Changing time. Boxes. Being a consultant. Some photos.

All change! Well, maybe! If Trump ever decides to concede, then maybe there will be a new President Biden in the White House. Numerous comparisons have been made between Obama’s graceful handover of the White House and the current seeming lack of co-operation. Let’s be kind and remember that Obama had already served two terms and was not going to have any chance of staying there ... no way! ... while Trump is feeling peeved because he wanted another term. But, no! I don’t really have kind feelings.

And here in the UK, Dominic Cummings has been shown the door. There was talk of him staying in post until Christmas but he’s already gone. Photos abound of him leaving Number Ten with his trusty backpack, containing his laptop I suppose (what secrets does that hold!?), and carrying a cardboard box. Why was he allowed to leave by the front door? some have asked. Why not scuttling out of the back door? That’s a bit churlish, if you ask me. Anyway, I expect his leaving by the front door provided a much better, more symbolic, photo opportunity. He does have a tendency to scuttle though.

What I want to know is who is making money out of those very neat cardboard boxes that seem to be de rigueur when someone finally leaves their desk in an office somewhere. It became a kind of symbol of the Crash, when hoards of bankers were seen departing from their posts with their neat boxes containing, I assume, the contents of their desk - pens, pencils, potted plant, coffee mug, cute ceramic “thingy” which showed you were a human being after all! You see those boxes in  American films and tv series as well. Nobody ever seems to depart with a Tesco carrier bag full of their belongings. Nobody ever has a scruffy old cardboard box they have scrounged from somewhere. No, it’s a nice neat box with a lid! Who produces them? A bit of niche marketing there!

I have seen, by the way, a grizzly little cartoon where Dominic Cummings arrives home and is greeted by Mrs Cummings, who wants to know what is in the box. Whereupon Dom lifts out the head of Boris Johnson! We shall see! Whether or not his departure signals the end for Mr Johnson, I doubt that we have seen the back of Mr Cummings!

There will probably be a book of memoirs - the truth about Barnard Castle at last? And probably consultancy jobs of one kind or another. 

My brother-in-law, an electrical engineer, was joking about consultancies yesterday as we walked along the soggy Donkey Line. He has recently retired from one of the electricity companies, having postponed that retirement several times as they needed his expertise on this and that. Now, he says, if they need him he can charge a hefty consultancy fee. Several thousand pounds a day seems to be the going rate for those who advise on PPE and Track and Trace, so maybe he can ask for something similar. Pipe dreams, I think!

We were walking along the Donkey Line in the last stages of our Diggle Chippy Hike, taking advantage of the fact that yesterday, although cold, did have some sunshine. Today, as predicted, is grey and dull, not quite so rainy as expected but hardly conducive to sitting at picnic benches. So, to cheer up a dull day, here are some photos of the sunshine on the Donkey Line yesterday morning 

 

 

 

 

 

and the rather chilly brightness over the Uppermill viaduct yesterday afternoon.

 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Rain and sun and stereotypes and class divisions and unelected pundits and bank holidays!

In the wee small hours, while it was still dark outside, I was woken by heavy rain on the roof, hammering on the skylight windows. I mean REALLY heavy rain, sounding as if someone was throwing stones at the house, and yet not sounding like hailstones. Amazing! So I was astounded to wake up (again) a couple of hours later to blue sky and sunshine, one of those perfect autumn days. So my brother-in-law has suggested another Diggle Chippy Hike.

In our Italian class online we have been talking about the differences between North and South, principally in Italy but also having a semi-serious look at the situation in the UK. One of our number suggested that we don’t really have a regional divide in this country so much as a class divide, or even a wealth divide. He’s probably right. We have all moved around so much for work and studies that regional differences proper have been ironed out. And the industrial revolution happened early in the UK, creating another division: city and country. It got us all talking. Stereotypes 

Anyway, last night in the news I heard an MP - I forget exactly who - in say that in the South of the country “culture” means opera and ballet, while in the North it means your local football club. He was immediately challenged and agreed that he “misspoke”. To put it into context, they were discussing the plight of small football clubs, which are in dire financial straits because they rely so much on fans going through the turnstiles. They need financial assistance or they will disappear for ever but they fall through all sorts of cracks - not small businesses, not recognised as “arts”, although the arts are suffering in a big way too.

But the stereotype the MP came out with says such a lot. Of course the North has “culture”. There is Opera North, the Royal Northern College of Music, theatres of high repute all over the place, the Tate in Liverpool and other art galleries, again all over the place. And of course the South has small football clubs which depend on their supporters and  are suffering just like Northern clubs. As my friend in the Italian class said, it’s much more a class and money divide than anything else.

Fun and games seem to kicking off at 10 Downing Street, with people I’ve never heard (Lee Cain, director of communications, apparently) of walking out and now the suggestion that Dominic Cummings might be out by Christmas. Will he end up in the House of Lords? That’s a question to ponder. What I am pondering is why in the midst of all the kerfuffle did it turn out that Carrie Symonds, aka Almost Mrs Boris, was involved in the shake-up. She objected to suggestions of promotion for Mr Cain to chief of staff. Since when did spouses of prime ministers wield power? That prime ministers discuss things with their spouses is inevitable but that those spouses have some kind of veto is a different matter altogether, no matter what their political experience. As far as I know, nobody voted Almost Mrs Boris into any position at all. 

At this rate, I’ll be signing off as Indignant of Delph!

But never mind. It seems we are to have an extra bank holiday in 2022 in celebration of the queen’s platinum jubilee. 70 years on the throne. Assuming we can have parties by then, people will no doubt be encouraged to organise street parties. Bunting and sausage rolls for all.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

On crowdfunding - for one purpose or another. And reactions to statues!

Crowd funding is an odd modern phenomenon. You hear heart-warming stories of someone who needs to fund travel to somewhere far away for medical treatment and the money is gathered. Stranger are the stories of people crowdfunding to set up a small business but, hey, if people want to give someone a leg-up, so be it. Then there are sponsored walks (cf Captain Sir Tom Moore) and sponsored runs and the like. 

Now it seems that Donald Trump is trying to crowdfund his “election defence fund”, asking for contributions from his fans. But then I suppose all campaign funding depends on a kind of crowdfunding. And undoubtedly there will be Americans who will “help him out”. Some will be rich folk, but there will lots of less well off crazies sending their little contributions. As Mr Tesco would tell us, every little helps.

And in Texas an ultra-conservative is offering a million-dollar bounty for proof that Donald Trump is being cheated of victory in the presidential election. He is the lieutenant governor of the state and says the money will “incentivize, encourage and reward” citizens who can provide evidence of voter fraud. I thought at first that he was offering his own money but then I read on and discovered that the sum of at least $25,000 dollars to anyone who provides information leading to a conviction will come from his campaign funds. More crowd funding!

We have our own crazies, of course! I read about a man in Totnes in Devon. He says the pandemic is a secret plot to impose a totalitarian world government and a nefarious effort to crush freedom. He is also opposed to 5G, believing mobile phone signals either transmit the virus or reduce our defences to it, and has said he would not accept a vaccine as it would involve injecting nanoparticles into the body that would allow people to be controlled. He’s in his 70s and is a recent convert to using Facebook. He’s the kind of 70+ year old who gets us all a bad name, in my opinion, but apparently quite a lot of people in or around Totnes share his views. Really?! I wonder of he and his like ever use video calling or zoom meetings, and if so, do they not fear that the virus might come through his computer or tablet screen?

I despair! I really do!

But all is not doom and gloom. The figures that a good friend of mine publishes every day show that the coronavirus infection rate is very, very, very slowly beginning to reduce in Greater Manchester, even in Oldham, where it still stands at over 700 per 100,000 but ever so slightly fewer cases than yesterday! Maybe we’ll see our way out of it eventually. Provided the crazies are not proved right that all this technology is just spreading it around some more!

That’s enough of that nonsense! There are other things for people to get upset about. A group of campaigners worked for years and years to get a statue erected to celebrate the writer and philosopher Mary Wolstencraft, mother of Mary Shelley, by the way.  She was self educated and at the age of 25 set up a school for girls in Newington Green in London. She published “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792. Quite an achievement. And then misogyny set in and the male establishment “annihilated” her reputation. But in 2010 volunteers set about raising funds (more crowdfunding?) and having a memorial made and placed near the location of her girls’ school.

The statue was duly commissioned and was eventually erected just the other other day, to immediate outcry from some quarters because it’s not a nice sedate (and nicely clothed) representation of the lady in question, like the suffragette statues erected in recent years. No, it’s a sculpture by Maggi Hambling, a swirling mass of supposedly female forms, representing the female struggle to be heard and to be taken seriously, a big problem for Mary Wolstenscraft, topped - shock! horror! - by a quite small naked female figure. Not a representation of the lady in question at all! Opponents have declared that you don’t see famous men represented by naked male figures, which is true, but I think this sculpture is quite thought provoking. Maybe the naked female might cause some to think about the objectification of women over time and still ongoing. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Timing. Nostalgia. Cycling matters.

Last week when I went to the Wednesday market in Uppermill there seemed to be long queues everywhere. Consequently it took me longer than expected. Today I breezed through everywhere and realised when I got to the Oliviccio delicatessen, where I buy olives and sundried tomatoes and whatever else takes my fancy on the day, it was only twenty to ten and they don’t open until ten. So I decided to push my bike around the park and take a look at the river. The leaf blowers were busy in the park. What do they do with them? I wonder. Presumably they take them away somewhere as otherwise they would just get blown back once the leaf blower men had left.

The stepping stones were, amazingly, not under water although branches seemed to have blown down into the water. I posted a picture on Facebook, provoking my Spanish sister into getting nostalgic about her last visit here. Which is surprising as she accused me aat the time of “making her” walk across the stepping stones. Where is her sense of adventure? No, what she was nostalgic about was the Cornish pasties we had eaten in the park on that visit. Cornish pasties from the bakery in Uppermill, which some people would claim should bot be called Cornish at all as they are made in Greater Manchester and have never been to Cornwall in their short lives. But they are very tasty!

Incidentally, I bought Lancashire “Brie” cheese in the delicatessen. We had a little chat, the shopkeeper and I, about the nomenclature. She told me a Frenchman, a customer, had told her recently, “This is no Brie” - you have to imagine a French accent. But apparently the name Brie, the cheese, is not protected. Unlike Champagne. No other fizzy wine can be called champagne but any cheesemaker can make a soft cheese of the correct kind and call in Brie. Hey! Ho!

By the time I got back to the delicatessen, still with just under ten minutes to wait, there was a gentleman standing outside the still closed door, with a list in his hand. He told me he had driven for 45 minutes to find Oliviccio. Oh, that list! The deli eventually opened, the gentleman went in and almost a quarter of an hour later I had my turn. If I had not gone walkabout I would have been first in the queue! And I arrived later than imtended once again. So it goes!

So I’ve been out and about on my bike. Now I read that Nigel Farage has been putting in his two penn’orth about cyclists. I am loath to mention that name as I firmly believe that he has received far too much air time ever since he first popped up. Maybe if he had not been invited to speak on so many chat shows he might not have become so well known and maybe, just maybe, we might still be in the EU!

Anyway, it seems he is opposed to cycle lanes. He thinks that the “vast majority” of road cyclists frequenting the Kent lanes where he lives are also most likely remainers! Bizarre! A good reason to keep,on cycling though. Other right wing populists apparently liken cyclists to “a strange swarm of insects”. How odd! There was even a tweet debate that started with the argument: “Country walks can be ruined by arrogant cyclists expecting walkers to know they are coming up behind at 40mph.”

Here’s a bit of scientific fact: “even in a brief time trial, professional cyclists competing in the Tour de France do well to manage 30mph. This is yet another complaint about cyclists – they’re always too fast, except when they’re too slow and holding up motor traffic. Schrödinger’s cyclist.”

But I do agree that some cyclists get us a bad name by not using that wonderful thing, the bicycle bell, when they ride along bridle paths. 

My bike, by the way, has an excellent bell!

Life goes on. Stay safe, everyone!

A way out? Getting back to normal? Mockery! Leaves and grass and mud. Dog problems.

 So maybe there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel with news of a possible vaccine in the next few months. Will we be “back to normal” for Christmas though? Will we ever be “back to normal”? 

If the announcement had come only from the government I might have had less hope.  Cautious optimism!

I read that under the current lockdown drivers are being warned that their car insurance may be invalid for non-essential journeys. What counts as an essential journey? Going to work, presumably. But going to the supermarket? After all, you could have bought less and walked with your bags! Drive carefully everyone!

I hear that Donald Trump’s campaign team set up a “voter fraud” hotline, with a view, I suppose, to gathering evidence that the presidency had been “stolen” from him. And now they have been getting prank calls from TikTok and Twitter users calling to laugh at them or mock them before hanging up. Prank calls prevent Trump supporters with “genuine” claims from getting through. Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, claimed on Twitter that the Democratic party was to blame for the prank calls. Well, of course! But maybe not as an organised campaign. Maybe it’s time for the Trump team to leave it all alone and have their leader withdraw gracefully. If gracefully is ever a way he does anything.

We shall see what the next couple of months brings.

Meanwhile, we have been clearing leaves from the garden. One of the neighbours says she has given up on her bit of garden. We share a garden with our immediate neighbour and manage to get along with it all quite amicably. The neighbour who has given up on hers has immediate neighbours with children who played football and basketball and anything-else-at-all-ball on their bit of grass just after the really heavy rainfall. Consequently the grass is all churned up into a veritable quagmire. Oddly enough, back in the day, when our children used to play ball games and other running around games in our garden I don’t remember them reducing it to such a mess. Either we have more rain now that we used to or maybe I just misremember it all.

My Italian class online continues to be great fun. We still talk over each other a little but we are becoming more disciplined. Our numbers were a little depleted yesterday. One missing member was too upset because her dog had just died; she had had him so long that he was a member of the family in his way. The other missing member is at the other end of the dog-owning chain, having just acquired a puppy who is demanding so much attention that she can’t do anything else at the moment. That sounds like a good reason not to have a dog!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

A bit of a rant!

I find myself getting indignant about things. 

Why, for example, have people been putting Remembrance Day pictures of themselves on social media, pictures adorned with poppies and a “Lest we forget” slogan? Poppies and the slogan I can understand but why a picture of yourself in the middle of all that. But then, a number of politicians have used wreath laying as a photo opportunity. Surely they didn’t need to put photos of themselves looking solemn next to a war memorial. It must be something about the “me-me-me!” times we live in. 

Then there are the hundreds of protesters who gathered in the centre of Manchester yesterday to protest about the national lockdown. Some of them even came in a charabanc from Cumbria. I ask you: with the high rate of infection in Manchester at the moment, who goes on a coach trip to stand in close proximity to a load of people, almost certainly not wearing face masks, in the centre of that fair city? If you feel so strongly about it bombard your MP with correspondence to that effect but don’t contribute to the spreading of the virus! Oh, of course, I forgot, those crazy people don’t think we need to worry about that aspect of things! I’m surprised there were only four arrests!

In Italy, I read in a news report the other day, tiny villages, places like Roccafiorita, with 187 inhabitants the smallest village in southern Italy, are scared stiff of coronavirus being detected there. Such places have an ageing population and could be wiped out altogether if the virus struck. Young people have mostly moved away to seek work in bigger places. And so they risk becoming ghost villages or places full of holiday residences. 

Here come some statistics: 

“Of Italy’s 8,000 villages, towns and cities, almost 70% have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. Two thousand have fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, and in some places the birth of a baby is so rare that the village bells toll to celebrate the news. Dozens of these villages have been declared coronavirus “red zones” – meaning the risk of infection is particularly high and people cannot leave or enter.”

And it’s not just Italy of course. There are many tiny places in Spain that are probably undergoing the same kind of thing. And such work as there is in those places, tourism related naturally, is disappearing this year as we are all restricted in our travels. Oh, boy!

The oldest resident of Roccafiorita, by the way is a gentleman by the name of Salvatore Occhino, born and raised in Roccafiorita. Salvatore Occhino is a living monument in the town, not only because at 93 he is its oldest person, but above all because despite his age, he continues to tend to his fields. It would be nice if he could see the end of the pandemic. “I’m worried,” he said. “If Covid strikes hard, there will be no one left in Roccafiorita. My heart cries out when I think of all the sacrifices we’ve made to keep this village alive. Now we can only place ourselves in the Lord’s hands.”

There are concerns that Coronavirus might be trumping fighting climate change as well. Before all this started, moves were afoot to reduce car use and to encourage people to opt for public transport, thus reducing our carbon footprint. Now, it seems, people are understandably reluctant to use public transport. The car feels,like a nice safe place to travel around in. A little bubble all your own!

Government figures show that in October car use was up to around 90% of pre-pandemic levels, and that’s with many people still working from home. Cycle trips, the government stats say fell significantly below pre-pandemic levels in that month. I can’t say I am surprised as October was such a wet and miserable month. All those who gladly got their bikes out of the shed or garage, or even bought new bikes, when the weather was better and the days were longer would feel little inclination to continue to cycle around and arrive soaking wet at their destination. Only the likes of me continue to do so I suspect. And even I have my limits!

Things got really bad though in the few days prior to Lockdown #2 beginning on Thursday. There was a mini boom in shopping, Christmas shopping (understandable, I suppose, at a pinch!) and stockpiling foodstuffs and household stuff (less understandable as the supermarkets are staying open!), and dining out, of course!

“Meal reservations for Sunday night, the day after Boris Johnson announced England was going back into lockdown, were 11% higher than on the same day in 2019, according to the online reservations hub OpenTable. By Wednesday night bookings were 70% higher, according to the company’s data, which is based on a sample of 20,000 restaurants.” 

Because what more sensible thing can you do when told to stay home and prevent the spread of the virus than dash out and be with crowds of people for one last fling?!?

Okay! I’ve got that off my chest now. 

 

It’s a beautiful day. 

 

The sky is blue again and the sun was shining on the Donkey Line when I went out for a run earlier this morning.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Strange times. A result. Business as usual.

2020 continues to be a very strange year. Here’s a headline from an Ayrshire newspaper:-

South Ayrshire Golf club owner loses 2020 presidential election

Donald Trump, a South Ayrshire golf club owner has lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, after running again to be re-elected for a second presidential term.

They must have been waiting for the chance to have a headline like that for ages. Mind you, maybe every one of Mr Trump”s exploits has been reported in similar fashion in that newspaper. 

And in a small place in India where Kamala Harris’s forebears hailed from they apparently celebrated her victory. 

Is this sort of thing what they mean when they talk about world wide repercussions?

So, anyway, Mr Biden has finally gathered together the necessary electoral college votes to be able to say he has won the election. Not that the incumbent is going quietly by the look of things. I was reading about how much money it would cost if he and his support team were to mount a real campaign for a national recount, which they reckon will probably not happen after all. Really the only winners would be the lawyers.

But still, in the time between now and Joe Biden’s inauguration POTUS Trump can still cause a fair bit of havoc and make things difficult for his successor. Let’s hope he can be persuaded to go quietly. From the voting numbers I think that any new president would have a hard enough time ahead of him.

We had stopped watching the news yesterday and gone for a walk up Lark Hill in the sunshine and so we only found out about the result quite late in the afternoon. So now all that excitement is over for the time being.

The bright, cold, sunny weather seems to be over as well for a while. When we walked up Lark Hill yesterday, from the top you could see the low cloud gradually filling up the valleys. And this morning we are back to dull and grey, not actually raining but with the threat there in the background.

And the Covid levels in Greater Manchester, but especially in Oldham, remain frighteningly high. So I guess we’ll just carry on doing what we’ve been doing for the last few months - local shopping, lots of walks, and electronic communication with friends and family.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!