Saints and their influence on weather. Summer holiday patterns. Harvest time. Oh, and accordions!

 For the first time in several weeks yesterday we didn’t go out for a walk. And for the first time in as many weeks I didn’t hit my Fitbit target of 10,000 steps a day. It was the rain that did it! And boy, did it rain! We’ve not had such heavy in a good while. Ironically, as the rain battered down on us, I listened to a news report on the radio about drought conditions in various parts of the country and the problems farmers are having as a result.

And yesterday was St Swithin’s (or Swithun’s) Day. The weather on July 15th (July 2nd in Wales, I am given to understand) is supposed to dictate the weather for the next 40 days. The rhyme goes:

And yesterday was St Swithin’s (or Swithun’s) Day. The weather on July 15th (July 2nd in Wales, I am given to understand) is supposed to dictate the weather for the next 40 days. The rhyme 

St Swithun’s Day if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain

St Swithun’s day if thou be fair

For forty days ‘twill rain nae more

But in Buckinghamshire they have a much more prosaic version:

If on St Swithun’s day it really pours

You’re better off to stay indoors

Swithin/Swithun was the bishop of Winchester and later patron saint of Winchester Cathedral. Since when do cathedrals have patron saints? I thought countries had patron saints, not cathedrals. It was all a long time ago though, as he died in 863.  Looking up stuff about old Swithin/Swithun, I’ve just read this: if it rains on Saint Swithun's bridge (Winchester) on his feast day (15 July) it will continue for forty days. So maybe we’ll get away with it having rained yesterday because it rained here rather than on his special bridge. Unless, of course, it did rain on his bridge as well.

To become a saint, as I understand it, you need to perform miracles. Well, Swithin/Swithun's best-known miracle was his restoration on a bridge of a basket of eggs that workmen had maliciously broken.

Various other saints in different countries are also said to have an influence on the weather, all of them on dates in June and July. My favourite from the name point of view is Russia’s Sampson the Hospitable, whose day is June 27th. 

I suppose everyone everywhere wants to have decent weather for bringing in harvests. (More about that later.)

As well as legends and stories, it seems there is a scientific basis to the weather pattern behind the legend of St Swithun's day. Around the middle of July, the jet stream settles into a pattern which, in the majority of years, holds reasonably steady until the end of August. When the jet stream lies north of the British Isles the then continental high pressure is able to move in; when it lies across or south of the British Isles, Arctic air and Atlantic weather systems predominate.

There you go. And here’s another silly statistic: The most false that the prediction has been, according to the Guinness Book of Records, was in 1924 when 13.5 hours of sunshine in London were followed by 30 of the next 40 days being wet, and in 1913 when a 15-hour rainstorm was followed by 30 dry days out of 40.

I recently made some comment about Parliament going into recess for the summer, assuming that that break began back at a time when MPs were rich guys with estates to manage and harvesting to oversee. I also seem to remember reading at some time in the past that our school year was originally established in its current form so that children could help with the harvest of various crops. Today I read that in Germany they have been having some arguments over the dates of summer holidays.

Since 1964 the various states of Germany agreed a system of “sharing out” the summer holidays: some of them breaking up for summer in early June and returning to school in August. The aim was to reduce holiday congestion on roads, railways and airports. It also extends the domestic holiday and tourism season. Its renegotiated every five years. How very forward-thinking and organised fhey were back in 1964!

But Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have not joined in the system, indeed have refused to do so.  They have a fixed holiday period every year, typically from around the end of July or beginning of August until mid-September. It is the last possible and most favoured holiday slot. They want to keep these time slots on the grounds that “their children are required to help bring in the harvest”. 

Really? This is the 21st century.

Here’s a thing: “Germany has about 255,000 farms of 5 hectares (12.3 acres) or more, the highest number being in Bavaria, followed by Baden-Württemberg. Children do still work on farms, but due to child protection laws, increased automation and a reduction in farming, the numbers who do so are thought to be small. Children are allowed to work on their family’s farm, but only for up to three hours a day and between the hours of 8am and 6pm.”

Hmm! It sounds as though they just like that time slot! Bavaria’s state leader, Markus Söder of the Christian Social Union, said: “We have our holiday rhythm, which is, so to speak, an integral part of Bavarians’ DNA.”

So it goes! 

Here’s a quotation that made me smile, having spent quite a lot of summer holidays in places where accordion players come and “serenade” you as you sit outside cafes and restaurants: 

“A gentleman is someone who can play 

the accordion, but doesn't.” 

― Tom Waits

Quite so!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Out and about in the rain - for a change. The price of things. Earwigging on the bus. Stuff in the wider world.

 The weather has well and truly broken today. Yesterday we had a brief interlude when the heavens opened and torrential rain fell but it really was a “brief” interlude and then the sun came out again. Today I woke to rain on the skylight windows and got propjerly rained on when I went out to catch bus. I had to be up early to go the dental clinic in Rochdale which has been sorting out my dental implant. 

Coming back I stopped off in Oldham to visit T.K.Max, the store which sells all kinds of expensive branded goods at much reduced prices. Surely they are a proof, if such was needed, that capitalism is strange and crazy. They must still be making a profit, showing that the original prices must have been highly inflated. I was looking for academic year diaries. Now, I am particular, you might even say weirdly obsessive, about diaries. For years now I have sought out diaries made by Moleskin, the company that makes such excellent notebooks. A small Moleskin diary of a suitable size to carry around in my handbag, is usually priced at about £20. Today In picked on up for a fiver! 

At the bus stop, as I waited for the bus for the final stage of my journey home, I couldn’t help overhearing two relatively young men (well into their thirties, I hazarded a guess) discussing the relative merits or otherwise of different types of drugs. Their conversation continued at top volume on the bus. By the time they got off, I swear we all know what kind of drugs each preferred, as well as what they had or had not experimented with! 

Some people don’t have a volume control!

I got off the bus at our crossroads as usual. When I looked back to see if it was safe to cross the road, I noticed that the bus was still waiting in the lay-by. What was going on? Not long after I arrived home, Phil organised himself to go to Uppermill for a haircut. A few minutes after leaving the house, he phoned to tell me that buses were not going through the village. He’d just watched one turn at the crossroads instead of going straight on. Fortunately that was not the bus he wanted to catch. Someone had told him that it was because of roadworks in the village centre. Quite plausible! So the bus drivers had taken a decision to miss out that bit of their route. Quite sensible! But once again, nobody seems to have thought to put notices out for passengers. 

A lack of joined-up thinking! 

It seems that Donald Trump is going to pay us a visit. Well, not me and my family, thank heavens. King Charles will have to host him, which is fair because he can afford to feed him expensive stuff. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, is apparently getting cross because the visit comes after Parliament has already begun its summer recess. (How many of the current MPs really need to go and supervise the harvest, I wonder?) he thinks that Parliament should be recalled so that MPS can be subjected to a speech from the visiting POTUS. There’s also some fuss being made about the fact that he’s already been her once in this presidency and there’s no precedent for a president coming twice. It rather sounds as though someone wants to cosy up to this powerful man. 

And here’s a Gaza statistic: 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Storks and the environmental problems they have. Our heron. Ongoing problems in the wider world. Escaping into sport.

Probably twenty years ago, if my memory for dates serves me at all, we spent the Easter holiday in Salamanca, where we were able to watch the Easter processions from the balcony of our hotel room. Salamanca is a beautiful city and they do Easter processions well,

More impressive than the processions, however, were the storks. After we left Salamanca we travelled south, eventually visiting my sister in El Puerto de Santa María, across the bat from Cádiz. And all the way along we saw storks. I don’t think I had ever really noticed them before. I have been a little obsessed since. 

In the last few years I’ve been watching them again on our various visits to places in Portugal. They build huge, sprawling, untidy nests in high places, impossible balance sometimes on the top of telegraph poles. Apparently other bird species such as sparrows, starlings and kestrels also live within these huge nests: a kind of avian commune. I think I have commented before on the fact that in some parts of Portugal itnis against the law to destroy a stork’s nest, even if it is built inconveniently in your garden! 

There are organisations that inspect stork’s nests, presumably out of scientific interest. And according to this article, storks, like most other birds, use all sorts of stuff to build and line their nests. This includes plastic waste, including plastic twine, the kind of thing that might not be deliberately discarded but accidentally left behind by busy farmers. And this stuff gets tangled round the fledgling storks as they roll around in the nests. It’s sort of the avian equivalent of dolphins and sharks getting tangled in nets in the sea. They also need rescuing. 

So there we are again, carelessly destroying the world for other species! 

We don’t have storks around here. The closest we come to them is the heron who appears to fish under the bridge in the village centre and sometimes waits on the second bridge for nearby residents to feed him. I think they believe it might stop him attacking ducklings!

Around the world we continue to destroy the environment for our own kind, never mind the animals and birds. People, including children, are still being killed as they try to collect food and water from aid stations in Gaza. Here’s a report from yesterday:

“An Israeli airstrike has killed at least 10 people, including six children, who were waiting to collect water in Gaza, Palestinian health officials have said.

A separate airstrike on Sunday hit a home, killing nine people, and 31 others were shot dead near an aid distribution site on Saturday, marking another bloody weekend as the conflict’s death toll exceeded 58,000.

Witnesses said a drone fired a missile at a crowd holding empty jerry cans beside a water tanker in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. About 20 children and 14 adults were lined up when the strike occurred, Ramadan Nassar, who lives in the area, told the Associated Press. Al-Awda hospital received 10 bodies, including six children, health officials said.

The Israel Defense Forces said a “technical error” caused a strike aimed at an Islamic Jihad “terrorist” to fall dozens of metres from the target, and that the incident was under review.”

According to this article, even aid staff from organisations like from Médecins Sans Frontières are being killed. They’ve been protesting outside Westminster.

And yet here at home we continue to watch women’s football, Wimbledon, the Tour de France. We are all indulging in escapism of one kind or another.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

The weather. Cyclists Protestors arrested and some protest poetry. Witches’ stones.

Yesterday was reportedly the hottest day this year in all sorts of places around the UK. We waited until early evening to go for a stroll round the village: an after-dinner stroll is supposed to be good for your digestion. Today is cooler, probably more pleasant to be out and about in. They seem to be having cooler weather for the Tour de France today as well: stage nine from Chinon to Châteauroux. In the previous stages they seem to have had a lot of nasty crashes. The professional cyclists’ ability to pick themselves up, scratched and bruised, and get back on their bikes is quite phenomenal. 

People are being arrested for publicly supporting Palestine Action: 42 … 46 … more than 70 … accounts of numbers arrested vary. Maybe if enough people are arrested the powers that be will rethink the whole matter. In the meantime, here’s a poem from Michael Rosen:- 

Freedom has no warning lights

when it slips away

it doesn’t flash red.

 

When they start saying you can’t 

speak your mind

and you weren’t doing harm

that’s it again, slipping away

but it’s not flashing red

 

When they start to talk of how

some people are born bad

that’s freedom slipping away

but it’s not flashing red

 

When they say you’re the wrong kind of person

to go to school

that’s it, slipping away

but it’s not flashing red.

 

When they say that you can’t work here

you’ve got the wrong face

sure enough, that’s it, slipping away

and it’s not flashing red.

 

When they start locking people up

without giving them a fair hearing

there it goes,  slipping away

but it’s not flashing red.

 

When people start disappearing

and they don’t come back

that really is it, slipping away

but it’s not flashing red.

 

freedom has no warning lights

when it slips away

it doesn’t flash red.

[A poem I wrote for the projects run by Professor Helen Weinstein and History Works TV for our work with school students on refugees. Michael Rosen.]

And here’s another poem, taken from a social media post, the poster having “borrowed”it from elsewhere. So I don’t know who wrote it but it’s clearly a reworking of Martin Niemoller’s post-WWII poem. Here’s one version of his poem:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Here’s the 21st century update: 

First they came for the ordinary Palestinian civilians 

The men, the women, the children, the babies and even the preborn in their incubators and I did not speak out—because I was not Palestinian 

Then they came for the Medical Professionals, the life savers

The surgeons, the doctors, the nurses, the paramedics  and I did not speak out—because I was not a Medical Professional 

Then they came for the  Press 

The journalists, the reporters, the camera operators, the truth tellers and I did not speak out—because I was not a member of the Press 

Then they came for the  First Responders 

The ambulance drivers, the rescueworkers, the firemen, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a  First Responder 

Then they came for the Aid Workers

Those who were distributing  food and water and medicine and tents and essential supplies. They murdered the starving people queuing for food and I and I did not speak out -- because I was not an Aid Worker 

Then they came for the Educators, Artists and Intellectuals 

The professors and the teachers, the writers, the poets, the painters, who spoke about the horror, the cruelty, the injustice and I did not speak out—because I was not an Educator, Artist or Intellectual 

Then the Police around the world came for the Protesters, they beat them, arrested them and jailed them for protesting a genocide and I did not speak out—because I was not a Protester 

Finally they came for the rest of us and there was nobody left to speak out. 

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

Incidentally, I read that the Unite union is rescinding Angela Rayner’s membership. She says she already left the union but this expulsion is a bit more public. We’ve come to a pretty pass when Labour Party politician is kicked out of a union! 

For some reason I was reading about “hag stones”, stones large or small which have a naturally formed hole in them. Almost all countries seem to have legends associated with them, understandably as they do look as though they might have magical qualities. Here’s one for the UK: 

“In the seaside town Hastings there is a local legend that the town is under an enchantment known as Crowley's Curse, said to have been conjured by Aleister Crowley* who lived in Hastings at the end of his life. The curse compels anyone who has lived in Hastings to always return, no matter how far away they move, or for how long. The curse can only be broken by taking a stone with a hole running through it from Hastings beach.”

*Aleister Crowley (born Edward Alexander Crowley, 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. He obviously had too much time onbis hands as he had so many hobbies and occupations! My note!) He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life.

There you go!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

What the rich get up to. Problem birds. And hot weather. And the Bayeux Tapestry. And Peace Prizes.

I read this morning (well, I spotted the headline) that Jane Birkin’s original Hermes bag had sold at auction for a record-breaking £7.4 million. Wow! I thought, that”s a lot of money for a second-hand bag. Especially as this original one is a bit messy because Jane Birkin used to stick stickers on it, announcing the various causes she supported. I suppose it’s another aspect of the modern version of collecting saints’ holy relics. 

Apparently such bags are all handmade and there’s a waiting list to purchase one. Even the rich have to queue! A new one costs around £7,400. Victoria Beckham is said to have more than 100 of them. Goodness! I thought I had a lot of bags, different colours and styles according to my outfit. But 100 extremely expensive bags is a little excessive! 

I am told that the rich in the UK have had to downsize their establishments because of Labour’s tax policy. They are having to do without butlers! This is a bit harsh for the butlers. Will their training in “butlering” stand them in good stead when they seek new jobs?    

In 2007 it seems there were an estimated 5,000 butlers in the UK. By 2014 the estimate had doubled to 1,000. Back in the 1980s there were only about 100. Why did the numbers go up? Are some of these butlers just personal assistants with a fancy title? Do the rich want to emulate the nobility?

All of this just underlines the difference between ordinary folk and those with more money than they know what to do with. 

In Italy, I hear that they are having problems with flamingoes. Ferrara province, between Venice and Ravenna grows risotto rice. Flamingos have recently moved into the area of the paddy fields and are stirring up the mud. The birds aren’t targeting the rice seedlings but use their webbed feet to stir up the soil and snatch molluscs, algae or insects from the shallow water. The rice is collateral damage.

Now farmers have started patrolling day and night in an effort to scare the birds away from their rice crops. The farmers honk truck horns, bang barrels and even fire small gas cannon that make thunderous booms. However, the noise mostly just sends the flamingoes flying to another nearby paddy to trample it underfoot. This seems to be another consequence of climate change. The birds seem to have gone from North Africa to Southern Spain, escaping drought,  and now northern Italy. More details in this article. 

It’s certainly hot and dry again here. Coming home on the bus from the supermarket I had to change seats because I was growing tired of hearing the couple behind me repeating over and over the mantra “It’s too hot to do anything!” It’s excellent weather for getting your washing dry. I am tempted to go round the house looking for more stuff to wash! 

It will be another hot ride for the cyclists in the Tour! 

Here’s a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post. This particular section reminds us that the Normans back in the eleventh century were still only a couple of generations away from the Vikings they used to be. 

I wrote recently about Netanyahu’s supposed proposal that Donald Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, apparently the same suggestion was made about a certain Adolf Hitler! Echoes of the past!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!