Some thoughts on World Book Day. Keep on reading!

Today is the day when proud mummies post on social media photos of their offspring dressed up as characters from books. It’s World Book Day. Well, it’s World Book Day in the UK and Ireland where it’s always the first Thursday in March. Elsewhere it’s the 23rd of April but apparently when World Book Day was established back in 1995 someone realised that here it would clash with schools closing for Easter holidays and so we went our own way. 

Actually, when you look into it you find that the idea goes back to 1926 when Vicente Clavel, then director of Cervantes publishing house in Barcelona,  decided it could be a way of honouring the writer of Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes, as well as boosting sales of books. It was first celebrated on 7 October 1926, Cervantes' birthday, before being moved to his death date, 23 April, in 1930. The celebration continues with great popularity in Catalonia, where it is referred to as Sant Jordi's Day (Sant Jordi, by the way, is Catalán for Saint George, a chap who gets around as patron saint of all sorts of places, not just England) or The Day of Books and Roses, when people exchange gifts of, yes, you’ve guessed it, books and roses!   

The 23rd of April is also the anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, the same date but not actually the same day as Cervantes as back then Spain and Britain worked on different calendars, but a convenient enough coincidence for UNESCO to declare it the date of World Book Day also known as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book. 

As far as I have been able to find out, dressing up was part of the day right from its UNESCO inauguration. When we started taking part here, I read that every child was given a £1 voucher towards buying a book. That wouldn’t go far towards buying a book now. There was then a move towards producing special £1 books for children. Goodness knows whether that continues nowadays. 

Some mummies, of course, do not post photos as they don’t allow photos of their offspring to go out into the public domain. Fair enough! Some mummies also dress their children up as characters from books children are unlikely to have heard of, let alone read: Agatha Christie characters or ladies from “The Thursday Murder Club”. 

It has always seemed to me that dressing up your tiny baby, under one year old, as a character from a book is more fun for the mother than for the baby. Most babies of that age don’t notice what they are wearing so long as they are comfortable. (Having said that, our daughter expressed preferences as soon as she was able to put two words together: at 18 months old tugging at the pretty dress a doting grandparent had given us and declaring, “No, not a dress!”) At two years old, however, having had stories read to them since they more or less from birth, our smallest grandchildren understood the idea of dressing up and would choose a favourite character, leading to some interesting costume invention. 

Granddaughter Number Four’s school this year has opted to have children turn a wooden spoon into a favourite book character. This seems to me to be an excellent idea as children can take a more active part in the creative process. Well, at any rate children like our seven year old can do so. 

On the downside, new research has shown that  more than a third of children in the UK cannot choose what they want to read, and one in five feel judged for what they do read.

“Children have told us that they think that reading choices are judged by the adults around them,” said Cassie Chadderton, CEO of World Book Day. “It discourages them, it puts them off reading for pleasure and by choice”.

The survey of 1,000 7- to 14-year-olds in the UK – conducted by consultancy Beano Brain in January – also asked children about their parents’ hobbies. Only 25% of children said their parents relax by reading at home, while 56% said their parents scroll on their phones and 52% watch TV. “Adults usually tell you to read, but then they go on their phones,” one 11-year-old “non-reader” told researchers. “My teachers and my dad do that!” There you go!

Then there’s the matter of libraries (which I have been praising in a recent blogpost). It seems that there is not a statutory requirement for schools to have a library. One in seven primary schools don’t, rising to one in four in disadvantaged areas. How do you develop a love of reading if you don’t have free access to books. One expert (I really don’t know who) said this: 

“At school they may have certain books that they’ve got to read,” whereas the library is “about the child really discovering its own interests”.

So children shouldn’t be criticised for what they choose to read, as our Grandson Number One once was for taking a factual book rather than fiction for a free-reading session at school.

Still on books, I read the other day that a school district somewhere in the USA has removed “To Kill a Mockingbird” from its schools’ reading list, because it “makes people uncomfortable”! Of course, it’s just possible that the book was meant to make people feel uncomfortable. 

Meanwhile, our very own bookworm, 20 year old Granddaughter Number Two, is currently enjoying “Jane Eyre”, sending us messages about how much she is enjoying it. Now ai need to find our copy of “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys, so that she can read the story from the viewpoint of the “mad woman in the attic”.

Keep on reading!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Blue sky days. “Holy” relics. Achieving step goals.

 For the third, or maybe even the fourth, day running we’ve woken up to a brilliant blue sky and sunshine. The air is still cold but there is considerable warmth in the sunshine. I could get used to this!

So for then first time in several weeks I got on my bike and cycled to Uppermill this morning. The Donkey Line itself was clear and mostly dry but the approach across the privately owned bit of land was still very much of a quagmire. Spring must be almost here though; in fact I think officially it has arrived. There are crocuses in profusion everywhere. 

Because I cycled, and maybe because I didn’t cycle quite far and hard enough, my Fitbit refuses to acknowledge that I have had any exercise today. I’ll have to go out walking again later. I confess to being just a little obsessive about getting my 10,000 seps a day. To that end I often take a slightly longer route home from the village, for example, just to up the step-count a little. However, that does not seem to be a bad thing, according to this article. Achieving the goal of 10,000 steps a day should help me dodge heart problems or stroke. And one of the things  they advise is getting off the bus a stop earlier than usual, just to increase your step-count.

I see that the sale of “holy” relics continues. This time it’s the booth in a New Jersey diner where Tony Soprano and family sat in the very last episode of The Sopranos, leaving us all uncertain as to whether mafia boss Tony Soprano had been shot or not. The owner of the diner expected to get maybe $10,000 for it, a sum that would have allowed him to refurbish his premises. In the event, he received $82,600. The death of the actor James Gandolfini must have added to its value as a collectors item. 

I wonder where you keep an item like a yellow diner table and red be bench seats. After all, when yo’ve paid $82,600 for the furniture you couldn’t just make a breakfast barb of it and use it on an everyday basis! And yet surely you would want to be able to admire it often and maybe sit there and make believe you were talking to Tony Soprano. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Ranting about oddness and unfairness of the modern world.

 Yesterday as we began our zoom Italian conversation class, one of our group was spluttering with indignation about Donald Trump having just had a victory with the Supreme Court ruling that states cannot ban him from the ballot, and that only Congress can decide who is allowed to stand for election. Our conversation was in danger of becoming seriously political. It’s not that we only ever talk about trivial stuff. Historical political stuff is fine but we try not to delve too deeply into contemporary issues in the interests of ensuring that everyone gets along. Maybe that seems a little shallow, but we’re a haphazard grouping of people and have so far resisted finding out if any of us are raving extremists of one kind or another. A common interest in Italian language and culture doesn’t make us all the same kind of political animal.

Thinking of political animals, here’s a link to the estimable Caroline Lucas having a little rant about Rishi Sunak and what she describes as the “shameless, dangerous speech” he made the other day about the dangers of letting extremists take over demonstrations, if not whole swathes of the country. She says “what Britain got was a masterclass in gaslighting. Sunak’s performance made a new art form of rank hypocrisy, as he pretended not to know that the very extremism he criticised was being actively driven by his party and peddled in his speech.”

At the end of the article we are informed that Caroline Lucas is the MP for Brighton Pavilion, which made me do a little double-take. Why does the Royal Pavilion (Grade 1 listed former royal residence located in Brighton, England. Beginning in 1787, it was built in three stages as a seaside retreat for George, Prince of Wales, who became the Prince Regent in 1811, and KingGeorge IV in 1820) merit an MP all of its own? It may well be a large building but hardly a constituency! Of course not! The constituency of that name is made up of the City of Brighton wards of Hanover and Elm Grove, Hollingdean and Stanmer (called Hollingbury and Stanmer before 2011), Patcham, Preston Park, Regency, St Peter's and North Laine, and Withdean.

This is the sort of nonsense that goes through my head. 

Caroline Lucas is a good person and does well to rant about the odd things going on in the world. 

Here is another odd thing going on (information courtesy of my German friend):

“GERMANY: BERLIN SCHOOLS ASKED TO DISTRIBUTE LEAFLET DESCRIBING THEN1948 NAKBA AS A ‘MYTH’

 

The brochure, aimed at high school students in Berlin’s Neukölln borough also claims that criticism of illegal Israeli settlements is antisemitic.”

Oh, boy!

Watching reports of events in Gaza, hearing about small babies dying before they have even really had time to be established as people, I found myself wondering, amazed, at he heartache those mothers must be going through. Back when life in Gaza was difficult, restricted but still relatively normal there must have been joy within families at the prospect of a new child. And then the women have had to give birth in impossible situations, knowing that the chances of their small miracle surviving into childhood let alone adulthood are slim indeed! 

Then his morning I read this article, looking at a problem that had not occurred to me, although it should have done if I’m any kind of feminist. Women, young and not so young, in Gaza continue to have periods. And they can’t nip to the local supermarket or chemists for sanitary products. In particular I can’t imagine the horror of being a young girl, at the age when just talking about periods is embarrassing, having to try desperately to find sanitary products and, even if she is lucky enough to locate them, living in overcrowded conditions with shared toilets. Another nightmare to deal with. 

While I’m ranting about unfairness, how about this in our own country:

“139,000 children in England are without a home.

Six people to one room. Families sharing beds. Sharing a kitchen with strangers. Doors with broken locks. No safety or security.

This is not a home, but it’s a reality for thousands of families in emergency temporary accommodation.

It's traumatising children and damaging their health.”

The world has gone seriously mad. However …

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Frost. Sunshine. Dandelions and bees. Tumbleweeds. A released hostage. And crocodile tears.

There was frost on the shed roof this morning. And there was a skim of ice on the millpond. The sticky mud on the path through the wooded area I run through most days was frozen into hard ruts. Later, hanging washing out in the garden, I discovered that there was a thick layer of ice on the water butt. Whether the washing will dry or just freeze remains to be seen. 

And yet, if you stand in a sheltered spot you can feel quite considerable warmth from the sun. It is in fact a beautiful day. The sky was completely clear when I got up but some cloud moved in later. But the stun is still shining. And yesterday I saw the first dandelion of 2024, well, the first one around here. The bees will be pleased.  P doubt we’ll be starting to see those notices pleasing with us not to spray weedkiller on the dandelions. As they are amongst the first flowers to bloom in the spring, the bees rely on them for a source of nectar. If they’ve been sprayed with weedkiller, then the bees die. As simple as that! As for me, I rather like dandelions, a bit of brightness cheering us all up. I don’t even mind the dandelion clocks   Sending their seeds blowing around. As children, we used to pretend to believe they were fairies, knowing full well what they really were.

Here’s a story about a town in Utah, USA, being over-run with tumbleweeds. It’s one of the classic Western scenes: an empty street in a small town somewhere in the Far West, with a clump of tumbleweed rolling along, and suspenseful music warning us that something dramatic, usually a confrontation between a couple of men with guns, is about to  take place. This was a bit different: “tumblemageddon” or vast amounts of tumbleweed blown into towns, burying cars blocking doorways. 

When we used to live in a small house in the valley between Delph and nearby Denshaw, on a couple of occasions we woke up to find we couldn’t immediately get out of the house because snow had drifted against the door. Once it was sleety rain that had blown against the whole door and then frozen into fantastic frost patterns. Like today, it was a fine sunny morning and when we opened the door the sheet of frosted sleet remained in place with the sun shining through it. Almost too beautiful to break, even to get out of then house. Of course, this predated mobile phones and so I did not snap an immediate photo. 

It must be quite different, though, tuiijopen your door snd find your way blocked by about 10 feet of tangled blown-around undergrowth. Some people had to wait to be rescued! 

Yesterday I came across this account by a released hostage, telling of her  captivity in Gaza. The headline reads:  ‘We were constantly in terror’: Israeli hostage tells of captivity in Gaza. 

And yet it is worth noting that she says her captors protected them: “the Hamas guards put mattresses over us on the floor to cover us, and then they covered us with their bodies to protect us from our own forces’ shooting.” “They kept on telling us they’re not going to harm us and that we were very important to them,” Maybe it was empty reassurance but it sounds as though their guards expected the hostages to be quickly released: “When Agam (one of her children) had a panic attack on day two of their underground confinement, one Hamas guard reassured her: “Tuesday, you’re back in Israel.” “ Note also how horrified she was by the destruction: “I saw a lot of devastation and destruction,” Almog-Goldstein said. “It made me feel terrible seeing such poverty. It was very difficult to see that. It was not a great feeling of: ‘Oh great, we Israelis showed them.’”

And finally, here’s something about crocodile rptears from the estimable Michal Rosen:

'Time for your lesson in ancient literature, sir,' said the King's tutor.

'O really?' said the King.

'Yes,' said the tutor, 'do you know the story about the crocodiles?'

'Possibly,' said the King.

'The ancients noticed that crocodiles lay in the sun and then ate people,' said the tutor.

'Of course,' said the King.

'Ah but then they noticed that the crocodiles wept,' said the tutor.

'Yes, I had heard that,' said the King.

'What do we learn from this?' said the tutor.

'I don't know,' said the King.

'We learn,' said the tutor, 'that it's possible to cry about the people killed by our own actions.'

'But that would be hypocritical,' said the King.

'Perhaps,' said the tutor, 'but some people believe in the tears and think that that person is doing something to stop the killing. ' 

'You mean some people would go so far as to put on a false show of crying?' said the King.

'It's possible,' said the tutor.

'I can't think of anyone doing such a thing,' said the King.

Applicable to a lot of stuff going on all over the world. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

In praise of local libraries. Who is an extremist? Possible ceasefire developments. Airdrops.

 My friend Colin was waxing nostalgic about old-style libraries in his blog yesterday.  He wrote: 

“It’s a long time since I’ve been in a UK library. Indeed, it’s probably 15 years since I was last in Pv city’s library. The one here in Heald Green is probably representative of how these are now in the UK – machines for taking books out and returning them. And for taking your cash once it’s told you how much you owe for being late in doing the latter. All very efficient, but soulless. Especially for someone whose step-grandad was a librarian in a place I loved to visit as a kid.”

Well, in an attempt to reduce the number of books we store in our house, I’ve been making use of our local public library quite a lot over the last few years. There’s a moderately sized library in Oldham town centre, with an art gallery as well. Oh, and a new modern addition, a library shop where you can buy art work and jewellery and greetings cards, supposedly made by local artist. 

And there are smaller branches in the Saddleworth villages. Our local library in Delph is mostly staffed by volunteers. Both it and the one in Uppermill, the ones I am most acquainted with, have the mechanised business of borrowing and returning books but it doesn’t fine you for overdue books. In fact the central Oldham library doesn’t fine you either, although they do send reminders. The staff at the Uppermill branch are friendly and helpful. It has a small computer section. I regularly see people beavering away there. They also have a lovely children’s section where they organise activities in school holidays and where children can take part in a reading challenge. Both my smallest grandchildren have library cards and will happily spend an hour (more if not dragged away) choosing books, reading books, examining things. It’s a fine old building that has nooks and crannies to examine. Their selection of books may not be fantastic but they will order items from elsewhere on request. I’m all in favour of our library. 

Moving on to other matters, my German friend posted this on her Facebook page yesterday, or maybe the day before:

“This gets right under my skin as a German:

"No Other Land, won the documentary prize at the Berlin film festival this week; in his acceptance speech, co-director Yuval Abraham called for a ceasefire, which caused uproar in Germany. As Abraham told us: “To stand on German soil as the son of Holocaust survivors and call for a ceasefire – and then to be labelled antisemitic, is not only outrageous, it is also literally putting Jewish lives in danger.” 

(Guardian 02.03.2024)”

It’s a strange world where Jewish people can be accused of being anti-semitic. It’s a strange world where female MPs in the UK need extra security because of threats to their safety. It’s a strange world where we find our government taking extra measures to make it more difficult to protest about things, anything! 

My German friend, a small person (5 foot 1 on a good day), who couldn’t be a threat to anyone, has been going on as many pro-Palestine marches and rallies as she can. I guess that makes her an extremist and a member of a mob!

Today comes this news: 

"Truce possible ‘within 24 to 48 hours’ if Israel accepts demands - Hamas official:

A senior Hamas official told AFP that if Israel were to meet its demands - which include a military withdrawal from Gaza and stepped-up humanitarian aid - this would “pave the way for an agreement within the next 24-48 hours”.

Envoys from the US, Qatar and Hamas have reportedly already arrived in Cairo, as all sides have been scrambling to agree a truce before Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month that begins on March 10/11."

Fingers crossed that they manage to sort it out.

Meanwhile the USA is airdropping aid to Gaza (not Ukraine!) because lorries are not getting through. I saw a very telling cartoon which showed missiles and bombs raining down, interspersed with the odd loaf of bread! The amounts that can be airdropped are tiny. The USA should be pressing its friend Israel to allow proper aid to get through. We shall see. 

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone! 

Successful bargain hunting.

Whenever my son and family come to stay at some point my daughter-in-law and I have a wander around Uppermill, popping into the various would-be trendy but rather expensive boutiques, the gift shops (aka tat shops) and, of course, the charity shops. Last time, we were accompanied by Granddaughter Number Two who found a pair of high-heeled, pointy-toed fashion boots in her size, clearly unworn as there was not the slightest scuff mark on the sole. She paid a grand total of £7. My daughter-in-law found a faux fur jacket in her size, very stylish, selling at £25. We all modelled it, we admired our very chic look, some of us decided we would never go anywhere that demanded such a jacket and then my son bought it for his wife. Second hand books and small toys were purchased for the small people. 

In America they don’t call them charity shops but thrift shops. Here’s the story of an American of Italian extraction who overcame her initial reluctance to buy stuff from a thrift shop. She must have associated a certain social stigma with buying secondhand stuff. Having caught the thrift shop bug, one day she purchased a couple of plates decorated with apparent Picasso pictures. When she investigated and had them evaluated they turned out to be the genuine article. Eventually she sold them at auction for $34,000! All I can say is WOW! 

I’ve found the occasional pretty piece of pottery in such shops but never anything that might have me rushing to the Antiques Road Show to see if i have found treasure. Maybe they have a better class of thrift shop in New York. The one where the writer found her treasure trove sounds a though it is not o much a charity shop, like the ones we have around here, as a thriving business with sections for different categories of goods. A different thing altogether.

The only place I can think of that compares around here is T K Maxx, which sells new goods, branded goods, at ridiculously reduced prices. It’s rather overwhelming in its range and its haphazard layout. My daughter and ai have often commented that if you find there a bargain that you really love you should buy it immediately, no hesitation, because if you go away to think about it you may never find it again. 

There you go.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone! 

Plans foiled by strikers and the weather. Stories from Palestine.

There I was, all set to go into Manchester, go to a couple of shops and then meet some friends for lunch. Then my phone pinged a message to me: one of the friends had just discovered that there were no trains running from Bolton, where she lives, to Manchester: rail workers on strike! It was one of those moments when you have feelings of solidarity for the striking workers but still feel peeved that your plans have been disrupted. But we contacted the third member of our lunch party and rearranged it for next Friday - fingers crossed for no further disruption. And here I am, all dressed up and nowhere to go!

Mind you, it’s a miserable day to go anywhere. As I spoke to my Bolton friend and she commented that it had just started snowing over there, I looked out of the window and saw that the snow had arrived here too. It was quite heavy at that point but now it’s just wet and sleety, nothing picturesque going on. Granddaughter Number One has been protesting because her weather app tells her “2° - Real feel -7°”. Certainly when I stuck my head out of the door to bring in the milk delivery it felt rather colder that the 2° my weather app assures me we have here. 

Out in the wider world France is calling for an investigation into the reported attack on people frying to get food from an aid convoy in Gaza:

“France calls for 'an independent probe' into circumstances in which Israeli troops fired at crowd seeking humanitarian aid

France has called for an independent investigation into the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza who were gathered to receive humanitarian aid on Thursday.

Stéphane Séjourné, the minister for Europe and foreign affairs, told France Inter:

We will ask for explanations, and there will have to be an independent probe to determine what happened. France calls things by their name. This applies when we designate Hamas as a terrorist group, but we must also call things by their name when there are atrocities in Gaza.

AFP reports Séjourné said his country would not apply “double standards”, and said that if an investigation should conclude that the Israeli shooting was a war crime, “then obviously this becomes a matter for the judiciary”.

Israel’s military has denied shooting into large crowds of hungry people and said most were killed in a crush or run over by trucks trying to escape. A spokesperson said Israeli soldiers only fired at a small group that moved away from the trucks and threatened a checkpoint. More than a hundred Palestinians were killed.”

Mainstream media here is now sometimes reporting events going on from a Palestinian viewpoint. Maybe reports of armed “settlers” attacking Palestinians who are going about their everyday lives have tipped the balance. Here is a link to an article about such events. 

Palestinians living in other countries, such as here in the UK, must be desperately worried about family left behind on that war-torn country. Worry mixed with guilt for not being there perhaps. Here is a link to an account by a Palestinian woman, a qualified radiologist now looking after her small children, married to a surgeon, a Palestinian presumably helping to keep our NHS going. She took her children to visit her parents in August last year and found herself trapped there when the conflict started. Fortunately her husband was able to have her name and their children’s names added to a list for evacuation, but her Palestinian family remains behind in a refugee camp. She says, “I feel guilty every moment. How can I be happy that I’m safe while they are not?” And her children still cover their ears when they go to bed for fear of hearing bombs and shelling. 

If Netanyahu succeeds in driving all the Palestinians out of the country, if the state of Palestine ceases to exist, what will be the nationality of people like Farah Morad, the writer of that account? 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!