On Monday we travelled back to Manchester after a weekend visit to our son. Arriving at Piccadilly Station, Phil and I parted company; he headed for the tram to continue the journey homewards with the suitcase while I went off to meet our very grown up granddaughter. She works in Manchester and we had agreed to go to a Suzanne Vega concert together that evening. I had very efficiently remembered to take the tickets with me.
So I zigzagged my way across the city centre to an approximate meeting point. We checked up every so often by text message to find out where the other was on the journey. Finally we did that thing where you actually speak on the phone, a conversation that goes through variations of "Where exactly are you?" until the moment where you simultaneously say, "Oh! I can see you now!"
We ummed and ahed about where to go for a bite to eat before the concert, ending up with tapas at La Viña on Deansgate. Then, finding that we were nowhere near a convenient tram stop and that neither of us had any idea where to catch the much vaunted free shuttle bus across central Manchester, we set off to walk to the venue, the Royal Northern College of Music. It's a nice venue, not too big, far preferable to the huge, anonymous concert arenas with their huge screens so that the poor souls at the back can see what happening onstage.
The first time I saw Suzanne Vega live was, I think, at the Lowry Theatre in Salford umpteen years ago. There the start of the concert was delayed - well, stopped and then restarted - because someone had had the bright idea to make it all look very atmospheric with a smoke machine ... which gave the singer an asthma attack. She had to leave the stage to find her inhaler! Not an auspicious beginning!
A couple of years ago my granddaughter and I saw her at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. My granddaughter remembers somebody calling her a young whippersnapper on that occasion. Neither of us can remember what provoked the name-calling!
Anyway, on Monday evening we walked to the venue, discovered that we still had a while to wait
until the start of the concert and sat and chatted about this and that, interspersed with Tas quietly singing bits of Paul Simon songs and then getting embarrased when a lady sitting next to us began nodding along to the songs. Eventually we went in, listened to a rather ordinary support act and watched a good 50% of the audience go out during the interval only to return with plastic glasses charged with drinks of various kinds. Is it not possible to sit through a concert without refreshments? And how do they not need to go out again to the loo? Well, in fact some did!
It was a good concert: some very old songs, some less old songs, some more recent songs and some brand new songs. And a fair amount of good humoured advertising for the new album out on Friday of this week. Afterwards, as we were near the back of the concert hall and so were able to get out quite quickly and join the queue with only about five people in front of us, we waited around to buy a collection of songs and have it signed by Suzanne Vega. Tas has a collection of signed albums by a range of artists she has seen with my brother-in-law who has been taking her to concerts since she was quite small. I have never stopped to chat to an artist before. There is a first time for everything and it's never too late to start! Even for a bus-pass carrying pensioner!
I "follow" Suzanne Vega on Facebook. (There's an odd expression: following someone on Facebook.) And yesterday I gave in to the temptation to comment on a photo of one of her appearances during this tour. You know the kind of thing: "lovely concert in Manchester!" This morning my Facebook notifications told me that Suzanne Vega had "liked" my comment. Another first!
How very nice!
Of course, she undoubtedly employs someone to monitor her Facebook page for her, putting on photos of the singer in the park with her dog, and probably "liking" every single comment from every single "follower". But it's a pleasing bit of attention to detail!
Wednesday, 12 October 2016
Sunday, 9 October 2016
Some bits of frivolous/unnecessary research.
The personality quiz in the Observer newspaper usually asks a couple of questions and defines your personality according to the answers. Today it didn't really do personality so much as life circumstances, asking if your income and your wellbeing are related. So it asked which salary band you fit into from £11k (bottom 20% of the UK) to ££36k (top 20%) which seemed quite a low total for the top 20%. It then asked how often each day you experience feelings of happiness, enthusiasm or satisfaction and, on the other hand, how often you notice feelings of anger, frustration, sadness and worry,
It turns out that your earnings makes very little difference to how often you are likely to experience positive emotions. However, the higher your salary, the less likely you are to experience those negative emotions of anger frustration, sadness and worry. There's a surprise; the more you earn the less likely you are to be worried about such things as paying your bills or feeding your family and so you are less likely to feel angry, frustrated or sad. It all makes sense; if you earn plenty you are not so likely to have to worry about how to pay the rent and feed the family. Conclusion: money can't buy you happiness but it can, and often does, buy the absence of sadness.
I could have told them that without their having to do a great big research project on it!
Here's another bit of research that's been going on. They gave a group of people a story to tell which involved them telling a lie either by email or over the phone, and then they gave them a random list of groceries and toiletries from which they had to choose items to put in a virtual basket. Those who had written a lie tended to choose to include handwash in their basket while those who has spoken a lie chose mouthwash. There's a creepy thing. Shakespeare knew about this already; after all he made Lady Macbeth keep on washing her hands after committing murder.
It's a funny old world!
Nearly as funny as the fashion page in the Sunday magazine. This featured an outfit which went as follows:
Hat £225
Coat £2,150
Dress £1,750
Corset £455 - this was a "corset" worn on the outside, not as an undergarment.
Belt £280
Pink agenda £305
Off-white agenda £215 - I always thought an agenda was a list of items to be discussed at a meeting but here it seemed to mean a diary or organiser, as in some other European languages. So why does the model need two?
Tortoiseshell key charm £195
Key charm £180
Boots £1,070
Tights £535
That's well over £7000 for one day's clothes, without asking what her undies cost! Even bearing in mind that she will wear each item more than once, it's still a silly amount of money.
It turns out that your earnings makes very little difference to how often you are likely to experience positive emotions. However, the higher your salary, the less likely you are to experience those negative emotions of anger frustration, sadness and worry. There's a surprise; the more you earn the less likely you are to be worried about such things as paying your bills or feeding your family and so you are less likely to feel angry, frustrated or sad. It all makes sense; if you earn plenty you are not so likely to have to worry about how to pay the rent and feed the family. Conclusion: money can't buy you happiness but it can, and often does, buy the absence of sadness.
I could have told them that without their having to do a great big research project on it!
Here's another bit of research that's been going on. They gave a group of people a story to tell which involved them telling a lie either by email or over the phone, and then they gave them a random list of groceries and toiletries from which they had to choose items to put in a virtual basket. Those who had written a lie tended to choose to include handwash in their basket while those who has spoken a lie chose mouthwash. There's a creepy thing. Shakespeare knew about this already; after all he made Lady Macbeth keep on washing her hands after committing murder.
It's a funny old world!
Nearly as funny as the fashion page in the Sunday magazine. This featured an outfit which went as follows:
Hat £225
Coat £2,150
Dress £1,750
Corset £455 - this was a "corset" worn on the outside, not as an undergarment.
Belt £280
Pink agenda £305
Off-white agenda £215 - I always thought an agenda was a list of items to be discussed at a meeting but here it seemed to mean a diary or organiser, as in some other European languages. So why does the model need two?
Tortoiseshell key charm £195
Key charm £180
Boots £1,070
Tights £535
That's well over £7000 for one day's clothes, without asking what her undies cost! Even bearing in mind that she will wear each item more than once, it's still a silly amount of money.
Friday, 7 October 2016
Things read and seen while travelling to London.
Here's a sample of stuff that attracted my attention this morning.
- American actor Michael Peña plays only Latinos. If the character he is playing has a non- Latino name, he asks for it to be changed. This is, according to Mr Peña "so maybe some Hispanic kid might hear that and be inspired." Very laudable! I wonder of he ever does Shakespeare. If so, can he only ever play Iago?
- In a similar vein, there was an article in the paper about the difficulty black actors have in being cast at all in British films. Apparently 60% of British films made in the last ten years featured no named black characters and only 13% cast a black actor in the leading role. This is why so many have gone across the pond to the USA to become famous. I first saw actors like Idris Elba and Thandie Newton in American TV series. Actor David Oyelowo reckons the casting is colourblind; it has to be a film about Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King or, of course, slaves!
- In a coffee shop on Piccadilly station, prior to catching the train to London, I ordered two flat whites, the least complicated coffee I can ever deal with in this crazy country with its caramel lattes and hazelnut lattes and huge variety of sizes of cup. I thought the price board said £2.50 and counted out my loose change accordingly. Then I realised that, not having my glasses on, I had misread; it actually said £2.60. As I offered an extra 20 pence, the young man serving me pointed out that there is an extra charge of 10p per cup for drinking the coffee in situ. So, an extra 10 pence for having a proper cup and a proper spoon. And no free biscuit or piece of cake as I would get in most places in Spain. Maybe the extra charge pays the wages of the plongeur!
- And what is a chai latte? This item is on the list of hot drinks. Is it a fancy way of saying tea with milk? Or is it something completely different?
- In the same coffee shop, I saw a young man with a semi-shaved head; the lower half was very
- close shaved, or perhaps just very, very short, while the top half was longer, clearly gelled and combed upwards to stand like a glossy block on the top of his head. To complement this, his face was also very close shaven, so much so that his beard and moustache, for he did indeed have both, looked as though they had been drawn on, in the way some girls draw their eyebrows. Curious!
- Toys predicted to sell well this year in the run-up to Christmas: a BMW min-beachcomber car - £300; the Alpha 1S Humanoid Robot - £500. If those are too expensive for you, encourage your child to learn to tell the time by giving him/her the VTech smartwatch for £43 and help him/her get fit by having it count his/her steps at the same time. And for your toddler, there is the Fisher-Price Code-a-Pillar, a caterpillar which can be assembled in different sequences, helping to develop the child's critical thinking abilities. At least that's what the traditional posh toy shop Hamley's says. The article in the paper suggests that children receiving it might be more impressed by its flashing lights and blinking eyes, reminding me of a fancy toy my brother-in-law, then aged seven I hasten to add, really wanted one Christmas and played with on Christmas morning only, after which it stayed in his toybox untouched.
- Nothing new under the sun!
Thursday, 6 October 2016
Elements of madness.
There's the Conservative government proposing to take us back in time: grammar schools, military cadet groups in schools to teach "British Values" and businesses to declare how many foreign nationals they have working for them.
I saw a breaking news headline this morning about a UKIP MEP being punched in a fracas of some kind at a meeting at the European Parliament and thought that maybe someone had finally got fed up of the sort of things UKIP says. Then I found out that it was at a meeting of UKIP MEPs. They can't even behave reasonably among the selves! Are these "British Values"?
And then I went on to look at what the Guardian calls The Long Read, this time about bottled water. Now that is a crazy thing!
They've been bottling and selling water in Harrogate since 1714. Those who could afford it were able to drink water that would not make them ill while those who could not afford it just had to carry on taking pot luck. I read somewhere else a while ago that that is one reason why you read about people drinking so much ale in Dickens and so on.
By 1914 Harrogate Spring was apparently the biggest exporter of British bottled water in the country, “proudly keeping the troops hydrated from England to Bombay”. I wonder of we still export or simply import water from elsewhere. Wondering if it was still a British company I googled them and found this:
"Harrogate Spring Water is England's oldest bottled water manufacturer. It dates back to the 16th century when the first springs were found to be therapeutic. Harrogate Spa Water is used locally, nationally and internationally, being exported to as far away as Australia. Many of the UK's largest companies supply this water to their customers and colleagues. For example, coffee chain Cafe Nero's own brand bottled spring water is sourced from Harrogate.
The company is owned by Harrogate Water Brands, which also owns the Thirsty Planet brand of bottled water."
This did not actually answer my question. Instead it raised another: is Cafe Nero, with its international sounding name, a British company?
Back to bottled water: it has become the fastest-growing drinks market in the world. Sales of water are 100 times higher than in 1980. I can believe that. You only have to see the Spaniards leaving the supermarket with their trolleys full of bottles of water, literally FULL, often without any other product in there! Maybe they just don't like the taste of what comes though the taps, because I regularly see people queuing to fill bottles at the spring, now piped and coming out of a tap, at the bottom of the street where our flat in Vigo is situated.
It's more complicated than that, however. There is a snobbery attached. You have to drink the RIGHT kind of water. And be seen to do so. Some brands are more classy than others. And there is whole science behind it, so that you know exactly how the water is doing you good. There are even people who train as "sommeliers", not for wine but for water.
There is a German called Reise who got himself a certificate as a mineral water sommelier from the German Mineral Water Trade Association and then moved to America in 2010 to be their very first mineral water sommelier.
Reading about him, I came across a new verb: to sommelier. Apparently Reise "sommeliers" at a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles. His technique goes like this:
First: “Do you prefer sparkling or flat?”
Then: “Do you prefer your bubbles a little bit more progressive, like very intense, or do you like your bubbles a little bit on the smaller side, like champagne bubbles, very tiny?”
Finally: “Do you prefer something on the high mineral end, on the salty and bitter side, or do you prefer something on the smoother side, with a lower mineral composition, like maybe a little bit on the fruitier side?”
All this to choose water to drink with your meal. Personally I usually ask for the stuff that comes from the tap. But I must be unsophisticated.
Apparently in 2013, Reise launched the longest water menu in Los Angeles at Ray’s and Stark Bar. Now, the pub next door to our house boasts the largest selection of gins possible and I can just about understand that but a huge list of water to choose from simply seems mad to my simple taste.
Just when I was thinking to myself that the next thing would be bottled air, I came across this:
"as Andrea Leadsom excitedly pointed out in her recent Tory party conference speech, a young British entrepreneur, Leo de Watts, now sells glass jars of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Welsh or Yorkshire air for £80 each, mostly to the Chinese."
The world has gone seriously mad. I wonder how you stop your bottled regional air from escaping all in one go when you open the lid.
Ah, well, here are a couple of pictures of the autumn colours that are starting to appear around here. Enjoy them before someone finds a way to charge for them.
I saw a breaking news headline this morning about a UKIP MEP being punched in a fracas of some kind at a meeting at the European Parliament and thought that maybe someone had finally got fed up of the sort of things UKIP says. Then I found out that it was at a meeting of UKIP MEPs. They can't even behave reasonably among the selves! Are these "British Values"?
And then I went on to look at what the Guardian calls The Long Read, this time about bottled water. Now that is a crazy thing!
They've been bottling and selling water in Harrogate since 1714. Those who could afford it were able to drink water that would not make them ill while those who could not afford it just had to carry on taking pot luck. I read somewhere else a while ago that that is one reason why you read about people drinking so much ale in Dickens and so on.
By 1914 Harrogate Spring was apparently the biggest exporter of British bottled water in the country, “proudly keeping the troops hydrated from England to Bombay”. I wonder of we still export or simply import water from elsewhere. Wondering if it was still a British company I googled them and found this:
"Harrogate Spring Water is England's oldest bottled water manufacturer. It dates back to the 16th century when the first springs were found to be therapeutic. Harrogate Spa Water is used locally, nationally and internationally, being exported to as far away as Australia. Many of the UK's largest companies supply this water to their customers and colleagues. For example, coffee chain Cafe Nero's own brand bottled spring water is sourced from Harrogate.
The company is owned by Harrogate Water Brands, which also owns the Thirsty Planet brand of bottled water."
This did not actually answer my question. Instead it raised another: is Cafe Nero, with its international sounding name, a British company?
Back to bottled water: it has become the fastest-growing drinks market in the world. Sales of water are 100 times higher than in 1980. I can believe that. You only have to see the Spaniards leaving the supermarket with their trolleys full of bottles of water, literally FULL, often without any other product in there! Maybe they just don't like the taste of what comes though the taps, because I regularly see people queuing to fill bottles at the spring, now piped and coming out of a tap, at the bottom of the street where our flat in Vigo is situated.
It's more complicated than that, however. There is a snobbery attached. You have to drink the RIGHT kind of water. And be seen to do so. Some brands are more classy than others. And there is whole science behind it, so that you know exactly how the water is doing you good. There are even people who train as "sommeliers", not for wine but for water.
There is a German called Reise who got himself a certificate as a mineral water sommelier from the German Mineral Water Trade Association and then moved to America in 2010 to be their very first mineral water sommelier.
Reading about him, I came across a new verb: to sommelier. Apparently Reise "sommeliers" at a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles. His technique goes like this:
First: “Do you prefer sparkling or flat?”
Then: “Do you prefer your bubbles a little bit more progressive, like very intense, or do you like your bubbles a little bit on the smaller side, like champagne bubbles, very tiny?”
Finally: “Do you prefer something on the high mineral end, on the salty and bitter side, or do you prefer something on the smoother side, with a lower mineral composition, like maybe a little bit on the fruitier side?”
All this to choose water to drink with your meal. Personally I usually ask for the stuff that comes from the tap. But I must be unsophisticated.
Apparently in 2013, Reise launched the longest water menu in Los Angeles at Ray’s and Stark Bar. Now, the pub next door to our house boasts the largest selection of gins possible and I can just about understand that but a huge list of water to choose from simply seems mad to my simple taste.
Just when I was thinking to myself that the next thing would be bottled air, I came across this:
"as Andrea Leadsom excitedly pointed out in her recent Tory party conference speech, a young British entrepreneur, Leo de Watts, now sells glass jars of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Welsh or Yorkshire air for £80 each, mostly to the Chinese."
The world has gone seriously mad. I wonder how you stop your bottled regional air from escaping all in one go when you open the lid.
Ah, well, here are a couple of pictures of the autumn colours that are starting to appear around here. Enjoy them before someone finds a way to charge for them. 
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Understanding words!
For the last couple of days the television weatherman has been telling us about Hurricane Matthew and what havoc it has wreaked and is predicted to wreak ... in the Caribbean! Does he not realise that we are not actually in the Caribbean but in the UK?
In fact, far from hurricanes, we have had another splendid day. A bit windy though, so maybe we are not so far from hurricanes as I thought.
Maybe it's all in how you understand the words.
Yesterday our Italian teacher/friend was telling us that she had "gastrite" from time to time, caused by stress of one kind or another. Did none of us have the same thing? We said that sometimes stress can give you stomach ache but she dismissed this as something much less important. So, "gastrite"? Well, of course, it's gastritis. An inflammation of the stomach lining, caused by acids in certain foods, according to Wikipedia. And I suppose stress can cause acidity and so on. However, all our explanations were dismissed. The Italians, like the French and the Spanish, clearly have ailments which the English do not have.
I have a French friend in Spain who suffers terribly from what she calls "cervicales" (for some reason she always uses the Spanish name) and what the Italians call "cervicale". Now, to most English women "cervical" is connected to the cervix. "Cervicales" or "cervicale" refers to bits of the spine, specifically at the back of the neck. The dictionary says it is neck pain but what my French friend suffers from is a lot more than a stiff neck; in fact she has been hospitalised for it before now. I have never come across an English person suffering from it but my Italian friend knew immediately what it was: definitely more serious than a simple stiff neck!
Do they all just know more about their anatomy than we do. We have back ache, a broad term covering all of the back. The French have "mal aux reins" - pains in the kidneys! I have only the vaguest idea about where my kidneys are located.
Then there is the Italian "colpo d'aria" which the dictionary says is a "chill" but which looks as though it should mean a draught. It's sort of a "blow from the air", I suppose. Basically, if you go out in a short sleeved shirt on a day like today, sunny and bright but with lots of wind, you will catch a chill, a "colpo d'aria". My Italian friend says she always warns her husband about it but he ignores her and then three days later he gets the snuffles. I suspect he has come across germs in some other way.
This belief in the "colpo d'aria" is probably why Spanish mothers wrap their children in large towels and make them stay covered up for at least half an hour when they get out of the swimming pool, instead of running about in the sunshine like hardy English kids on cold English beaches.
As you might have guessed, I tend to disregard the "colpo d'aria"; we English are made of tougher stuff. My mother, though, believed that you caught cold from getting your feet wet!
That "colpo" is a useful word. Our Italian friend asked if we had a term for the "colpo della strega"; according to her, this is the sudden sharp pain that you get sometimes in the small of your back when you bend over to pick something. We all recognised the ailment and suggested lumbago: no, lumbago is something else altogether. So, another thing we have no name for.
I rather like the term "colpo della strega", literally a blow from the witch! Considering that they also use this term for whiplash, a magical illness that many people suffer from after minor car crashes, the name seems appropriate. We told our Italian teacher that many of us had suffered from "colpo della strega" when bending but none of us knew that there were witches involved.
Unrelated to illness, unless falling in love is deemed to be a malady, is the term "colpo di fulmine", which the Italians use for "love at first sight", although it actually means being struck by lightning!
Isn't language lovely?
In fact, far from hurricanes, we have had another splendid day. A bit windy though, so maybe we are not so far from hurricanes as I thought.
Maybe it's all in how you understand the words.
Yesterday our Italian teacher/friend was telling us that she had "gastrite" from time to time, caused by stress of one kind or another. Did none of us have the same thing? We said that sometimes stress can give you stomach ache but she dismissed this as something much less important. So, "gastrite"? Well, of course, it's gastritis. An inflammation of the stomach lining, caused by acids in certain foods, according to Wikipedia. And I suppose stress can cause acidity and so on. However, all our explanations were dismissed. The Italians, like the French and the Spanish, clearly have ailments which the English do not have.
I have a French friend in Spain who suffers terribly from what she calls "cervicales" (for some reason she always uses the Spanish name) and what the Italians call "cervicale". Now, to most English women "cervical" is connected to the cervix. "Cervicales" or "cervicale" refers to bits of the spine, specifically at the back of the neck. The dictionary says it is neck pain but what my French friend suffers from is a lot more than a stiff neck; in fact she has been hospitalised for it before now. I have never come across an English person suffering from it but my Italian friend knew immediately what it was: definitely more serious than a simple stiff neck!
Do they all just know more about their anatomy than we do. We have back ache, a broad term covering all of the back. The French have "mal aux reins" - pains in the kidneys! I have only the vaguest idea about where my kidneys are located.
Then there is the Italian "colpo d'aria" which the dictionary says is a "chill" but which looks as though it should mean a draught. It's sort of a "blow from the air", I suppose. Basically, if you go out in a short sleeved shirt on a day like today, sunny and bright but with lots of wind, you will catch a chill, a "colpo d'aria". My Italian friend says she always warns her husband about it but he ignores her and then three days later he gets the snuffles. I suspect he has come across germs in some other way.
This belief in the "colpo d'aria" is probably why Spanish mothers wrap their children in large towels and make them stay covered up for at least half an hour when they get out of the swimming pool, instead of running about in the sunshine like hardy English kids on cold English beaches.
As you might have guessed, I tend to disregard the "colpo d'aria"; we English are made of tougher stuff. My mother, though, believed that you caught cold from getting your feet wet!
That "colpo" is a useful word. Our Italian friend asked if we had a term for the "colpo della strega"; according to her, this is the sudden sharp pain that you get sometimes in the small of your back when you bend over to pick something. We all recognised the ailment and suggested lumbago: no, lumbago is something else altogether. So, another thing we have no name for.
I rather like the term "colpo della strega", literally a blow from the witch! Considering that they also use this term for whiplash, a magical illness that many people suffer from after minor car crashes, the name seems appropriate. We told our Italian teacher that many of us had suffered from "colpo della strega" when bending but none of us knew that there were witches involved.
Unrelated to illness, unless falling in love is deemed to be a malady, is the term "colpo di fulmine", which the Italians use for "love at first sight", although it actually means being struck by lightning!
Isn't language lovely?
Tuesday, 4 October 2016
The uncertainty of privacy, celebrity marriage and public transport.
Sitting in Waterstone's cafe in Manchester, earwigging on other people's conversation, I am amazed at the volume at which some people discuss their life, their problems, their ambitions. It's as if being at a table provides a little bubble of privacy. Maybe it's the lack of background music here or maybe it's the open plan aspect of the cafe here but sitting alone, you can here other people's talk without any problem. Note to self: never discuss anything really intimate and personal with anyone in Waterstone's cafe!
I am here because I have been to the hairdresser's this morning and have time to kill before going on to the Italian conversation class later this afternoon. As usual I had my fix of gossip magazines while having my hair done: who has put on weight, who has lost too much weight, who is doing what. September's Hello magazine still goos about how lovely the Brangelina family is. That issue of the magazine must have been printed just before the great split. Deadlines leave you with egg on your face. Other magazines reveal that the Brangelina split is not as smooth and painless as some would like us to think. He smokes pot first thing in the morning - "waking and baking" is the term for it, apparently - and has been known to be verbally and even physically aggressive with at least one of the children - my guess is it's the teenage son! She has too many eating disorder problems!
Oh my, if there is one thing a gossip magazine loves more than a celebrity wedding it's a celebrity divorce. The first gives them romantic photos and the second gives them a chance to recycle those pictures together with a whole lot more demonstrating that the romance is dead and gone!
My hairdresser told me she is moving on, going to another salon somewhere else in Manchester, trying to be very discreet as she gives me her phone number in case I should want to follow her. (Probably not as it is on the other side of Greater Manchester and more difficult to get to.) she may be leaving that salon but she still has to work out her notice and doesn't want any ructions.
And then, sitting in the bookshop cafe, i realised I was running out of time. I needed to get over towards the universities to the Italian conversation class and had half an hour to do so. Everything packed up, off I went. After a happy two hours talking Italian about this and that I made my way homewards.
Going to Manchester is not a problem. Getting back is a pain. My timing was all wrong for the train so I caught a tram, arriving at the bus-tram interchange in Oldham about ten minutes too late for the connecting bus to home. And there was not another one for about 50 minutes. I went to examine other buses, on a route that would leave me with a 20 to 25 walk at the other end. However, some helpful souls had removed the timetable for that service! Great!
As I stood there fuming, trying to decide whether it merited a £10 taxi ride, the bus which should have come at 19.28 arrived - it was now close to 1945!
Sometimes the unreliability of our service works in my favour!
I am here because I have been to the hairdresser's this morning and have time to kill before going on to the Italian conversation class later this afternoon. As usual I had my fix of gossip magazines while having my hair done: who has put on weight, who has lost too much weight, who is doing what. September's Hello magazine still goos about how lovely the Brangelina family is. That issue of the magazine must have been printed just before the great split. Deadlines leave you with egg on your face. Other magazines reveal that the Brangelina split is not as smooth and painless as some would like us to think. He smokes pot first thing in the morning - "waking and baking" is the term for it, apparently - and has been known to be verbally and even physically aggressive with at least one of the children - my guess is it's the teenage son! She has too many eating disorder problems!
Oh my, if there is one thing a gossip magazine loves more than a celebrity wedding it's a celebrity divorce. The first gives them romantic photos and the second gives them a chance to recycle those pictures together with a whole lot more demonstrating that the romance is dead and gone!
My hairdresser told me she is moving on, going to another salon somewhere else in Manchester, trying to be very discreet as she gives me her phone number in case I should want to follow her. (Probably not as it is on the other side of Greater Manchester and more difficult to get to.) she may be leaving that salon but she still has to work out her notice and doesn't want any ructions.
And then, sitting in the bookshop cafe, i realised I was running out of time. I needed to get over towards the universities to the Italian conversation class and had half an hour to do so. Everything packed up, off I went. After a happy two hours talking Italian about this and that I made my way homewards.
Going to Manchester is not a problem. Getting back is a pain. My timing was all wrong for the train so I caught a tram, arriving at the bus-tram interchange in Oldham about ten minutes too late for the connecting bus to home. And there was not another one for about 50 minutes. I went to examine other buses, on a route that would leave me with a 20 to 25 walk at the other end. However, some helpful souls had removed the timetable for that service! Great!
As I stood there fuming, trying to decide whether it merited a £10 taxi ride, the bus which should have come at 19.28 arrived - it was now close to 1945!
Sometimes the unreliability of our service works in my favour!
Saturday, 1 October 2016
Ways of looking at life.
Who would imagine that healthy eating could make you ill? And yet there is now a new, well, new to me, eating disorder called orthorexia. Presumably the name has suggestions of orthodox ways of doing things. It involves "clean eating" and can be so extreme that some sufferers won't drink tap water because it is not the brand they are used to. You start off with good intentions to eat healthily, preparing all your own meals from scratch instead of eating convenience foods and ready meals. Then you cut out certain food groups such as dairy products and food containing gluten. Then, before you know it, it's no longer about healthy eating but about obsessively watching you weight and refusing to eat a whole load of things. And there you are, just another sad case who needs help!
I think I have always enjoyed food too much to fall into the trap. For a while we were macrobiotic vegetarians - no meat and a diet based on whole foods. We were kind of persuaded into it by some French friends who were so full of life and vitality on this regime that we opted to follow their example. Like so many of these diets, it began with a "cleansing". For ten days you were supposed to eat nothing but boiled brown rice. After that you could gradually add beans and pulses and stir-fired vegetables. I seem to remember that we grew tired of boiled brown rice after about three days and decided to skip to adding vegetables to the mix.
That was an improvement and we kept to the macrobiotic way of life for a good few years, growing our own vegetables and even for a while drinking no alcohol. But we proved to be very poor obsessives and slowly but surely introduced other elements of variety into our meals. A sir-fry of onions, carrots cabbage and brown rice is greatly improved by the addition of prawns and other shellfish. And of course, a nice glass of wine goes down well! And so nowadays we eat most things, although red meat still does not figure in our menu. Not only do I find it hard to digest but I really cannot cope with handling it raw. Consequently red meat doesn't stand much of a chance. And then, I really enjoy trying out new kinds of cake and desserts. We just make sure everything is balanced and nothing is to excess; that's as far as the obsession goes in this house.
Side by side in today's Guardian are photos of Presidents Clinton and Obama, former Prime Ministers Blair and Cameron, and heir to the British throne Prince Charles, all of them at the funeral of Simon Peres, and an article about Iranian women appealing for the women's world chess championship to be allowed to take place in their country in 2017. Or at least, an appeal that it should not be boycotted. All of the men in the photos are wearing the kippah, although none of them is of the Jewish faith. Presumably they are wearing it as a mark of respect for the culture and religion of the country as well as out of respect for Shimon Peres. The Iranian women are having to appeal because there have been calls for a boycott of the championships as all women taking part will be asked to wear the hijab, compulsory wear for women in Iran since 1979.
Those calling for the boycott say that the headscarf is a symbol of Islamic repression. The women who oppose the boycott said that it would undermine efforts to promote female sports in their country, or even to gain the right to watch sports. "This is going to be the biggest sporting event women in Iran have ever seen; we haven't been able to host any world championship in other sporting fields for women in the past," said Mitra Hejazipour, a woman chess grandmaster. "It's not right to call for a boycott. These games are important for women in Iran; it's an opportunity for us to show our strength."
I just find it rather interesting that these two religious/cultural symbols are viewed so differently.
I think I have always enjoyed food too much to fall into the trap. For a while we were macrobiotic vegetarians - no meat and a diet based on whole foods. We were kind of persuaded into it by some French friends who were so full of life and vitality on this regime that we opted to follow their example. Like so many of these diets, it began with a "cleansing". For ten days you were supposed to eat nothing but boiled brown rice. After that you could gradually add beans and pulses and stir-fired vegetables. I seem to remember that we grew tired of boiled brown rice after about three days and decided to skip to adding vegetables to the mix.
That was an improvement and we kept to the macrobiotic way of life for a good few years, growing our own vegetables and even for a while drinking no alcohol. But we proved to be very poor obsessives and slowly but surely introduced other elements of variety into our meals. A sir-fry of onions, carrots cabbage and brown rice is greatly improved by the addition of prawns and other shellfish. And of course, a nice glass of wine goes down well! And so nowadays we eat most things, although red meat still does not figure in our menu. Not only do I find it hard to digest but I really cannot cope with handling it raw. Consequently red meat doesn't stand much of a chance. And then, I really enjoy trying out new kinds of cake and desserts. We just make sure everything is balanced and nothing is to excess; that's as far as the obsession goes in this house.
Side by side in today's Guardian are photos of Presidents Clinton and Obama, former Prime Ministers Blair and Cameron, and heir to the British throne Prince Charles, all of them at the funeral of Simon Peres, and an article about Iranian women appealing for the women's world chess championship to be allowed to take place in their country in 2017. Or at least, an appeal that it should not be boycotted. All of the men in the photos are wearing the kippah, although none of them is of the Jewish faith. Presumably they are wearing it as a mark of respect for the culture and religion of the country as well as out of respect for Shimon Peres. The Iranian women are having to appeal because there have been calls for a boycott of the championships as all women taking part will be asked to wear the hijab, compulsory wear for women in Iran since 1979.
Those calling for the boycott say that the headscarf is a symbol of Islamic repression. The women who oppose the boycott said that it would undermine efforts to promote female sports in their country, or even to gain the right to watch sports. "This is going to be the biggest sporting event women in Iran have ever seen; we haven't been able to host any world championship in other sporting fields for women in the past," said Mitra Hejazipour, a woman chess grandmaster. "It's not right to call for a boycott. These games are important for women in Iran; it's an opportunity for us to show our strength."
I just find it rather interesting that these two religious/cultural symbols are viewed so differently.
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