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The weathermen may well have said that October was going to a really good month but they must have been talking about another country, or at any rate another bit of the country, not the place I am living in. Winter seems to be just around the corner here.
Yesterday I was going out to meet a friend for lunch and had selected a pair of shoes to wear. Then I took another look out of the window and changed my mind. Boots! Definitely boots! And hat and gloves! The autumn colours may be around still but that's just window dressing!
The same goes for the early morning sunshine. The latter looks very pretty but it's not giving out much heat.
It's a good job I had put my boots on yesterday or my poor feet would have frozen. I went out for the bus which is supposed to come at 10.02. I arrived at the stop in plenty of time as our buses are notorious for leaving Delph early and then taking a five minute rest somewhere further along the route. Most annoying! Anyway, 10 o' clock arrived. No bus. 10.05 still no bus! I almost got on a bus going in the opposite direction with the idea that I could get off a few stops along and change to another bus or even the train going into Manchester. Foolishly I opted to wait, thinking that my bus would be along in minutes. At 10.25 an apologetic bus-driver told us he had been stuck behind a traffic accident and had been unable to move. How very annoying!
I was JUST in time to meet my friend. We set the world to rights, in the way that women do when they get together.
We didn't manage to solve the problem of getting the perfect coffee in Manchester, apart, of course, from in my kitchen. However, that is a minor problem compared with the difficulty of getting a perfect cup of tea in continental Europe. I came across an article on that very subject the other day. This told me they even investigate the art of tea making at universities. I am assured that this is true even though it seems to me that there must be more serious things to investigate, especially if my money is being used to fund such projects. Anyway, a certain Dr Stapley of Loughborough University has been examining the thorny question of which should go in the cup first: tea or milk?
Dr Stapley maintains that if you put the milk in after the tea then the milk heats unevenly which causes the proteins in the milk to "denature", whatever that means, and affects the taste of the final beverage. It seems that some people can really taste that difference; they are not just being picky and fussy. It's been proved scientifically true. I would have believed it anyway. I am the person who can sniff a cup of tea or coffee and tell you whether or not it has sugar in, a skill that some people do not possess.
Personally I avoid the milk in first or second problem by drinking my tea black these days. And I particularly enjoyed this comment from the writer of the article: "As an aside, having been to America and sampling the weak tea made there, it must be stressed that the teabag should either be in a pot or the mug itself; it is not sufficient just for it to be in the same room."
Some quite illustrious people have had strong opinions about tea making. Here is a link to the writer George Orwell's instructions for making tea.
Moving on, I want to know when tweeting or twittering abuse about people became "trolling". I keep coming across the term in various news articles. When my children were small you could buy "cute" troll toys. Not at all threatening. In stories trolls used to live under bridges and leap out and threaten to eat anyone who trip-trapped over said bridges. Perhaps it's the lying in wait that makes internet stalkers and the like into trolls. Then the mythology kind of evolved into trolls into beings who would turn to stone if exposed to sunlight - thank you Mr Tolkien for making that clear.
Maybe that's what should happen to the modern "trolls" who apparently make life thoroughly miserable for their victims.
Great excitement in our village yesterday morning! Well, if not great excitement, then a good deal of tutting! Someone had thrown something through the post office window. A young man who works at the Co-op store expressed his remorse at not having noticed anything when he arrived at work at 5.30 am. 5.30!!!! It was still dark then! I'm surprised he could see the door of the Co-op let alone a hole in the window of the post office next door. Poor young man! Fancy having to start work at 5.30 on a Sunday morning, an hour at which some folk would just be getting home from their Saturday night out!
Had he noticed the damage, the young man would have phoned the police at once. As it was, someone else did it later. By the time I went through the village, the police were there, milling around trying to find someone who could open the premises so they could check if entry as well as breaking had taken place. This was causing a problem as no-one had a number for the people who run the post office. You would think that there would be some kind of central data bank giving phone numbers for those responsible for places like post offices. Or is that too much like joined up thinking?
The general consensus was that the hole in the window, though quite large, was probably not big enough for anyone bar a small child to have got through. (Is this the work of a gang of young thieves run by a Fagin-like character?) Besides, there were no incriminating footprints on the outside windowsill. So it was felt that this was bit of mindless vandalism, still not to be condoned but less serious than proper breaking and entering. Mind you, there was still a fair amount of indignation. "This sort of thing doesn't happen around here!" You know the sort of thing.
As for me, I went on my way, having bought my newspaper and some reduced-price strawberries.
The radio news on Sunday morning featured, among other things, the Liberal party conference. They appear to be a little unhappy about having got into bed with the Tories and are criticising the right-wingers' proposals for cuts to all sorts of things. They do still have a good half-year to go before the next election, during which time they remain in bed with the aforementioned Tories. That could be quite difficult!!
Among both the Liberals and Labour people there are those who say that they need a change of leader if they are to have any chance of winning the next election. We just need someone to start agitating for Cameron to give up leadership of the Conservatives and the turmoil will be complete. After all, Nick Griffin has not only lost leadership of the BNP but has been expelled from the party. Meanwhile, no-one seems to have a concrete idea of who to propose as the leader of the Liberals or Labour.
Interesting times ahead!
At eight this morning the house phone rang. I stumbled downstairs to answer it. A quite cultured voice asked me to listen to an announcement: " Those who have debts of under £5000 ...." I have no idea what came next as I put the phone down. This caller made no attempt to identify herself as so many do, presumably in an attempt to make the call seem somehow more personal. It was not a caller with an accent from the Indian subcontinent trying to convince me that his name implausibly was Andrew or Roger or Gordon. They call later in the day as a rule. So why the eight o' clock call?
I can only assume that this was an attempt to catch workers before they set off for the office - a little late for that or else maybe the caller doesn't know that commuters have to set off early to beat the traffic - or perhaps trying to persuade those of us who no longer have to do the morning journey to work that someone important is calling. In the latter case it works. No-one calls here first thing in the morning unless there is a family emergency. And despite the fact I know that my daughter, the usual early morning emergency person, would call my mobile, I still leap out of bed and stumble down the stairs.
This morning's call was very likely a pre-recorded message so I couldn't even indulge in the minor pleasure of stringing the caller along for a while. I know several people who do that quite successfully.
Later in the morning I heard Phil berating another cold caller, asking in quietly indignant tone, "Why are you calling me? You are not supposed to call this number!" Those services which are meant to eliminate such nuisance calls do not seem to be very effective.
Such was the start to my day.
I did not get up at once but went back to bed to warm my feet up and finally went out for my morning run an hour later.
The sun was shining and it was no longer chilly but there was still frost on the grass in shady places. It's that time of year again.
By contrast, a friend of mine has been posting on Facebook pictures of her brown knees on Samil beach, Vigo, boasting of the 26 degrees they had yesterday. Pretty good for the start of October. And we thought we were doing quite well here.
As well as Autumn, conference season is in full swing here. Labour had theirs in Manchester recently and the Conservatives have just finished theirs with threats/promises to bring down the benefits bill and cut taxes. The analysts say that some of this, as well as being standard Tory stuff, is an appeal to "Middle England" (whatever that really means) in an attempt to stem flight to UKIP. Whatever it is, they seem to be planning to make life more difficult for a lot of people.
More cheerfully, well in the first case anyway, I found stories in the news about two Georges. First of all, George Clooney and the new Mrs Clooney, or maybe that should be Amal Alamuddin and the new Mr Alamuddin, have declared their intention to give to charity the huge amount of money paid by scandal mags for their wedding photos. You see, some people don't just want more and more money.
second George is third in line to the throne here in the UK. A journalist or photographer has been keeping an eye on wee George and his nanny when they go out for walks in the park, trying to get photos of the little chap. A spokeswoman for Kensington Palace said that the duke and duchess want Prince George to lead an “ordinary life” while he is young. I can understand their sentiments. They know he will have all kinds of oddities in his life as heir to that throne but they want his childhood to be hassle free. Good for them. However, how "normal" is it to be taken for walks to the park by your nanny?
And finally, I found a link to
an article about learning languages, something always close to my heart. And for once it doesn't say that you absolutely HAVE to start learning as a child. Lots of sensible tips for those who really want to speak in tongues!
Yesterday in the early evening I sat at Stalybridge Station in the buffet bar again, waiting for the poetry group people to turn up. I was a little early as I had come from Manchester.
There is just not quite time to go home from Manchester after the Italian class and back again to Stalybridge in time for the poetry thing on the last Tuesday of the month. So I hang around in Manchester for a while, finding things to occupy my time, and then make my way to Stalybridge. Yesterday, however, I left Manchester a little earlier than usual as it was NOISY!!!!
Manchester is, of course, a university city and yesterday turned out to be Student Takeover Day. From 6 til 9 students could get discount in all sorts of places. I imagine it's part of Freshers' Week. Back when I was a student in Leeds, the activities used to be confined to the university campus. Now, in Manchester anyway, they take over the whole city centre. In every square and on every corner there seemed to be a DJ and HUUUUGE loudspeakers belting out music at top volume. Well, I think it was meant to be music.
I could just about accept that but when I found that almost every shop also had music at unbearable volume as well I just had to escape. I took refuge in Marks and Spencer's cafe for a while but eventually I decided to just get on a train and head for the hills.
One favourable consequence of that was discovering that the station buffet has wifi. So I fed their password into my iPad and caught up with my electronic communication. When we are Galicia I have a collection of wifi cafes whose password is already in my iPad and so I connect automatically. Now I seem to be building up a similar, if smaller, collection for the Manchester area.
We were a small group at the Stalybridge Stanza poetry group last night. Someone suggested that it was because Manchester City had a match going on. (This match against Roma was another factor in the noise of city centre Manchester. There were an amazingly large number of people out selling match scarves! At the top of their voices, of course.) But are there really so many City fans among the poets?! Be that as it may, we had a pleasant evening and my autumn poem was well received.
In a former life, when I was a teacher of French and Spanish, I used to have immigration as one of my topics on the advanced courses. Included in that topic area were the people who hand over their savings to sharks and pirates so that one or two of their family can make the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe. A futile quest and a dangerous one. As if it were not dangerous enough to travel across the Mediterranean packed far too many into one small boat, now the journey is made even more perilous as the sometimes pirates ram the overloaded boats for reasons which are hard to understand. Here is an article from today's Guardian newspaper about such a disaster. . It is worth noting that now some of those would-be immigrants are refugees from Gaza.
The turmoil continues.
The topics that are chosen to produce statistics about can be very odd at times. In La Voz de Galicia newspaper online I came across some statistics regarding infidelity. Apparently doctors, bankers and teachers are the most likely to be unfaithful. Amongst doctors it seems that 40% of infidelities are with a work colleague and 25% with a patient: all those soppy hospital romance stories come true! How do teachers find time to be unfaithful, that's what I want to know. And also, of course, I would love to know who decided to survey such a topic and how many people were involved. I wonder if they factored in the boasting elements. Surely some people must have added a little spice and romance to their humdrum lives by pretending to have been unfaithful.
Still on the romance front, Amal Alamuddin married George Clooney yesterday and today (civil ceremony). Photos of the wedding cannot be seen until the next edition of Vogue magazine comes out. This is what the stars do; they sell exclusive rights to their wedding photos to magazines.
A U.S. Website, "The Business Woman", is reported to have turned the story on its head, reporting that the “dual-qualified English barrister and New York litigation attorney who has long been a high-profile figure in international refugee and human rights law has gone against the trend for professional women in her field and married… an actor”. It described the groom as “probably a nice man, but seems to be a bit clingy, as since she met him it’s hard to find a photo or footage of Amal without him hanging around in the background”. I love it.
The other day I read an interview with a young actress whose name escapes me now, one of those who used to be a model and moved into acting. Just as in the normal world of work, where we are constantly being told that it is unusual for someone to have a job or even a profession for life but must move from one position to another in the modern world, so the same rule applies in the rather artificial world of showbiz. Actors become models become singers become writers become directors become who knows what.
Anyway, this particular actress who used to be a model was asked this question:
"What has been your biggest fashion faux pas?
Here is her answer:
"I am constantly faux pas-ing."
Isn't it amazing what you can do with the English language?
One of my favourite journalists, Paul Mason, has been giving advice to overseas students studying in the UK. As well as thanking them for helping to finance UK universities with their extra-high tuition costs, he advises them to visit kebab shops late in the evening to improve their command of English. I particularly enjoyed his description of the railway system: "In Britain, we have a railway system that was privatised, then half-renationalised and fragmented. There has been a lot of investment in Cornish pasty outlets, but not so much on actual rolling stock." Here is a link to the whole article. Well worth a look!
Meanwhile Germaine Greer has been talking to European Newsweek and sounding off about the Duchess of Cambridge, the young lady formerly known as Kate Middleton (Catalina to the Spanish). Good old Germaine says the duchess is too thin - maybe that's just her body type as her sister is also slender and her mother is not exactly fat! - and should not have been "made to get pregnant" again so soon - her two children will have the same sort of age difference as my two and as the children of many of my friends! But, of course, Germaine is entitled to her opinion. However, she should be careful. She should consider the fuss that ensued when Hilary Mantel dared to comment on the role of the duchess.
According to the Newsweek article, a poll of 3,000 British adults found that 43% of respondents thought the duchess represented a “step forward for women and represents modern women”. However, 38% of women and 35% of men believed she was not allowed to voice her opinions enough or at all. And only 36% believed she had “control and ownership over her own body”.
There you go. That's statistics for you!
Yesterday began with blue sky and sunshine and went rapidly downhill. By the time I had returned from my run and showered, the clouds had moved in. An hour later it began to rain. The rain didn't last all day but on the whole it was a bit of a washout. Oh, yes, and there was frost on the grass up at the Cricket and Bowling Club first thing.
Today, by contrast, began dull and cloudy and improved as the day went on. I would not describe it as a total success but a distinct improvement on yesterday. Out on my run this morning I met Jack, an old gent with whom I have a sort of a nodding acquaintance. Well, perhaps a bit more than just nodding; we are on first name terms now, after a few years of my stopping and chatting to him on my run. Usually he parks just beyond the Cricket and Bowling Club (of frosty grass fame) and walks his little dog, and occasionally his daughter's little dog as well, a hundred yards up the road and back. Today his little dog, Rosie, who usually ignores me totally, waddled up to meet and greet me. Like other residents of this village, she has taken time to accept me but now clearly regards me as a local and, therefore, her friend. Clearly, no-one has told her of my aversion to small, happy-type dogs but that's the way it is.
Reading the newspaper I have learnt that we may be in for a warm October. Of course, that might only apply to the south of England. Here in Saddleworth our proximity to the Pennines often prevents the good weather from reaching us. I also read that Alaska may become the new Florida by 2050. Climate change is no longer a future problem but one which needs facing today.
Be that as it may, autumn is shaping up quite nicely, with some rather fine colours around. So here is my latest poem on that topic.
Seasonal changes.
Autumn lays her colours down,
Sets up her stall.
None of the green brashness of Spring,
Although it seems only days
Since we admired HER fresh insolence:
Parading her slender youth for all to see.
Summer dealt with her,
Forcing her pale innocence
Into dusty, darker greens
And hidden shady places
Away from his brilliance.
But now Autumn comes
To set things right,
Deep reds and oranges,
Burnt yellows and ochres,
Bright browns,
In one last fling
Before Winter with his white cruelty
Locks all the colours away.
Today is the European Day of Languages, according to their website "a time to celebrate the 6,000+ languages spoken around the world, promote language learning and have some multilingual fun!"
Their website offers all sorts of teaching resources for schools. Very nice.
Some odd statistics abound regarding languages. English remains the most spoken "foreign to me language", which does not surprise me. It's up there in the top five with French, German, Spanish and Russian. In some countries of Europe up to 98% of the people speak another language. Impressive! The UK is one of the places where this is least likely to be the case, together oddly enough with Portugal. When we talk to friends in Spain about foreign language learning they almost always say that the Spanish are really bad but that the Portuguese are really good, especially at learning English. And there they are, the Portuguese, just like the English; 61% of them only speak their own language. Here's a link to an article about it with a very nice map showing where different "foreign to me languages" are spoken.
The Guardian must be aware of the UK's minimalist attitude to foreign language learning as they have been asking people to send a photo of an everyday object, labelled in their native language, as a way of celebrating European Day of Language.
Here's another aspect of the same thing. A Facebook "friend" who works as a teaching assistant in a local primary school expressed his bewilderment when given the task of helping a couple of Rumanian children to learn some basic English. Some of his Facebook friends gave him sensible hints. Others advised him to resign in the face of an impossible task. But it's symptomatic of his being an English-only speaker that he had no idea of where to start. Or maybe he just lacks imagination altogether. That's a different problem.
I wonder which language will be used when George Clooney gets married in Venice on Monday. Oddly, they are having the star-spangled (Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon et al) reception on Saturday. If one of them changes their mind, I suppose, this means that they have had the party anyway. It's all something to do with Venetian bye-laws that say civil ceremonies have to take place in council buildings, which presumably are closed at the weekend. I know a number of ladies who will be rather disappointed about the whole proceedings. Their dreams of being George's chosen one have become a little more remote. Of course, in this modern world of short-term marriage they may very well be able to hope again before too much time has gone past. There I go, being cynical once again.
Happy European Day of Languages.
