Out and about and some more changes.

I never got to see the blood moon on Sunday night to Monday morning. A friend suggested I should set an alarm but in the end I chose not to do so. I did wake at some point in the small hours and looked out but I could see no moon at all then. My window must have been at the wrong angle. So that's something I have missed. 

I have seen a good deal of the large, bright silver moon since then. We seem to be having one of those clear Septembers when the days start bright and crisp and warm up nicely as the day goes on. This has been good as I have been out and about quite a lot. On Monday I admired the autumn colours in the way to visit my dentist for a check-up and to undergo the almost medieval torture of the "scrape and polish". If my dentist were to ask me to reveal secrets I would happily do so! 

 When I got home I persuaded Phil to get out if the house and go walkabout with me. We saw some splendid sunflowers on our travels. Down in Buckinghamshire, where our son lives, all the sunflowers are past their best and are now turning to seed. Here, in the slower, cooler North West, they are still blooming nicely. 


So, unfortunately, are the Himalayan balsam plants. We found further infestations of these and spent some time uprooting and trampling them along the bridle path. 

Yesterday I went into Manchester and caught up with old friends at my Italian conversation class. Curiously, this year our classes take place in the Institute for the Deaf. The organisation that arranges the classes must hunt around for the most economical venue and this year the Deaf Institute won! 

My return journey took me through the newly airy Victoria Station. They have been working on refurbishing this previously dark and gloomy station for a couple of years now. It was voted worst station in the UK back in 2009, so it really needed some work. I am not convinced that the modernistic roof is the most elegant but the place is certainly a lot brighter and feels a lot safer in the evening as it gets dark outside. 

Fortunately they have kept the facade of the old station as it was, with glass and wrought iron verandahs, advertising trains to Blackpool, Bournemouth and Belgium. Belgium!? Really? Well, they also advertise trains to Ireland! I am pretty sure trains run to none of these places from that station but the old facade is still very fine. 

They have also kept the old buffet bar with its lovely domed glass roof but they have given it a silly new name. And it seems to have incorporated a Starbucks, which is definitely not an improvement. It's good thing there is a Java cafe at the other end of the station. So far the has not become a shopping mall like Piccadilly station at the other end of the city centre. But there is not at the moment anywhere to buy a newspaper and it still costs 30 pence to go to the loo. 

However, they do seem to have recognised that there are lot of Spanish speakers in Manchester. Those cone that warn you about wet floors now give you the warning in Spanish as well as English. I suppose it makes a change from Welsh, which does appear on road works signs around here.

A bit of independence!

The weathermen promised us a cold night last night. They were right. There was frost on the grass on the cricket pitch up the road, which was still in the shade when I ran past at 8.30 this morning. But the sky was blue and the sun was shining. It turned out to be a very fine day. 

Towards midday I went down to the crossroads to meet the second grandchild, making her independent way on the bus from her house to ours. Her older sister had been very reluctant at the same age to travel independently (she has no problem with it now) and I wondered about how these things come about. The oldest grandchild had never been obliged to be independent and had been used to being driven all over the place. Her younger sister was forced by circumstances to learn to make her own way to and from school on public transport almost from the start of secondary school. 

I can remember when their mother started secondary school, coinciding with my getting a job on the other side of Manchester, and she had to become a latch key kid. Some people I knew expressed surprise and concern at my letting my eleven going on twelve year old make her own way back and forth. Even more so as she had the key to the house and was able to let herself in to wait for me getting back. 

It's funny how opinions swing to and fro on this question. My sister and I used to catch the bus into the town centre and mooch around town while we were still at primary school. Granted we grew up in a fairly small town but even so we achieved a level of autonomy some kids don't have nowadays. I know people who travelled across Greater Manchester on their own from an early age. On the other hand, a friend of mine taught girls who at fifteen and sixteen had never been on public transport, let alone travelled independently. It's hard to find the right balance in all this. 

Anyway, grandchild number two and I had a pleasant afternoon, baking, going for a walk, making tea for the rest of the family when they eventually turned up. 

Tonight, I have to decide whether I am going to stay up late enough to see the blood moon which is promised for the small hours. Since the weather is actually clear enough for us to be able to see it, unusual for our bit of the world, it would be a shame to miss it, especially as some people are predicting that it is a warning of the end of the world. 

If the world is going to end, I would like to experience the remaining time to the full!

Changes.

You go away for a while and discover on your return that some things, but not all, changed in your absence. 

Out running on my usual route around the village, I came across my old friend Jack and his little dog Rosie. We swapped stories of what we have been up to over the summer. His has been damper and colder than mine. In fact, he told me, he had seen statistics that said this summer in the North West of England had been one of the wettest since records began. And I had heard that it had been one of the coldest. So I think I was very fortunate that on my two lightning visits to the UK during June and July the weather was kind to me. 

Continuing my run, I came across the place where there used to be one of those gates that are meant to prevent large animals pushing their way through. You know the kind of thing: the gate opens in one direction but is blocked from opening totally by the edge of a kind of enclosure which you step into and move the gate in the other direction before getting out of the enclosure and continuing on your way. A fairly standard country walk gate. This particular gate has annoyed me for a while because I kept finding that some ignorant person had forced it all the way open, leaving the way clear for cows, horse, people on motorbikes or whatever to get through. Yesterday I found it has gone a stage further and the gate has disappeared! All that remains is the gate post and the enclosure! 

Later in the day I walked into Uppermill, going through Dobcross village en route. Dobcross is an unusual place as the village centre stands at the top of a hill. No fortifications so it’s not a case of an old hill fort or anything like that. There is an old pub so maybe it was a stopping place on an old coaching route. In the centre of the village square stands a monument to some local dignitary. This was carelessly knocked down by a reversing delivery van earlier this year and for months the plinth stood there alone with striped tape around it. We began to think it would never be restored. But yesterday it was back to normal. Phew! What a relief! 


Leaving Dobcross, I walked down the lane past an old house which has stood derelict for years and years. Many a time I have looked at it and thought how nice it would be to have the money to restore it. Now I find that the overgrown garden has been cleared and the property has been sold. I hope the intention is to renovate and restore, not to knock down and build something new. 

Our eldest granddaughter came to see us, complete with small dog. Not the family's small dog but her very own. I thought she had a fox cub in her arms but it turned out to be a fox-faced brown Pomeranian, or some such thing. My knowledge of dog breeds is almost equal to my knowledge of makes of car! In other words, very small! This creature has cost her a large amount of money from her savings. Nobody told us that she had bought it because they knew we would have remonstrated with them for wasting money when there is already a perfectly serviceable dog in their house. So it goes! 

After she had left, Phil decided to tidy up the garden. He did not get very far as he discovered that the bottom section of the garden had been infested with Himalayan balsam, or policemen's helmets as the children called them. The downstairs neighbour who shares the garden with us had left them to spread as she thought they were just rather pretty flowers. Well, yes, true as far as it goes. They are very pretty. Unfortunately they are also aggressively assertive and take over patches of land, allowing nothing else to grow as their root systems demand lots of space and lots of water. In some cases, the value of houses has been reduced because of the presence of this dominating weed. So Phil spent a good part of the afternoon uprooting the things and stamping on them. We might need to rake them together when they have dried a little and then set fire to them to destroy the seeds. 

I was reading about pronunciation changes in an article somewhere. Apparently new ways of pronouncing words are spreading in Britain thanks to the influence of US culture. That 's what people studying language have decided. A study by the British Library reveals that a third of the people taking part in the study pronounce schedule with a "sk", American style, instead of the more traditional English "sh". Other US pronunciations taking root, according to researchers, are “pay-triotic”, in place of “pat-riotic”, and “advertISEment”, instead of “adVERTisement”. 

I was particularly interested to read this: 

"Initial findings of the research have indicated that Britons are also creating a new way of saying controversy which hasn’t traditionally been used in Britain or the US. Three quarters of Britons taking part say “conTROversy”, with the emphasis on the middle syllable, rather than the previously conventional “CONtroversy”. Jonnie Robinson, curator of sociolinguistics and education at the British Library, said the word had undergone a “stress shift”. “The new pronunciation – conTROversy – does appear to be peculiarly British and it is catching on,” Mr Robinson said." 

A new pronunciation? Really? This controversy has been going on in our house for more than forty years. All my life, I have favoured the so-called "new" way of saying it, only to be told by Phil that it is wrong. But then, he also insists that lorry should be pronounced to rhyme with worry, whereas I say it rhymes with sorry. 

What can I say? And how should I say it?

Making our way back up north!

Here we are, back in a remarkably mild and sunny Saddleworth. Well, at least Tuesday was remarkably mild and sunny. The forecast promised more cloud than sun but they were wrong. Definitely more sun than cloud! Wednesday promises sun and cloud with an occasional shower. At least it's not predicting rain, rain and more rain! 

It is, however, decidedly cooler here in the North West than it is down south. We spent a few days with offspring number one and his family at the far end of the tube system, in Buckinghamshire, at the point where you can no longer call the underground service the underground. The place was very mild and full of flowers. 

On Saturday we went into London itself. Our plan was to go to see some Botticelli at the Victoria and Albert Museum. A what's-on-in-London website had told us about this; what they neglected to put in clear and obvious large letters was that this exhibition does not start until some time next spring. So instead we went to the Courtauld Institute to admire the paintings. Some Van Gogh, Manet, Degas, Gauguin, Kandinsky, among other stuff. Even a very early Picasso, before his models began to have their facial features rearranged into odd places. 

Goodness knows what the insurance must cost them. The value of one room alone must run into millions! 
  
The art was wonderful. The building itself is worth visiting, with a most impressive staircase. 

Unfortunately the Institute's cafe leaves much to be desired. Looking at lots of fine art (or Fine Art) is quite exhausting and we really needed refreshment. So before moving on we went into the depths of the building for a cup of tea. Such a refined establishment does not have a cafeteria style service; you wait to be seated and they give you time to study the menu before coming to take your order. We opted for an afternoon tea (scone and a pot of tea) between the two of us. The scone was a great disappointment. more of a rock bun than a fruit scone. No amount of tasteful serving with little pots of jam and cream could make up for the fact that it was difficult to cut the thing in two. We succeeded but felt rather disappointed in the result. 

At another table a lady on her own had ordered the same. She did not succeed in slicing her rock bun/scone in order to butter it. Hers ended up in crumbled pieces and she called the waitress over to tell her that the thing was too hard for her to eat. She was sending it back and only wanted her pot of tea. She demanded to know if it was fresh. With a sniff the waitress told her that all their cakes are freshly baked each day! Now, I suspect that the scones were overcooked rather than stale but whatever the truth of the matter, these were not the standards one expected of a venerable institute such as the Courtauld! 

 Otherwise our trip to the capital was almost without incident and we had a very pleasant weekend, setting off back for the North West on Monday. Disaster almost struck as we strolled down the hill to the station to catch the not-quite-underground to Euston. A few minutes into our stroll I remembered that my mobile phone was still plugged into a borrowed charger in our son's kitchen. Leaving Phil to pull two wheelie suitcases, I ran back up the hill, retrieved the phone, ran down the hill again and reached the station with two minutes to spare before the train set off. 

That was quite enough adventure and excitement for me, thank you very much!

Moving on.

Because we were leaving Vigo yesterday the sun decided to come out again after a fair few days of rather foul weather, the "ciclogenesis violenta" which brought wind and rain and general nastiness. But we left Vigo under blue skies once again. By the time we reached Santiago de Compostela, however, the skies were grey once more and a light rain was falling. This was Santiago after all! 

It cleared up later and we had blue skies once more until the moment came to board the plane. At that point the heavens opened and it seemed that the "ciclogenesis" had returned. It's amazing how wet you can get in a short run to a plane and then a walk up the steps. Inside the plane there was the usual problem, even WITH assigned seats, of people insisting on standing in the aisle to sort themselves out and remove from their hand-luggage anything they might need during the journey before stowing their bags away. The idea that they might move into the row of seats to do this is clearly a concept some have never heard of. Appeals from the cabin crew for people to move to their seats as quickly as possible so that those still standing on the steps in the rain could get inside went unheeded. I'm-all-right-Jack-ism and centre-of-the-universe syndrome was rife. 

Eventually most of the damp people were seated and most of the luggage was stowed. Fortunately we had managed to be among the first to board so we were able to put our luggage above our own seats. Not so a very indignant Spaniard who had to be persuaded by the cabin crew to let them put his bag in a locker towards the back of the plane while he was seated near the front. It was only when they began to insist that if he failed to accept that, the only solution was to put the luggage in the hold that he agreed, still mumbling and muttering about the insecurity of his bag being so far away from him. 

When we landed and as soon as we were allowed to unbuckle our seat belts, indeed possibly a little sooner than that, he had elbowed his way through the passengers in the aisle, almost knocking several over in the process. When challenged he protested that his suitcase was THERE and pointed indignantly to the locker he was aiming to reach. Immediately a chorus of Spanish passengers told him, also pointing, "Y mi maleta está allí", each one indicating that his case was, of course, the most important in the plane! 

We alighted to much better weather, calm and almost warm, as if England and Spain has swopped weather! All went well until we reached a point where the automatic door refused to open. It crossed my mind that we might all have died and gone to a special form of hell for plane passengers, one where you stand for all eternity in a queue of Ryanair passengers waiting to go through a door! 

Our indignant fellow passenger, he of the important suitcase, was vociferous in his complaints and suggested that we should all turn round and go back and find another door to go through. This despite the fact that the remaining passengers were piling up behind us, making retreat impossible, not to mention the fact that we almost certainly had to go through a specific numbered door for security reasons. 

But in the end all was well. At last, after about five minutes, one of the airport employees became aware of our plight and opened the door. All we had to do after that was stand in the enormous queue for passport control, a good half hour of waiting I should say. Eventually we were officially back in the UK and onto the Stansted Express into London so that we could catch the underground train out again to go to visit offspring number one. 

Some ten and a half hours after walking out of the door of our flat in Vigo we walked in through the door of his house. Such are the joys of travelling!

Visiting Vigo in the rain!

Well, that seems to be the end of summer. Officially autumn doesn't start until the 21st but nobody has told the weather gods. Friday was cool and cloudy. Saturday began wet. Very wet! When I looked out and saw the state of things I decided that running was not on. It takes quite a lot for me to forego my run but this was one of those days. Originally I had planned to walk my running route, sheltered under my umbrella, but by the time I got down to street level it was raining so hard that I gave up on that idea as well and simply walked to the bread shop via the short route. It was the kind of rain that they call "la tromba", rather like the north of England expression about raining stair-rods. It's as if someone has just turned a million taps on a full pressure! 

 Down at the harbour there were two huge cruise boats again. I saw the second one arriving again. As it docked the mist thickened and you could no longer see anything. Parking a big boat in the Atlantic blanket cannot be an easy task. And what would all those tourists do on Sunday? There must be close on seven or eight thousand when you put two huge boatloads together. And they couldn't even take refuge in shopping because it was Sunday when all the shops are closed. Is there capacity for so many even in all the cafes of Vigo? 

No doubt there were buses laid on to take them off to Santiago de Compostela but the same question arises. What would they do there in the rain? Because if it was raining in Vigo it would almost certainly be raining in Santiago. It rains there even when it's sunny everywhere else. I exaggerate, of course. We have visited Santiago on beautifully sunny, blue-sky days. I have the photos to prove it. But Sunday wouldn't be one of those. The visitors would no doubt buy plastic ponchos and big umbrellas from the African blokes who pop up like mushrooms in the rain to sell their wares. 

If I were one of those cruise people I think I might opt to stay on the boat with a good book.

By mid afternoon the day had improved somewhat. The boats left in rather cloudy sunshine. So at least they would get a better view of the ria as they left than they did in the morning on the way in! 

Today there's another one. As I helped a lady out in a shoe shop today - shopping, of course - she commented on how rough their cruise has been so far. At least they have had a bit of sunshine today.

Putting the world to rights!

Yesterday evening I went out for a drink with a friend. We put the world to rights, as you do when you sit down for a drink with a friend: the European Union, Brexit, Greece, Syria, immigration, begging and all sorts of other stuff. At some point, talking about the time when she used to work as a doctor in the UK, my friend told me about having got back in touch with a friend from that time through Facebook. Her friend moved long ago to Texas and she had lost touch completely until one day she decided to try to find him on Facebook. And there he was! And the time difference didn't matter. They could have a chat, of sorts, and swop photos and comments about life and its ups and downs. 

Now, that is what Facebook should be about as far as I am concerned. I too have re-established contact with old friends from the past in that way. Later in the evening, however, I found this on Facebook: "Sometimes I just want to shut off my cell phone, sell my car, move to a little cabin in the woods and live off the land." It was posted by a friend of a friend. I saw it because said friend "liked" it. I resisted the temptation to comment that the original poster could begin by switching off her iPhone and not posting rubbish on Facebook. And in any case, it wasn't even an original thought; she had found it on something called Sun Gazing.com. I suppose that if posting nonsense makes someone feel happy and less stressed then I have no right to criticise them. 

Everyone finds some way of relieving the stress in their lives. Pupils in some boarding schools in Zimbabwe have been doing so by brewing beer from breakfast cereal. This was something I read in the news last night! Most curious! It seems that in Zimbabwe parents send parcels of groceries to their offspring in boarding school. It must be a bit like the tuck boxes you used to read about in the Billy Bunter stories but instead of sweets they send proper food items. Anyway, a number of schools have had to contact parents and ask them NOT to send a certain kind of breakfast cereal. 

“Pupils reportedly mix the cereals with brown sugar and yeast and leave the mixture to ferment in the sun, creating a potent alcoholic mixture which the pupils drink right under the noses of school authorities,” said the news report. 

These were pupils as young as 13! And we thought it was just the youth of the UK who were into underage drinking. 

Meanwhile, schools in the UK continue to have problems in connection with uniform. I read that some schools have banned the wearing of skirts altogether because young male teachers are uncomfortable chastising the girls for wearing their skirts too short. And girls are the one who statistically get into the most trouble over uniform and are sent home or put into "isolation" for some offence against the dress code. And so some places have decreed that all girls must wear trousers. But even this leads to further problems because girls are criticised for wearing trousers which are too figure-hugging! (Are boys excluded for wearing low slung trousers that show their underwear) When will the establishment learn? Uniform does not automatically create a corporate identity! 

Here in Spain they don't have the problem because only private schools impose uniform on their pupils: girls in pleated plaid skirts (kilts, I suppose) and matching cardigans! In the public sector they just wear normal clothes. Nobody seems to think that dressing everyone the same will improve discipline and performance and the like. That must be a curiously British thing. 

This business of girls getting into trouble for what they wear should really be regarded as a preparation for later life, when they will be scrutinised and criticised, and occasionally praised, over and over again. But it's something of a two-edged sword. There was another case the other day of someone getting a storm of abuse for telling a young woman that her photo on LinkedIn was very nice. This was a young woman in the legal profession. The older gentleman who complimented her on her lovely photo apologised even as he did so, aware that it might be taken the wrong way, politically incorrect. But she still lambasted him. 

It's rather a sad world where a woman cannot just accept a compliment. Yes, I am aware that few men are assessed in quite the same way for their physical appearance, although there are signs that it is becoming more common. But something is wrong when it becomes impossible to tell a woman she looks good without this being taken as a totally sexist remark. There are women out there who will hate me what I am about to say next: I don't even see the harm in a chap giving a wolf whistle when he sees a pretty girl. So long, of course, as that is where it ends and he doesn't start to follow her and harass her! 

That's my point of view anyway!