As I spread almond butter on my breakfast toast I read an article about bees. In California beekeepers, apiculteurs, loan their hives to almond growers. They put their hives in a trailer and take them off to the almond orchards, if such a term exists, set the hives up during the blossom season and then take them home again when pollination is deemed to be complete. I never knew you could move hives around in this fashion. And now I have an image in my head of a trailer with several beehives on board and a trail of stray bees following behind, like a plume of smoke! The reality may be nothing like this but I rather like the image.
Anyway, it would seem that this system of renting out your pollinators, mutually satisfactory up to a point as the almond growers get their crop of nuts while the bees make very fine almond blossom honey, is not working well recently. The bees are coming home with deadly diseases, are being attacked by mites and are dying in large numbers. The probable cause is chemical insecticides. Even if the almond growers agree not to use them, grape growers in the vicinity continue to do so. And the bees won’t always keep to the boundaries of the almond orchard.
There is a solution of sorts, being tried by some almond growers and apiculteurs together. Wild flowers are being planted in between the almond trees instead of completely clearing the ground between the trees, providing a natural mulch for the trees as well. At the same time, flowering hedges are being planted around the almond orchards, instead of plain fences, making a natural barrier that the bees appreciate. And there is plant diversity as well. Rewilding here we come! Old remedies proving to be the best again.
But now I feel guilty because it’s people like me spreading almond butter on my toast, and masses of vegans insisting on an alternative to cows’ milk, such as almond milk, that is causing an increase in demand for almonds and, therefore, an increasing use of bee-hire to pollinate the blossom. Oh boy!
Talking of veganism, there is this:-
“Burger King has launched its first plant-based burger in the UK, but it is not suitable for vegans because of the way it is cooked.
The soy-based version of the chain’s Whopper beefburger will be available in UK restaurants from Monday, but is cooked on the same grill as meat, meaning that many non-meat eaters will refuse to eat it.
Instead, the fast-food chain is aiming the new burger, which it has named the Rebel Whopper, at “flexitarians” – people who eat meat but are reducing their intake of animal products.
Toni Vernelli, international head of communications and marketing at Veganuary, a campaign to encourage people to go meat, dairy and egg-free for the month of January, complimented the burger.”
And yesterday I walked past a Greggs, the bakers, where they had big posters about their really successful vegan sausage roll. In fact, it has been so successful Greggs are paying all their employees a bonus in gratitude for the their part in the success of the sausage roll! Gone are the days when vegetarians and vegans ate plates of lentils. Now they can pretend to eat ordinary food and feel smug about it. Although personally I have never understood the need to have pretend meat products if you are a determinedly ethical vegetarian or vegan.
However, according to George Monbiot “Eating is now a moral minefield, as almost everything we put in our mouths – from beef to avocados, cheese to chocolate, almonds to tortilla chips, salmon to peanut butter – has an insupportable environmental cost.” In the not too distant future, he tells us, we need to be eating lab-made food instead of naturally grown food. Hmm! So much for natural remedies. Maybe we have gone beyond that point.
Ah well, here is a new acronym: FOMO - FEAR OF MISSING OUT!! This is a very modern phobia.
And here are some words that the BBC says have fallen out of use, but which I think we should try to re-introduce:-
Vizzying-hole
A Scots word for a peephole in a door, derived from the Old French word visée meaning ‘look’.
“Sheila, have a quick shufty through the vizzying-hole and see if the maid’s coming while I stuff these towels in the suitcase.”
Gongoozler
A person who likes to mindlessly stare (at anything). If only we all had more time to stare idly and do nothing. The word survives in and around the canal boat community, to this day.
“Yeah, I’ll try and make it to your wedding, but I’ve got a lot of gongoozling planned for that weekend.”
Snollygoster
A 19th century American term for an unprincipled, dishonest person, especially a politician.
“That snollygoster came up to kiss my baby, but nicked my phone when I wasn’t looking.”
Mumpsimus
An obstinate person who holds on rigidly to a certain set of beliefs even though they are wrong or disproved. The term may have been coined by Erasmus.
“That silly mumpsimus still thinks Sporty was the best Spice Girl when everybody knows it was Posh.”
Wamblecropt
To have digestive issues that are so severe, you can’t physically move.
“I should never have had that sixteen piece chicken finger combo pack and Viennetta all to myself, now I’m wamblecropt.”
You can see where Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl got some of their strange vocabulary ideas from.
Wednesday, 8 January 2020
Tuesday, 7 January 2020
It’s all about how we see things!
Someone showed me a photo of Australia seen from space. Today’s Australia. With fires blazing away. Almost the whole continent ablaze. If it had featured in an apocalyptic movie we would no doubt have said it was an exaggeration.
Also impressive are the images of Australia superimposed on the map of Europe or of the USA. Australia is away on the other side of the world and we tend to forget how big it is. And then I imagine almost all of Europe ablaze in the same way. Frightening!
The smoke from the fires is causing problems all the way over in New Zealand - the same hemisphere but still along way away. Scary stuff!
I came across an article about an Australian Aboriginal elder who had developed a bushland property with a main house and several huts, offering cultural camps for tourists and Indigenous youth. He had to evacuate a few weeks ago because of the fires but when he returned, expecting nothing but ashes, he found his property intact. The fire had gone round it. Why? He put it down to the traditional Indigenous technique of cultural burning conducted on their land three years ago. The only hut not protected by cultural burning, 500 metres from the main house, was destroyed in the blaze.
Apparently there are modern techniques of hazard reduction burning, creating firebreaks, so that fire cannot spread. Those in favour of cultural burning, a practice which they say is informed by thousands of years of traditional knowledge, maintain that unlike hazard reduction burning, cultural burns are cooler and slower moving, usually no taller than knee height, leaving tree canopies untouched and allowing animals to take refuge from the flames. And they are more effective. Small fires are lit with matches, instead of drip torches, and burn in a circular pattern.
If Australia manages to put this fire out and recover from the current situation, maybe they should listen to older wisdom.
We see the same sort of thing with flooding. Modern techniques work to some extent but in places where older ideas such as planting trees, which take up a lot of the excess water, have been followed these seem more effective. We must get away from always thinking new is best.
But we are all great followers of fashion. Just take the example of little Archie’s beanie. Prince William and his Meghan were given a knitted hat for their baby, during a visit to New Zealand I think. This hat featured in a photo as part of their Christmas or New Year message. (It seems that everyone and their grandmother send out such messages nowadays. Oddly enough, Princess Anne dies not appear to share this activity. I may come to admire that lady!) They must have revealed where the hat came from as the company who made it, accustomed to having maybe 30 or 40 orders a month, suddenly had 300 orders overnight! They were a little overwhelmed!
Now, this is a perfectly ordinary knitted hat with a couple of bobbles, a bit like ears, instead of one single bobble on the top. I could knock one up in a day or so, as could any half-way competent knitter. But, of course, it would not be “Archie’s beanie”.
A similar phenomenon is what is happening to the little village of Hallstatt in Austria - just under 800 inhabitants. It seems it was the inspiration for the town of Arandelle in the Disney film “Frozen” and now tourists are turning up in their thousands to take selfies.
We live in an increasingly odd world!
Also impressive are the images of Australia superimposed on the map of Europe or of the USA. Australia is away on the other side of the world and we tend to forget how big it is. And then I imagine almost all of Europe ablaze in the same way. Frightening!
The smoke from the fires is causing problems all the way over in New Zealand - the same hemisphere but still along way away. Scary stuff!
I came across an article about an Australian Aboriginal elder who had developed a bushland property with a main house and several huts, offering cultural camps for tourists and Indigenous youth. He had to evacuate a few weeks ago because of the fires but when he returned, expecting nothing but ashes, he found his property intact. The fire had gone round it. Why? He put it down to the traditional Indigenous technique of cultural burning conducted on their land three years ago. The only hut not protected by cultural burning, 500 metres from the main house, was destroyed in the blaze.
Apparently there are modern techniques of hazard reduction burning, creating firebreaks, so that fire cannot spread. Those in favour of cultural burning, a practice which they say is informed by thousands of years of traditional knowledge, maintain that unlike hazard reduction burning, cultural burns are cooler and slower moving, usually no taller than knee height, leaving tree canopies untouched and allowing animals to take refuge from the flames. And they are more effective. Small fires are lit with matches, instead of drip torches, and burn in a circular pattern.
If Australia manages to put this fire out and recover from the current situation, maybe they should listen to older wisdom.
We see the same sort of thing with flooding. Modern techniques work to some extent but in places where older ideas such as planting trees, which take up a lot of the excess water, have been followed these seem more effective. We must get away from always thinking new is best.
But we are all great followers of fashion. Just take the example of little Archie’s beanie. Prince William and his Meghan were given a knitted hat for their baby, during a visit to New Zealand I think. This hat featured in a photo as part of their Christmas or New Year message. (It seems that everyone and their grandmother send out such messages nowadays. Oddly enough, Princess Anne dies not appear to share this activity. I may come to admire that lady!) They must have revealed where the hat came from as the company who made it, accustomed to having maybe 30 or 40 orders a month, suddenly had 300 orders overnight! They were a little overwhelmed!
Now, this is a perfectly ordinary knitted hat with a couple of bobbles, a bit like ears, instead of one single bobble on the top. I could knock one up in a day or so, as could any half-way competent knitter. But, of course, it would not be “Archie’s beanie”.
A similar phenomenon is what is happening to the little village of Hallstatt in Austria - just under 800 inhabitants. It seems it was the inspiration for the town of Arandelle in the Disney film “Frozen” and now tourists are turning up in their thousands to take selfies.
We live in an increasingly odd world!
Monday, 6 January 2020
Talking to strangers!
I bought some stuff in The Body Shop in Oldham the other day. As I put my purchases down on the counter the assistant said to me, “Oh, you look lovely!” How nice to be greeted with a compliment. Of course, it might just be my natural loveliness but I think that what provoked the compliment was my matching bright yellow accessories; beret, gloves, bag, brightening up a dull day.
Okay, perhaps I go a little,over the top with matching or coordinating accessories and maybe my daughter and granddaughters call me “the coordination queen”, with some reason, but I grew up in an age when if you bought a pair of shies you did your darnedest to buy a matching handbag. Goodness, I worked part time in a shoe shop in my late teens and we were not just encouraged but positively instructed to press lady customers to purchase a matching handbag!
Anyway, getting back to random compliments I came across this in the Guardian online. For some reason I didn’t get the link but simply copied the content. Neither did I get the name of the journalist. But here it is, all about how we find it hard to give and accept compliments:-
“When I was about 12, I distinctly remember being in a branch of Sayers the bakers. (Sayers was a very popular chain in the north-west before Greggs came along – in completely the same colour scheme, I might add – and somehow became “cool”. I don’t think this injustice has ever been fully acknowledged.)
Anyway, I was in Sayers the bakers, and I complimented a woman on her earrings. The woman didn’t thank me; she instead looked very embarrassed and proceeded to deliver a five-minute monologue about how rubbish her earrings were. How they were actually really cheap. And the colour washed her out. They weren’t real silver, either. These earrings were basically the source of all that was bad in the world. I remember it because a week before I had read in some teen magazine that girls and women very rarely accept compliments – and here was empirical proof.
I resolved then to always accept a compliment. In truth, I often add a self-deprecating aside, but, more than I used to, I will just smile and say thank you. It feels good. Is it better to give or receive? With compliments, as with sex, these are equally pleasurable. I give a lot of compliments. I love to give compliments. I compliment people on the street, sometimes weaving between commuters like the opening scene of a Bond film where he’s giving chase, to ask someone where they got their awesome top (it’s never, say, “Jigsaw last month.” Always: “Oh! A tiny off-the-beaten-track stall in Peru four years ago!”).
Most of the time, people beam at random compliments. If someone is looking great, why not tell them? Likewise, if someone has produced something you have really enjoyed, tell them. As a novelist friend recently tweeted: “If you spot a harried husk of an author looking broken in the tinned mysteries aisle at Lidl, and you are considering engaging them in excited chat about their last book… do. Made my week.” We don’t often get things for free in this world. But a compliment is free and easy. It can make a heavy heart lift. Or quell an insecurity, or remind you what a good friend somebody is, or that there are benevolent people in the world, just floating about.
I am writing this on the decking of a cafe, pavement-side. A man just walked past looking very dapper. I told him so. “Thank you very much!” he replied. I can see him walking into the distance, grinning.”
There you go! And here is a link I did get, Gaby Hinsliff going on about how we don’t talk to people on buses and in cafes.
And here is Daniel Lavelle, on the same subject. Now, personally I talk to people at bus stops and on public transport all the time.. And it has led to some very interesting conversations on aeroplanes as well. But I am aware that this is a little unusual. It’s just me
However, I rather object to the suggestion that I hear all the time that this reluctance to talk to strangers is a particularly British trait. I have travelled quite a bit on Spanish buses and trains and find that Spanish travellers are just as reluctant to communicate with strangers as their British counterparts. The same applies to people sitting in bars and cafes. As a rule people sit in their little groups and communication only takes place between tables if something unusual takes place.
The exception, of course, is when you sit on a terraza and have to fight off the onslaught of silly pigeons and aggressive seagulls seeking to eat your free tapas before you do. Then people talk, but only to moan about the flying vermin!
Okay, perhaps I go a little,over the top with matching or coordinating accessories and maybe my daughter and granddaughters call me “the coordination queen”, with some reason, but I grew up in an age when if you bought a pair of shies you did your darnedest to buy a matching handbag. Goodness, I worked part time in a shoe shop in my late teens and we were not just encouraged but positively instructed to press lady customers to purchase a matching handbag!
Anyway, getting back to random compliments I came across this in the Guardian online. For some reason I didn’t get the link but simply copied the content. Neither did I get the name of the journalist. But here it is, all about how we find it hard to give and accept compliments:-
“When I was about 12, I distinctly remember being in a branch of Sayers the bakers. (Sayers was a very popular chain in the north-west before Greggs came along – in completely the same colour scheme, I might add – and somehow became “cool”. I don’t think this injustice has ever been fully acknowledged.)
Anyway, I was in Sayers the bakers, and I complimented a woman on her earrings. The woman didn’t thank me; she instead looked very embarrassed and proceeded to deliver a five-minute monologue about how rubbish her earrings were. How they were actually really cheap. And the colour washed her out. They weren’t real silver, either. These earrings were basically the source of all that was bad in the world. I remember it because a week before I had read in some teen magazine that girls and women very rarely accept compliments – and here was empirical proof.
I resolved then to always accept a compliment. In truth, I often add a self-deprecating aside, but, more than I used to, I will just smile and say thank you. It feels good. Is it better to give or receive? With compliments, as with sex, these are equally pleasurable. I give a lot of compliments. I love to give compliments. I compliment people on the street, sometimes weaving between commuters like the opening scene of a Bond film where he’s giving chase, to ask someone where they got their awesome top (it’s never, say, “Jigsaw last month.” Always: “Oh! A tiny off-the-beaten-track stall in Peru four years ago!”).
Most of the time, people beam at random compliments. If someone is looking great, why not tell them? Likewise, if someone has produced something you have really enjoyed, tell them. As a novelist friend recently tweeted: “If you spot a harried husk of an author looking broken in the tinned mysteries aisle at Lidl, and you are considering engaging them in excited chat about their last book… do. Made my week.” We don’t often get things for free in this world. But a compliment is free and easy. It can make a heavy heart lift. Or quell an insecurity, or remind you what a good friend somebody is, or that there are benevolent people in the world, just floating about.
I am writing this on the decking of a cafe, pavement-side. A man just walked past looking very dapper. I told him so. “Thank you very much!” he replied. I can see him walking into the distance, grinning.”
There you go! And here is a link I did get, Gaby Hinsliff going on about how we don’t talk to people on buses and in cafes.
And here is Daniel Lavelle, on the same subject. Now, personally I talk to people at bus stops and on public transport all the time.. And it has led to some very interesting conversations on aeroplanes as well. But I am aware that this is a little unusual. It’s just me
However, I rather object to the suggestion that I hear all the time that this reluctance to talk to strangers is a particularly British trait. I have travelled quite a bit on Spanish buses and trains and find that Spanish travellers are just as reluctant to communicate with strangers as their British counterparts. The same applies to people sitting in bars and cafes. As a rule people sit in their little groups and communication only takes place between tables if something unusual takes place.
The exception, of course, is when you sit on a terraza and have to fight off the onslaught of silly pigeons and aggressive seagulls seeking to eat your free tapas before you do. Then people talk, but only to moan about the flying vermin!
Sunday, 5 January 2020
Some thoughts on being positive and on the pursuit of happiness.
My daughter and I were talking the other day about being happy with what you have. Well, actually, it began with her saying she almost feels guilty at times because she enjoys her babies so much. So many people, she commented, go on and on about how difficult motherhood is. Were there really as many cases of postnatal depression when I was having babies as there are now? Because it seems, she said, as if there is an epidemic of it, as if it’s almost de rigueur to suffer from it, almost as if those who don’t are somehow not fashionable. Of course, as her latest baby is her fifth, she has a fair bit of experience behind her in the bringing up babies field and it has to be said that the one before this, now three years old, has been singularly delightful and easy to be around.
The answer to her question is that I really don’t know but I get a sort of gut feeling that maybe there were not so many cases. However, we need to take into account that we didn’t have social media and so there was no great pressure to keep up with others or to make yourself important by posting again and again about how hard life is.
Some of the solution, we concluded, is relaxing into enjoying the good goes on in your life, in all aspects, not just raising babies, making sure you focus on that and not on the bad, difficult stuff. In fashionable terms, this is all about finding the joy. Everyone is talking about it, in all sorts of areas. Here’s a link to an article about how to make 2020 as joyful as possible.
The writer of the article tells us this: “ Many of us treat joy like the good china, only warranted on special occasions. Even if we know it is within our reach, we may not see it is within our control.” For her article she interviewed a “happiness expert”, one Nataly Kogan, who has written books about happiness and is the founder and chief executive of the wellbeing business Happier, which apparently helps companies to improve their workplace culture and professionals to foster joy in their lives.
Oh boy! Now, she may well have set up is business as a consequence of “lessons born out of her experience of career burnout and personal dissatisfaction in her late 30s”, but I still remain amazed at the ways people can make money out of almost anything!!
By the way, Nataly Kogan lives in Boston, Massachusetts, if that makes any difference to her chosen life path!
Everyone appears to be writing about seeking happiness. There are two articles, one of which seems to be in favour of finding happiness as you go along while the other suggests that the pursuit of happiness makes you miserable.
I suppose in the end it comes down to whether you are a glass half full or a glass half empty person.
The answer to her question is that I really don’t know but I get a sort of gut feeling that maybe there were not so many cases. However, we need to take into account that we didn’t have social media and so there was no great pressure to keep up with others or to make yourself important by posting again and again about how hard life is.
Some of the solution, we concluded, is relaxing into enjoying the good goes on in your life, in all aspects, not just raising babies, making sure you focus on that and not on the bad, difficult stuff. In fashionable terms, this is all about finding the joy. Everyone is talking about it, in all sorts of areas. Here’s a link to an article about how to make 2020 as joyful as possible.
The writer of the article tells us this: “ Many of us treat joy like the good china, only warranted on special occasions. Even if we know it is within our reach, we may not see it is within our control.” For her article she interviewed a “happiness expert”, one Nataly Kogan, who has written books about happiness and is the founder and chief executive of the wellbeing business Happier, which apparently helps companies to improve their workplace culture and professionals to foster joy in their lives.
Oh boy! Now, she may well have set up is business as a consequence of “lessons born out of her experience of career burnout and personal dissatisfaction in her late 30s”, but I still remain amazed at the ways people can make money out of almost anything!!
By the way, Nataly Kogan lives in Boston, Massachusetts, if that makes any difference to her chosen life path!
Everyone appears to be writing about seeking happiness. There are two articles, one of which seems to be in favour of finding happiness as you go along while the other suggests that the pursuit of happiness makes you miserable.
I suppose in the end it comes down to whether you are a glass half full or a glass half empty person.
Saturday, 4 January 2020
A rather pessimistic little post!
2020 lulled us into a false sense of security with some fine and even sunny days to start the year with. Today we are back to normal with dull and drizzly weather and rather chilly as well. Rain is forecast for he next few days. Bang goes our almost established routine of heading out for a long walk just after the one o’ clock news!
Christmas seems to be officially over in Delph village as well, despite it not yet being Twelfth Night. As I ran round this morning, men in hi-vis jackets were taking down all the “flying Christmas trees” (my five year old granddaughter’s description of the trees fixed above each shop doorway). I did think they might have waited until Monday.
Oldham town centre still has it’s Christmas lights burning brightly though, even if they include a big sign, in lights, that says “OLDHAM LIGHTS”, just in case you thought you had wandered into Rochdale or Ashton by mistake!
But on the international plane, the season of peace and good will to all men is well and truly over with America’s drone attack on Iran. I was struck by the fact that this has been justified as a defensive act to protect American soldiers from future attacks. Imagine a mother who smacks her child, just in case the child is naughty tomorrow!
That’s a good start to the year!
Are we due for a whole new series of apologies?
After all, we have already had the pope apparently apologising for slapping a woman’s hand on New Year’s Eve as she tried a little too insistently to kiss his hand. It”s a hard life for pontiffs!
So what does the future hold for our grandchildren?
Our three-year-old granddaughter tells me that when she is a grown up she wants to be a “maker”. She was busily stitching cards together to make a Little Red Riding Hood character, an activity-based Christmas present. A “maker”, eh? Quite a good ambition.
But since when do three-year-olds have to decide what they will be in the future? How does she already have that concept in her little head?
Where is the carefree magic of childhood?
I have to say, however, that I’m not really pessimistic. It just sounds that way from time to time.
Christmas seems to be officially over in Delph village as well, despite it not yet being Twelfth Night. As I ran round this morning, men in hi-vis jackets were taking down all the “flying Christmas trees” (my five year old granddaughter’s description of the trees fixed above each shop doorway). I did think they might have waited until Monday.
Oldham town centre still has it’s Christmas lights burning brightly though, even if they include a big sign, in lights, that says “OLDHAM LIGHTS”, just in case you thought you had wandered into Rochdale or Ashton by mistake!
But on the international plane, the season of peace and good will to all men is well and truly over with America’s drone attack on Iran. I was struck by the fact that this has been justified as a defensive act to protect American soldiers from future attacks. Imagine a mother who smacks her child, just in case the child is naughty tomorrow!
That’s a good start to the year!
Are we due for a whole new series of apologies?
After all, we have already had the pope apparently apologising for slapping a woman’s hand on New Year’s Eve as she tried a little too insistently to kiss his hand. It”s a hard life for pontiffs!
So what does the future hold for our grandchildren?
Our three-year-old granddaughter tells me that when she is a grown up she wants to be a “maker”. She was busily stitching cards together to make a Little Red Riding Hood character, an activity-based Christmas present. A “maker”, eh? Quite a good ambition.
But since when do three-year-olds have to decide what they will be in the future? How does she already have that concept in her little head?
Where is the carefree magic of childhood?
I have to say, however, that I’m not really pessimistic. It just sounds that way from time to time.
Friday, 3 January 2020
The aftermath of Christmas - and it’s not even Twelfth Night yet!
On Christmas Eve they dismantled the roadworks outside our house. The work wasn’t finished but someone decided that the residents would like to have the road clear for the Christmas period. So the barriers came down, the holes in the road were patched up for the time being and the equipment was stored away. A stack of great, enormous pipes were locked away behind a barriers further up the road, as if there was a fear someone might steal them - far too big for drunken pranksters to move them elsewhere! And yet the mound of fancy gravel, which did look very tempting fo anyone who had a drive to maintain or a soggy pathway to improve, was just left completely accessible.
The road was open, traffic could get through again and the air quality outside our house deteriorated.
We knew they were going to start up again yesterday but still it was a bit of surprise to get back from my daughters at the end of yesterday afternoon to find the road closed once again, making vehicular access to our house problematical once more! This morning it was obvious that the workmen were back ... with a vengeance! At 8.00 they were pounding away, digging up sections of the road. Heaven help any of the neighbours suffering from a hangover! I suppose the workmen have to start quite early because the days are still short, despite having passed the winter solstice. The sun still sets at around 4.00 pm and I imagine that they need to take advantage if the daylight hours.
I remember years ago staying with my Spanish sister in Andalucía in August. Construction work was going on not far from her block of flats and one morning we were woken at 4.00 in the morning by the screeching sound of iron girders being moved into place. It was too hot to do such physical labour in the heat of the day so they started in the wee small hours and finished work at lunchtime! Very nice for the workmen but much less so for those who wanted to sleep while it was still cool! Especially as we wanted to keep windows open if possible during the night. Her flat now looks out a very posh residential complex with swimming pool and elaborate gardens. And she now has air-conditioning and does not need to worry about keeping her windows open in the night. Very bad for the environment though!
So I spent yesterday at my daughter’s house, helping her to restore some order. She was expecting a joiner to come and give her a quotation for some work that needs doing and did not want him to be unable to see what he needed to assess because of continuing Christmas chaos. The tree had already been taken down. As she wanted a larger and taller tree than the one I had selected for our house, a rooted tree in a pot, she had opted for a tall, cut tree, which was a problem from the outset. First she had difficulty obtaining a suitable stand so that the thing would remain upright. Then it started shedding needles even as they put decorations on it. By Boxing Day it was looking pretty scrawny and by New Year’s Eve it was already standing like a skeleton outside her door.
There was another problem too: she had been “uncled”. Her uncle, my brother-in-law, and his wife have no children and seem to compensate for this by buying inordinate amounts of stuff for the offspring of both our children, or more specifically for our grandchildren. And our daughter had been “uncled”, as she and her bother refer to it, a couple of days before Christmas Day. Of course they really appreciate the generosity but in the rush to organise Christmas it had not been possible to organise things properly. And then they had spent Christmas Day at our house, Boxing Day at her in-laws’ house and the intervening time in a flurry of social activity.
So we sorted through bags of presents they had received and miscellaneous Christmas stuff that needed storing somewhere other than a corner of the living room. It’s the kind of task you need to share, especially if you have an almost four-month-old who has just had his latest round of inoculations and is a little cranky!
Now I think I need her to come and return the favour, helping to remove the yards and yards of paper chains made by the grandchildren and festooned around my kitchen by my son and daughter, who are both tall enough to blu-tack them up just beyond my reach! My small tree, by the way, still has all its needles.
The road was open, traffic could get through again and the air quality outside our house deteriorated.
We knew they were going to start up again yesterday but still it was a bit of surprise to get back from my daughters at the end of yesterday afternoon to find the road closed once again, making vehicular access to our house problematical once more! This morning it was obvious that the workmen were back ... with a vengeance! At 8.00 they were pounding away, digging up sections of the road. Heaven help any of the neighbours suffering from a hangover! I suppose the workmen have to start quite early because the days are still short, despite having passed the winter solstice. The sun still sets at around 4.00 pm and I imagine that they need to take advantage if the daylight hours.
I remember years ago staying with my Spanish sister in Andalucía in August. Construction work was going on not far from her block of flats and one morning we were woken at 4.00 in the morning by the screeching sound of iron girders being moved into place. It was too hot to do such physical labour in the heat of the day so they started in the wee small hours and finished work at lunchtime! Very nice for the workmen but much less so for those who wanted to sleep while it was still cool! Especially as we wanted to keep windows open if possible during the night. Her flat now looks out a very posh residential complex with swimming pool and elaborate gardens. And she now has air-conditioning and does not need to worry about keeping her windows open in the night. Very bad for the environment though!
So I spent yesterday at my daughter’s house, helping her to restore some order. She was expecting a joiner to come and give her a quotation for some work that needs doing and did not want him to be unable to see what he needed to assess because of continuing Christmas chaos. The tree had already been taken down. As she wanted a larger and taller tree than the one I had selected for our house, a rooted tree in a pot, she had opted for a tall, cut tree, which was a problem from the outset. First she had difficulty obtaining a suitable stand so that the thing would remain upright. Then it started shedding needles even as they put decorations on it. By Boxing Day it was looking pretty scrawny and by New Year’s Eve it was already standing like a skeleton outside her door.
There was another problem too: she had been “uncled”. Her uncle, my brother-in-law, and his wife have no children and seem to compensate for this by buying inordinate amounts of stuff for the offspring of both our children, or more specifically for our grandchildren. And our daughter had been “uncled”, as she and her bother refer to it, a couple of days before Christmas Day. Of course they really appreciate the generosity but in the rush to organise Christmas it had not been possible to organise things properly. And then they had spent Christmas Day at our house, Boxing Day at her in-laws’ house and the intervening time in a flurry of social activity.
So we sorted through bags of presents they had received and miscellaneous Christmas stuff that needed storing somewhere other than a corner of the living room. It’s the kind of task you need to share, especially if you have an almost four-month-old who has just had his latest round of inoculations and is a little cranky!
Now I think I need her to come and return the favour, helping to remove the yards and yards of paper chains made by the grandchildren and festooned around my kitchen by my son and daughter, who are both tall enough to blu-tack them up just beyond my reach! My small tree, by the way, still has all its needles.
Wednesday, 1 January 2020
New Year, new honours, new protests. And family traditions.
2020 has arrived. The world has not ended, although Australia is having a good try at extinguishing itself still.
I read that some 200,000 people signed a petition asking for Ian Duncan Smith not the receive a knighthood. And today someone posted this on social media:-
“As the New Year’s Honours list is announced, let’s briefly salute some who declined an honour:
Michael Rosen, Danny Boyle, Michael Faraday, J. B. Priestly, Amartya Sen, Stephen Hawking, Ken Loach, C. s. Lewis, Virginia Woolf, Jon Snow, L. S. Lowry, Dorothy Hodgkin, Benjamin Zephaniah.”
Life goes on.
This being the season for family get-togethers, my daughter and I piled as many family members as possible into her car and travelled over to Southport where we did a traditional walk in the Botanic Gardens, reminiscing over how many times the oldest of the cousins, 22 and 21, had had their photos taken in various spots in the park.
We then went off and had a pub lunch, in the pub where we always go, sitting at the table where we always sit, taking over a large section of the pub and swopping Christmas presents.
Our three-year-old granddaughter must think that Christmas goes on for ever as it began the weekend before Christmas with a visit from her uncle and cousin from southern parts of the country, went on through Christmas day at our house, Boxing Day at her other grandparents’ house and now a New Year’s Day lunch with yet more presents.
Tomorrow reality strikes and she goes back to nursery. Life does indeed go on, even when you are only three.
I read that some 200,000 people signed a petition asking for Ian Duncan Smith not the receive a knighthood. And today someone posted this on social media:-
“As the New Year’s Honours list is announced, let’s briefly salute some who declined an honour:
Michael Rosen, Danny Boyle, Michael Faraday, J. B. Priestly, Amartya Sen, Stephen Hawking, Ken Loach, C. s. Lewis, Virginia Woolf, Jon Snow, L. S. Lowry, Dorothy Hodgkin, Benjamin Zephaniah.”
Life goes on.
This being the season for family get-togethers, my daughter and I piled as many family members as possible into her car and travelled over to Southport where we did a traditional walk in the Botanic Gardens, reminiscing over how many times the oldest of the cousins, 22 and 21, had had their photos taken in various spots in the park.
My older sister complained that the gardens are now rather run down, in particular that there are no peacocks any longer. But the younger ones enjoyed looking at the caged birds and children of variousages played on the swings.
We then went off and had a pub lunch, in the pub where we always go, sitting at the table where we always sit, taking over a large section of the pub and swopping Christmas presents.Our three-year-old granddaughter must think that Christmas goes on for ever as it began the weekend before Christmas with a visit from her uncle and cousin from southern parts of the country, went on through Christmas day at our house, Boxing Day at her other grandparents’ house and now a New Year’s Day lunch with yet more presents.
Tomorrow reality strikes and she goes back to nursery. Life does indeed go on, even when you are only three.
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