Out and about today. Bluebells. And Gaza in the news again.

 Today I got up fairly early and ran round the village. It was quite cool but not as cold as yesterday. The wind had dropped. A friend I ran into told me there had been frost earlier. I wasn’t up and about to see that.

Later I went to have lunch with an old friend. This was a second try as last week she double-booked herself and forgot to turn up for lunch to celebrate her own birthday. We set the world to rights … well, our bit of the world. 

Later still, as the sun was shining and it was by now quite warm, Phil and I went out to walk the bluebell woods. At last they were quite magnificent. Well worth a walk. 

Sorry. Still no photo! 

Skimming the news later I read that an 87-year-old holocaust survivor, Stephen Kapos, has been called to a police station to be interviewed under caution of protesting the Gaza genocide.

According to Jewish Voice for Labour:

“As a small boy in Hungary in 1944, Kapos remembers his mother and aunts cutting out yellow stars and sewing them onto his clothes. He remembers hiding from the Arrow Cross fascist movement, which rounded up Jews, shot them and dumped them into the Danube.

He remembers the clandestine shuffle between safe houses in Buda, when Jewish boys were spirited from one place to another to avoid detection from the local SS officers as the advancing Russian army approached and fighting engulfed them.

He remembers the panic of his aunt, who was in charge of a group of boys pretending to be war orphans, and had been invited to sit down for a mournful Christmas meal with Wehrmacht officers.”

No comment.

Meanwhile I read that the far-right Israeli finance minister has been speaking at a conference in the occupied West Bank settlement of Ofra. He told them “Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to … the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.

He recently said that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza even if there is another hostage deal.

On the other hand, a senior Hamas official has said that they are not interested in further talks on a new Gaza ceasefire while Israel continues what he called its “starvation war”,

Israel cut off all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza nine weeks ago and later resumed its military offensive, saying it was putting pressure on Hamas to release hostages.

But Bassem Naim said there was "no point in any negotiations" while the blockade remained in place.

That sounds like a stalemate. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Hacking. Power cuts. Phone theft. Society breakdown? And Gaza.

Maybe it’s because April was mostly sunny and warm, even hot towards the end of the month, that May is so disappointing. Well, disappointing so far anyway, but we’re only 5 days in and there is still time for it to wake its ideas up. The last few days have seen a serious drop in temperature and today, as I ran round the village, I was struck by how cold the wind is. I know May can still be chilly around here but we had all got used to warm / hot sunshine. 

On my run round the village this morning I popped into the co-op to buy tomatoes. They didn’t have any. In fact there was a notice telling us they were having some supply issues. There was another notice too, just inside the entrance:

                             Cash only.

                            IT problems.

               Sorry for the inconvenience.

It seems they have been hacked. The self-service machines weren’t working. The card readers weren’t working. The ATM wasn’t working. They couldn’t even read my coop card. (The adverts urging  people to join the Co-op tell us that the store is ‘Owned by you. Right by you.” I hope that doesn’t make me liable when things go wrong.)

I hear that Marks & Spencer has also been hacked recently. They told employees in some of their stores to stay at home as they could not open.  There has been the huge electricity outage in Spain and Portugal. Our local Metrolink tram system has been having problems with electricity supply to its overhead lines. Our bank is sending out warnings about phone theft with advice on how to keep your phone safe. This is because so many use their phone for everything: paying for all kinds of things from travel to chewing gum; keeping up with the latest news; searching for stuff on the Internet; buying and selling stuff - Vintage or otherwise. Thieves are stealing phones, not so much for the phone per se as for the information contained in the phone.

Maybe the breakdown of society is underway!

I shall keep up my small personal campaign to use cash rather than card as much as possible, for security as well as to help the small shopkeeper. I heard just the other day that a huge percentage of people in this country never carry cash, or even cards. All they need is their phone! 

And, as I have said before, maybe we should start to follow the advice that apparently the French government sent out recently and start to stockpile basic survival necessities. 

In the news I saw two items giving contrasting attitudes to Gaza.

On the one hand:

“Israeli ministers approved a plan to capture all of Gaza and remain there – two officials say

Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan to capture all of the Gaza Strip and remain there for an unspecified amount of time, two officials said, AP reports.

The plan was approved today and is part of Israel’s efforts to increase pressure on Hamasto free hostages and negotiate a ceasefire on Israel’s terms.

The two officials said the plan also includes the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to southern Gaza  The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing military plans.”

And on the other:

“One of Pope Francis’s popemobiles is being transformed into a mobile health clinic for children in the Gaza Strip, fulfilling one of his final wishes, the Vatican said yesterday.

The vehicle, used by the late pontiff during his 2014 visit to the Holy Land, is being outfitted with diagnostic and emergency medical equipment to help young patients in the Palestinian territory, where health services have been devastated by the Israeli invasion.”

Food for thought!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Blossom. Migrating plants and animals. Modern madness.

 Suddenly the hawthorn is in flower. Almost overnight hawthorn bushes and trees have not only grown leaves - I swear that a week ago they were still bare - but blossom as well. Travelling home from Oldham on the bus yesterday I went past a hawthorn tree in full pink blossom, one of nature’s rarities (around here anyway)  which I always look out for. The horse chestnuts have also got their candle-like blossom, developing again from one day to the next. 

Looking at this article, which I had bookmarked and forgotten about, I read that horse chestnuts are not native to this country. I went and looked it up as horse chestnut trees have always seemed quintessentially English to me. But it seems they arrived from Turkey in the late 16th century - quite a long time ago then! . We call them “horse” chestnuts because when the leaves fall off the trees the stalk leaves a horse-shoe shaped scar. And secondly, conkers used to be ground and fed to horses to relieve them of coughs. Crushing the conkers releases certain medicinal chemicals which are beneficial for horses but, for other smaller animals, are actually poisonous. There you go. 

Other aliens include grey squirrels,  ring-necked parakeets, rhododendrons (rhododendra?), the dreaded Japanese knotweed and the ubiquitous Himalayan balsam. I know grey squirrels are held at least partly responsible for the decline in the red squirrel population, but I quite like the grey squirrels we see around here. The rhododendron bushes are a pleasant addition to our local landscape, with their rather exotic-looking flowers in a range of colours, just blooming nicely right now. We don’t have ring-necked parakeets around here to my knowledge, nor do I know of any cases of the dreaded knotweed close to home but we have rather too much Himalayan balsam. 

At the moment we also have lots of wild garlic. According to Wikipedia, the “starry white flowers of wild garlic are a pleasing sight in spring, and this little woodland plant is also valued for its edible leaves and wildlife benefits. However, its spreading habit can make it unwelcome in some areas of a garden.” Rather like the balsam in that respect then. 

(There would be a photo but I am still receiving this message: Sorry! We could not copy your photos to your blog. Most annoying!) 

Anyway, the above-mentioned article suggests we are moving too fast around the world, inadvertently moving plants and animals all over the place. On the one hand, as I mentioned recently, we build walls and barriers, preventing the natural migration of some animals, while on the other we accidentally spread plants and insects, and even birds and animals! Strange! 

Equally strange, in my opinion, are the folk who walk around talking on their mobile phones non-stop, sometimes using earbuds and no evident device, almost convincing me that they are raving mad and talking to themselves, or consulting Google-maps on he go, or reading something on the tiny screen. Often they don’t see you until the last moment and I have often only narrowly avoided collisions. Here’s Michael Rosen on that subject:

“There are two health hazards I cope with: people walking very fast towards me while looking at their phones. And people walking very fast behind me with wheelie suit cases.

The phone people I can mostly deal with. I do a little sideways shimmy and they whoosh past, and all I get is that express train breeze washing over me. Sometimes the breeze is full of armpit, but hey, that's better than being butted in the guts by a phone moving at speed.

The wheelie suitcase people are much harder to avoid. Now that I'm blind and deaf on my left side, if they're coming at me from that side, I don't get any kind of peripheral warning, no sense that there is someone about to overtake me. All that happens is that, out of nowhere, I feel that someone is hurling a big brick at my lower leg. Then a second later, someone is by my side, giving me a foul look, and tutting because my leg has been in the way of their wheelie suitcase. 

But there is now a third street health hazard. The person with both the wheelie suitcase AND the phone. If they're coming at me head on, they're taking up more space than the usual phone people so I'm not fast enough or agile enough to do my shimmy  in time. I do the shimmy but the big brick that's hurtling towards me, hits me full on from the front.

There are now two reasons for the person to be pissed off with me: one, I'm in the way of their big brick. two, I've interrupted their phone call. Of course I apologise over and over again. Sorry, sorry, sorry I was in the way. So sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

Maybe he needs to move away from London. Around here we have the phone hazard but not the wheelie suitcase hazard.

Finally, more seriously, here is another bit of modern madness, a more pernicious one in my opinion. When a report of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes appear in newspapers there is almost always a paragraphp like this:

“The war was triggered by a surprise attack launched by Hamas into Israel on 7 October 2023. Militants killed more than 1,200 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.”

It’s as if they feel the need to remind us of the common mistaken belief that this all started in 2023. Without saying as much they want to imply that Gaza brought this upon themselves! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Doing your job properly. Noisy phone users.

 There’s been a lot of kerfuffle about Reform UK winning a sizeable number of seats in local council elections in various parts of the country. Maybe it will be a wake-up call to Mr Starmer to make the Labour Party do Labour Party things and have Labour Party policies. The fact remains, however, that Reform UK still has only a handful of seats in Westminster.

In most professional occupations, if you fail to be present for the majority of meetings, you lose your job. Maybe that should apply to Members of Parliament, not just Mr Farage but to others as well. I am always amazed at the emptiness of the chamber when you see a shot of it on TV. I am aware that MPs (i like to think that it is most of them) do a lot of work in their constituency as well. I don’t think that applies to Mr Farage though!

On the subject of MPs, I hear that the Liberal Democrats are proposing a bill to ban people from playing loud music on their phones in public places. I see a lot of people out running with-ear buds or even huge ear phones. It’s as if they can’t be out and about without listening to something. What’s wrong with listening to nature? Mind you, I think I have yet to hear music blasting out as I make my rather sedate a the local bridle paths. I did almost have to run down a lady (with ear buds) with my bicycle the other day as she failed to hear my much praised, much admired bell until the very last moment. No harm done, fortunately.

We have had the occasional argument while remonstrating with noisy phone-music perpetrators! It’s not always music. There are people who cannot have a phone conversation without shouting, as if they don’t believe phones work if you don’t use top volume. You hear some awful conversations, details of court cases and all sorts of scandal! We’ve yet to remonstrate with such people. 

Anyway, the Liberal Democrats want there to be law against it. A good idea but hard to enforce. Bring back the bus inspectors! The drivers have a hard enough time without having to police mobile phone use as well. This is especially true around here where some of the buses follow extraordinary routes and have to slalom between parked  vehicles.

.

Today they have had extend their routes, making a long detour to allow for repairs a local viaduct. Not even pedestrians are allowed to walk under the viaduct, presumably for fear of falling masonry! This last is rather a shame as it’s a fine day for a stroll along the canal towpaths.

Safety first! So it goes!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Birthdays. Blockades. Music and arts in schools. Grammar.

 I think we might have finished celebrating birthdays for the time being. There seem to have been rather a lot of them in April. Yesterday, 1st of May, we belatedly sang happy birthday to Grandson Number One, who was 20 on Tuesday. I made a cake, of course. When I told Granddaughter Number Four that I didn’t actually have 20 candles to put on his cake and that he would now have to be an adult and just have one token candle, she expressed some concern: “You do have 9 candles, though, don’t you, Grandma?” She was clearly thinking ahead to September when her own 9th birthday comes around again. I do have nine candles! 

So we had a bit of a birthday tea, sang happy birthday, watched him blow  out his one candle and then went for a family stroll round the village. By then it was around 7.30 but it was still very warm. I hear that the temperature reached 29.3 in South London. The temperature wasn’t that high here but there was a definite feeling of summer: that stillness that you get on long hot days. 

Today began cooler and cloudy but the sun was coming out by midday. We also have a cool breeze. 

A couple of months ago Israel imposed a strict blockade on Gaza, allowing no food, water, medical supplies to enter the country, before beginning airstrikes once again, breaking the ceasefire. Last night, in the middle of the night drones attacked a humanitarian aid-ship  headed for Gaza, disabling it in international waters off Malta. The ship belonged to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. Here’s a link to an article about the midnight attack.

At one point the report tells us that ‘a previous Freedom Flotilla launched from southern Turkey in 2021 ended in bloodshed when Israeli forces stormed the Mavri Marmara vessel, killing 10 people and wounding 28, a fact that seems to have disappeared into a kind of memory hole, conveniently forgotten so that we could regard current events as something new. 

Here’s a short recap about that occasion: 

“The Gaza flotilla raid was a military operation by Israel against six civilian ships of the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" on 31 May 2010 in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea. Nine of the flotilla passengers were killed during the raid, with thirty wounded. Ten Israeli soldiers were wounded, one seriously. The exact sequence of events is contested, in part due to the IDF's confiscation of the passengers' photographic evidence. The flotilla, organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, was carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials, intending to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.”

The problem isn’t new. It’s been going on for decades. 

Here’s a link to an article about ancient Indian gems up for auction. There seem to be two things for discussion here: how right is it to put up for auction precious things that were stolen in the colonial past? and, is there not a certain amount of superstition in believing the gems to be “imbued with the spirit of Buddha”? 

Something else stolen is music (and arts in general, for that matter) in state schools. Here’s an article about Sheku Kanneh-Mason, a cellist and one time winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year award. He tells about how his state school in Nottingham was full of music when he was a pupil there. Then the school was subsumed into a multi-academy trust, funding cuts followed and the focus on music was lost. The cellist himself, though, donated his £3,000 BBC Young Musician of the Year award to the school so that cello lessons could continue. 

If we lose the arts from our state schools we will deprive masses of children of access to all sorts of things and we deprive the country of possible future artists, musicians, actors, writers and so on. There’s more to education than reading, writing and ‘rithmetic’.

Judging by the grammar in this extract from a recent report of a holocaust memorial ceremony, I’m not aomsure we’re doing very well on the reading and writing bit: 

“The delegation took part in the international commemorations at the main Obelisk where Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner spoke, and both her and Lord Coaker laid wreaths.”

Oh dear!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Out and about. Human behaviour. The value of kindness. Lost on Mount Fuji. And amusing words.

This morning I got up early to walk to the doctors’ surgery for a routine matter. It was a fine morning to be out and about early.

At the surgery I came across contrasting examples of human behaviour. 

First the positive, outgoing stuff: a young lady (any age in her twenties or thirties, I suppose - it’s very hard to tell these days) told me how nice my trousers were. (We laughed at the fact that I had had to chop an inch or two off the bottom and re-hem them. So called “regular” trousers are much too long in present fashion and ai can’t be doing with trousers that scrape along the pavement, not at all practical in our usual weather, and not even in the unusual sunshine we have at the moment. She sympathised and said she has the same problem - short legs! Well, no, in neither case are the legs disproportionately short; it’s just that they make trousers very long.) Then my doctor asked if I had had my hair cut and said how nice it looked. Two compliments in one morning: not at all bad!

Then the negative side of things. I came out of my doctor’s room and headed for the reception desk to arrange something. A small amount of chaos was going on there. A queue had formed, as it often does, despite the surgery having an electronic, computerised check-in for those with appointments. There was a certain amount of shouting going on, centred around a rather dishevelled elderly gentleman with a walking frame and a couple of rather bossy people.

It transpired that the old chap had come into the surgery, looked around and gone straight to the head of the queue to ask for information of some kind. The couple, who could not called young but less old than the dishevelled chap, were telling him off, pointing out that there WAS a queue, that THEY had been waiting patiently (which I doubt, given how grumpy they were) and he had come along and PUSHED IN, and at his age he SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER! When the old gent something about this being his first time in the surgery and that he had been told to report to reception, they set about him again, exclaiming in amazement that HE WAS NOT EVEN FROM AROUND HERE! They went on and on, berating the old chap while the receptionist tried to sort out his needs. 

Eventually the receptionist found out that old chap should have been in Greenfield, a few miles down the road, not in Uppermill at all. Could she call him a taxi, the old chap asked. No problem! Well, yes, because the angry couple now exclaimed about his expecting the receptionist to be a taxi service too! I had to bite my tongue as a part of me wanted to tell the couple (who seemed to be about my own age) that at their age they should know better than to go on and on and on in that fashion to a rather confused and not very mobile person. But I kept quiet, probably thus avoiding a similar tongue-lashing!

Another member of the queue told him his taxi was waiting and yet another made sure he knew where he was going and helped him deal with the doors. A little kindness goes a long way!

Here’s a link to an article about what’s wrong with shouting at children. I think the same goes for shouting at old people, or indeed at anyone in your queue!

I went on my way, did a bit of shopping and caught the bus home

Here’s a story about a student who was rescued from the slopes of Mount Fuji, Japan … not once but twice: 

“A university student has been rescued from the slopes of Mount Fuji of twice in the space of a week – the second time during an attempt to retrieve his mobile phone.

The hapless climber, a 27-year-old Chinese national who has not been named, was airlifted from Japan’s highest mountain last week, only to be the subject of a second search four days later.

It emerged that he had returned to the scene of his first rescue to retrieve his phone, Japanese media reported.

The student, who lives in Japan, was found on Saturday by another off-season climber on a trail more than 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) above sea level.

“He was suspected of having altitude sickness and was taken to hospital,” a police spokesperson said on Monday.”

That’s how important en influential our mobile phones are! 

And now, here is a list of words to pronounce as if they were the names of famous ancient Greeks - think Sophocles, Androcles, and so on:

Articles    Barnacles   Bicycles   Chronicles   Icicles   Monocles (clearly then older brother of Spectacles)    Obstacles   Particles   Tentacles   Vehicles   and   Ventricles.

Isn’t language fun! Enjoy them!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!