed that the drivers here are as cavalier as ever in their attitude to traffic lights, especially red ones. As the little green man appears at pedestrian crossing, you don't take it for granted at traffic will automatically stop. Sometimes you have to make sure you catch their eye, ensuring that they have actually registered that you are there. Otherwise, some drivers will regard the light telling them to stop as an arbitrary thing, something they can ignore if they feel there is time for them to get across the stripes of the crossing before pedestrians get to that point. Just before the bottom of Gran Vía, in the centre of the city, there is a set of traffic lights and a pedestrian crossing. On the other side of the crossroads there is another pedestrian crossing, controlled really by the same set of lights. 

Whenever stand waiting at that crossing we feel compelled to stand well back as cars hurtle down the final few yards of Gran Vía, across Urzáiz, swerving into Lepanto Street opposite Gran Vía. One miscalculation, one failure to steer properly and a car is going to mount the pavement and scatter the folk waiting to cross the road. And when the lights change and the little green man appears at the crossing on Lepanto, you always have to allow for the half dozen drivers who have jumped the red light at the end of Gran Vía and, therefore, need to get across the pedestrian crossing so that they are not obstructing Urzáiz. 

Roundabout etiquette or rules or whatever fox drivers too. there was a bit of a bump at one our roundabouts this morning. 

 And people wonder why I don't want to drive in this crazy city! 

Out in the wider world religion keeps up its own craziness. The Pope, visiting South America, has decreed that use of condoms is permissible during the zika crisis. How very enlightened. However, the Vatican has also decreed that for those women who carelessly conceived before he made that pronouncement abortion is still not an option. Meanwhile some 4000 babies have been born with microcephaly!!! 

The Pope has questioned Donald Trump's Christian faith because that politician has said he wants to build a wall between the USA and Mexico! Donald Trump is a bit cross about that! 

And then Phil found out about a women's chess tournament in Iran. Well, that's good. Women are being accepted as thinking beings. However, all women taking part must wear the headscarf! I don't suppose they would be allowed to play against men! 

The world still has some way to go!

Getting back to Vigo!

Here we are back in the land of the eucalyptus trees. Oh, I know they are not native to Galicia but our bus had barely left Porto and we started seeing little woodlets. I think one term for them is "stands" of trees. Why such a weird term? Anyway, here we are, back in Galicia. The sun shone on our arrival but we did get some rain later. Just a little! 

I heard a radio report in the taxi from the bus station, all about the cost of repairing the damage from the storms that have hit Galicia. Presumably the same ones as hit the UK. Quite a lot of ports have been hard hit and will need financial help to put things right. Here in Vigo, there is a back street carpark that always has a large puddle in the middle of it, unless there have been weeks and weeks without rain. Even in summer, it is often a puddly place. Today the puddle is a lake! Almost the whole carpark is full of water! So it's not just Saddleworth that has been getting a soaking. 

At Porto airport, we discovered that the number of bus services providing transport from the airport to a variety of places has double, at least. It might have tripled. Unfortunately they are of no use to us as they only seem to go to places like Braga and Viana del Castelo. Nice places, no doubt, but not where we want to end up. 

 Our bus, the Autna service, was almost half an hour late. Had we known, we might have treated ourselves to a second breakfast while we waited. And to think that we had been concerned that we might miss it. This was because Easyjet insisted on putting my suitcase into the hold. Because of fog during our journey to Manchester airport, we were on the last minute. As we approached the gate, I could hear the employees discussing how many bags had gone through already. When it got to me, mine was syphoned off to go in the hold. It's years since I have had to wait for luggage at the carousel. 

But all was well: I retrieved my suitcase, we caught the somewhat belated bus and finally arrived in Vigo in the early afternoon. Some five or six hours later we feel as though we have had a full day. Food shopping. Making a late lunch. Recharging our pay as you go Spanish phones. Ditto the dongle for the computer. Good news there: because of a special promotion we get double the amount of internet access for the usual price! 

Sometimes things just work out right! All we need now is a bit more sunshine!

Stuff and nonsense!

I accidentally find out stuff via Facebook that otherwise I would never come across. Here's an example. One of my former students, a very talented musician, posts all sorts of interesting musical stuff. Unfortunately she also posts a lot of nonsense because she "follows" Hello Magazine. And so today I discovered that someone called Tom Fletcher, a singer-songwriter for a group called McFly, and his wife Giovanna, who blogs for the magazine, have just produced their second child, another son. The first one, I found out, is called Buzz. And now Buzz has a small brother, Buddy. 

These are not names! Excuse me, but I have to say it! Buzz and Buddy are perfectly good nicknames but they cannot be considered to be proper names. Never in a month of Sundays! 

Here's another bit of nonsense. Not found out from my musical ex-student. A peer, Lord Richard, once chief of the Benefits Agency, thinks that pensioners should prove that they are contributing to society or have their pensions cut. "Older people who are not very old could be making a very useful contribution to civil society if they were given some incentive or recognition for doing so,” he told a committee of MPs. He feels that if it's okay to "incentivise" job seekers in this way, then it should be okay to do the same to those who have finished working all their lives and are now in receipt of a pension. In that way we are no longer a "negative burden on the state". 

Whoopee! That should help the unemployment figures no end! 

Lord Richard, by the way, retired at 53 and has a very large pension. Presumably pontificating in this way counts as contributing to society! 

And while we are at it, if that is how things ought to be, can someone work out a way for me to reclaim some of the National Insurance contributions I have paid over the years? I haven't seen my GP for years and years. I have not been to A&E for anything. For a short time while I was having children, I have to admit that I availed myself of the services of the state but apart from flu jabs, I simply have not made use of the local doctors' services in recent years. I am sure I have not had my money's worth. 

So please don't start messing around with my pension. I already pay tax on it and that's quite enough, thank you! 

Here's more. Prince William has been making a speech to British diplomats in which he spoke of the importance of international partnerships. This has been interpreted by media know-it-alls as this young man who might possibly one day be king coming out in favour of the EU. At the same time, actress Emma Thompson has said much more directly that she is in favour of staying in; she thinks we would be mad to leave. 

So that's all right then. We can stop worrying about Brexit!

Some travel reflections and getting out and about.

This weekend I paid a flying visit to our son's house. The occasion was a party to celebrate his little daughter's second birthday. By a masterpiece of planning I arrived just as the first wave of total mayhem had calmed down. Ten minutes or so prior to my arrival, eight or more very small children had been running round and round through the interconnecting rooms of the ground floor, squealing with glee and waving teddies and other toys in the air. By the time I got there, however, several mummies had whisked their little dears away homewards and the birthday girl herself had fallen asleep and been popped in her cot for an energy restoring nap! 

And so there was time for the adults to have a chat without fear of accidentally treading on a small person. Those small people who remained had settled for quieter activities (well, less energetic anyway) such as tipping the Duplo all over the floor trying to build towers. 

On my way there on the train, I had been amazed at how much sustenance some travellers need to consume. The couple opposite me went through a pack of sandwiches and a salad bowl with breadsticks to dip in humous. After a brief pause, the female of the pair leaned towards the male and said, in a quite clear voice, "Choc, choc, choc! Choc, choc, choc!" Whereupon he produced a large pack of M&Ms (whether peanut or chocolate, I could not say!) which she proceeded to consume, fairly quickly. 

Now, I realise it was only mid-morning and that they might have come out without having had any breakfast. I was, after all, drinking my second cup of coffee of the day on the train instead of at my kitchen table. But the "Choc, choc, choc!" incident left me queasily embarrassed. Many couples, indeed many families or groups of close friends, have endearing little terms or catch-phrases that they use among themselves. Most of us, though, don't use them loudly in public! 

Despite such trauma, I survived the journey, made my way to our son's house and joined in the fun and games, admiring his offspring and those of his friends, many of whom I know from the days of ferrying said son to and from university, more years ago than any of us will admit to. 

Yesterday morning we visited what remains of Berkhamsted castle, largely some bits of old wall, a mound where the keep would have been, a sort of hollow all around where the moat would have been (indeed photos on Wikipedia show the moat full of water) and a quite impressive well, thankfully covered with a metal grill with holes too small for any but the tiniest of animals to fall through. 

 My son assures me Berkhamsted is where William the Conqueror formally accepted the final surrender of the Anglo-Saxons. I have no reason to doubt his veracity. He has always been great fan of castles (designing them in great detail as a child) and he did study history both for A-Level and as one of his university subjects. Wikipedia suggests that the castle was built by, or at the command of, William's half brother, Robert of Mortain. There you go. 

Apparently I should have been able to see the remains from the train which carried me back from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly but Virgin's Pendolinos thunder along far too fast for you to pick out bits of castle wall, unless by some happy chance you are looking in the right direction at precisely the right time. 

 During my return journey I was not subjected to any displays of gluttony, although there was a snorer! There seems to be no way of ensuring that the stipulations of the "quiet" carriage - no phone calls, keep your use of electronic devices as unobtrusive as possible - can be extended to include a snoring ban!

Today dawned fine and crisp and cold with a bright blue sky. As Phil was off to a friend's house on an errand of IT-related mercy, I suggested to my daughter that she might care to accompany me on a walk round the local reservoir cum beauty spot. Too busy! Maybe another day! So I hopped on a bus and then walked round the reservoir on my own. 

My photos seem to have taken on a trees-against-the-sky theme but I have to say that I am not really bothered.

 

Feeling my age.

It used to be that people commented, semi-despairingly, on how young the policemen were becoming. Of course, that was back when there were regularly bobbies on the beat and you even got to have a nodding acquaintance with your regular policeman. I thought I had heard that they intended to bring back bobbies on the beat but I can't say I have seen a whole lot of them. 

Anyway, nowadays it is beginning to seem that the go-to group for resignedly admitting that you are getting older is journalists: not any old journalist but the ones who write specialist columns on politics, economics, the environment and social issues. There is always a photo of the journalist at the head of the column in a newspaper, so even if they are not bright young pundits giving their views on the television you can still have an idea of what they look like. 

Such a one is a certain Owen Jones. I looked at his head-of-column photo the other day and decided that either he has not renewed his photo for some years or he is far too young to be doing his job. Or perhaps, like a 21st century Dorian Grey, he has an ageing photo posted to a special Facebook page in a virtual attic somewhere. Far from looking old enough to be writing deep and meaningful stuff, explaining the economic problems and hi-jinks of the modern world, he looks as if he should be sitting his A-Levels in Politics and Economics this year! 

A good friend of mine went to hear Owen Jones speak at Home, the multi-media arts centre which has replaced The Cornerhouse in Manchester. I think it was last night as she was enthusing about it on Facebook this morning. The last time I saw her she was expressing her surprise at how much she had to play for a ticket to hear him speak: something like £15, I seem to remember. When I told her that this was a cheap deal, she laughed and said that another friend had told her the very same thing. After all, we pay around £60 to go to classical music concerts at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and anything between £50 and £100+ to see individual musical artists of our choice. Indeed, I know of people who pay upwards of £150 to see singers and groups I would pay never to hear again! All is relative! 

With ticket prices in mind, I was interested to read about the football fans who walked out of the Liverpool match recently at the 77th minute, in protest at the £77 ticket price. Liverpool's owners have apologised to fans but did try to justify the prices on the grounds that they put a lot of it back into the club. But they have now set a top price of £59 and have ended the system which meant that fans paid more if their team was playing a high-ranked team. 

Good for them! 

And yet, £59 still seems an awful lot of money to me, even if that is the top price. How do fans afford to pay these prices. I imagine a family, a couple of fans who want to take their two kids to the football match. A good family day out! Except that it must cost close on £200 for that really good day out, and that's before you factor in transport costs, hot drinks and snacks, and possibly a proper meal on the way home. 

Goodness me! It all makes me feel tired and old!

Learning from the young, or at any rate the younger than us!!

Concern is being expressed about children nowadays not being out and about enough in the natural world. According to a two-year study funded by the government 10% of children in the UK have not set foot in a park, forest, beach or any other natural environment for at least a year. Cue apocryphal stories of the urban child who is asked where milk comes from and answers, "The supermarket". Cue also all the harrumphing about children nowadays spending too much time on electronic entertainment gadgets. 

Well, there's at least one youngster who manages to combine technological know-how with an interest in wildlife. He is 13-year-old wildlife blogger (here's a link ) and has said that schools and parents are partly to blame. Too many parents, according to this young man, stop taking their children into the natural world when they go to secondary school and the schools let their students down because they don't make the environment a core subject. "Once children hit high school they become more independent and might think being interested in the natural world is uncool,” he said. “If they can, parents need to keep their connection with their children and continue to take them outdoors." 

I am sure he is an exemplary young man but he is not, of course, the parent of recalcitrant teenagers and so does not know how hard it can be to "take them outdoors" if they don't want to go. You have to start when they are a lot younger and encourage them with your own enthusiasm for being out and about. 

As for schools, well, things have just got harder, with everything tied up in the red tape of national curriculum and ticking boxes. One of the things I remember with delight about primary school is being taken out for "nature walks". If it was a fine day our teacher would decide it was time for the whole class to go out for a walk to some local beauty spot, pointing out trees and plants, making us collect leaves and flowers and other such stuff to make some kind of display later. Nowadays, teachers would have to plan it weeks in advance, write it into their yearly plan, complete a specific planning form which explains the educational objectives of the outing and slotting it into the demands national curriculum, and then do a risk assessment, of course. This last requirement would probably lead to them not being allowed to walk the children in pairs through the streets but demand the ordering of a bus to transport the children safely to wherever they might then encounter nature in its raw state. It makes me tired just thinking about it! 

In secondary school, we did not do such things as nature walks but occasionally some of our teachers would decide, often after much badgering on the part of the class, to conduct the lesson outside, sitting on the grass. We were fortunate enough to have large playing fields surrounding our girls' high school and I can only assume that it did not rain as much then as it does now. Once again, of course, the strictures of modem educational practice come into play to prevent such arrant nonsense. Lessons all must have a lesson plan, usually demanding evidence of use of IT (pupils researching stuff on the internet, teacher using the interactive whiteboard - you know the kind of thing), group or pair work and a pile of other necessary modern methods. 

Still, it's nice to see a young man advising the older generation on how to do things. 

There was an article in the New Statesman the other day that suggests that we should look to the young for examples in other areas of our lives as well. "Over a quarter of those aged 16-24 today are teetotal; just 29 per cent drink heavily in an average week, compared with 44 per cent a decade ago. Only 23 per cent of under-25s smoke, a 10 per cent decrease since 2001. Conception rates among under-18s are at their lowest since records began in 1969, and the number of sexually transmitted infections among those under-25 has also declined in the last five years. Today’s youth haven’t been resorting to narcotics, either: drug use among under-25s has fallen by over a quarter in the last decade." 

Time to get rid of the stereotype of the irresponsible young person, it seems. Presumably all the drunks who were falling down in the streets of Manchester on New Year' Eve, having photos taken that were compared to works of art, were all over 25 then. 

One factor nowadays is money; if you don't have a well-paid job, indeed any job at all, you can't afford to go out and get drunk and buy drugs. Another is social media. If you do go out and get drunk, you shouldn't tweet about it or post pictures on Facebook. Apparently about half of recruiters in the UK look at candidates' media profile and a third of recruiters have rejected candidates after finding evidence of binge drinking or drug use online. It's a hard life! 

Jean Twenge, writer of a book called "Generation me" explains it like this. "In past decades, teens might have smoked, drunk and had sex because they didn’t have much else to do. Now, teens have a world of entertainment and digital communication available on their phones 24/7.” I would like to take issue with that. In the pre-computer entertainment age, not all of us resorted to smoking and drinking and promiscuous sex put of boredom. There was a lot of music, places to go and dance, cinemas, bowling alleys and even odd places called youth clubs that were not just for pre-teens as they seem to be now. And quite a lot of us read books as well. 

According to the New Statesman article those of us who grew up in that less technological age, especially the over-65s, are apparently the ones more likely than any other group to drink alcohol at least five days a week. Of course, the fact that fewer of us have to get up to go to work the next day might have something to do with it. And the reports don't suggest that these irresponsible over-65s are getting roaring drunk five days a week. 

Mostly we grew up at a time when you have to learn about moderation in all things!

Pancakes and poppycock!

I didn't make pancakes for dessert last night, despite it being Pancake Tuesday. Today, however, I have seen photos of David Cameron dropping a pancake, or rather, not succeeding in catching the thing when he tossed it. And I have seen pictures of clerics in Ripon, looking silly running down the street in their red robes as they took part in a pancake race. I suppose I should give them full marks for taking part. 

However, there is a part of me that feels that politicians, and clergy for that matter, should stop trying to convince us that they are just like the rest of us. I don't go around tossing pancakes in public. In fact I don't toss pancakes at all. I find less messy ways of turning my pancakes over. And there are a myriad other ways in which David Cameron is not at all like me. 

As for the clerics, well, I sometimes wonder about the red robes, even the robes in general. And then I came across something from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. According to the Bishop of Tenerife, there are adolescents, thirteen year olds, who not only consent to abuse, presumably by clergy, but actually want it to happen and set out to tempt the clergy. And here I was, thinking that clergy in the Catholic church took vows of chastity and abstinence and were supposed to resist temptation! Silly me! It's all down to those naughty adolescents! No suggestion that youngsters who do set out to tempt adults might need help rather than abuse. 

What century does this bishop live in? Obviously not the 21st, judging by his comments on homosexuality. He comments that it is no longer "políticamente correcto" to say that homosexuality is an illness but clearly he still believes it is. He goes on to say, "Eso que decía cualquier diccionario de Psiquiatría diez años atrás, hoy no se puede decir" (Nowadays one cannot say what any dictionary of Psychiatry said ten years ago.) I suspect his dictionaries of psychiatry are more like 50+ years old! What we should do, according to the bishop is "promover la educación e inculcar los valores de la feminidad y la masculinidad". In other words, education should teach and inculcate the values of feminity and masculinity. 

That should sort it then! I wonder what the Bishop Tenerife would think of the girls in this article from today's Guardian.  They are studying "boys' subjects", Computer Science and Engineering, so clearly they have not been inculcated with the values of femininity and masculinity. You would have thought that we might have got beyond "boys' subjects" and "girls' subjects" by mow, but apparently not. And it still seems that when a man works in a profession commonly regarded as women's work, he frequently rises quickly to the top while a woman in the reverse situation is regarded as a bit odd! We still have some way to go! 

Finally, a correction. According to Phil, "navvies" are so called because the men who worked on the construction of canals were called "navigators". The contraction to "navvies" comes, he says, from "navigators" and not from "navigations", although he is prepared to accept that there is a connection. Well, I got my information from one of Phil's heroes, the journalist Paul Mason, but I stand corrected.