In this morning's Guardian online I came across a long article all about "Operation London Bridge: the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death". She is getting on a bit so I suppose that there must be contingency plans. The queen’s last three prime ministers were all born after she came to the throne. That's quite disturbing really. (One of my earliest, vaguest memories is sitting on the grass at a Coronation Party in a park. Somewhere I still have a coronation mug and a commemorative book with pictures of a very young queen and her husband. His pictures I always thought were pictures of my uncle and I was very confused about what he was doing in the book at all.)
Apparently when George VI was dying they agreed on a coded message to send when the royal doctor had "injected the king with 750mg of morphine and a gram of cocaine – enough to kill him twice over – in order to ease the monarch’s suffering, and to have him expire in time for the printing presses of the Times, which rolled at midnight", as the article put it. (Is that not assisted suicide?) The code was "Hyde Park Corner", a cryptic message so that the prime minister and other important folk could be informed of the death but the telephone operators would not know before the rest of the nation.
The code agreed for Elizabeth is "London Bridge is down". Surely they will have to change that now as everyone who has skim read the article knows what it is. And if anything actually happens to London Bridge they will have to be very careful how they word the reports in case the wrong message is sent and we all go into mourning ahead of time.
It is, however, reassuring to know that some things are planned. Maybe the people who do this kind of planning for the royal household should be invited to join the Brexit committee.
The mass media have plans as well. The Guardian has a list of prepared stories pinned to the deputy editor's wall and ITN is said to have rehearsed the death of the queen, substituting the name "Mrs Robinson". Royal correspondents are lined up ready for the off. This is clearly another bunch of people who should be helping to make plans for what the Uk should do if we get no deal with the EU?
The code names thing is quite amusing. So Her Majesty is known as London Bridge and Mrs Robinson. I wonder what code names exist for other members of the royal family. And for politicians for that matter. In the utopian White House world of "The West Wing" all the major players have security code names. The press secretary CJ is most upset to discover that hers is Flamingo. No amount of reassuring her that a flamingo is a beautiful bird helps; she obviously just sees the lanky and ungainly aspects of it.
Anyway, getting back to mortality matters, there are contingency plans according to where the royal lady dies. Ideally she would die in Buckingham Palace and save everyone a lot of bother but she could be in Balmoral, her holiday home in Scotland. There is a whole protocol for getting her back to London. This is fine at the moment but what happens, I ask myself, if Scotland has gone independent by then? Will the queen even be able to holiday in Balmoral, let alone die there? And will we need some kind of special permit to bring her through the customs post in the newly fortified Hadrian's Wall?
The more I think about this, the more convinced I become that this long read article was included just to take our minds off other stuff that is going on (planned or unplanned) in the world!
Thursday, 16 March 2017
Wednesday, 15 March 2017
Getting away from it all! And getting away with it?
Amidst all the news stories of Brexit chaos, Donald Trump's tax returns (imagine paying more in tax in one year than many people earn in a lifetime!) and Scotland wanting (or perhaps not) to leave the United Kingdom, I came across a curious tale. It was a true story.
A young man of about twenty left work one day, cashed in his last pay check and was not heard from again. I was going to say he disappeared without trace but traces there were; it's just that nobody knew they were HIS traces and they didn't seem to lead anywhere. Of course, they found him in the end or his story would not have been told.
He got in his car and drove away. And he drove and drove until his car had almost run put of petrol - or gas, as he might have said since the story took place in the USA. And then he left car in the woods, with the keys on the dashboard, and walked. And he walked and he walked and he walked until eventually he found a spot in the woods that suited him. And there he made his camp.
I think he had a tent and a small amount of food but none of the equipment you might think he would take with him if he planned to go and hide in the woods long term. So maybe he did it on a whim and then it turned into a life choice. For he stayed there for just over a quarter of a century.
Since he didn't have any of the necessary stuff to be self sufficient he began to steal. This was in the woods or forests of Maine. Scattered around the area are cabins and hunting lodges and the like where people go for weekends, probably all year round, or maybe for a couple of weeks or so in the summer. Anyway he worked out when the owners were not around and how to break in to their places and steal what he needed, never causing any damage. Some places he visited on a fairly regular basis, hiding the spare keys that he found inside the cabins in the vicinity so that he could let himself in easily the next time. Boy, that must have annoyed the owners!
He even borrowed their canoes to paddle across lakes and rivers to access other houses, always returning the canoe to its place. After all, he didn't need a canoe every day. I thought he might have simply escaped from all the news as well but apparently he stole a portable television set and rigged up an arial in the trees in his hideaway. So presumably he kept reasonably up to date with the news. Eventually, of course, they caught him. They had been after him for years. He must have been pretty crafty to evade capture for twenty-five years.
He still doesn't seem to have given any real explanation as to why he ran off like that. Always a loner, he had no friends to miss him. His family must have wondered where he had got to, maybe even thought he must have died somehow, but that did not seem to bother him. The authorities say he shows no signs of mental illness. He just wanted to be alone.
Funnily enough, his arrest came about not long after the capture of another chap who lived six years in the mountains of Utah before being caught. It must be an American thing! He was a runaway parolee, however, so his case is a little different. And he clearly was not as efficient as the man from Maine since he only lasted a paltry six years.
Of course, this happened in America, a very big country, which still has huge empty places where people can still disappear like that. I find it hard to imagine someone setting up camp anywhere in England and living there for years and years without being discovered. Maybe somewhere in the wilds of Scotland it might be feasible but I should think it would be pretty cold at times.
I have known a number of people who have had the dream of going off and finding a small place to live where they could be quite self sufficient, growing a lot of their own food and such like. Most of them would still like to be within at least driving distance of some, at least small, place where other folk live, just in case they needed some kind of help. Most of those I have known have had this dream when they were young and then have grown out of it as they grew up or just grew older. We do, however, have one friend who upped sticks in her sixties to go and live off the land with her partner in Scotland. Most of us thought at the time that she was slightly bonkers, and indeed still think so to this day.
No, if asked by Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs how we would manage on our own on the island, most of us might well respond that well, we might be okay but we would prefer to be within reach of civilisation. Mind you, I suppose the man from Maine cannot truly be said to have been properly self-sufficient. He kept enough contact with civilisation to keep himself fed and provided with replacement clothes and shoes and equipment as his own wore out. Not the same thing at all!
And now what will become of him? How will he adjust to life in Donald Trump's America? Will he write his story and will someone come along and make a film of it? (I'm betting they will.) And will he he make enough money out of this to escape from the world again, without the need to steal from other folk's weekend retreats?
But I bet he would miss the little rush of excitement of breaking and entering!
A young man of about twenty left work one day, cashed in his last pay check and was not heard from again. I was going to say he disappeared without trace but traces there were; it's just that nobody knew they were HIS traces and they didn't seem to lead anywhere. Of course, they found him in the end or his story would not have been told.
He got in his car and drove away. And he drove and drove until his car had almost run put of petrol - or gas, as he might have said since the story took place in the USA. And then he left car in the woods, with the keys on the dashboard, and walked. And he walked and he walked and he walked until eventually he found a spot in the woods that suited him. And there he made his camp.
I think he had a tent and a small amount of food but none of the equipment you might think he would take with him if he planned to go and hide in the woods long term. So maybe he did it on a whim and then it turned into a life choice. For he stayed there for just over a quarter of a century.
Since he didn't have any of the necessary stuff to be self sufficient he began to steal. This was in the woods or forests of Maine. Scattered around the area are cabins and hunting lodges and the like where people go for weekends, probably all year round, or maybe for a couple of weeks or so in the summer. Anyway he worked out when the owners were not around and how to break in to their places and steal what he needed, never causing any damage. Some places he visited on a fairly regular basis, hiding the spare keys that he found inside the cabins in the vicinity so that he could let himself in easily the next time. Boy, that must have annoyed the owners!
He even borrowed their canoes to paddle across lakes and rivers to access other houses, always returning the canoe to its place. After all, he didn't need a canoe every day. I thought he might have simply escaped from all the news as well but apparently he stole a portable television set and rigged up an arial in the trees in his hideaway. So presumably he kept reasonably up to date with the news. Eventually, of course, they caught him. They had been after him for years. He must have been pretty crafty to evade capture for twenty-five years.
He still doesn't seem to have given any real explanation as to why he ran off like that. Always a loner, he had no friends to miss him. His family must have wondered where he had got to, maybe even thought he must have died somehow, but that did not seem to bother him. The authorities say he shows no signs of mental illness. He just wanted to be alone.
Funnily enough, his arrest came about not long after the capture of another chap who lived six years in the mountains of Utah before being caught. It must be an American thing! He was a runaway parolee, however, so his case is a little different. And he clearly was not as efficient as the man from Maine since he only lasted a paltry six years.
Of course, this happened in America, a very big country, which still has huge empty places where people can still disappear like that. I find it hard to imagine someone setting up camp anywhere in England and living there for years and years without being discovered. Maybe somewhere in the wilds of Scotland it might be feasible but I should think it would be pretty cold at times.
I have known a number of people who have had the dream of going off and finding a small place to live where they could be quite self sufficient, growing a lot of their own food and such like. Most of them would still like to be within at least driving distance of some, at least small, place where other folk live, just in case they needed some kind of help. Most of those I have known have had this dream when they were young and then have grown out of it as they grew up or just grew older. We do, however, have one friend who upped sticks in her sixties to go and live off the land with her partner in Scotland. Most of us thought at the time that she was slightly bonkers, and indeed still think so to this day.
No, if asked by Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs how we would manage on our own on the island, most of us might well respond that well, we might be okay but we would prefer to be within reach of civilisation. Mind you, I suppose the man from Maine cannot truly be said to have been properly self-sufficient. He kept enough contact with civilisation to keep himself fed and provided with replacement clothes and shoes and equipment as his own wore out. Not the same thing at all!
And now what will become of him? How will he adjust to life in Donald Trump's America? Will he write his story and will someone come along and make a film of it? (I'm betting they will.) And will he he make enough money out of this to escape from the world again, without the need to steal from other folk's weekend retreats?
But I bet he would miss the little rush of excitement of breaking and entering!
Tuesday, 14 March 2017
The rights and wrongs of it all!
So it's been decided that there will be no guarantee of rights for EU citizens living in the UK. Here's an interesting article from the New Statesman on that topic.
And here is another quote from Forum for EU Citizens, showing that some people are taking it calmly:
"So, my few thoughts to all the negativity here...
No one has said we have no rights.
No one has said we have to leave.
No one actually expected the vote to show a different result, right guys? Admit it: we knew it would come to this.
No one can expect the UK to focus on the EU citizens before solving all the other problems the referendum has caused. Of course they can't promise us anything, not before the negotiations actually start.
Come on guys - I know it's scary, but for fucks sake (sorry, Irish partners bad influence) pull yourself together and stop whining. This is so counterproductive! We are all in the same boat - and you all are talking it to the ground. In any vote, in any
discussion they are talking about us. We are not ignored, nor 'forgotten'.
And they simply can't kick us out of the UK, as we are contributing too much - and they know it!
So you all take a deep breath - and try not to take this bill personal, because it's not.
Keep calm and carry on! Because giving up is not an option."
However, my Italian class has been cancelled today because our teacher is unwell. Has she been sickened by the vote from the House of Lords? I wonder!
I also wonder where all of his will end! A friend of mine pointed out that rather a lot of people are retweeting something a certain David Cameron posted in 2015:
"Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband."
Well, we know where at got us, don't we. Oh, to be able to rewind ourselves to 2015 and do it all differently.
Someone who might agree with that last statement is Nick Clegg, someone I used to like and respect before he made the mistake of getting into bed with the Tories. However, he did speak movingly and sensibly in the debate on the rights of EU citizens. Here's a link to that.
On to other matters.
We have recently had quite lengthy email correspondence with a friend of ours about things grammatical and what should and should not be acceptable as good English. And then I came across this article about different kinds of English around the world. It starts off talking about the government being urged to create opportunites for people in Britain to learn languages like Polish, Urdu and Punjabi, in the interests of social cohesion, rather than just insisting that everyone living here should learn English. "There is interest and joy'" the writer tell us, "to be had not only in learning the languages of other cultures, but also in appreciating the effect they might have had on English."
I agree with all of that. I can appreciate the charm of, for example, Irish English. And I accept that language constantly evolves and changes. And yet my linguist's ear is still offended when I hear local youngsters (and the not so young as well, for that matter), native English speakers all their lives, say such things as the following:
I seen it. (Often said by football pundits as well!)
They done it yesterday.
He's broke his leg.
I've ate it already.
Such things are simply wrong!
And here is another quote from Forum for EU Citizens, showing that some people are taking it calmly:
"So, my few thoughts to all the negativity here...
No one has said we have no rights.
No one has said we have to leave.
No one actually expected the vote to show a different result, right guys? Admit it: we knew it would come to this.
No one can expect the UK to focus on the EU citizens before solving all the other problems the referendum has caused. Of course they can't promise us anything, not before the negotiations actually start.
Come on guys - I know it's scary, but for fucks sake (sorry, Irish partners bad influence) pull yourself together and stop whining. This is so counterproductive! We are all in the same boat - and you all are talking it to the ground. In any vote, in any
discussion they are talking about us. We are not ignored, nor 'forgotten'.
And they simply can't kick us out of the UK, as we are contributing too much - and they know it!
So you all take a deep breath - and try not to take this bill personal, because it's not.
Keep calm and carry on! Because giving up is not an option."
However, my Italian class has been cancelled today because our teacher is unwell. Has she been sickened by the vote from the House of Lords? I wonder!
I also wonder where all of his will end! A friend of mine pointed out that rather a lot of people are retweeting something a certain David Cameron posted in 2015:
"Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband."
Well, we know where at got us, don't we. Oh, to be able to rewind ourselves to 2015 and do it all differently.
Someone who might agree with that last statement is Nick Clegg, someone I used to like and respect before he made the mistake of getting into bed with the Tories. However, he did speak movingly and sensibly in the debate on the rights of EU citizens. Here's a link to that.
On to other matters.
We have recently had quite lengthy email correspondence with a friend of ours about things grammatical and what should and should not be acceptable as good English. And then I came across this article about different kinds of English around the world. It starts off talking about the government being urged to create opportunites for people in Britain to learn languages like Polish, Urdu and Punjabi, in the interests of social cohesion, rather than just insisting that everyone living here should learn English. "There is interest and joy'" the writer tell us, "to be had not only in learning the languages of other cultures, but also in appreciating the effect they might have had on English."
I agree with all of that. I can appreciate the charm of, for example, Irish English. And I accept that language constantly evolves and changes. And yet my linguist's ear is still offended when I hear local youngsters (and the not so young as well, for that matter), native English speakers all their lives, say such things as the following:
I seen it. (Often said by football pundits as well!)
They done it yesterday.
He's broke his leg.
I've ate it already.
Such things are simply wrong!
Monday, 13 March 2017
How the people speak!
I talked about words and expressions the other day, amazed at the odd things other languages come up with. Then my friend and fellow blogger Colin reminded himself, and incidentally me, about invented things being "trumped up" - usually charges.
Today's Guardian had an article about disappearing dialects. In the UK that is; in other countries they abound and are called regional languages. Here's a link. The conclusion was that you can still hear dialect words all over the place.
They included the expression "like a figure one, well scraped", used in Bolton apparently to describe a very thin woman. A friends of ours from Prestwich or Whitefield says, of someone very small and thin, "if you turn her sideways she disappears". All very picturesque but not in quite the same class as some of the Scandi words. However, "clemmed" for "hungry" still used apparently in Wigan might almost fit the bill.
There's a whole section of the British Library that catalogues these expressions. In fact, in the middle of the article there is a very informative little quiz where you can try to guess the meaning of certain words and expressions.
Sometimes words seem to travel. They identified "well" used in the sense of "very" as coming from the Midlands and yet I hear it used that way around here al the time. And they appear to have neglected to include "proper", also used to mean "very", as it, "I'm proper tired", "that film's proper good" and " me mam's proper poorly". I heard it all the time when I worked in Salford.
Many of the dialect words included in the quiz came from Cockney rhyming slang. When does slang become dialect? That's another little conundrum!
This is not really an example of a dialect word but a small robot submarine called Boaty McBoatface is setting off on its first Antarctic mission. The name was chosen by public vote from names suggested, also by the public at the request of the Natural Environment Research Council, for a new polar research ship. Some joker suggested Boaty McBoatface and it took off. But it was felt to be too jokey for such a prestigious vessel and so they gave it tine little yellow submarine instead.
How could they do that? After all, the people had spoken! And we know that you have to listen when the people speak!
The results of the people speaking, i.e. triggering article 50, seems to be being pushed back again. Instead of this week, the suggestion is that it will be by the end of the month. We wait to see the outcome.
Meanwhile Nicola Sturgeon is calling for the people to speak again; she wants another referendum on Scotland's independence.
And Sean Spicer, White House press secretary, has been accused of racism after telling an Indian-American woman that America is a great country because it lets her stay there. I was unsure whether this meant an Indian-American whose ancestors were the original inhabitants of that great country or one whose family came originally from India.
Words are not always crystal clear!
Today's Guardian had an article about disappearing dialects. In the UK that is; in other countries they abound and are called regional languages. Here's a link. The conclusion was that you can still hear dialect words all over the place.
They included the expression "like a figure one, well scraped", used in Bolton apparently to describe a very thin woman. A friends of ours from Prestwich or Whitefield says, of someone very small and thin, "if you turn her sideways she disappears". All very picturesque but not in quite the same class as some of the Scandi words. However, "clemmed" for "hungry" still used apparently in Wigan might almost fit the bill.
There's a whole section of the British Library that catalogues these expressions. In fact, in the middle of the article there is a very informative little quiz where you can try to guess the meaning of certain words and expressions.
Sometimes words seem to travel. They identified "well" used in the sense of "very" as coming from the Midlands and yet I hear it used that way around here al the time. And they appear to have neglected to include "proper", also used to mean "very", as it, "I'm proper tired", "that film's proper good" and " me mam's proper poorly". I heard it all the time when I worked in Salford.
Many of the dialect words included in the quiz came from Cockney rhyming slang. When does slang become dialect? That's another little conundrum!
This is not really an example of a dialect word but a small robot submarine called Boaty McBoatface is setting off on its first Antarctic mission. The name was chosen by public vote from names suggested, also by the public at the request of the Natural Environment Research Council, for a new polar research ship. Some joker suggested Boaty McBoatface and it took off. But it was felt to be too jokey for such a prestigious vessel and so they gave it tine little yellow submarine instead.
How could they do that? After all, the people had spoken! And we know that you have to listen when the people speak!
The results of the people speaking, i.e. triggering article 50, seems to be being pushed back again. Instead of this week, the suggestion is that it will be by the end of the month. We wait to see the outcome.
Meanwhile Nicola Sturgeon is calling for the people to speak again; she wants another referendum on Scotland's independence.
And Sean Spicer, White House press secretary, has been accused of racism after telling an Indian-American woman that America is a great country because it lets her stay there. I was unsure whether this meant an Indian-American whose ancestors were the original inhabitants of that great country or one whose family came originally from India.
Words are not always crystal clear!
Sunday, 12 March 2017
Forward planning?
When I was working as a teacher in a sixth form college I had to make plans. Formal lesson plans for individual lessons only needed to be submitted of observations and inspections were taking place but schemes of work for the year had to be in place and subject leaders were expected to give five year development plans to their head of department.
So why, I wonder, is there such a lack of planning for what the country will do after Brexit?
Political parties produce manifestos but these are not the same thing as specific, concrete plans. We have all heard the ambitious list of things that Donald Trump promises to get done but, once again, that list is not really a plan of how he intends to do it all.
And so we stagger along, with the letter of withdrawal, article 50, probably being signed this week and no real idea of what happens afterwards.
Meanwhile, here are a couple more quotes from the Forum for EU Citizens:
"I think it's safe to say that the moods amongst Europeans have shifted from ' please,please, let us stay' to actually ' fuck it,stuff it,enough is enough, we won't be beggars,we got our pride,we got where to go, see how well you do without us,see who'll have the last laugh', as this been dragging on for too long and upsetting too many. How long is a peace of string?"
"I just heard that a Dutch citizen who has lived and worked in the U.K. for over 40 years has been advised by the Dutch embassy that, if he is told to leave, they will require him to be fully compensated for any financial loss, fully reimbursed for all the NI he has paid and all of his expenses paid. In his case this will be about £500k. If this applies to all EU nationals, it will be quite a hefty bill. Worth bearing this in mind."
Also, I was reading about the Pret a Manger chain of restaurants ... no, not really restaurants, more food outlets, cafes or even what used to be called snack bars. Anyway, whatever they are, they employ a lot of EU nationals in their places in the UK. This despite being rather better employers than other similar places. Still not the best place in the world to work but better than some.
They would really like to employ more UK nationals but very few apply. One of their employees said that the British find the work too hard and leave after a few weeks, probably at the point where they are about to learn how to make a coffee really quickly and deal with a rapid turnover of costumers. So it goes.
It's not just Pret though. Huge numbers of employers in the hotel and catering industry say that they would find it really hard to replace the EU nationals who work for them. If they managed it, the replacement employees might not be so highly qualified; there are economics graduates and other quite highly educated people among those employees.
People in the know reckon it could take about ten years to sort out that bit of employment anomaly. And by then, if Jean Claude Juncker's predictions are correct, we might well be applying to rejoin the EU in some form or other.
Just another of life's little ironies!
Political parties produce manifestos but these are not the same thing as specific, concrete plans. We have all heard the ambitious list of things that Donald Trump promises to get done but, once again, that list is not really a plan of how he intends to do it all.
And so we stagger along, with the letter of withdrawal, article 50, probably being signed this week and no real idea of what happens afterwards.
Meanwhile, here are a couple more quotes from the Forum for EU Citizens:
"I think it's safe to say that the moods amongst Europeans have shifted from ' please,please, let us stay' to actually ' fuck it,stuff it,enough is enough, we won't be beggars,we got our pride,we got where to go, see how well you do without us,see who'll have the last laugh', as this been dragging on for too long and upsetting too many. How long is a peace of string?"
"I just heard that a Dutch citizen who has lived and worked in the U.K. for over 40 years has been advised by the Dutch embassy that, if he is told to leave, they will require him to be fully compensated for any financial loss, fully reimbursed for all the NI he has paid and all of his expenses paid. In his case this will be about £500k. If this applies to all EU nationals, it will be quite a hefty bill. Worth bearing this in mind."
Also, I was reading about the Pret a Manger chain of restaurants ... no, not really restaurants, more food outlets, cafes or even what used to be called snack bars. Anyway, whatever they are, they employ a lot of EU nationals in their places in the UK. This despite being rather better employers than other similar places. Still not the best place in the world to work but better than some.
They would really like to employ more UK nationals but very few apply. One of their employees said that the British find the work too hard and leave after a few weeks, probably at the point where they are about to learn how to make a coffee really quickly and deal with a rapid turnover of costumers. So it goes.
It's not just Pret though. Huge numbers of employers in the hotel and catering industry say that they would find it really hard to replace the EU nationals who work for them. If they managed it, the replacement employees might not be so highly qualified; there are economics graduates and other quite highly educated people among those employees.
People in the know reckon it could take about ten years to sort out that bit of employment anomaly. And by then, if Jean Claude Juncker's predictions are correct, we might well be applying to rejoin the EU in some form or other.
Just another of life's little ironies!
Saturday, 11 March 2017
Rubbish - recycling - remarkable words!
Out running this morning I came across a woman with a bag full of rubbish in one hand and a further collection of bits and pieces she could not fit into the bag in the other. She told me she collects rubbish every day on her morning walk. She thinks that the lay-by up the road is used by drug addicts to share their poison of choice as she frequently finds crumples of tinfoil there. She also find vodka bottles on a fairly regular basis. She finds this slightly less offensive than the remains of picnics and packaging from fast food outlets: stuff that people don't want to clutter their cars with but don't mind leaving to clutter up our pavements. What she finds most offensive are the sweet wrappers, which she assumes parents allow their children to drop as they walk along.
Why do people leave all their detritus behind? Is it so difficult to carry your rubbish home in a bag in your car and then put it in the bin. Of course, some of the problem might disappear if there were actually bins in the places where people stop for picnics in lay-bys. And along the bridle paths for that matter. It is possible to go for a couple of miles along bridle paths around her without seeing a single rubbish bin. But wanting litter bins might be asking for too much. After all, you would then have to employ someone to empty them!
Later, returning from the shops, I came across Mike, a local chap who walks miles and miles every day with his unprepossessing-looking rescue dog. He commented that earlier in the day he had met another dog walker. That lady's dog had one of those collars like a lampshade to prevent it getting at a wound on its leg. She had let it run around in a field recently and the poor thing had cut his leg badly on a broken bottle in the grass. Even worse than stuff left at the side of the road.
Our daughter is also having difficulty with rubbish. In her case, it's the difficulty of getting rid of it. First of all there is the paper-recycling bin that the local council neglects to empty. Recycling is encouraged; indeed people are sometimes fined for not recycling. But in her square the dustbin men fail to empty the paper recycling bins. The last time she complained about it the solution was for them to empty the recycled stuff into the general waste wagon. Not a solution! One of her neighbours plans to take up the challenge; he likes to remind them when he phones about such things that he is a retired magistrate. I wonder if that still works!
Her other problem is disposing of an old sofa now that she has ordered new furniture from that Scandinavian company. They promise to take old stuff away and recycle it when they deliver new but on this occasion there was no specific instruction to that effect on the delivery note and so the workmen refused to take the old sofa away. They did not realise that they were dealing with one of the experts in making complaints and now, after her telephone rant to customer services, they have to turn out again and take it away.
I am, however, impressed by the company taking stuff away for recycling at all. It is remarkably difficult to get rid of large old stuff when you buy new. But this is a Scandinavian company. They like recycling.
They also like words for odd things. We have already grown used to "hygge", the Danish for comfortable living. They also have "uhygge", meaning creepiness or possibly the antithesis of "hygge". The Swedes, by the way, call "hygge" "koselig".
A pleasing word is "Kabelsalat", which both the Germans and the Norwegians use to describe the mess when all your cables are tangled up.
I also like "kalsarikännit", a Finnish term for drinking by yourself at home in your underwear with no intention of going out. Goodness knows why they drink in their underwear, let alone have a word for it. Maybe they are all "Texas", a term which the Norwegians are said to use to mean crazy!
Now I need to start looking out for English terms for odd things. Surely we must have some.
Why do people leave all their detritus behind? Is it so difficult to carry your rubbish home in a bag in your car and then put it in the bin. Of course, some of the problem might disappear if there were actually bins in the places where people stop for picnics in lay-bys. And along the bridle paths for that matter. It is possible to go for a couple of miles along bridle paths around her without seeing a single rubbish bin. But wanting litter bins might be asking for too much. After all, you would then have to employ someone to empty them!
Later, returning from the shops, I came across Mike, a local chap who walks miles and miles every day with his unprepossessing-looking rescue dog. He commented that earlier in the day he had met another dog walker. That lady's dog had one of those collars like a lampshade to prevent it getting at a wound on its leg. She had let it run around in a field recently and the poor thing had cut his leg badly on a broken bottle in the grass. Even worse than stuff left at the side of the road.
Our daughter is also having difficulty with rubbish. In her case, it's the difficulty of getting rid of it. First of all there is the paper-recycling bin that the local council neglects to empty. Recycling is encouraged; indeed people are sometimes fined for not recycling. But in her square the dustbin men fail to empty the paper recycling bins. The last time she complained about it the solution was for them to empty the recycled stuff into the general waste wagon. Not a solution! One of her neighbours plans to take up the challenge; he likes to remind them when he phones about such things that he is a retired magistrate. I wonder if that still works!
Her other problem is disposing of an old sofa now that she has ordered new furniture from that Scandinavian company. They promise to take old stuff away and recycle it when they deliver new but on this occasion there was no specific instruction to that effect on the delivery note and so the workmen refused to take the old sofa away. They did not realise that they were dealing with one of the experts in making complaints and now, after her telephone rant to customer services, they have to turn out again and take it away.
I am, however, impressed by the company taking stuff away for recycling at all. It is remarkably difficult to get rid of large old stuff when you buy new. But this is a Scandinavian company. They like recycling.
They also like words for odd things. We have already grown used to "hygge", the Danish for comfortable living. They also have "uhygge", meaning creepiness or possibly the antithesis of "hygge". The Swedes, by the way, call "hygge" "koselig".
A pleasing word is "Kabelsalat", which both the Germans and the Norwegians use to describe the mess when all your cables are tangled up.
I also like "kalsarikännit", a Finnish term for drinking by yourself at home in your underwear with no intention of going out. Goodness knows why they drink in their underwear, let alone have a word for it. Maybe they are all "Texas", a term which the Norwegians are said to use to mean crazy!
Now I need to start looking out for English terms for odd things. Surely we must have some.
Friday, 10 March 2017
The kindness - or otherwise - of strangers!
Driving around with my daughter yesterday, at one point our conversation was interrupted by the angry pipping of a horn. We were in a queue of traffic, stopped by a red light. The angry horn pipper wanted to cross our road from a side road and wanted us to move forward a little so he could get across. There was barely room for us to advance without almost touching the car in front or ours but we did so anyway. However, there would have been no need for that if the car behind us had respected the cross hatching on the road, the sort that means "do not enter this bit of road unless you can get out the other side at once". Little bits of discourtesy.
Later, we paused once again in a queue of traffic, this time to let someone come out of a side road and turn right into our lane ahead of us. Knowing how frustrating it is to be stuck at the end of a side road, waiting for the opportunity to move out into the main road, we try to give way when we can. We work on the principle that the good turn you do someone else might persuade them to be similarly kind to others and so the goodwill gets passed along.
In an increasingly grumpy, bad-tempered, selfish and unco-operative world, it is more important than ever to live by principles like that.
The nasty news stories keep popping up from the past. Recently there has been the discovery of an unmarked mass grave, mostly babies and young children, discovered under a playground in Ireland. It is located on what was the site of one of those home for unfortunate girls who found themselves pregnant and had nowhere else to go. The babies and small children had died there and been buried anonymously. This place, like so many others, was run by nuns. As in the Magdalene laundries, the young women who went there for help were punished for having babies out of wedlock. Many of the babies were adopted by families who wanted children. We can only hope they had happier lives but often they were prevented from getting in touch with their birth mothers later in their lives. And often the young mothers were told that their babies had died at birth.
This has parallels with the children of Republic women giving birth in Spanish prisons in Franco's Spain after the Spanish Civil War. Their babies were usually taken from them and given to good Franco-supporting families. While some of those children no doubt had happy childhoods, others are known to have had very unhappy lives, being reminded constantly of their good fortune in having been taken from their wicked Republican mothers. Many of those adoptions were also arranged through the church. Isn't it strange how harsh some Christian institutions can be?
Institutionalised nastiness keeps on happening of course. I follow a group on Facebook that calls itself Forum for EU Citizens. Despite assurances from all sorts of people that EU citizens living and working in the UK will not be thrown out of the country after Brexit, there is a very high level of uncertainty, worry and stress among those people. People simply don't know where they stand. Here are some examples of the kind of queries that pop up:
"Checked for an insurance quote and now have to enter whether you are permanent UK resident or European, formerly UK resident.....?!?!Quote with the latter, of course, considerably more expansive...
Is this even legal?"
And so many of the queries and comments relate to families and children:
"I am polish and have been in UK for last 12 years. I do have permanent residence already but all my 3 children even though born here only have Polish passports. Do they need PR as well to have the same rights as I do? EDIT: has any if you applied for pr for children? Is the process/forms as lenghty as for adults? And can I apply for them as a single parent? I am not interested in British passports at the moment because of personal reasons (father might not agree.. etc) Thanks in advance."
"While I am adamant I am not going to apply for PR etc, I thought that that was my prerogative and not my childrens'. I have therefore decided to apply for their British passports since they qualify. So last night and again tonight, I am on the gov.uk site. And guess what, the system is down.
Twice in a row...😮"
"Hi there. I have a question about children. me and my husband are both EU citizens and have lived and worked here continuously for over 30 years now. We never thought we would have needed PR, so we never applied for it. our children were born here, one is 20 the other 13. Are they British citizens? They don't have a brit passport but the eldest voted in the referendum."
Or the "catch 22" situation that some people find themselves in:
"I just have been refused PR, actually on Sunday at 1pm by a phone call with hidden number. To be fair- I have asked for an email confirmation and I receive it. There are few ways to apply and I chose the way to apply based on my marriage, as I don't have 5 full years of working history.
I've been rejected because if I stayed home and lived off of benefits then they will recognise my husband as a "sponsor". But because I've been stupid enough to work in the country and pay taxes apparently my husband can't be my sponsor!
So my question is: is that what is required to be recognised in here- to stay home when I'm able to work, to live off of benefits and being punished if I want to work, to pay taxes and help the economy?! Speechless!!!"
Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. Some people are reminded of the kindness and acceptance that is still out there:
"Here is what happened to me yesterday. Was with my daughter in a taxi as we were meeting friends for play. And suddenly taxi driver asks if my daughter was born here and where I am from. You can imagine what's going through my head, right? Am I gonna get another lecture on immigrants, EU etc? But I am polite and answer: yes she was and I am from Poland, expecting some silly comment. And he says he loves Poland, has lots of Polish friends and his sister works there so he travelled there few times. And we end up having most nice conversation about the state of the world. So just want to say big thank you again to all British people who support us. 😀😁"
Now, are UK citizens living in the EU going through the same kind of heartache? I really don't know but I wonder what my sister will do if she suddenly finds herself after almost 40 years in Spain, more than 30 of them married to a Spaniard, being told she should return to her country of origin. How do you do that when you have children and grandchildren born in the country that wants you to leave?
Of course, it may not come to that for any of them but in the meantime nobody knows quite what is going on. What a crazy world!
Later, we paused once again in a queue of traffic, this time to let someone come out of a side road and turn right into our lane ahead of us. Knowing how frustrating it is to be stuck at the end of a side road, waiting for the opportunity to move out into the main road, we try to give way when we can. We work on the principle that the good turn you do someone else might persuade them to be similarly kind to others and so the goodwill gets passed along.
In an increasingly grumpy, bad-tempered, selfish and unco-operative world, it is more important than ever to live by principles like that.
The nasty news stories keep popping up from the past. Recently there has been the discovery of an unmarked mass grave, mostly babies and young children, discovered under a playground in Ireland. It is located on what was the site of one of those home for unfortunate girls who found themselves pregnant and had nowhere else to go. The babies and small children had died there and been buried anonymously. This place, like so many others, was run by nuns. As in the Magdalene laundries, the young women who went there for help were punished for having babies out of wedlock. Many of the babies were adopted by families who wanted children. We can only hope they had happier lives but often they were prevented from getting in touch with their birth mothers later in their lives. And often the young mothers were told that their babies had died at birth.
This has parallels with the children of Republic women giving birth in Spanish prisons in Franco's Spain after the Spanish Civil War. Their babies were usually taken from them and given to good Franco-supporting families. While some of those children no doubt had happy childhoods, others are known to have had very unhappy lives, being reminded constantly of their good fortune in having been taken from their wicked Republican mothers. Many of those adoptions were also arranged through the church. Isn't it strange how harsh some Christian institutions can be?
Institutionalised nastiness keeps on happening of course. I follow a group on Facebook that calls itself Forum for EU Citizens. Despite assurances from all sorts of people that EU citizens living and working in the UK will not be thrown out of the country after Brexit, there is a very high level of uncertainty, worry and stress among those people. People simply don't know where they stand. Here are some examples of the kind of queries that pop up:
"Checked for an insurance quote and now have to enter whether you are permanent UK resident or European, formerly UK resident.....?!?!Quote with the latter, of course, considerably more expansive...
Is this even legal?"
And so many of the queries and comments relate to families and children:
"I am polish and have been in UK for last 12 years. I do have permanent residence already but all my 3 children even though born here only have Polish passports. Do they need PR as well to have the same rights as I do? EDIT: has any if you applied for pr for children? Is the process/forms as lenghty as for adults? And can I apply for them as a single parent? I am not interested in British passports at the moment because of personal reasons (father might not agree.. etc) Thanks in advance."
"While I am adamant I am not going to apply for PR etc, I thought that that was my prerogative and not my childrens'. I have therefore decided to apply for their British passports since they qualify. So last night and again tonight, I am on the gov.uk site. And guess what, the system is down.
Twice in a row...😮"
"Hi there. I have a question about children. me and my husband are both EU citizens and have lived and worked here continuously for over 30 years now. We never thought we would have needed PR, so we never applied for it. our children were born here, one is 20 the other 13. Are they British citizens? They don't have a brit passport but the eldest voted in the referendum."
Or the "catch 22" situation that some people find themselves in:
"I just have been refused PR, actually on Sunday at 1pm by a phone call with hidden number. To be fair- I have asked for an email confirmation and I receive it. There are few ways to apply and I chose the way to apply based on my marriage, as I don't have 5 full years of working history.
I've been rejected because if I stayed home and lived off of benefits then they will recognise my husband as a "sponsor". But because I've been stupid enough to work in the country and pay taxes apparently my husband can't be my sponsor!
So my question is: is that what is required to be recognised in here- to stay home when I'm able to work, to live off of benefits and being punished if I want to work, to pay taxes and help the economy?! Speechless!!!"
Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. Some people are reminded of the kindness and acceptance that is still out there:
"Here is what happened to me yesterday. Was with my daughter in a taxi as we were meeting friends for play. And suddenly taxi driver asks if my daughter was born here and where I am from. You can imagine what's going through my head, right? Am I gonna get another lecture on immigrants, EU etc? But I am polite and answer: yes she was and I am from Poland, expecting some silly comment. And he says he loves Poland, has lots of Polish friends and his sister works there so he travelled there few times. And we end up having most nice conversation about the state of the world. So just want to say big thank you again to all British people who support us. 😀😁"
Now, are UK citizens living in the EU going through the same kind of heartache? I really don't know but I wonder what my sister will do if she suddenly finds herself after almost 40 years in Spain, more than 30 of them married to a Spaniard, being told she should return to her country of origin. How do you do that when you have children and grandchildren born in the country that wants you to leave?
Of course, it may not come to that for any of them but in the meantime nobody knows quite what is going on. What a crazy world!
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