Confidence!

 So Boris Johnson wins the vote: 211 to 148. 

There’s a professor who predicted the result exactly. Professor Jon Tonge, who teaches British Politics at the University of Liverpool, tweeted 58 minutes before the result was announced:   

“I’ll go for confidence in Johnson 59% (211 votes) to 41% no confidence (147) and delete this tweet at 9.01 when it’s way out.”

So he hedged his bets, getting ready to delete the tweet if he was proved wrong as he probably didn’t want to look like a fool. It’s a pity he didn’t put an actual bet on it though. Mind you, I expect his students think he’s really cool and clever. It will have done his standing with the students no harm at all. 

I wonder if he can predict what will happen next. 

Theresa May survived, albeit briefly, 37% of the Tory Party voting against her, winning the vote by 200 to 117. But she departed in tears a few months later. Some pundits are saying that was partly because there was already a big push to replace her with Boris Johnson. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus of opinion, or even a plot, about who might realistically  replace Mr Teflon. Some suggest, however, that Jeremy Hunt could be a front runner.,

While some people, Tory voters and Tory MPs, were still expressing their disgust and calling for Mr Johnson to resign, others were enthusiastic about his victory. The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, tweeted that she was “pleased that colleagues have backed the prime minister. I support him 100%. Now’s the time to get on with the job.” And the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, tweeted: “The PM has won the confidence vote and now it’s time to move forward. Tomorrow we get back to work growing the economy and delivering better public services.”

The housing secretary, Michael Gove, was a little more circumspect, simply saying that Mr Johnson had “secured the support of Conservative MPs”. Perhaps Mr Gove himself has ambitions. 

Whatever happens, we seem to be stuck with the Tories for a bit longer, even though some say this vote may have strengthen the cause of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. We shall see!

But all is not doom and gloom Harry and Meghan, Mr and Mrs Sussex, have given the media a photo of their little Lilibet. So we can now share their joy! That will no doubt be some comfort for those people who are having difficulty getting home from their holidays. And to those who were hoping to see the back of Boris Johnson. 

I am heartily glad not to be trying to fly anywhere at the moment.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

A bit of giddiness. Meeting comeuppance. On being an island nation. Chippies.

 We had the gang, aka our daughter and most of her offspring, round for a meal yesterday. For various reasons we’ve not seen the eldest granddaughter for a while. For the same various reasons she and the second granddaughter have not seen each other for even longer. Whether that had anything to do with it or whether someone slipped giddy juice into the food I do not know, but the conversation around the dinner table got rather loud and giddy and silly. And Phil and I were the only ones drinking wine and we were probably the most sensible. 

The two smallest caught the general giddy mood and once given permission to leave the table (yes, we and their mother all insist on requesting permission to leave the table!) ran around sticking paper spiders on more grown-up people’s backs and other such nonsense.

It was nice to see everyone having a good time, especially the three sisters. Hopefully it will have set up the workers for the week beginning today. It certainly made up for the rain! We made our own sunshine!

Today by the way is another dull day but so far the promised rain has not arrived. It still doesn’t feel much like summer. May is out, in the sense that we have moved on into June, and also in the sense that the “May” blossom, i.e. hawthorn, is not just out and blooming but coming to an end. So, according to old sayings, we can now start to cast clouts - in other words put winter clothes away and don lighter wear! And yet, when I went for my run this morning it still felt rather chilly! So it goes!

The jubilee celebrations are over and done with. We can all get back to business as usual. And this morning came the news that the Tory MPs are going to vote this evening on whether or not they have confidence in Mr Johnson. Some time after 8.00pm we’ll find out if he really is teflon-coated or if his MPs finally had enough. If the vote goes against him, the next question is: who will replace him? Not an easy decision, I think!

Someone interviewed in France yesterday described the British as an island nation who eat a lot of fish. I’m not sure that most of us are truly conscious of living on an island. An awful lot of us are city dwellers or at least suburban dwellers. Island dwellers live on the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Anglesea or the Scottish islands. Even though many of us live not much more that 50 miles from the sea, I don’t think we’re really aware of it. 

As a child, growing up in Southport, but out of sight of the sea, I thought I would always like to live in a place where I could easily access the sea shore but I never thought about us being an island. And then I went away to University in Leeds, well away from the sea and since then have lived mostly in Greater Manchester, also well away from the sea. Yes, I know I can still get there in an hour and a bit but it’s not the same. However, I think the hills and moorlands have replaced the sea shore for me.    

As regards being a nation who eat a lot of fish, how many of us really do? Phil and I do. And I know the fishman at the market on Uppermill does quite a good trade but it would be interesting to see some proper statistics. 

Here’s some stuff about fish and chips, or rather, in praise of chippies.

They start the article with a sort of disclaimer about it being unfair to inland chippies to claim that best chippies are by the sea. So I won’t protest but I will repeat my praise of Diggle Chippy. I would like to add to that a mobile chippy we discovered recently: Cod in a trap - a kind of Elvis-tribute chippy. Really good chips! Of course, the best fish ‘n’ chips are always the ones you eat outdoor, walking down the street in the late evening, sitting by the Diggle duck pond at the end of a hike, or on a windy sea front, possibly having to protect your chips from the rather aggressive seagulls!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Disappointing June weather. Her Majesty. Nationality questions.

It’s a very dull and damp June day. So much for summer! Last night we had a glorious sunset which surely should have been a sign of good weather today but that is not the case. If I were Her Majesty I think this morning I might well have said, “Forget jubilee celebrations, I’m staying in bed!”. As it was, just being me, I did consider staying in bed but in the end I got up and ran. I saw a few dog-walkers. That’s all. 

No, not quite all. I also saw our local heron out fishing.

Here’s something I saw on Facebook yesterday:

“I’ve been back to a EU country this week for the first time in 3 years. Exploring big towns and cities I’ve seen food on the shelves in the supermarkets, children ride bikes down the street, I haven’t seen one homeless person and there is definitely a refreshing absence of flags.

I don’t want to go home.

But watching monarchists boo the PM today, while the Queen yet again refused to attend an event with him makes me think maybe the tectonic plates are finally shifting. The scales are falling from the eyes of those that make up traditional, conservative, patriotic England...and their ringleader is none other than the living symbol of tradition and conserving British values. It’s beautifully unexpected...”

Hmmmm! I’m not sure the queen was refusing to go because Boris was there but …. it’s a nice idea. It amuses me that people ascribe motivations for her actions to the queen. Another suggestion is that the sketch she apparently did with Paddington Bear (which I haven’t actually seen but only had described to me) is a sign that she is in favour of welcoming refugees into the country and against packing them off to Rwanda. Who knows?

Amidst all the odds and ends of cartoons and comments about the jubilee celebrations, I came across this re-captioning of an old photo of her Majesty. 

 

As the wife of a chess player, I appreciate such things.

Everything has gone fairly quiet about Brexit and it’s consequences but yesterday I came across this about the artist Anthony Gormley:

“The acclaimed British sculptor Antony Gormley is to become a German citizen because of the “tragedy” of Brexit. 

Speaking at a major retrospective of his work at the Museum Voorlinden near The Hague, Gormley, who is half-German, said his strong feelings about Britain’s departure from Europe had prompted him to apply for German nationality.

“I’m embarrassed about Brexit: it’s a practical disaster, a betrayal of my parents’ and grandparents’ sacrifice to make a Europe that was not going to be divided again. It’s a tragedy,” said the Turner prize-winning creator of the Angel of the North sculpture, at the launch of his show at Wassenaar, in the Netherlands.”

It’s a pity to lose him. I remember the first time we stopped, en route to a friend’s house in the North East, to admire the Angel of the North. And last summer I finally got round to seeing his famous men on Crosby beach. What happens now? Does he have dual nationality or will he have to apply for settled status if he wants to spend any length of time here? Maybe he won’t want to spend time here!

Personally, I don’t have any burning desire to give up British citizenship and take on a different nationality. I like living where we do. We’re fortunate to have good country walks to hand. Our neighbours are friendly enough. Of course, I would like to see the country run in a different manner. I would like to be back in Europe. I would like to see more fairness all round. But that’s how things are at the moment.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Words! Words! Words!

A new bit of vocabulary relating to use the mobile phone made itself known to me this morning: “fexting”. It seems to be fighting by text; that’s where the “f” comes in. Apparently the Bidens do it in the white house so that the secret service doesn’t note down every argument they have. It appears that presidential communications are preserved for historical record! Who knew? But it seems that they have been arguing by text for years; it began as a way of preventing the children overhearing their arguments. Fair enough! 

In my daughter’s house they often communicate via text and occasionally, if texting doesn’t work fast enough, they will phone each other. It’s a rather tall house: entrance hall, downstairs loo and kitchen on the ground floor; living room and two bedrooms (one of them tiny) on the first floor, two bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor. So it’s quite possible for the family to be spread around the house, especially as the eldest son spends a good deal of time playing computer games in his top floor bedroom and his sister often works from home, in other words from her first floor bedroom. If she’s not working she might well be reading in her room. The paterfamilias might well be working from home in the living room while my daughter spreads her teacher-prep material over the kitchen table. So communication by phone is a useful tool. The smallest people could be with any of the aforementioned family members, which is just as well as they don’t have mobile phones … yet! 

Our own house is similarly tall but we tend to leave doors open and as a rule a good shout or a shrill whistle up the stairs serves well as a means of communication. Only rarely to we resort to our mobile phones. In any case, one or other of us is likely to have left our phone in some other part of the house. As far as I know none of us resort to “fexting”. We try not to argue!

Group chats work well, however, as a means of keeping in touch between the three household: my house, my daughter’s house and her eldest daughter’s house. Such is modern living. My grandmother would be twiddling her thumbs in amazement and declaring in amazement, “Just fancy!”. 

Psychologists and counsellors, however, warn that text arguments could just add to problems for couples. Text messages, like emails, can be misconstrued as there is no facial expression or body language to take into account. Hence the rise of emojis! 

One couples and families counsellor said that texts also risked “memorialising” rows, with phone and chat app messages often being brought up during therapy as a documentary record of troubled relationships. “The ability for people to go back and look over them can be tricky in terms of people healing and moving on because it’s something you can return to, fester over, or be upset by again.”

Here’s some more vocabulary of interest, some old, some relatively new:

Mansplaining -  the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner that is seen to be condescending or patronising. Often finished off with “Did that make sense, love?”

Manterrupting - when a man decides he needs to make a contribution to “help” his female companion explain something. 

And now I’ve come across “hepeating”. It’s new to me but was coined by friends of the US physics professor and astronomer Nicole Gugliucci, who announced it to the world in a tweet on 22 September 2017. This is what Prof Gugliucci originally tweeted: “My friends coined a word: hepeated. For when a woman suggests an idea and it’s ignored, but then a guy says the same thing and everyone loves it”.

There you go!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Weather reports. Being patriotic. The importance of names. Urban animals.

Sunny intervals and a moderate breeze! That’s what my weather app tells me. In an odd reversal of the usual way of doing things around here - we often start the day with sunshine and deteriorate into dull and cloudy even if not damp - today began with rain and has turned into a fine and sunny day. Excellent!

As I set off on my run around the village, I noticed that the house next door has a huge Union Jack in the front window. Who knew they were so patriotic! And they are mostly American, apart from the father of the family, who is a local man. His wife hails from Florida and their offspring, now in their early twenties, still speak with an American accent despite ten years or so in the UK. 

So, anyway, it seems to be another fine day for celebrating royalty. While people in London yesterday oohed and ahed at the Red Arrows filling the sky with red, white and blue vapour trails, my Italian friend watched similar planes fill the sky over Italy with red, white and green trails. I have not idea what the occasion was. She once explained the colours to us: green for the fields and hills where young Italians fought during the war, white for the snow in the mountains where Italians died fighting and red for the blood that was shed. I do not know if our red, white and blue have any significance beyond being the flags of various patron saints.

National identity! I hear that Turkey wants to change its name. The Turkish government has apparently sent a letter to the United Nations formally requesting that it be referred to as Türkiye. No doubt we will all comply and begin to use the requested version of the name. How soon before Spain requests the use of España, Italy the use of Italia, Germany the use of Deutschland and so on? Maybe it is time we started agitating to be called England everywhere and stop other nations referring to us a Inglaterra, Angleterre and Inghilterra! What’s in a name, after all!

My friend Colin has commented recently on wild boar in city centres in Spain. Around here we have urban foxes and occasionally in our garden pheasants or the odd cockerel. And, of course, grey squirrels. On rare occasions I have seen deer on the hillside while out running. In Dallas, Texas, they have coyotes in their suburbs! One recently tried to snatch a toddler off the family porch, resulting on the child having to go to hospital. Some people blamed the residents, saying that they have been feeding and even petting the coyotes. I always understood that coyotes were rather shy creatures. However, like foxes they will have learnt to scavenge for food close to places where the humans live! Bears likewise, in other parts of the USA! There have been stories recently of people having left their car windows open only to find it full of bears later! As we encroach on wild animals’ natural habitat, fairy stories come true and they encroach on ours. The world is weird and strange!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

On flags and bunting! Getting married with Elvis! Friends’ experience of travel disruption.

 It was beautifully sunny when I went out running this morning. The sky was blue and it was positively balmy, a good deal warmer than it was by midday when the cloud had moved back in. 

The across the road neighbours were busy hanging union jack bunting on their garden fence when I went out. They like to decorate their garden. Christmas lights and baubles are usually in place well before the start of December. They don’t bother with Hallowe’en though. I was quite surprised that they had left it so late to decorate the place for the jubilee. Maybe they bought cut-price bunting yesterday. Or maybe I am doing them a disservice and it was the rainy weather of the last week that put them off decorating. 

As I returned from my run I stopped to chat to one of my dog-walking nodding acquaintances. I have no idea what she is called but her dog is Beau. As a rule I know the names of the dogs rather than the names of the walkers. When we had set the world to rights once again, my dog-walking acquaintance told me she was off home to watch the trooping of the colours. I didn’t bother to say that I was not planning to watch any of it. Each to their own! 

The pub next door is hung with bunting, although rather retrained compared to the efforts of the White Lion at the other end of the village. They are positively festooned with patriotic flags. On the whole, however, relatively few houses around here have bothered to put the flags or bunting out. Maybe, like me, they are rather indifferent to the whole business. The ladies in the Italian fruit and veg shop in Uppermill have very fetching red, white and blue hats though, tiny wedding-fascinator style! 

The pub garden is very empty this lunchtime, despite their pumping out Elvis songs, presumably in an attempt to create a festive atmosphere. But it’s still quite early, so maybe more festive lunchers will arrive shortly.

I read an article this morning about Elvis themed weddings in Las Vegas, his city I suppose. The licensing company that controls the Elvis Presley name and image is ordering wedding chapel operators in Las Vegas to stop using Elvis in themed ceremonies. Maybe the licensing company isn’t making enough money out of it. I found myself wondering why anyone would want to theme their wedding around Elvis. When you’re all dressed up in your frothy frock and your smart suit, why would you choose to be upstaged by an Elvis impersonator? Unless, of course, you went the whole hog and told ALL the wedding guests to dress up as Elvis for the day. Now, that might be worth seeing. 

A friend of mine has just returned from Hamburg, not, I hesitate to add, in order to celebrate the jubilee. It’s not quite her thing, although it wouldn’t have surprised me if her daughter had decided to decorate her mother’s garden as a surprise for her. The daughter is that kind of organised person! Anyway, my friend reports that it took her more than 9 hours to get from Hamburg to Manchester. The flight itself was about 2.5 hours but she spent a good 4 hours getting through security and baggage control at Hamburg airport and then had to wait for her suitcase at this end. Crazy! My Italian friend, by way of a contrast, seems to have managed to get to Italy for a family wedding (without Elvis!) with minimum trouble! It seems to be a matter of luck as well as disorganisation!

It did cross my mind that all the delays and cancelled flights this week were part of a cunning plan to make people stay home for the jubilee! You never know these days!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

How to measure things! Sleep problems!

Much fuss is being made about proposals that we return to imperial measures. When did we really stop? Everyone I know orders pints or half pints in the pub. We still have speed limit signs in miles per hour on our roads. So what is all the fuss about?

It really doesn’t bother me that my bag of caster sugar says it contains 500 grams or that my bag of self-raising flour contains 1.5 kilos. When I bake I weigh the ingredients on my scales in pounds and ounces. And if my recipe is in metric I can switch the scales to metric. Besides I have a rough rule of thumb (out that in metric!) that tells me that 100g is more or less 4oz. Sometimes my recipes call for “cups” of this and that. Maybe Mr Johnson should propose a crockery system of measuring for the UK! 

As regards inches to centimetres, knitting patterns always recommend you do a “tension square” - to make sure you don’t need to adjust your needle size - of a certain number of stitches and a certain number of rows to produce a 10 centimetre or 4 inch square. I confess to still finding it hard to visualise the length of something in centimetres. I prefer inches. So if a length is only given in centimetres and I want to be able to visualise it I do a quick calculation: divide by 10 and multiply by 4.

I have a similar calculation for kilometres to miles: divide by 8 and mulriply by 5. 

A little bit of mental arithmetic does a person no harm; indeed it might help stave off age and decrepitude.

Of course, if my collection of recipes gets passed on to one or other the grandchildren, probably one of the granddaughters who both cook and bake, they too will need to work out a system to transfer imperial to metric as they have been brought up metric. My oldest grandson, by the way, is perfectly capable of cooking and baking, having done GCSE Home Economics, but does not regard it as a leisure pursuit as his older sisters do. Indeed, since passing the exam he seems not to have cooked anything. 

I have read a number of things about warmer nights causing sleep problems. This sort of thing:

“The spring and summer months can make sleep feel impossible, with everything from sweltering temperatures and noisy late-night barbecues to rowdy birdsong and early sunrises to contend with. Numerous studies have shown that our sleep changes for the worse when spring arrives.” 

Personally I haven’t been finding the nights particularly warm as yet. Indeed, my sleep is more likely to be disturbed by my feet being too cold! 

Some people, however, have been prompted to write letters to the newspapers about it, such as this:

If we are to endure hotter nights, it might help to end our love affair with the duvet. Even a low-tog duvet is unsuitable for a hot night, but try taking a summer break in the UK and finding a hotel, B&B or Airbnb with any alternative, even on request. The return of the pre-duvet sheet and blanket is surely the answer? Endlessly adjustable and suitable for all seasons. 
David Bauckham
Charlton, London

That letter led to some replies: 

 

I suggest that David Bauckham takes a suitable sheet on his travels, in case the duvet cover in his hotel room can’t be removed and used as a sheet. I usually take a lightweight shower handset and hose to temporarily replace the fixed shower heads used in so many hotels.
Stephen Ingamells
Ilford, London

Re David Bauckham’s letter, I invested in a wool-filled duvet earlier this year. It has kept me warm during the cold nights and I haven’t overheated on the couple of warm nights that we have had so far this year, so I am hoping that I have solved the problem. 
Diane Woodley
Westgate-on-Sea, Kent

Anyone needing advice on how to get a better night’s sleep might want to read this article. 

Meanwhile, columnist Arwa Mahdawi has a different sleep problem! 

“For a while, I thought a new baby might mean a new and improved me. Since you can’t hit the snooze button on a child, I assumed I’d be forced to become one of those people who jumps out of bed at the crack of dawn ready to seize the day. After a year of tough scientific study, however, I have discovered that eliteness eludes me. Being someone who is forced to get up early in the morning, it turns out, is very different from being a Morning Person.”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!