When there are so many more important things to sort out, why is May banging on about bringing back fox hunting? She has stated her support for getting rid of the ban but I wonder if she has ever been fox hunting herself. She has made great play of being a humble vicar's daughter. Does a vicar's stipend run to maintaining a horse for his daughter to go and join the hunt? They cost quite a lot money.
There is a bit of me that wonders if this is a ploy to take our minds off education and health cuts. Mind you, expressing your support for such hobbies does not exactly enhance her desired image as champion of the working class. Here is a link to Polly Toynbee explaining why we should not believe that the tories have become champions of workers' rights. And, if that is not enough, here is Suzanne Moore on the same subject.
I remain amazed when I hear people on the news, in those "let's talk to Joe Bloggs on the street" sections, saying how they trust Theresa May. Have they not noticed how many changes of mind she has had? Or do they just blindly believe her when she says they can trust her? She seems like a nice woman, they say. A nice woman with a big bus with her name on it in big letters, contributing to making this election almost presidential in style!
Meanwhile, over in Luxembourg the European Court of Justice is considering the case of a British-Spanish citizen who has been denied the right to have her Algerian husband come and join her in the UK.
"She had come to the UK exercising her rights under the European treaty on freedom of movement. She settled in the country, acquired permanent residence and then applied and acquired British citizenship. However, she also retained her Spanish citizenship, which she believed enabled her to have her husband, Toufik Lounes, join her.
He applied for a residence card using her automatic right to bring a family member into the country. The Home Office refused his application on the grounds that she could not rely on her EU freedom of movement rights, which include the right to bring in a family member, as she was a British national as well as an EU national."
So acquiring dual nationality, which many have done thinking that it protected them in al sorts of ways, has reduced her rights rather than increased them.
How complicated life has become!
If the European Court if Justice rules jn favour of this woman, will it fire up the Brexiteers who object to Europe "telling us what to do in our own country?
Another argument about rights and justice is apparently going on behind the scenes at the BBC. It seems that there is an unwritten rule that Radio 4's Today programme should be hosted by a mixed team of presenters. And yet a decision has seemingly been made that on the day after the election the programme will be presented by Nick Robinson and John Humphreys, pushing Sarah Montague aside. She is said to have made complaints about sexism. Nick Robinson, so the story goes, wants to present the programme because he was taken off the post-referendum programme and replaced by John Humphreys, who had a bit of a strop about not being assigned the job in the first place. And they want John Humphreys, now 73, on the programme as this may well be the last post-election programme he does.
Well! What a lot of fuss and bother! I shall go back to watching the rain fall outside the window!
Tuesday, 16 May 2017
Monday, 15 May 2017
Some questions!
Best story of the day: Theresa May does a live Facebook Q&A and Jeremy Corbyn submits a question! That's one way to get some debate going I suppose.
How do live Facebook Q&A sessions work? This is another bit of modern magic that I have failed to understand. If it involves "following" Theresa May, I want nothing to do with it. Of course, if it does involve "following" her, then it could be another indication of how she does not appear to want to truly connect with the electorate at large, but only with those who already love her.
Another important question of the day, apparently, is whether or not it matters that Mrs Macron is so much older than Mr Macron. If it were the other way around nobody would bat an eyelid. Besides, he is the one elected, not his good lady!
And then there is the question of why French women are on average slimmer than women of other nationalities. I was prepared to question the truth of that statement but it seems that only 14% of French adults are obese. Really? Can that be true? After all they have had MacDonald's in France for ages. I remember having a map of Paris, twenty years ago at least, showing where all the MacDo outlets were situated. I haven't been to France for a good while so I really can't give a personal observation on this.
One answer seems to be that food portions are generally smaller in France. Maybe so. Another thing is actually eating more slowly and appreciating what you eat, rather than just getting the meal over with as soon as possible. Zen and the art of eating!
I also wonder about eating on the street. I am constantly amazed at how many people are seemingly unable to walk around a city centre in the UK without constantly feeding their faces. I suspect that French ladies are too conscious of how inelegant you look if you walk along stuffing a sandwich or a sausage roll into your mouth.
Here's another question: do we manufacture anything in the UK any longer? Well, according to something I read over the weekend there are still some bits and pieces.
Wooden chairs, made by the Ercol company. Bad news for the anti-Europe folk, the company was founded in 1920 by a Tuscan joiner called Lucian Ercolani.
Teddy bears . We used to make millions of them but there is now only one of the 30 Merrythought factories remaining. But it is still making those bears, made the official 2012 Olympics bear and has a strong following in Japan. I just love the name Merrythought - straight out of the Hobbit.
Dr Martens, the boots, are still made here.
And Brompton cycles, I read, makes around 50,000 bikes (folding, I year, 80% of which are sold overseas.
Not really an industrial base though!
How do live Facebook Q&A sessions work? This is another bit of modern magic that I have failed to understand. If it involves "following" Theresa May, I want nothing to do with it. Of course, if it does involve "following" her, then it could be another indication of how she does not appear to want to truly connect with the electorate at large, but only with those who already love her.
Another important question of the day, apparently, is whether or not it matters that Mrs Macron is so much older than Mr Macron. If it were the other way around nobody would bat an eyelid. Besides, he is the one elected, not his good lady!
And then there is the question of why French women are on average slimmer than women of other nationalities. I was prepared to question the truth of that statement but it seems that only 14% of French adults are obese. Really? Can that be true? After all they have had MacDonald's in France for ages. I remember having a map of Paris, twenty years ago at least, showing where all the MacDo outlets were situated. I haven't been to France for a good while so I really can't give a personal observation on this.
One answer seems to be that food portions are generally smaller in France. Maybe so. Another thing is actually eating more slowly and appreciating what you eat, rather than just getting the meal over with as soon as possible. Zen and the art of eating!
I also wonder about eating on the street. I am constantly amazed at how many people are seemingly unable to walk around a city centre in the UK without constantly feeding their faces. I suspect that French ladies are too conscious of how inelegant you look if you walk along stuffing a sandwich or a sausage roll into your mouth.
Here's another question: do we manufacture anything in the UK any longer? Well, according to something I read over the weekend there are still some bits and pieces.
Wooden chairs, made by the Ercol company. Bad news for the anti-Europe folk, the company was founded in 1920 by a Tuscan joiner called Lucian Ercolani.
Teddy bears . We used to make millions of them but there is now only one of the 30 Merrythought factories remaining. But it is still making those bears, made the official 2012 Olympics bear and has a strong following in Japan. I just love the name Merrythought - straight out of the Hobbit.
Dr Martens, the boots, are still made here.
And Brompton cycles, I read, makes around 50,000 bikes (folding, I year, 80% of which are sold overseas.
Not really an industrial base though!
Sunday, 14 May 2017
Days and weeks and horticultural matters!
I've been seeing stuff about today being Mother's Day. That struck me as ofd because the pub/restaurant next door has not put up any big notices offering special deals on meals if you bring your mum, which is the kind of thing they usually do it's a special "day". So I looked it up. I was right about one thing: today is not Mother's Day in this country. In the United States it is; they celebrate it on the second Sunday in May. In most Arab countries it is always celebrated on the 21st of March. Does it bother them that this is the Spring equinox.
But here in the UK it's the fourth Sunday in Lent. We never used to call it "Mother's Day" but "Mothering Sunday" and when I was a little kid going to Sunday School they gave every child a card to take home to their mother. Well, at least they did so at the Sunday School I went to. So my mother always got two or three of the same card. I suppose this could also happen nowadays with the commercially produced cards. And I suppose that someone was making money out of the cards (postcard style) handed out by the Sunday School. However, it probably bears no comparison with the money made in this age of commercialisation. And back then nobody had yet thought to invent Father's Day!
Also coming up soon is "Be Nice to Nettles" week. Not just a day but a whole week! 19th to30th May. When did that come about? There are even a number of websites about it. Here is an example.
Someone from the BBC has been trying to persuade us that nettles are quite wonderful. Here are some of the good points:
1. Butterflies can't get enough of it. Nettles are butterfly food for at least two common British species - the Red Admiral and Painted Lady. Without these ruthlessly efficient plant pollinators all sorts of crops would suffer and that in turn could affect the human food chain. It's not just the disappearance of the bees we need to worry about.
2. They're medicinal. Nutritional therapist Jenny Logan claims that nettles can be used to ease the symptoms of gout, among other ailments. "They help to clear excess uric acid out of the joint - and it is the uric acid which causes the pain and inflammation associated with gout."
3. They are survivors. The sting on the underside of the nettle leaf is designed to protect it. Tiny hairs laced with formic acid sink into the skin leaving raised bumps.
4. They tend to come with their own first aid kit.Dock leaves are commonly believed to soothe the symptoms of a nettle sting, and they often grow close by. But their proximity is pure coincidence says Phil Griffiths, conservatories manager at Kew Gardens. "They're just both very quick to adapt to neglected areas."
5. Nettles are chic. The fibre inside the plants can be spun into string and used to make fabric for clothing, cushion covers, and even paper. "A mature nettle is incredibly fibrous, like flaxen," says Guy Barter from the Royal Horticultural Society. De Montfort University scientists made a dress from nettles.
6. The German army used nettle fabric to make army uniforms during World War I.
7. It's low-maintenance. Nettles love wasteland. They will flourish wherever the soil is rich in phosphate and are common throughout Northern Europe. They can grow to be 4ft tall.
8. The plants are packed with magnesium, iron and calcium - all essential minerals for healthy humans, says trainee nutritional therapist Lucy Tones.
9. They're tasty too, although nettle nutrition is a dish best served hot. The sting disappears when the leaves are boiled which is probably why they are most commonly consumed in the form of tea. If that's not your cuppa, nettle soup is also "earthy, slightly tangy, outrageously healthy," according to Good Food magazine blogger Toby Travis. The basic ingredients are nettles, onions, potato, stock and seasoning.
10. And finally, they can raise your spirits... literally. Nettle wine is a traditional country wine that's enjoying a bit of a resurgence. It is a very dry, crisp wine that "retains a bit of a prickle" according to Lyme Bay Winery manager James Lambert. The winery recently made 3,000 litres of its unusual tipple using 40kg of nettles.
As I go for long walks around here I notice the nettles growing. I can't say that I am especially nice to them but I don't set about uprooting them as I do the Japanese or Indonesian balsam plants. No I have too much respect for nettles to do such a thing. I treat them with respect. I just wish they returned the compliment! I remember as a child setting out with my sister to pick bluebells (this was before they became a protected species before it was against the law to pick them) and the pair of us returning hime with our arms full of flowers and our legs full of nettle stings. So much for being nice to nettles!.
As today's post seems to be turning into a mini version of Gardener's Question Time or some such thing, here are some more observations:
* The newspapers tell me that this has been the driest winter for 20 years. Really? Not around here, it hasn't. Yes, we have had some dry weeks recently but winter as a whole has been pretty wet. The mud puddles on the bridle paths bear witness to that.
* There are reports of an avocado shortage. Goodness! It's not two minutes since we had a courgette shortage. What next? There are two reasons for this latest shortage: poor harvests and the fact that the Chinese are now eating more avocados. There you go.
Coincidentally, I recently came across an item about stupid injuries people have managed to inflict upon themselves. A large number of these came from trying to cut up or remove the stone from an avocado. A fruit (or veg) that gets its own back.
That's all for today!
But here in the UK it's the fourth Sunday in Lent. We never used to call it "Mother's Day" but "Mothering Sunday" and when I was a little kid going to Sunday School they gave every child a card to take home to their mother. Well, at least they did so at the Sunday School I went to. So my mother always got two or three of the same card. I suppose this could also happen nowadays with the commercially produced cards. And I suppose that someone was making money out of the cards (postcard style) handed out by the Sunday School. However, it probably bears no comparison with the money made in this age of commercialisation. And back then nobody had yet thought to invent Father's Day!
Also coming up soon is "Be Nice to Nettles" week. Not just a day but a whole week! 19th to30th May. When did that come about? There are even a number of websites about it. Here is an example.
Someone from the BBC has been trying to persuade us that nettles are quite wonderful. Here are some of the good points:
1. Butterflies can't get enough of it. Nettles are butterfly food for at least two common British species - the Red Admiral and Painted Lady. Without these ruthlessly efficient plant pollinators all sorts of crops would suffer and that in turn could affect the human food chain. It's not just the disappearance of the bees we need to worry about.
2. They're medicinal. Nutritional therapist Jenny Logan claims that nettles can be used to ease the symptoms of gout, among other ailments. "They help to clear excess uric acid out of the joint - and it is the uric acid which causes the pain and inflammation associated with gout."
3. They are survivors. The sting on the underside of the nettle leaf is designed to protect it. Tiny hairs laced with formic acid sink into the skin leaving raised bumps.
4. They tend to come with their own first aid kit.Dock leaves are commonly believed to soothe the symptoms of a nettle sting, and they often grow close by. But their proximity is pure coincidence says Phil Griffiths, conservatories manager at Kew Gardens. "They're just both very quick to adapt to neglected areas."
5. Nettles are chic. The fibre inside the plants can be spun into string and used to make fabric for clothing, cushion covers, and even paper. "A mature nettle is incredibly fibrous, like flaxen," says Guy Barter from the Royal Horticultural Society. De Montfort University scientists made a dress from nettles.
6. The German army used nettle fabric to make army uniforms during World War I.
7. It's low-maintenance. Nettles love wasteland. They will flourish wherever the soil is rich in phosphate and are common throughout Northern Europe. They can grow to be 4ft tall.
8. The plants are packed with magnesium, iron and calcium - all essential minerals for healthy humans, says trainee nutritional therapist Lucy Tones.
9. They're tasty too, although nettle nutrition is a dish best served hot. The sting disappears when the leaves are boiled which is probably why they are most commonly consumed in the form of tea. If that's not your cuppa, nettle soup is also "earthy, slightly tangy, outrageously healthy," according to Good Food magazine blogger Toby Travis. The basic ingredients are nettles, onions, potato, stock and seasoning.
10. And finally, they can raise your spirits... literally. Nettle wine is a traditional country wine that's enjoying a bit of a resurgence. It is a very dry, crisp wine that "retains a bit of a prickle" according to Lyme Bay Winery manager James Lambert. The winery recently made 3,000 litres of its unusual tipple using 40kg of nettles.
As I go for long walks around here I notice the nettles growing. I can't say that I am especially nice to them but I don't set about uprooting them as I do the Japanese or Indonesian balsam plants. No I have too much respect for nettles to do such a thing. I treat them with respect. I just wish they returned the compliment! I remember as a child setting out with my sister to pick bluebells (this was before they became a protected species before it was against the law to pick them) and the pair of us returning hime with our arms full of flowers and our legs full of nettle stings. So much for being nice to nettles!.
As today's post seems to be turning into a mini version of Gardener's Question Time or some such thing, here are some more observations:
* The newspapers tell me that this has been the driest winter for 20 years. Really? Not around here, it hasn't. Yes, we have had some dry weeks recently but winter as a whole has been pretty wet. The mud puddles on the bridle paths bear witness to that.
* There are reports of an avocado shortage. Goodness! It's not two minutes since we had a courgette shortage. What next? There are two reasons for this latest shortage: poor harvests and the fact that the Chinese are now eating more avocados. There you go.
Coincidentally, I recently came across an item about stupid injuries people have managed to inflict upon themselves. A large number of these came from trying to cut up or remove the stone from an avocado. A fruit (or veg) that gets its own back.
That's all for today!
Saturday, 13 May 2017
Living in a computer-driven world!
"Bitcoin is a cybercurrency and a digital payment system." So began an explanation of "Bitcoin". That was enough to swirl me into the world of science fiction. I was looking it up because I had read about Ransomeware being used in the latest cyberattack, this time on the NHS and other organisations throughout Europe. Ransomeware apparently demands payment in Bitcoin to release the computer systems it has frozen.
From what I read, this latest attack is not the first. Many hospitals have already been targeted. This is just one of the biggest.
What with this and electoral systems being hacked into, the world seems very strange. This is the kind of thing that used to happen is science fiction stories twenty years or more back. So maybe the politicians are not wrong to want to send us back to a less IT-driven age. Although none of them seem to agree about what constitutes nostalgia politics. Is it nationalised railways? Is it selective schooling? Is it unions with power? Or politicians capable of robbing them of their power? Whatever it is, I don't think we are going to go back to the seventies!
As regards selective schooling and testing and the like, here is a link to one teacher's thoughts on the kind of tutoring that seems to be necessary these days to get school pupils through SATS, the 11+, GCSE and AS and A Level exams. Someone should listen to teachers. Maybe then they would not have to keep on fighting the same battles we fought forty-odd years ago.
Elsewhere in the paper today, Tim Dowling wrote about his experience as a father. Not another nostalgia trip this. I enjoy reading Tim Dowling's regular column; I like the way he always talks about the "band I am in" and never "my band". He makes no stake for ownership or for being the boss. His son was very generous about bis father's column, which unashamedly uses events in the family's real life. "It's amazing", he wrote, "to have a record of our family life that goes back so many years. Everything is there, from learning to ride a bike to leaving home. The column was a great way to keep up with events at home from university while simultaneously avoiding my parents."
Tim Dowling writes of his astonishment that two decades of parenting have passed him by - his oldest is 22 and his youngest is about to be 18 - while he still feels that he is just learning the trade. I know what he means; I feel much the same about housekeeping. Every time I do a major clean-up I think to myself that this is the kind of thing that "proper housewives" do all the time, on a much more regular basis. Somehow I have never felt like a "proper housewife". We completed our final year at university as married students; I was a student playing at being a housewife, with some feminist-demanded help from my husband. Then we got jobs as teachers and again we played housekeeping in between marking and preparing lessons and going to union meetings and organising extra-curricular activities. And when the children came along, well, it was more of the same. There were always more interesting things to be done than concentrating on being a "proper housewife".
So I can fully understand Tim Dowling's sentiments.
I particularly appreciated his comments about the IT-related stuff. His first son was born pre-google and his two other sons post-google. So effectively his son's have always had the internet around. Consequently he had felt no compunction about directing them to the computer to find answers to some of the difficult questions. The question of sex, however, came up for the first time when son number one was only five or six. After some shilly-shallying on Daddy's part, Mummy stepped in, he wrote, and gave the child a "brief but frank description of the whole business". The child's reaction was classic; he turned to look at his father and said, "You certainly wouldn't want anyone to walk in and see you doing that."
Some things have to be explained without the use of IT!
What with this and electoral systems being hacked into, the world seems very strange. This is the kind of thing that used to happen is science fiction stories twenty years or more back. So maybe the politicians are not wrong to want to send us back to a less IT-driven age. Although none of them seem to agree about what constitutes nostalgia politics. Is it nationalised railways? Is it selective schooling? Is it unions with power? Or politicians capable of robbing them of their power? Whatever it is, I don't think we are going to go back to the seventies!
As regards selective schooling and testing and the like, here is a link to one teacher's thoughts on the kind of tutoring that seems to be necessary these days to get school pupils through SATS, the 11+, GCSE and AS and A Level exams. Someone should listen to teachers. Maybe then they would not have to keep on fighting the same battles we fought forty-odd years ago.
Elsewhere in the paper today, Tim Dowling wrote about his experience as a father. Not another nostalgia trip this. I enjoy reading Tim Dowling's regular column; I like the way he always talks about the "band I am in" and never "my band". He makes no stake for ownership or for being the boss. His son was very generous about bis father's column, which unashamedly uses events in the family's real life. "It's amazing", he wrote, "to have a record of our family life that goes back so many years. Everything is there, from learning to ride a bike to leaving home. The column was a great way to keep up with events at home from university while simultaneously avoiding my parents."
Tim Dowling writes of his astonishment that two decades of parenting have passed him by - his oldest is 22 and his youngest is about to be 18 - while he still feels that he is just learning the trade. I know what he means; I feel much the same about housekeeping. Every time I do a major clean-up I think to myself that this is the kind of thing that "proper housewives" do all the time, on a much more regular basis. Somehow I have never felt like a "proper housewife". We completed our final year at university as married students; I was a student playing at being a housewife, with some feminist-demanded help from my husband. Then we got jobs as teachers and again we played housekeeping in between marking and preparing lessons and going to union meetings and organising extra-curricular activities. And when the children came along, well, it was more of the same. There were always more interesting things to be done than concentrating on being a "proper housewife".
So I can fully understand Tim Dowling's sentiments.
I particularly appreciated his comments about the IT-related stuff. His first son was born pre-google and his two other sons post-google. So effectively his son's have always had the internet around. Consequently he had felt no compunction about directing them to the computer to find answers to some of the difficult questions. The question of sex, however, came up for the first time when son number one was only five or six. After some shilly-shallying on Daddy's part, Mummy stepped in, he wrote, and gave the child a "brief but frank description of the whole business". The child's reaction was classic; he turned to look at his father and said, "You certainly wouldn't want anyone to walk in and see you doing that."
Some things have to be explained without the use of IT!
Friday, 12 May 2017
Washing, weather and wondering who to blame!
Yesterday I spent a good part of the day assisting my daughter in a major tidy-up of her daughters' bedrooms. I came home with a party bag: a bag full of washing. We collected so much stuff for washing that my daughter's house and washing machine were about to be overwhelmed. And so I volunteered to bring a lot of it home with me and did two lots straight away. Onto the washing line to dry overnight it almost all went.
This morning early the last lot was pegged out and off I went for my run. Of course pegging out worked like a magic charm on the weather and by the time I returned it was starting to rain. And so the whole lot had to be unpegged and brought into the house to dry. The whole point of it coming here was because this is largely stuff that cannot go in the tumble-drier and I have more space for hanging stuff in the garden to dry.
But it seems that singlehandedly I have brought the drought to an end. For I am told that we have been having a drought. One of my early morning run acquaintances has been complaining that the soil is too dry to plant out leeks and the like. They need good, wet ground. And a keen gardening friend who has just returned from a few weeks away declares that her grass is beginning to turn brown. So a drought has been going on; even the weathermen say so.
Somehow I imagine a drought to bring along with it the sun burning down day after day from an empty, cloud-free sky: desert conditions and dominant colours blue (sky), yellow (sun) and a pale brown (all the dried up plants). Here drought has largely meant cloudy skies, apart from occasional brilliantly sunny days inbetween times: dominant colours grey and green. The only real signs of drought are the plants in pots in the garden which needed regular watering.
I have heard no mention of weather in the much talked about Labour Party manifesto. I say this only half jokingly. The peculiar weather patterns going on all over the place are almost certainly down to climate change, something that certain politicians don't even believe in!
In the meantime I have gone from shorts and t-shirt yesterday to wondering whether we need to put the heating back on now.
One of my Facebook friends put on a post about the death of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, and how her death could have been prevented if the queen had insisted that Diana have proper security after her divorce. If the queen had insisted that Diana keep her bodyguards all would have been well, supposedly.
Where do people find these things? There are masses of stories out there that people put out on social media. Do they spend hours trawling the internet for such stuff? Do they not have enough to do with their time? Are there not enough good books to read?
Anyway, let's get back to Diana. It seems there is going to be yet another documentary about it all. Or maybe there has already been such a documentary. The article began like this:
"The world came to a halt on 31st August 1997, after Princess Diana sadly lost her life in a tragic accident at the age of 36."
It was that opening like that annoyed me to begin with. I really don't think the world came to a halt. Not for most of us. Certainly not for me. Very sad for her sons but it didn't have a direct effect on the rest of us. I remember my son calling upstairs with thenews he had just heard. I thought maybe she had committed suicide. After all, her life was very chaotic at the time. As the details came out, I thought from the start that her death must have been avoidable. But I never thought it had anything to do with her having insufficient security around her.
No, what struck me was that if Diana and her boyfriend had simply driven away quietly, ignoring the paparazzi, they could almost certainly have made it back to their hotel or wherever else they wanted to go.. It must have been a pain being followed around by photographers but eventually the photographers would have grown tired and moved on to somebody else. It's a bit like teasing: the more you react and respond, the more it continues. There was really no need to join in the exciting game of driving off at top speed with all the thrill of the chase. Surely the posh car had smoked glass in the windows to keep prying eyes out.
No, the whole thing was avoidable but I find myself feeling a little sorry for the queen if she is held responsible for the car crash. And, goodness knows, I don't often stand up for her majesty!
It's another extreme example of the media doing weird things to our view of the world!
This morning early the last lot was pegged out and off I went for my run. Of course pegging out worked like a magic charm on the weather and by the time I returned it was starting to rain. And so the whole lot had to be unpegged and brought into the house to dry. The whole point of it coming here was because this is largely stuff that cannot go in the tumble-drier and I have more space for hanging stuff in the garden to dry.
But it seems that singlehandedly I have brought the drought to an end. For I am told that we have been having a drought. One of my early morning run acquaintances has been complaining that the soil is too dry to plant out leeks and the like. They need good, wet ground. And a keen gardening friend who has just returned from a few weeks away declares that her grass is beginning to turn brown. So a drought has been going on; even the weathermen say so.
Somehow I imagine a drought to bring along with it the sun burning down day after day from an empty, cloud-free sky: desert conditions and dominant colours blue (sky), yellow (sun) and a pale brown (all the dried up plants). Here drought has largely meant cloudy skies, apart from occasional brilliantly sunny days inbetween times: dominant colours grey and green. The only real signs of drought are the plants in pots in the garden which needed regular watering.
I have heard no mention of weather in the much talked about Labour Party manifesto. I say this only half jokingly. The peculiar weather patterns going on all over the place are almost certainly down to climate change, something that certain politicians don't even believe in!
In the meantime I have gone from shorts and t-shirt yesterday to wondering whether we need to put the heating back on now.
One of my Facebook friends put on a post about the death of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, and how her death could have been prevented if the queen had insisted that Diana have proper security after her divorce. If the queen had insisted that Diana keep her bodyguards all would have been well, supposedly.
Where do people find these things? There are masses of stories out there that people put out on social media. Do they spend hours trawling the internet for such stuff? Do they not have enough to do with their time? Are there not enough good books to read?
Anyway, let's get back to Diana. It seems there is going to be yet another documentary about it all. Or maybe there has already been such a documentary. The article began like this:
"The world came to a halt on 31st August 1997, after Princess Diana sadly lost her life in a tragic accident at the age of 36."
It was that opening like that annoyed me to begin with. I really don't think the world came to a halt. Not for most of us. Certainly not for me. Very sad for her sons but it didn't have a direct effect on the rest of us. I remember my son calling upstairs with thenews he had just heard. I thought maybe she had committed suicide. After all, her life was very chaotic at the time. As the details came out, I thought from the start that her death must have been avoidable. But I never thought it had anything to do with her having insufficient security around her.
No, what struck me was that if Diana and her boyfriend had simply driven away quietly, ignoring the paparazzi, they could almost certainly have made it back to their hotel or wherever else they wanted to go.. It must have been a pain being followed around by photographers but eventually the photographers would have grown tired and moved on to somebody else. It's a bit like teasing: the more you react and respond, the more it continues. There was really no need to join in the exciting game of driving off at top speed with all the thrill of the chase. Surely the posh car had smoked glass in the windows to keep prying eyes out.
No, the whole thing was avoidable but I find myself feeling a little sorry for the queen if she is held responsible for the car crash. And, goodness knows, I don't often stand up for her majesty!
It's another extreme example of the media doing weird things to our view of the world!
Thursday, 11 May 2017
Things that are hard to understand.
Once upon a time, long ago, employers used to give their employees a bonus, usually at Christmas time. It went along with giving the postman, the milkman, the newspaper delivery boy and anyone else who regularly delivered stuff to your house what they called a Christmas Box: a sort of tip. When did bonus stop being given to humble employees and begin to be given instead to people high up in management? Because they already receive quite high salaries, these bonuses tend to be huge amounts of money. It struck me that the state budget for health and education would be ridiculously huge if class teachers (not necessarily heads and deputy heads) and bog-standard nurses all received each year a bonus, just a bonus commensurate with their regular annual salary, not one running into millions. This bonus business is one of the things I find hard to understand in the modern world.
I am not sure that this still happens but it used to be that in some areas of employment in Spain employees received an extra month's salary in December. This always struck me as an eminently sensible way of organising things and keeping workers happy.
Today a BBC newsman had his foot run over by the car driving Jeremy Corbyn away. Maybe someone should tell Donald Trump and Theresa May about this new way of dealing with the media.
Having said that, I also heard that polls are going up in favour of Jeremy and the labour party.
An item is going around Facebook at the moment pointing out that Paul Nuttall, current leader of the UK Independence Party, despite having no MPs and having won only one council seat in the recent local council elections, has been invited twice to appear on BBC election specials prior to the soon to happen general elections. By contrast, the post goes on to tell us, Caroline Lucas and Jon Bartley, joint leaders of the Green Party, despite having an MP and the chance of a couple more in the general election as well as having won 40 local council seats, have not been invited even once. Could it be that Mr Nuttall makes, to some people's way of thinking, "better" television because he is more controversial the Green Party people will simply come across as sensible, sincere, thoughtful and a while lot more really good adjectives.
A person can really go off our media-obsessed modern life!
The Labour Party's ideas about re-nationalising the railways and getting rid of university fees have been described by some as a desire to return to the Britain of the 1970s. Funnily enough nobody seems to have made the same comments about the desire to have more grammar schools and, oh yes, bring back fox hunting! That's another thing I find hard to understand.
Other things in the hard to understand list are:-
Why my soon-no-longer-to-be-teenager granddaughter cannot keep her room tidy;
Why they decided to paint double yellow lines outside our house;
Why people start to complain that it is too hot as soon as the temperature goes up a degree or two;
Why a French driver felt that it was OK to deliberately drive into Chris Froome as he road his bike in France the other day;
Why English strawberries are so much nicer-tasting than any others.
No doubt I'll come up with a whole lot more after I post this!
I am not sure that this still happens but it used to be that in some areas of employment in Spain employees received an extra month's salary in December. This always struck me as an eminently sensible way of organising things and keeping workers happy.
Today a BBC newsman had his foot run over by the car driving Jeremy Corbyn away. Maybe someone should tell Donald Trump and Theresa May about this new way of dealing with the media.
Having said that, I also heard that polls are going up in favour of Jeremy and the labour party.
An item is going around Facebook at the moment pointing out that Paul Nuttall, current leader of the UK Independence Party, despite having no MPs and having won only one council seat in the recent local council elections, has been invited twice to appear on BBC election specials prior to the soon to happen general elections. By contrast, the post goes on to tell us, Caroline Lucas and Jon Bartley, joint leaders of the Green Party, despite having an MP and the chance of a couple more in the general election as well as having won 40 local council seats, have not been invited even once. Could it be that Mr Nuttall makes, to some people's way of thinking, "better" television because he is more controversial the Green Party people will simply come across as sensible, sincere, thoughtful and a while lot more really good adjectives.
A person can really go off our media-obsessed modern life!
The Labour Party's ideas about re-nationalising the railways and getting rid of university fees have been described by some as a desire to return to the Britain of the 1970s. Funnily enough nobody seems to have made the same comments about the desire to have more grammar schools and, oh yes, bring back fox hunting! That's another thing I find hard to understand.
Other things in the hard to understand list are:-
Why my soon-no-longer-to-be-teenager granddaughter cannot keep her room tidy;
Why they decided to paint double yellow lines outside our house;
Why people start to complain that it is too hot as soon as the temperature goes up a degree or two;
Why a French driver felt that it was OK to deliberately drive into Chris Froome as he road his bike in France the other day;
Why English strawberries are so much nicer-tasting than any others.
No doubt I'll come up with a whole lot more after I post this!
Wednesday, 10 May 2017
Organising apps!
The other day I went for a walk with our daughter, her baby and her dog. As we set off she "told" her Apple watch that she was going for a walk. That way it would count how many steps she had taken, how far she had walked and how many calories she had burned. It was my third walk of the day and I had no idea how many steps I had taken, although I had a rough-ish idea of how far I had walked. As for how many calories I had burned, well, I gave up on the whole business of calorie counting (calories in or caries out, it makes no difference) long ago. In fact, I have pretty well decided that even stepping on the scales is rather useless. The best indicator of fitness or flabbiness is how comfortably you can fit into your clothes without having to buy new ones.
It's not that I object to exercise. I do a lot of it. It's the constant monitoring that gets my goat. This is especially so as there are plenty of people who believe that having a fitness app on their phone or iWatch or owning a Fitbit is enough to magically turn them into a toned and fit person. It's rather like paying for gym membership and never going.
And now it seems that Apple have brought out something called Beddit: a sleep tracker! In fact Apple has not invented it, they have bought it from the Finnish company which has been selling it in Apple stores for a good while now. Here's a little description: "The £130 Beddit sleep tracker consists of a 1.5mm thick strip of sensors that are placed on top of the mattress and connected to a wall outlet for power. Combined with an Android or iPhone app, the Beddit 3 sleep sensor tracks sleep time and quality, heart rate, breathing rate and snoring. It also acts as an intelligent alarm clock that wakes you up in the lightest sleep phase."
I know sleep is important. My mother always used to say it was the hours of sleep before midnight that counted. This was a trick to get us to go to bed early. Did she not realise how long we then spent reading under the bedclothes?
Nowadays (nowanights?) I am an intermittently poor sleeper. I need to be warm but not too warm. I try not to drink coffee or tea too late in the day, just in case. And if the weather is damp, any bits of me that heve ever suffered from anything remotely like arthritis will decide to play up overnight. But I am not the only one to suffer this sort of thing: apparently 70 million adults are believed to have sleep or wakefulness disorders in the US alone.
Sleep deprivation is a basic torture technique. Donald Trump is reputed to sleep only four hours a night, as did Margaret Thatcher. This is not a torture technique inflicted on them, but seems to give them the energy, if not to actually torture, then at least to torment, the rest of us.
I read somewhere that one of the great classic beauties of the films of my youth, either Sofia Loren or Claudia Cardinale, is said to sleep eighteen hours a night (or should that be a day?), a sleep pattern that maintains her great beauty. I would imagine it is less painful that plastic surgery.
Pretty soon though, with all these fitness apps and sleep apps and calorie counting apps, there will be no need to make decisions about any aspect of our life; apps will tell you what to do and when to do it.
We need one in our house to enable the shower to adjust automatically to whoever is using it. This morning, after my run, I stepped into the shower, switched on the water and stood back to allow said water to reach a decent temperature. It did not take too long for me to realise that the water was not in fact warming up. Glancing at the settings, I saw that the dial was set to cold - not just moderately cold but snowflake-creating cold. And in order to change the setting I had to lean through the ice-cold waterfall, turn off the water, alter the setting and start afresh.
There is only one other person using the shower at present. He knows who he is.
If I were a vindictive person I would come up with a suitable revenge plan. As it is, public blog-shaming will have to suffice!
It's not that I object to exercise. I do a lot of it. It's the constant monitoring that gets my goat. This is especially so as there are plenty of people who believe that having a fitness app on their phone or iWatch or owning a Fitbit is enough to magically turn them into a toned and fit person. It's rather like paying for gym membership and never going.
And now it seems that Apple have brought out something called Beddit: a sleep tracker! In fact Apple has not invented it, they have bought it from the Finnish company which has been selling it in Apple stores for a good while now. Here's a little description: "The £130 Beddit sleep tracker consists of a 1.5mm thick strip of sensors that are placed on top of the mattress and connected to a wall outlet for power. Combined with an Android or iPhone app, the Beddit 3 sleep sensor tracks sleep time and quality, heart rate, breathing rate and snoring. It also acts as an intelligent alarm clock that wakes you up in the lightest sleep phase."
I know sleep is important. My mother always used to say it was the hours of sleep before midnight that counted. This was a trick to get us to go to bed early. Did she not realise how long we then spent reading under the bedclothes?
Nowadays (nowanights?) I am an intermittently poor sleeper. I need to be warm but not too warm. I try not to drink coffee or tea too late in the day, just in case. And if the weather is damp, any bits of me that heve ever suffered from anything remotely like arthritis will decide to play up overnight. But I am not the only one to suffer this sort of thing: apparently 70 million adults are believed to have sleep or wakefulness disorders in the US alone.
Sleep deprivation is a basic torture technique. Donald Trump is reputed to sleep only four hours a night, as did Margaret Thatcher. This is not a torture technique inflicted on them, but seems to give them the energy, if not to actually torture, then at least to torment, the rest of us.
I read somewhere that one of the great classic beauties of the films of my youth, either Sofia Loren or Claudia Cardinale, is said to sleep eighteen hours a night (or should that be a day?), a sleep pattern that maintains her great beauty. I would imagine it is less painful that plastic surgery.
Pretty soon though, with all these fitness apps and sleep apps and calorie counting apps, there will be no need to make decisions about any aspect of our life; apps will tell you what to do and when to do it.
We need one in our house to enable the shower to adjust automatically to whoever is using it. This morning, after my run, I stepped into the shower, switched on the water and stood back to allow said water to reach a decent temperature. It did not take too long for me to realise that the water was not in fact warming up. Glancing at the settings, I saw that the dial was set to cold - not just moderately cold but snowflake-creating cold. And in order to change the setting I had to lean through the ice-cold waterfall, turn off the water, alter the setting and start afresh.
There is only one other person using the shower at present. He knows who he is.
If I were a vindictive person I would come up with a suitable revenge plan. As it is, public blog-shaming will have to suffice!
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