Up the hill. Reminiscing - the appeal of the different. And mistranslations.

Yesterday we walked up Lark Hill, aka The Quarry Road, again. Earlier in the day it had changed from bright and sunny to dull and cloudy. Indeed, I had met one of my walkabout acquaintances, Lindsay, the wife of the Methodist minister who serves Delph, Dobcross and possibly Diggle, who told me that it was much sunnier in Dobcross than Delph. I told her it had been sunny in Delph when I set out. She was on her way to a coffee morning at the church. I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that such events still go on. It’s like a throw back to my childhood. But then, Lindsay seems to have no other occupation than being “the minister’s wife”, supporting him in all sorts of events the church organisers. Another throw back to my childhood. 

Anyway, the cloud moved in. However, by mid afternoon it pretty much moved out again. And the sun came out once more. And so eventually we set off up the hill. If anything the track is more eroded than ever. But the views are still splendid. 

The house at the top of the hill has a very charming hidden garden too.

 

 

And the local fruit bushes, winberries, are coming on nicely. Not ready yet but in a few weeks they'll be plump and purple - mini blueberries.

The writer Lee Child was featured in one of those quiz-style articles in the weekend Guardian. Here is his answer to one of the prompts:

“My favourite book growing up.
I remember books, plural, as series, in retrospect all of them orphan fantasies involving independence and agency for children, as antidotes to my own repressed and restricted family situation: Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven, Richmal Crompton’s Just William, and so on. I also loved Frank Richards’ Billy Bunter books – incomprehensibly, since their world was a million miles from mine.”

We listened to a Just William story read by Martin Jarvis the other day. It involved William’s father meeting the headteacher os William’s school on the train and receiving the advice that William should have extra classes in the summer holiday, delivered by the headteacher. It also has a worried William bringing home a very poor school report, managing to destroy it and in the process charm an aged great aunt into leaving her wealth to William’s father. I was reminded of how delightful William’s world is to those of us not living it. 

Like Lee Child, I also enjoyed the Famous Five, Billy Bunter and Just William, without any of their world’s having anything in common with mine. I would add to the list The Silent Three at Saint Botolph’s, a story serialised in one of the magazines for young girls, either School Friend or Girl. The idea of being in a girls’ boarding school and joining a secret society which wandered the school at night solving mysteries was supremely appealing. Taking a step up the cultural ladder, I also enjoyed reading Tom Brown’s Schooldays, despite once again having nothing in my life in common with what Tom experienced. It’s an odd thing.

Do children still read these stories? My daughter grew up reading Tracy Beaker, this time stories about a child in care. I must ask her to what extent she identified with Tracy Beaker. Or maybe with characters in books we read together: The Secret Garden, Moondial, Tom’s Midnight Garden and others. 

In the end, I suppose, it’s all about being taken out of your own small familiar world by reading. I still do it. 

And now, here are some odd mistranslations. On I forget which radio programme they talked about the supermarket Aldi in Wales, where notices appear in both English and Welsh. A NO ENTRY sign was translated into Welsh, unfortunately using terminology taken from an anthology of book-keeping terms. The WINES AND SPIRITS section in one of their stores was labelled with the Welsh for WINES AND GHOSTS. Someone commented that this is what comes of using Google translate instead of just asking a Welsh speaker! And I thought of the numerous crazy translations into English that I have come across in restaurants in other countries. Just asking a native speaker to check things saves a lot of silliness. 

So it goes.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Some stuff about gardening.

Today is the first Saturday in May, which I am told - I am not sure how reliably - is World Wide Naked Gardening Day. I won’t be participating but I now have an image in my head of naked gardeners of all shapes and sizes busily planting and pruning, mowing lawns and weeding! 

I was reading about “guerrilla gardening”, essentially planting stuff in patches of what is more or less common land, and allowing anyone who fancies any of it to harvest stuff as they need it. It’s part of a general feeling that we need to get back in touch with nature. Quite a lot of people did so during lockdown, growing stuff in their gardens. Our next door neighbours did it. Their sage was so successful  - an enormous patch of it - that they have invited all the neighbours to help themselves. 

But It seems that we have largely lost touch with the outside world and for decades children have been able to name more video game characters than wildlife species. In 2017, polls suggested that a third of young children thought cheese came from plants. I can understand that last one. After all, people have cheese plants. We’re doing our bit. Even the 21/2 year old can name a range of animals and plants. He does, however, argue with me about forget-me-nots, insisting that they are bluebells. 

But guerrilla gardening is rather more public than planting herbs and lettuce in your own garden. It adds colour and interest to public places. We have colour and interest around here but it’s mostly flowers. 

The idea is not completely new:

“More than a decade ago Incredible Edible began growing food on pockets of neglected public land in Todmorden, Yorkshire. The council was supportive, providing lists of possible sites. Corn sprouted in front of police stations and an apothecary garden flowered at the health centre. The movement spread quickly across the town and was so successful that tourists began to arrive. “Propaganda gardening” they called it; more than 170 Incredible Edible cells have now taken root across Britain and 1,000 around the world. Gardening, say the founders, makes for a kinder, more connected community.”

I’m not at all surprised that Todmorden was in the vanguard: always a bit poetic and artistic and rather hippy.

You can take it even further back. In April 1649, Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers (or True Levellers) responded to high prices and food shortages by cultivating vegetables on common land at St George’s Hill, near Weybridge in Surrey. 

Now, that would make a wonderful name for a pop or folk group: Gerrard Winstanley and The Diggers! 

Which reminds me, Carly Simon has been inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Everything comes to those who wait. Recognition at last. She has a lovely home, I hear, in Martha’s Vineyard. I wonder if she grows stuff out there.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

What happened to Thursday. And a bit of ecological stuff. Don't pave your garden!

 Well, yesterday disappeared down the rabbit-hole or down a wormhole in time. I was up and about at least an hour earlier than usual, expecting the arrival of not one but two small grandchildren. Our reception-class-age granddaughter had been sick on Tuesday night, which meant under the latest school regulations that she was not allowed back in school for 48 hours. By Wednesday morning she was fine but rules are rules and so she stayed at home with Daddy, who was working from home, while her small brother went off to nursery. On Thursday, knowing that her small brother was coming to spend the morning with me, she opted to come along too. Fine by me. We played games, did some painting, ran about in the garden and so on. My daughter finished off her marking and sorting put before coming to collect her offspring. She stopped off for coffee and a snack and suddenly the afternoon was almost over.  

Yesterday was polling day. So, having sent the small people and their mother on their way, we did a quick walk into the village to do our civic duty and vote in the local council elections. Our vote made little difference - the Conservative candidate was elected again - but still, we have the vote - use it or lose it! 

We had tea. Phil went off to chess club. I walked into the village again to pick up supplies of milk and bread and fruit juice, which I had decided not to buy earlier in the interests of getting the chess-player on his way in plenty of time. I returned home and tidied up, with a sort of niggle at the back of my head that there was something I had neglected to do. At some point later in the evening it came back to me - I hadn’t posted my blog! By then I was half-asleep listening to music. After all I had been up earlier than usual. Experts might say 7 hours a night is all the sleep we need but my body says that one extra hour makes all,the difference! So it goes. 

Today, having had my eight hours of sleep, I got up and ran along the Donkey Line bridle path, as a change from running round the village. I noticed at various points along the path little piles of uprooted Indonesian (or possible Japanese, depending on which flower book you consult) balsam. This bully of the plant world, individually quite beautiful but collectively so dominant that once it starts to grow little else gets a look in, was introduced to this country by Queen Victoria, so the story goes. When the flowers turn to seed, the slightest tap fires the seeds out from the pods to establish new little enclaves. It has become so all-pervasive in recent decades that “keep my town beautiful” societies and primary school classes have organised mass weeding sessions. I recognise the seed leaves of the plant as they start to grow and remove them from my garden and from the edges of paths in the places where I run or walk. It’s easier to do as the plants get just a little bigger and the task gets less back-breaking as you don’t need to bend so far. Obviously someone else has also started the work of restricting the spread of beautiful invader. I pulled up some more to add to the piles along my route. A younger runner went past me - they all run faster than I do - greeted me and commented, “I see you’ve been weeding as you run!” Well, yes! So it goes. 

Fortunately, the bluebells come into their best before the balsam gets going. 

 

It would be sad to lose displays like this along the Donkey Line. 

I wonder how some of the nature conservation societies feel about our uprooting, indeed trying to eradicate, balsam. First there is the insect question. According to a recent survey the numbers of flying insects In Great Britain have plunged by 60% since 2004. They put a sort of screen on car registration plates and count how many insects get splatted during journeys. 

“The new survey included almost 5,000 journeys made in 2021 and determined the “splat rate” for each, ie the number of insects recorded per mile. Wet days were excluded as rain might have washed some of the splatted insects off the plates.

In the 2004 survey, which was conducted by the RSPB, only 8% of journeys failed to splat any insects at all. But in 2021, 40% of journeys did not record a single squashed bug. The possibility that newer vehicles were more aerodynamic and therefore hit fewer insects was ruled out by the data.”

Now Buglife, aka The Invertebrate Conservation Trust, the only organisation in Europe devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates, (“Actively working to save the UK's rarest little animals; everything from bees to beetles through to worms and woodlice.” Personally I could live without the woodlice but I suppose someone must love them and no doubt birds eat them when they can.) wants us to take some positive action: 

“As well as demanding action from the government and councils, Buglife said people could help insects by not using pesticides, letting grass grow longer and sowing wildflowers in gardens. If every garden had a small patch for insects, collectively it would probably be the biggest area of wildlife habitat in the world, the group said.”

A knock-on effect of the decline in insects is, of course, a decline in birds. While I find it hard to get emotional about the decline in species such as the Australian brush turkey, I recognise that we need to preserve the diversity and that human activity is continuing to cause problems all over the world. I’m more concerned about the disappearance we notice her of species such as sparrows and starlings, once very common in our gardens. One expert said people need not feel powerless in helping to reverse the decline but added: “We all have connections [to birds]. If a company is associated with deforestation in Brazil, don’t buy stuff from them,” he said. “And if everyone spares as much land as possible within their gardens for nature, then that adds up to quite a large area. Another lever is voting – we get the politicians we vote for.”

So, as with the insects, so we can also help the  birds by not being too ruthless with the tidiness of our gardens. We let the dandelions grow. My wild front garden is beginning to develop nicely, with its crop of poppies and aquilegia. We’re doing our bit, but when I’ve been out and about recently I’ve watched yet another garden disappearing under flagstones. It’s turning into a nicely elegant area where the house owners can sit out at their nicely elegant garden furniture on mild sunny afternoons and long summer evenings. But it’s another patch of land lost to nature. And there is too much of that in modern gardens. So far I have resisted the suggestions from  my daughter that our garden could be improved with a nice little paved patio outside the back door. I shall continue to do so!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Out and about in the rain for various reasons. Price rises. Exporting asylum seekers.

 The rain is back. It woke me several times during the night. By the time I set off for Uppermill market it had stopped, fortunately. I had already decided to walk to Uppermill rather than cycle as we had appointments at the local clinic for vaccination against pneumonia and shingles. I am beginning to feel a little like a pincushion, I have had so many injections in the last couple of years! 

So I set off to do the market trip and Phil followed later to meet me at the clinic and then go for a haircut. Busy, busy morning!

En route I snapped a picture of holly in flower. I have long wondered why it is I see holly with berries but never with flowers. So today I have found it!

 

Yesterday came the announcement that BP has made profits $6.2bn in the first three months of this year. This is the result apparently of soaring gas prices. Apologists for BP say that the company will invest a whole lot of money in improving how things work, but the announcement did say “profits” not “money to invest in improvements”. So why are they making lots of money while energy prices are going up for ordinary people who are struggling to make ends meet?

Our Prime Minister appeared on a breakfast TV programme, Good Morning Britain I think. Told about an elderly lady who travelled round for hours on a bus to keep warm as heating her house was too costly, he reminded the interviewer that it was he who introduced free bus passes! Supposedly that made it all okay and made him look like a good guy. It has led to a series of jokes about buses with notices on the side inviting people to “hop on and keep warm”. 

Here’s Michael Rosen’s contribution:

“Dear Mogg

Wasn't it Great Tebbitt who said that people without jobs should get on their bikes?  I, of course, introduced bikes to London and it occurs to me that if people are moaning about fuel bills, why don't they got on their bikes to get warm?

Pedalo in narnia

Boris”

In articles about the prospect of asylum seekers being “exported” to Rwanda, I have come across a new verb, “to offshore”, as in “the threat of offshoring will drive some refugees underground”.

And here’s an extract from something written by Diane Abbott

“It was also reported in the media a few days ago that a Home Office whistle blower said that it was now practice to issue visas for refugees from Ukraine, but that one small child would be left off the list of family visas granted. The twin purpose is to allow ministers to boast a high number of visa approvals, but practically allowing only the smallest number of actual arrivals, because families will not leave without the small  child.

We checked our own case work records, and immediately found three other families from Ukraine in exactly the same position. There may be others. This is too much, and too specific to be coincidence.

At the same time, we learn that the Home Office is refusing to deal with any applicants from Afghanistan at all, and has now done so for some time.

It seems that there are strong words of sympathy and support while these conflicts continue, but there is precious little action in terms of support for refugees, some of whom are in desperate straits.”

It seems to me the world is in desperate straits.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Thinking about tattoos!

Our second granddaughter, 19 years old and earning money in a part time job answering phone calls for Transport for Greater Manchester, spent some of her money on a discreet little tattoo on her wrist: two birds. Some months later she spent rather more money, including money given to her for her 19th birthday on a tattoo-artist-designed hourglass image which covers almost the whole of her forearm. When I saw her the other day she showed me a photo of a tattoo someone has had inflicted upon themselves, beginning on the back of one shoulder and kind of swooping over the shoulder and down the upper arm. She would now like something of this kind and is considering asking her very artistic older sister to design her something. In that way it would be a unique affair. Nobody else would have that tattoo. Which is fine if you like tattoos. 

And I am afraid I don’t like tattoos. It’s a very permanent way of adorning your body and one that you might regret in later life. Goodness! it took a long time for me to finally decide to have my ears pierced. I must have been on my forties. I had always resisted having my ears pierced - for similar reasons as my opposition to tattoos. And then I had my hair cut very short and ear rings really enhanced the look. But clip-on earrings are the cruellest kind of jewellery imaginable. After a while your earlobes start  to throb. Then they go numb but when you remove the earrings and blood starts to flow back into the tortured earlobes, you go through another, different kind of agony. So I took the plunge and had my ears pierced. And now I have a ridiculously large collection of earrings, none of them terribly expensive I hasten to add but selected to coordinate with whatever I choose to wear on a given day. 

And I think that that is another reason for my dislike of tattoos; not only are they permanent but they are invariable. All you can do is hide them under clothing. I am reminded of John Irving’s novel “Until I Find You”, where the protagonist has almost all his body covered in tattoos. I also think of an acquaintance if mine who has spent huge amount of money having tattoos removed: names of former girlfriends and the like. Even so, when he gets hot or agitated the ghostly outline of his old tattoos shows against his skin. As I said earlier, much too permanent! 

And then today I read this:

“Ukrainians are inking the fight for their country on to their bodies, with artists getting requests for tattoos of molotov cocktails, anti-tank missiles and even a type of bread that has become an unlikely symbol of national identity because Russians struggle to pronounce it.

As people filtered back to Kyiv after Russian troops abandoned their attempts to seize it, tattoo artists noticed an increasing demand for art that paid tribute to this spring of tragedy and violence, and to Ukraine’s spirit of resistance.

“I wanted to capture this moment,” said Mariika, a tattoo artist who now has an anti-tank hedgehog on her leg and a molotov cocktail on her arm.”

Apparently the tattoo artists are giving the proceeds from such works of art to the Ukrainian armed forces. Nonetheless it seems to me an odd way to demonstrate your love for your country. But then, each to his own…

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Good deeds ignored! Adventures of young people and worries of parents and grandparents. The nanny state !

Yesterday morning, out running, I spotted what looked like a notebook at the edge of the path. Ever nosy, I had to go and investigate. Not a notebook but a passport, a rather soggy one at that! If you are going to lose your passport you should try not do so on a rainy night. We have had loads of dry nights when passports could get lost with impunity but this one appeared to have been lost in Friday or Saturday night’s rain. It was valid until 2027, so I thought maybe the owner would like to have it returned, especially as there are reports of long delays in renewing passports or applying for new ones at the moment. Another shortage of staff problem!

And so I called the emergency contact number listed in the back of the soggy document. The gentleman I spoke to promised to pass a message on to the young lady it belonged to. Nobody contacted me. Eventually through various social media networks, my daughter has found out that the young lady in question, the same age as my eldest granddaughter, lost the passport weeks ago (did it remain beside the path unnoticed in all that time?), has already cancelled it and has applied for a replacement. Well, good luck with that, say I! And I still consider it rather rude that my gesture of good citizenship did not merit even an acknowledgement. So it goes! 

In the continuing saga of my eldest granddaughter and her American visitors I am reliably informed that they have received a parking ticket and, not knowing if they were allowed to remove the notice from their windscreen they drove around for while with it still stuck there! Like fools! my granddaughter commented. For accommodation they had found an Air b&b online. This turns out to be in a rather insalubrious part of central Ashton - hence parking problems - hence the parking ticket. It then transpired that they had not booked a whole flat (apartment to them) as they expected but just a couple rooms, so that when they turned up there were already people using the sitting room and kitchen. They have since booked out of there and into the nearest Travelodge, as originally advised by our rather bossy but well-organised granddaughter. 

On Friday they went to Skipton Castle to admire the ruins and then on to a farm with a petting zoo where they fed calves and stroked furry animals. This bunch of 25 year olds are clearly still in touch with their inner 5 year olds! 

 

 

In the same vein, today they have gone off to Chester Zoo. We have already received photos of elephants and rhinos. 

 

Following our granddaughter’s reports of the American driver needing to be reminded  not to straddle two lanes on the motorway, something that incurred the wrath, not to mention the swearing and rude gestures, of at least one lorry driver, my daughter and I are now both suffering from what she calls the ‘heebie-jeebies”. We will want reports later today of their safe return home!

With safety in mind, how’s this for the nanny state?

“Last month, police officers descended on public green spaces in Stanhope, a 1960s residential estate in Ashford, Kent, to fight crime. Rather than arresting any suspected criminals, officers took away five benches and uprooted low-lying shrubs from small parks. In a since deleted tweet, Ashford Police explained that the benches had provided “places to gather” and their removal would help “design out crime”.

The chief inspector of Ashford Police explained that removing the benches and shrubbery were part of a temporary trial to “prevent antisocial behaviour in hotspot areas”. The idea that providing pleasant places to sit with friends causes crime sounds absurd, but it’s one of a number of controversial urban design principles that British police forces are promoting. Increasingly, these principles are dictating the design of our neighbourhoods: police aren’t just removing benches and bushes, they are demanding a wider raft of changes to architecture and public spaces, including blocking the construction of new cycle paths, dictating the height of garden gates and deciding the orientation of homes.”

As I read this, I thought of all the benches along Spanish streets where the residents of blocks of flats sit out and chat - often elderly residents - and the squares with similar benches, squares that serve as a communal meeting place. Do they worry in Spain about antisocial behaviour in these “places to gather”.

According to this article that kind of action against people meeting on the streets and in the parks of our cities is not a new initiative. It’s not even a consequence of the pandemic and an attempt to prevent the spread of Covid. No, indeed, it has been quietly around for a good while. It’s a police initiative called Secure by Design, dating back to Maggie Thatcher’s time - quelle surprise!

“Founded during the latter years of the Thatcher government, Secured by Design gives police significant influence over the architecture and design of public spaces. Under the programme, officers develop and publish neighbourhood design guides with recommendations such as advocating the “use of single seats or stools set several metres apart” rather than park benches, and warning against “providing too many” footpaths. When planning applications are submitted to local authorities, officers in those areas may object if the proposals do not incorporate their recommendations.”

It has led to the orientation of buildings being turned around, so that, for example, windows of flats do not overlook play areas, in case the “wrong kind of people” move in! And we thought we lived in a free country! The mind boggles!

But then, I know of benches in Manchester centre so designed that you can sit but not stretch out full length on them. We don’t want the homeless sleeping there, after all! Best is the bench outside a city centre church with a statue of Christ reclining there, preventing anyone else from reclining! There you go!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

A bit of gardening. Seasonal things seen in the sky. Some environmental concerns.

Yesterday afternoon, I reminded Phil of his plan to cut the grass. This plan has been around for a few days. The ground had dried up nicely, so the grass was no longer at all wet and would not clog up the lawn mower. Earlier in the week, whenever he had got around to thinking of getting the mower out he had looked outside and seen the next-door neighbours sitting out in garden chairs. 

Ours is a shared garden. Well, on the deeds to the two houses there is a clear demarcation line, indicating which bit of garden belongs to which house. If we or they decided to be territorial we could put up a fence but this would be very much a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.  We all benefit from having a bigger space rather than a long narrow strip in their case and a long triangle in ours - we also have a patch of garden at the side of the house to “compensate” for the smaller area at the back. Our grandchildren and their dogs run around the whole open area. Altogether a much better arrangement!

It does, however, occasionally cause problems if Phil decides to cut the grass, which is really just grass and does not merit the name of lawn. It’s a bit anti-social to disturb your neighbours’ relaxation. It is usually Phil who cuts the grass. Yes, I too could push the mower around but I tend to be the tidier-upper. And the neighbours will occasionally say that we should “let” them do it but they never actively volunteer. So Phil does it. That’s just how it is.

Anyway, yesterday I reminded Phil of his plan. It had been a fine, sunny and warm day but in the late afternoon the cloud was moving in and I remembered the weathermen saying that rain was likely today, Sunday. So the grass needed cutting before it got too wet and would need to dry out again. 

And, lo and behold, at some point in the early evening when I was cajoled into going and admiring his handiwork, the first rain was beginning to fall. It got heavier later but today has so far been dry but dull. We needed the rain. My tubs of plants were getting dry. Indeed, one pot containing something in the daisy family was beginning to droop to such an extent that I had had to get my watering can out. The plants do seem to be reviving. 

On Friday afternoon we walked round the village in the sunshine and saw the first of this year’s swallows. According to this article swallows and other migratory birds are running late this year. Bad weather in the south of Spain delayed them and although we have had dry weather in recent weeks they have been slowed down by strong winds. The people in the know are concerned that they will not have time to produce more than one brood of chicks. Numbers will go down. Climate change is taking its toll. 

Also on Friday, returning from our stroll, we saw the first of this year’s hang-gliders. He, or possibly she, can just  be made out in my photos. My granddaughter’s phone has a much more powerful zoom on its camera and would have produced a closer picture. So it goes. I like the idea of hang-gliding, floating around up there, looking down at the land below and recognising landmarks. However, the reality of it scares the wits out of me and I really have no desire to be up there in such a flimsy means of transport and one that seems very uncontrollable and unpredictable. 

Getting back to climate change problems, this article tells of the declining moth population, surprisingly more so in British woods that in surrounding farmlands or in cities. Now, I can’t remember when we last had a moth in our house. It once was a fairly frequent occurrence, much to my consternation as I really cannot abide things flapping around indoors. Our eldest granddaughter still gets them in her house, in nearby Mossley, which is unfortunate as she is even worse than I am with indoor flappers. I learnt not to panic when my children were small but she still goes into an overdrive hissy fit and needs her housemate to remove the offending insect. (Spiders cause even more havoc!)

As regards the moths, it may be that she has a particular kind of tree growing near her house. When I was small and we we moved into a new house, I remember my father planting poplar trees at the bottom of the garden. A nice poplar hedge … which was a nice habitat for poplar hawk moths, large, ugly beasts whose caterpillars look curled up poplar leaves. They used to visit our house! Maybe that is one of the reasons I dislike moths indoors!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!