Another ‘Day’, another celebration. Works of art. The continuing madness,

 Among other things, yesterday was Beer Day Britain. Who knew? Certainly not I. Here’s something about that particular bit of nonsense:

“Beer Day Britain is an annual celebration on June 15th for all beer lovers and it celebrates all beer including traditional ales, mainstream lagers, and limited edition craft beer and everything in between no matter where it is brewed or who owns the brewing company. 

June 15th is significant because that is also the date Magna Carta was sealed in 1215. The great charter mentions ale in Article 35.

‘Let there be throughout our kingdom a single measure for wine and a single measure for aleand a single measure for corn, namely 'the London quarter'.

Ale was so important in England in 1215 that it was cited in one of the most significant legal documents in history. Today beer and pubs are still central to British life and seven out of 10 drinks sold in a pub are beer.

There you go. Of course, in centuries past people drank ale because the water was not always very safe to drink. Just in case you think that Beer Day is an ancient tradition, it seems we have only been celebrating Beer Day Britain annually on June 15th since 2015. The main focus of the day is the National Cheers To Beer that takes place at 7 pm when people also sing the Cheers To Beer anthem co-written by Peyton.

 

I didn’t hear any singing from the pub next door at 7pm yesterday. Maybe nobody reminded them. 

I came across this interesting photo, looking for all the world like the kind of thing you might find in a Barbara Hepworth exhibition. Apparently the large stone is a “hag stone”. Of course, I had to look it up:

“What Are Hag Stones?

A Hag Stone, often referred to as an Adder Stone, is a unique type of rock characterized by a naturally formed hole piercing straight through it. These stones have been shrouded in mystique for centuries, with many cultures attributing magical qualities to them. It’s said that possessing a Hag Stone could grant one the power to cure venomous snake bites or to peer through the veil of enchantment, revealing the true form of witches or fairies when gazed upon through the stone’s aperture.”

This one seems to have inspired the finder of the stone to make a work of art:

“Hard to not balance this very specific hagstone once it found me, as I’ve only seen one other like it in the world, 8 years ago on a karst mountain in rural China. I balanced that one then and felt a need to balance this one now, despite being nearly too heavy to place atop any complexity..  thus intuitively ended up keeping this one simple, both as a physical and design constraint, especially considering the round rocks below are soft sandstone, as well as building with collaborative intent, while here in Lancashire UK. 

The curved side rock followed me from downstream for no apparent reason at the time, but became a perfect inclusion to amplify negative space. The round rock on top of it functions to counterbalance / lean it closer to the core, amplifying visual mass and dialogue of the parts.”

Unfortunately I don’t have a name for the artist, just this: # gravity glue. 

On more serious matters, in the wider world the madness continues and now Israeli women and children are also being killed. Here’s a Michael Rosen comment on that, or rather on how that is being reported:

“The big moral question being sorted out in the newsrooms: Is a dead Israeli worth the same as a dead Palestinian or a dead Iranian? Mostly the answer is no, an Israeli is worth much more than a Palestinian or an Iranian. 

This kind of non-equivalence is not known in maths where 1 = 1 = 1. But this isn't maths. This is the news.”

Meanwhile people are still starving in Gaza, but a lot of media attention has been drawn away from what is still going on there. 

And Zarah Sultana MP has been reminding us about the state of things: 

“The Iraq playbook is back & the media won’t question it.

Iran has no nuclear weapons. israel - on trial for genocide - does. Iran signed the NPT& allows IAEA inspections. Israel hasn’t - and its leaders face ICC arrest warrants.

Beware of politicians beating the drums of war”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Remembering Grenfell. Calling for votes. No Kings demonstrations. Oh, and some cheerful nonsense.

 It’s eight years yesterday since the Grenfell Tower fire. The tower is about to be demolished at last but while it’s been standing it has been a strongly visible reminder of what happened, a reminder that people in other similar blocks are still waiting for cladding to be removed and replaced. 

“There is the fear that once that tower comes down, they’ll be forgotten,” said Nina Mendy, whose aunt, Mary Mendy, and cousin, Khadija Saye, died in their flat on the 20th floor. “It’s the uncertainty of what next year a memorial will look like. It’s like we’ve been told what’s going to happen, rather than been consulted – it’s almost like being a child.”

Survivor David Benjamin, who was in his girlfriend’s flat on the fourth floor at the time of the fire, said that eight years on from the tragedy, he hoped that “people would remember that it wasn’t just a building – it was our home”.

There is going to be a memorial but the fear is that there will be too long a gap between demolition of the tower and the establishment of a permanent memorial might be too long. Survivor Antonio Roncolato, who lived on the 10th floor, said, “I feel that the time has come for the tower to be taken down. But for me it’s important there is a plan in place – that the tower is not dismantled and then the ground remains sealed off for a year. For me, it’s very important that events like this take place and that we keep breathing down the necks of our politicians to make sure that the recommendations from the public inquiry are implemented.”

It’s amazing how slowly some things move. 

As tension in Iran and Israel mounts, and our chancellor has apparently told Sky News that UK military could “potentially” be used to defend Israel, Zarah Sultana MP once again appeals for more sensible action: 

“If the UK government wants to defend Israel militarily, put it to a vote in Parliament.

Let the country see which MPs support a genocidal state.”

We need more MPs like Zarah Sultana.

Here’s an ancient quotation from John Lennon:

“Working class people around the world have no innate desire to go to war with each other. They have to be conned into it by sociopaths who will profit from it.”

And here’s one from the late, great Kurt Vonnegut: 

"You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."

In the USA, as well as having the US Army 250th Anniversary Parade, which coincided with Mr Trump’s 79th birthday yesterday, there were huge demonstrations nationwide known as the No Kings protests, also No Kings Day and No Dictators Day. The protests were aimed at opposing the policies and actions of Mr Trump’s administration and follow days of demonstrations against ICE raids in Los Angeles and other cities. 

The No Kings theme was created by the 50501 movement.  50501 is short for "50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement”; it is a grassroots political organization founded to protest the policies and actions he second Donald Trump administration. The group organized several nationwide demonstrations starting on February 5, 2025, with anti-Trump rallies. Critics and activists compared Trump to an absolute monarch: hence the name No Kings. Its message: "We reject authoritarianism. We reject fear. We reject tyrants.”

Here’s a photo of the demonstrations in Philadelphia.

And an ironic dog protest: 

On a lighter note, here’s a bit of Spike Milligan:

Smiling is infectious

You catch it like the flu

 When someone smiled at me today

I started smiling too

I walked around the corner

And someone saw me grin

When he smiled I realised

I had passed it on to him

I thought about the smile

And then realised its worth

A single smile like mine

Could travel round the world

So if you feel a smile begin

Don’t leave it undetected

Start an epidemic

And get the world infected.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Whit Walks then and now. Keeping up traditions in a crazy world. The possibility of drought.

After my comments yesterday on how few children seemed to be involved in the Whit Walks in our village, I found some old photos of Whit Walks from years ago, with lots of children dressed in traditional white.

There are also a couple of photos showing how traditionally it rained on their parade. 

Maybe there are fewer children involved nowadays because we have an aging population in most pf the villages. Also perhaps it’s also because families with young children are priced out of houses around here. 

We walked into the village in the afternoon yesterday and saw bands that walked in

played their obligatory piece for judging

and then left the village via the bridge that featured long ago in the film “Brassed Off”.

Out and about collecting small children from school earlier this week, I noticed that it seems to be well-dressing time again, at least in nearby Greenfield. The Delph well-dressers have done nothing so far. In neither case is there any sign of a well, just the dressing. 

But in a world that seems to be going crazy, we are keeping up traditions. 

After a quite hot and sunny day yesterday, today is rather muggy and very dull. It even tried to rain on me as ai ran round the village. And although we have had bits of sunshine, it did rain quite heavily in the late morning. However, according to this article, despite the rain we have had over the last week or so, Yorkshire has bow joined the Northwest of England as a declared drought area. The reservoirs are lower than they should be for the time of year. 

And, according to some reports, it’s not going to get much better. In fact we may be due for a hot summer. We shall see. All the rain has done is encourage the crop of buttercups in our back garden … which now needs cutting once again. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

The 13th: superstitious nonsense? Whit Walks and brass bands. Elsewhere: further dangerous chaos.

 Friday the 13th - supposedly unlucky, but not in Spain where the unlucky day is Tuesday the 13th: martes y trece. Friday the 13th is considered unlucky, I am told, because of Christ being crucified on Good Friday. Tuesday/martes has connections with the god of war. I think thirteen is unlucky because of Judas, the thirteenth disciple, the one who betrayed Christ. Tuesday is a bad day all round in Spain. There is an old saying “En martes ni te cases, ni te embarques, ni de tu casa te apartes.” In English, this translates as “On Tuesday, don’t marry, don’t start a journey nor leave your house.”, adding to the thought that Tuesdays aren’t always the best day! And for the really superstitious there’s actually a real phobia called ‘Trezidavomartiofobia’ (fear of Tuesday 13th), causing an uncontrollable fear of leaving the house and coming into contact with others!

A friend of mine has her birthday today - fortunately she is not superstitious, at least as far as I know. Having your birthday on the 13th must be hard on the superstitious because it must fall on a Friday, or a Tuesday, at regular intervals. 

As well as being Friday the 13th, today is Whit Friday, the closest we have to a fiesta around here. There are Sunday School “walks” in the morning, with Sunday School banners and the local brass band. 

In the afternoon and evening there is the Band Contest, with brass bands from all over the country, in some cases from other countries, move from Saddleworth village to Saddleworth village, marching into each village in formation, playing as they march, and then playing a designated piece in a designated spot to be awarded points. And, of course, points mean prizes,  or trophies! People came from far and wide to see and hear the bands, and to drink beer and eat street food!

So far Friday the 13th has been fine and dry and warm and occasionally sunny. As a rule Whit Friday is damp and cold. Fingers crossed that the bad luck remains at bay.

I don’t usually see the Sunday School walks. As a rule I am home from my run and having breakfast by the time they go through the village. Today, however, I stopped by one of the mill ponds and had a long chat with a nodding acquaintance who is almost a friend by now. (He always remembers my name but I have completely forgotten his and pretty soon must cross that embarrassment threshold and ask him to remind me.) As a result, when I got to the village centre the Whit Walks were just setting off.

Looking back to my childhood, we did Whit Walks on Whit Sunday. All the little girls were dressed in white - a white pleated skirt for your Sunday best clothes - and all the little boys wore a tie and had had their hair neatly combed. There were enough boys and girls to merit ropes decorated with paper flowers, to keep us in line in our pairs. Today’s Walk in our village seemed rather short on children, it seemed to me, and those who were there were very casually dressed.

The band, on the other hand, was very smart!

So, Friday the 13th! Not a very auspicious day for world news. Overnight Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. Where do we go from here? We need al the good luck we can get. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Goodbye Brian Wilson. Lookalike life partners. Continued trouble in L.A. A bit of Michael Rosen and Jeremy Corbyn.

 Today began bright and sunny. I decided to wear shorts. So now the cloud has moved in. Was I a little overoptimistic in choosing summer wear? I may have to change clothes. We shall see.

And Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has died, aged 82. There goes another one. No more good vibrations! 

When I was a sixth form student I began to learn German. I had to stop so that I could take an O Level in Latin instead, a requirement at the time if you wanted to study Modern Foreign Languages at a good university. I passed my Latin exam but I think I remember more German than I do Latin. My German teacher was young and enthusiastic and friendly with her sixth form students. She brought in photos of her wedding for us to see. We marvelled to each other, but not to our teacher for fear of offending her, about how alike she and her new husband were. They could have been brother and sister. Arwa Mahdawi, writing in yesterday’s Guardian, appealed to people to stop asking if she and her wife are twins. They do say we are attracted to people who resemble us but I don’t think Phil and I look like siblings. 

Troubles continue in Los Angeles. And maybe in other parts of the USA. Here’s something from a report in today’s Guardian: 

“An estimated 14 million undocumented immigrants live in the US. A 2017 study estimated that two thirds of such immigrants at the time had been in the US a decade or more. These people typically work jobs, pay taxes and build families, frequently with US-citizen spouses and children. They are Americans in all but legal status. Deporting them rips holes in households and communities.

If not for the polarized politics of Washington, these longtime residents would have long ago been given a path to regularize their immigration status. If we decline to prosecute most crimes after five years, in part out of recognition that at some point people should be able to move on with their lives despite what they have done in the past, why not have a similar statute of limitations for deportations?”

So many undocumented people living and working there! 

Somebody commented on social media that it’s hard to believe that the person who has been making pizza in his restaurant for the past 15 years is a bad guy and possibly a terrorist and that the armed men who come wearing masks and bulletproof vests are the good guys! Quite so!

I read an article today about two Frenchmen, furniture restorers, who carried out a fake antique furniture scam. They convinced clients that the chairs they sold them were centuries old, possible sat upon by Marie Antoinette! They told the trial: “We said we’d do it as a game, to see if the art market noticed or not.” Now they face prison and a huge fine. There is something wrong with our society if people are prepared pay inflated prices for antiques, leaving themselves open to that kind of scam

And here’s a little Michael Rosen for today: 

“Somewhere, 

people will be discussing 

the 'problem' 

of how to build apartments, shops and hotels 

on land where thousands of bombs fell 

and corpses 

and parts of corpses 

are buried.”

And a bit of Jeremy Corbyn:

“For the past 20 months, UK government ministers — Conservative and Labour — have aided and abetted crimes against humanity.

Recently, some politicians have attempted to backtrack and change their tune. Perhaps they are frightened by the consequences of their complicity. 

If they had any integrity, they would weep for the 61,000+ Palestinians who died as a result of their moral and political cowardice. 

We will not rest until the government finally listens to the demand being made by millions of people of all backgrounds and faiths: end all arms sales to Israel, now. 

Momentum is shifting. We will expose the full scale of UK complicity in genocide. We will bring about justice. And we will continue to campaign for the only path to peace: the liberation of Palestine.”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!