Just when I had had enough of reports of floods in the North West of England, lo and behold, a friend on Facebook let me know about floods in the North West of Spain. Bits of Vigo that we know well have been under water. Vigo has had more rain that Santiago de Compostela, a place that gets rain when other places are basking in sunshine. Here come some statistics: Vigo had 181 litres of rain per square metre on Thursday but, on the other hand, the minimum temperature was 13.5, the highest recorded since 1957. More rain is expected over the weekend.
Just as well we have not organised to go there at the moment. I don't think we would really appreciate swapping one damp, grey place for another, even if Vigo is rather warmer than here. Just as well also that our flat in Vigo is on the seventh floor and in one of the higher streets of the city!
So for the moment we are still in Saddleworth, which did manage to see a little sunshine today after a rather gloomy start. By the time I had persuaded Phil to leave his computer and go out for a walk the sun had already sunk rather low in the sky but at least most of that sky was blue.
The North of England has been in the news today for another reason: the restoration of the steam train, the Flying Scotsman. They have been restoring this amazing engine for about ten years and today it was back on the rails. Here is a link to an article about it, with video footage. I wonder if a century from now people will be getting nostalgic about the high speed trains of today and organising associations to raise money for their restoration. Somehow I doubt it.
Nostalgia is not what it used to be!
Friday, 8 January 2016
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Modern stuff!
Here's a new and interesting 21st century profession : treadmill desk salesman. Such a post could not have existed before this century but our health conscious age keeps finding new ways of doing things. There are companies selling treadmill desks: a treadmill set up at an office desk or an office desk organised to accommodate a treadmill. You have to be careful not to set the treadmill too fast or the person walking while they work ends up running and gets all sweaty.
I had heard about standing desks, similar to the kind of thing you might expect Bob Cratchit to work at in his Dickensian office, and they seem like a good idea as they prevent the worker from developing the typical computer-used slump, but treadmill desks are a step further along. How possible is it to concentrate on your work if you are having to carry on walking in order to keep your balance?
Companies who sell such things and monitor their use have found that it is best to place two side by side in a large office complex, rather than one at each end. People are more likely to use one if they have a workmate on another next to them. One machine standing alone seemingly discourages users who are afraid of looking odd, geekish, freakish or just sucking up to management-ish. Oh, the fear of embarrassment!
These treadmill desk companies also market a "communal bike station", three exercise bikes attached to a table, for people who just like to sit and chat .... and want to exercise at the same time. Now that sounds like a good idea. Exercise bikes are extremely boring! Mind you, surely you can sit and chat to the next spinner to you in a gym!
I wonder how many companies really are willing to equip their offices with these desks. One companies deluxe model sells at around $2,500 dollars. All right, so that is the deluxe model but I imagine the standard model doesn't exactly come cheap.
I'm not against exercise and fitness and a healthy lifestyle. Not at all. I am the person who used to cycle to work back in the seventies, who went to a gym before it was a run of the mill kind of thing for people to do, who has always been to yoga classes and aerobics classes. I have always been careful about what I eat, even going through a vegetarian phase, but never really faddy. I have never quite seen the sense of the kind of diet that has you living on coffee and hard boiled eggs. Food should be enjoyable after all. But there are aspects of the 21st century model of the healthy life style that I find a little excessive.
In the summer when our daughter spent a fortnight with us in Spain, I was amused by the app she had on her iPhone that tracked how far we had walked each day, how many flights of steps we had gone up and down and so on. I was even briefly interested in acquiring such an app myself. But not for long. Now she has gone a stage further. She has an Apple watch which does all the step counting and distance measuring (she tells me how many kilometres she walks round her classroom every day!) and checks her pulse rate if she wants to do that. It will even keep track of how many calories she has consumed and how many she has burnt off doing all those steps and kilometres if she sets it that way. She can use it to check her email, look at messages and make phone calls, Provided her iPhone, to which it must be technologically/telepathically linked, is within range. If she's lucky it might even tell her the time!
And I find myself wondering what is the point! Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate my iPhone and my iPad and my digital camera. I'm not a luddite, after all! But I have my doubts about the absolute necessity of every new gadget and app that comes along.
When it comes down to it, they don't stop us procaffeinating - a lovely 21st century word for the tendency to not start anything until you have had a cup of coffee!
I had heard about standing desks, similar to the kind of thing you might expect Bob Cratchit to work at in his Dickensian office, and they seem like a good idea as they prevent the worker from developing the typical computer-used slump, but treadmill desks are a step further along. How possible is it to concentrate on your work if you are having to carry on walking in order to keep your balance?
Companies who sell such things and monitor their use have found that it is best to place two side by side in a large office complex, rather than one at each end. People are more likely to use one if they have a workmate on another next to them. One machine standing alone seemingly discourages users who are afraid of looking odd, geekish, freakish or just sucking up to management-ish. Oh, the fear of embarrassment!
These treadmill desk companies also market a "communal bike station", three exercise bikes attached to a table, for people who just like to sit and chat .... and want to exercise at the same time. Now that sounds like a good idea. Exercise bikes are extremely boring! Mind you, surely you can sit and chat to the next spinner to you in a gym!
I wonder how many companies really are willing to equip their offices with these desks. One companies deluxe model sells at around $2,500 dollars. All right, so that is the deluxe model but I imagine the standard model doesn't exactly come cheap.
I'm not against exercise and fitness and a healthy lifestyle. Not at all. I am the person who used to cycle to work back in the seventies, who went to a gym before it was a run of the mill kind of thing for people to do, who has always been to yoga classes and aerobics classes. I have always been careful about what I eat, even going through a vegetarian phase, but never really faddy. I have never quite seen the sense of the kind of diet that has you living on coffee and hard boiled eggs. Food should be enjoyable after all. But there are aspects of the 21st century model of the healthy life style that I find a little excessive.
In the summer when our daughter spent a fortnight with us in Spain, I was amused by the app she had on her iPhone that tracked how far we had walked each day, how many flights of steps we had gone up and down and so on. I was even briefly interested in acquiring such an app myself. But not for long. Now she has gone a stage further. She has an Apple watch which does all the step counting and distance measuring (she tells me how many kilometres she walks round her classroom every day!) and checks her pulse rate if she wants to do that. It will even keep track of how many calories she has consumed and how many she has burnt off doing all those steps and kilometres if she sets it that way. She can use it to check her email, look at messages and make phone calls, Provided her iPhone, to which it must be technologically/telepathically linked, is within range. If she's lucky it might even tell her the time!
And I find myself wondering what is the point! Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate my iPhone and my iPad and my digital camera. I'm not a luddite, after all! But I have my doubts about the absolute necessity of every new gadget and app that comes along.
When it comes down to it, they don't stop us procaffeinating - a lovely 21st century word for the tendency to not start anything until you have had a cup of coffee!
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
Fixing stuff.
There's a feature in the Observer magazine on a Sunday called "Things We Love". Basically it's a series of photos of stuff someone has selected as desirable bits and pieces to have about the home. I wonder if they receive free samples or if the producers of all this stuff pay the paper for giving them a mention. Anyway, the latest edition included something called Hokan bowls, which look like black Tupperware.
The description says, "Not only are these bowls ideal for January leftovers, they are also perfect for cooking baking and serving". At £87 for three bowls these seem to me to be rather expensive containers. What's wrong with ice cream tubs? So I looked up Hokan and found this:
"The Hokan /ˈhoʊkæn/ language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California.
The term is often used as a convenient label to simplify one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world. The name Hokan is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan languages: *xwak in Proto-Yuman, c-oocj (pronounced [koːkx]) in Seri, ha'k in Achumawi, etc.
These languages are spoken by Native American communities around and east of Mount Shasta, others near Lake Tahoe, the Pomo on the California coast, and the Yuman peoples along the lower Colorado River."
It went on quite a lot more but enough is enough. Hokan would seem, then, to be some kind of Native American thing. Something mainly linguistic. So I wondered if the advertised bowls were somehow related to Native American crafts and had a further hunt on the internet. Of course, when you go on the hokanbowls webpage it turns out not be tupperware at all:
"New and unique; innovative kitchen ware that you can cook with, bake with, store in and serve from, providing real help in the kitchen. Exclusively launched through this website only. Premium quality cookware specially designed and produced to be a robust and durable kitchen aid for everyday use; from the fridge, to oven, to table, and back again!
The set comprises of 3 stoneware bowls with stoneware lids; small (400ml), medium (600ml) and large (1000ml) glazed in a deep Cobalt Blue. Designed to stack one on top of the other saving precious fridge space.
High fired deep glazed stoneware to last a lifetime. Oven safe, Microwave safe, Dishwasher and Freezer safe."
Lovely, undoubtedly the kind of thing you would love to have in your kitchen but what does it have to do with the languages of California? No idea! Life is too short and too full of other things to do to spend any more time fretting about it.
Here are some things that I have decided need fixing:-
Water everywhere! Ever since the great rains started we have had a lively stream of water flowing down our street. Some time just before Christmas workmen came and had a look at it. They dug holes, they removed grid covers and poked around. Then they put a temporary fence around the hole and went away. They came and had another look on New Year's Eve and went away once more. We are very fortunate that it has not been icy cold, for our road would surely have been turned into a skating rink. I said as much yesterday morning to the workman who was digging out the hole they made just before Christmas. He told me the rain is the problem. If it would stop raining then they could fix the drains which are getting silted up with sand and gravel and such washed down by the rain. I could have told him that the rain was the problem myself but I thanked him politely, wished him every success and went off to continue my run. It needs fixing though.
Holes! First there is the growing hole, not dug by workmen, where the water running down the road has eroded the top surface of the tarmac. This is not the only hole around here. My running route, or at any rate one of my running routes, takes me along a path by an old mill pond. Over the weekend a huge hole has appeared in the path. I thought at first it might be a sink hole - there has been a spate of sink holes, far bigger than my little specimen, around the Greater Manchester area in recent months - because I could not see where the contents of the hole had gone to. Then I realised that a little further up the path the layer of gravel has grown extra thick. Someone needs to fix it.
Guns! President Obama is trying to fix the problem of guns by tightening up on the background security checks on people who buy guns at gun shows. He has been getting very agitated about it all and has finally decided that something must be done. I might start by restricting gun shows. Gun shows? For heaven's sake! Who goes to gun shows? Who buys all these guns? Why does anyone who is not running an army need machine guns and hand held rocket launchers. That bit of craziness needs fixing!
Certain attitudes in Northern Ireland! Medical staff in Northern Ireland are supposed to report to the police women who ask for help after having bought miscarriage-inducing pills over the internet. Staff who are discovered not to have reported such cases face legal problems themselves. Midwives are worried about women who buy such pills and work on the assumption that if you are eight weeks pregnant you take two a day for a week, then if you are sixteen weeks pregnant you can just take double the dose. The consequences are scary. The whole things is scary! How can somewhere that is part of the UK have such different laws?
Priorities! A village in china has built a huge statue of chairman Mao. Vast amounts of money has been spent on it, money that could gave been spent feeding the hungry or improving the social infrastructure. Fix it!
And finally, praising photos of drunken people in Manchester on New Year's Eve! There has been a lot of tweeting and twittering during which the photo has been compared to renaissance paintings. The balance of the composition is described as artistically perfect. Now as for me, it reminds me of some of Grayson Perry's tapestries, "The vanity of Small Differences". The difference of course is that he deliberately chose the placing of the elements in his picture whereas the photographer had to snap people where they fell.
Or did he? Maybe he fixed it.
The description says, "Not only are these bowls ideal for January leftovers, they are also perfect for cooking baking and serving". At £87 for three bowls these seem to me to be rather expensive containers. What's wrong with ice cream tubs? So I looked up Hokan and found this:
"The Hokan /ˈhoʊkæn/ language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California.
The term is often used as a convenient label to simplify one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world. The name Hokan is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan languages: *xwak in Proto-Yuman, c-oocj (pronounced [koːkx]) in Seri, ha'k in Achumawi, etc.
These languages are spoken by Native American communities around and east of Mount Shasta, others near Lake Tahoe, the Pomo on the California coast, and the Yuman peoples along the lower Colorado River."
It went on quite a lot more but enough is enough. Hokan would seem, then, to be some kind of Native American thing. Something mainly linguistic. So I wondered if the advertised bowls were somehow related to Native American crafts and had a further hunt on the internet. Of course, when you go on the hokanbowls webpage it turns out not be tupperware at all:
"New and unique; innovative kitchen ware that you can cook with, bake with, store in and serve from, providing real help in the kitchen. Exclusively launched through this website only. Premium quality cookware specially designed and produced to be a robust and durable kitchen aid for everyday use; from the fridge, to oven, to table, and back again!
The set comprises of 3 stoneware bowls with stoneware lids; small (400ml), medium (600ml) and large (1000ml) glazed in a deep Cobalt Blue. Designed to stack one on top of the other saving precious fridge space.
High fired deep glazed stoneware to last a lifetime. Oven safe, Microwave safe, Dishwasher and Freezer safe."
Lovely, undoubtedly the kind of thing you would love to have in your kitchen but what does it have to do with the languages of California? No idea! Life is too short and too full of other things to do to spend any more time fretting about it.
Here are some things that I have decided need fixing:-
Water everywhere! Ever since the great rains started we have had a lively stream of water flowing down our street. Some time just before Christmas workmen came and had a look at it. They dug holes, they removed grid covers and poked around. Then they put a temporary fence around the hole and went away. They came and had another look on New Year's Eve and went away once more. We are very fortunate that it has not been icy cold, for our road would surely have been turned into a skating rink. I said as much yesterday morning to the workman who was digging out the hole they made just before Christmas. He told me the rain is the problem. If it would stop raining then they could fix the drains which are getting silted up with sand and gravel and such washed down by the rain. I could have told him that the rain was the problem myself but I thanked him politely, wished him every success and went off to continue my run. It needs fixing though.
Holes! First there is the growing hole, not dug by workmen, where the water running down the road has eroded the top surface of the tarmac. This is not the only hole around here. My running route, or at any rate one of my running routes, takes me along a path by an old mill pond. Over the weekend a huge hole has appeared in the path. I thought at first it might be a sink hole - there has been a spate of sink holes, far bigger than my little specimen, around the Greater Manchester area in recent months - because I could not see where the contents of the hole had gone to. Then I realised that a little further up the path the layer of gravel has grown extra thick. Someone needs to fix it.
Guns! President Obama is trying to fix the problem of guns by tightening up on the background security checks on people who buy guns at gun shows. He has been getting very agitated about it all and has finally decided that something must be done. I might start by restricting gun shows. Gun shows? For heaven's sake! Who goes to gun shows? Who buys all these guns? Why does anyone who is not running an army need machine guns and hand held rocket launchers. That bit of craziness needs fixing!
Certain attitudes in Northern Ireland! Medical staff in Northern Ireland are supposed to report to the police women who ask for help after having bought miscarriage-inducing pills over the internet. Staff who are discovered not to have reported such cases face legal problems themselves. Midwives are worried about women who buy such pills and work on the assumption that if you are eight weeks pregnant you take two a day for a week, then if you are sixteen weeks pregnant you can just take double the dose. The consequences are scary. The whole things is scary! How can somewhere that is part of the UK have such different laws?
Priorities! A village in china has built a huge statue of chairman Mao. Vast amounts of money has been spent on it, money that could gave been spent feeding the hungry or improving the social infrastructure. Fix it!
And finally, praising photos of drunken people in Manchester on New Year's Eve! There has been a lot of tweeting and twittering during which the photo has been compared to renaissance paintings. The balance of the composition is described as artistically perfect. Now as for me, it reminds me of some of Grayson Perry's tapestries, "The vanity of Small Differences". The difference of course is that he deliberately chose the placing of the elements in his picture whereas the photographer had to snap people where they fell.
Or did he? Maybe he fixed it.
Monday, 4 January 2016
Metamorphosis and the price of being legal.
My passport runs out in March this year. I have acquired a passport renewal form. Now I just need some photos. Oh, and the £75 it is going to cost me.
If I needed to renew a gun license it would only cost me £50. But I don't have a gun so I don't need a cut-price license. Apparently it costs the police £196 to carry out the background checks but someone decided it would not be fair to pass on the full cost to the gun license holder. After all, the people who are most likely to own guns and need licenses for them are the most impoverished in the country: people who go hunting and shooting!
Yes, I know that farmers have shotguns as well and they are not necessarily going to be among the richest in the land. There are exceptions to every rule!
Still on the huntin', shootin' fishin' theme - outdoor pursuits, don't you know? - it seems that if you rear pheasants they count as livestock and so you are entitled to a VAT exemption and possibly other benefits, because you are producing food!. Very nice! If you want to organise a shoot, however, you have to release them into the wild so that they stop being livestock and count as wild birds. Otherwise they cannot be hunted. Then, after the shoot is over and, with rearing for next year in mind, you recapture the birds who have evaded the shotguns, then they revert to being livestock and you can go on claiming the tax exemption. Isn't that handy?
It's amazing the stuff you can find out quite accidentally! Stuff other people post online!
If a pheasant accidentally causes damage to someone else's property while they are being rounded up so that they can metamorphose back into livestock, the rounder-upper is not liable because at that point the pheasants are still wild. It's a kind of beneficial Catch-22!
Funnily enough, my father accidentally killed a pheasant years ago on his allotment. The silly bird was eating his young bean plants and he had chased it off unsuccessfully several times. In the end he threw a stick at it and by a fluke hit it on the head. The bird topped over and never got up again. A pheasant's head is very small so it probably doesn't take much to cause fatal brain damage. So there was my father with a dead pheasant. On his way home he called in at the local butchers and asked if he would clean it and pluck it for him. The butcher, however, refused to touch it on the grounds that it was a game bird and it was not yet the hunting season! So my father took it home and dealt with it himself.
When they eventually cooked the offending bird, my parents declared themselves unimpressed and did not understand what all the fuss was about.
If I needed to renew a gun license it would only cost me £50. But I don't have a gun so I don't need a cut-price license. Apparently it costs the police £196 to carry out the background checks but someone decided it would not be fair to pass on the full cost to the gun license holder. After all, the people who are most likely to own guns and need licenses for them are the most impoverished in the country: people who go hunting and shooting!
Yes, I know that farmers have shotguns as well and they are not necessarily going to be among the richest in the land. There are exceptions to every rule!
Still on the huntin', shootin' fishin' theme - outdoor pursuits, don't you know? - it seems that if you rear pheasants they count as livestock and so you are entitled to a VAT exemption and possibly other benefits, because you are producing food!. Very nice! If you want to organise a shoot, however, you have to release them into the wild so that they stop being livestock and count as wild birds. Otherwise they cannot be hunted. Then, after the shoot is over and, with rearing for next year in mind, you recapture the birds who have evaded the shotguns, then they revert to being livestock and you can go on claiming the tax exemption. Isn't that handy?
It's amazing the stuff you can find out quite accidentally! Stuff other people post online!
If a pheasant accidentally causes damage to someone else's property while they are being rounded up so that they can metamorphose back into livestock, the rounder-upper is not liable because at that point the pheasants are still wild. It's a kind of beneficial Catch-22!
Funnily enough, my father accidentally killed a pheasant years ago on his allotment. The silly bird was eating his young bean plants and he had chased it off unsuccessfully several times. In the end he threw a stick at it and by a fluke hit it on the head. The bird topped over and never got up again. A pheasant's head is very small so it probably doesn't take much to cause fatal brain damage. So there was my father with a dead pheasant. On his way home he called in at the local butchers and asked if he would clean it and pluck it for him. The butcher, however, refused to touch it on the grounds that it was a game bird and it was not yet the hunting season! So my father took it home and dealt with it himself.
When they eventually cooked the offending bird, my parents declared themselves unimpressed and did not understand what all the fuss was about.
Sunday, 3 January 2016
There goes another Christmas.
It may not be Twelfth Night yet but the tree was undressed and put outside this afternoon. It's a tiny living tree so hopefully it will grow a bit and can come in again next year. The cards have been collected up. Now it's time to decide whether I am following my parsimonious cousin's idea and cutting off the best pictures to make my own cards for next year or simply throwing the whole lot into paper and card recycling. Probably the latter. Knowing me, I would forget where I had put the carefully selected Christmas pictures when the time came to make new cards. And besides, what does one do for envelopes for such creations?
Last night we hosted some friends who have been up in Scotland and are making their way back to their home in France via selected friends and family. We had a good long discussion about how the French and Spanish borrow and mangle bits of the English language. Our friends are much more pessimistic about it than we are. I just find it fascinating but they are almost offended by what is being done to the purity of the French language. As if we could legislate against it. Goodness me, the Académie Française has tried unsuccessfully for donkeys' years.
And then this afternoon, our daughter asked if she could bring the gang round for tea as her oven has collapsed and died on her. Well, of course, you have to help out in such situations but I hope she gets it fixed pronto quick. I have been catering for friends and family for about two weeks now and have decided that we shall survive on soup and sandwiches and salad for the next week at least!
Tomorrow everyone goes back to school or work and we all return to our old routine. And as for those have made New Year's Resolutions, I wonder how long they will last.
At some part this afternoon, we thought about the expression "put your dukes up" for some unknown reason and wondered where the expression came from. So, of course, I Googled it. The general consensus seems to be that it is another example of Cockney rhyming slang: - Duke of Yorks = forks = fingers/hands. Hard to believe but apparently 'the forks' had been a slang term for 'fingers/hands' since the 18th century. It is recorded as slang for 'pickpocket'.
Another suggestion is that 'dukes' is of Romany origin. This belief comes from the Romany word 'dookin', meaning fortune telling or palmistry. However, my source said that there is little substantial evidence to back this up. So it goes.
I was amused by this comment I found in my searching: "Most Americans won't realise that the expression 'duke it out', which is the US variant of 'put up your dukes', is in all probability an homage to the favourite son of the ruler who did all that he could to prevent the formation of the United States. The ruler was of course the English King George III and the favoured son was Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany."
There you go.
Last night we hosted some friends who have been up in Scotland and are making their way back to their home in France via selected friends and family. We had a good long discussion about how the French and Spanish borrow and mangle bits of the English language. Our friends are much more pessimistic about it than we are. I just find it fascinating but they are almost offended by what is being done to the purity of the French language. As if we could legislate against it. Goodness me, the Académie Française has tried unsuccessfully for donkeys' years.
And then this afternoon, our daughter asked if she could bring the gang round for tea as her oven has collapsed and died on her. Well, of course, you have to help out in such situations but I hope she gets it fixed pronto quick. I have been catering for friends and family for about two weeks now and have decided that we shall survive on soup and sandwiches and salad for the next week at least!
Tomorrow everyone goes back to school or work and we all return to our old routine. And as for those have made New Year's Resolutions, I wonder how long they will last.
At some part this afternoon, we thought about the expression "put your dukes up" for some unknown reason and wondered where the expression came from. So, of course, I Googled it. The general consensus seems to be that it is another example of Cockney rhyming slang: - Duke of Yorks = forks = fingers/hands. Hard to believe but apparently 'the forks' had been a slang term for 'fingers/hands' since the 18th century. It is recorded as slang for 'pickpocket'.
Another suggestion is that 'dukes' is of Romany origin. This belief comes from the Romany word 'dookin', meaning fortune telling or palmistry. However, my source said that there is little substantial evidence to back this up. So it goes.
I was amused by this comment I found in my searching: "Most Americans won't realise that the expression 'duke it out', which is the US variant of 'put up your dukes', is in all probability an homage to the favourite son of the ruler who did all that he could to prevent the formation of the United States. The ruler was of course the English King George III and the favoured son was Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany."
There you go.
Saturday, 2 January 2016
What's in a name?
Some friends of our son recently had a baby boy. When I say recently, I mean about eight weeks ago now. For the first month of his life the poor child was simply known as "Nameless". They even got as far as the register office one day, where the registrar watched them hesitate and advised them to go away and rethink. Snap decisions, he told them, were always regretted.
Eventually the poor child was named Wilfred!!! This is not a name I would ever have chosen, never in a month of Sundays. It is patently not a tiny boy's name. However, this is their choice. They must have looked him in the eye and decided he looked like a Wilfred, now referred to as Wilfie!
They went through a similar period of indecision over the name of their first child, a daughter. Lots of people agonise in this way. Some friends of ours went through about ten names before deciding that their son was a Sam. We had no such problems, although we did have to think of a girl's name rather quickly when our daughter was born, so convinced was I that I was having a second son. After all, the first had been fine, so there was no problem having another small boy around. And then a small girl came out instead!
I was reminded of all this when I read one of those question and answer sessions in the Guardian. I think that they print the question and answer session in that way to avoid having to write up the interview. Lazy journalism! Anyway, today's session was with the actress (I categorically refuse to call her an actor!) Lily Cole. It turns out she has a daughter called Wylde. This is another name chosen after much thought. The actress said, "It took us a while but Wylde was the first name that my partner and I both liked." I wonder how you look at a child and decide that her true name is actually Wylde. Did she have a particularly uncivilised look about her?
Names are, of course, a serious business. And quite often eagerly expectant parents have a name in mind and then take a look at the newborn and realise that the selected name is all wrong. This is even popping up in the radio soap opera The Archers, where the manipulative Rob is trying to persuade Helen, his dormouse of a wife, that the name he has chosen for their as yet unborn son is the right one. For once the dormouse has resisted, declaring that she did not choose the name for her firstborn until she saw his little face. Good for the dormouse!
I suppose the only consolation for the children named Wilfred or Wylde (or even North) is that they will probably have a number of little friends in nursery also called Wilfred or Wylde! Such is the way of fashion.
On the subject of fashion, I have found yet another random statement made by those who write about fashion. According to Jess Cartner-Morley, in the Guardian magazine, there is an etiquette to wearing jumpers. "Your winter jumper should end either at your waist, tucked into a waistband, or continue to the top of your thighs. The jumper that ends around jeans pocket level is not where fashion is at."
Who knew? And is "jeans pocket level" a technical term?
Eventually the poor child was named Wilfred!!! This is not a name I would ever have chosen, never in a month of Sundays. It is patently not a tiny boy's name. However, this is their choice. They must have looked him in the eye and decided he looked like a Wilfred, now referred to as Wilfie!
They went through a similar period of indecision over the name of their first child, a daughter. Lots of people agonise in this way. Some friends of ours went through about ten names before deciding that their son was a Sam. We had no such problems, although we did have to think of a girl's name rather quickly when our daughter was born, so convinced was I that I was having a second son. After all, the first had been fine, so there was no problem having another small boy around. And then a small girl came out instead!
I was reminded of all this when I read one of those question and answer sessions in the Guardian. I think that they print the question and answer session in that way to avoid having to write up the interview. Lazy journalism! Anyway, today's session was with the actress (I categorically refuse to call her an actor!) Lily Cole. It turns out she has a daughter called Wylde. This is another name chosen after much thought. The actress said, "It took us a while but Wylde was the first name that my partner and I both liked." I wonder how you look at a child and decide that her true name is actually Wylde. Did she have a particularly uncivilised look about her?
Names are, of course, a serious business. And quite often eagerly expectant parents have a name in mind and then take a look at the newborn and realise that the selected name is all wrong. This is even popping up in the radio soap opera The Archers, where the manipulative Rob is trying to persuade Helen, his dormouse of a wife, that the name he has chosen for their as yet unborn son is the right one. For once the dormouse has resisted, declaring that she did not choose the name for her firstborn until she saw his little face. Good for the dormouse!
I suppose the only consolation for the children named Wilfred or Wylde (or even North) is that they will probably have a number of little friends in nursery also called Wilfred or Wylde! Such is the way of fashion.
On the subject of fashion, I have found yet another random statement made by those who write about fashion. According to Jess Cartner-Morley, in the Guardian magazine, there is an etiquette to wearing jumpers. "Your winter jumper should end either at your waist, tucked into a waistband, or continue to the top of your thighs. The jumper that ends around jeans pocket level is not where fashion is at."
Who knew? And is "jeans pocket level" a technical term?
Friday, 1 January 2016
A start to the new year.
So here we are in 2016, having successfully negotiated New Year's Eve. We went to a friend's house to celebrate the event. She and her daughter and a few other people had been to the pantomime first. Not quite what I would choose to do, but there it is. We went along post panto for drinks and nibbles.
Our contribution was a bottle of Rioja, a strange chocolate fondu set (given to Phil by one of his chess players who clearly thought that his chocoholic habit extended to dipping marshmallows and such in melted chocolate - not really the case) and some rather old sparklers. The wine was mostly drunk and the chocolate sampled but the sparklers fizzed out rather too quickly to write Happy New Year, or HNY as some of my younger friends refer to it, in the dark air.
Fireworks, fizz and chat over, we walked home through the crisp night. The weathermen were correct: the skies cleared for midnight and at two in the morning we had stars and half a moon to light us on our way. The weathermen were right about the temperature drop as well. As we walked down the hill there were frost patterns on the roof of cars, the first I have seen this winter.
There was also frost on the roof of our shed when I got up this morning. My plan had been to stay in bed until I just woke of my own accord, no alarms set. Had that happened, I might not have seen the frost. Our granddaughter had other plans however. And so my phone went ping at 9.30 with the following message:
"I'm not sure if you are awake yet, but if you are am I allowed to pop over?"
Now, I assumed she was at home, a bus ride away and told her:
"Yes, I am awake NOW. How soon will you get here?"
The conversation continued:
"Like, immediately."
"Where are you?"
"Delph crossroads. (i.e. Two minutes down the road.) I tried to get a bus but they lied."
"Ok. I'll open the door. See you soon."
"I'm here!"
It turned out that she had seen the New Year in locally with her he's-not-my-boyfriend and his family, had stayed up all night watching stuff on Netflix and had planned to catch a bus home. The bus never came! Nor did the next one! (Later in the day other friends complained about the complete lack of bus service.) So she decided to wake her grandmother and wait for her mother to pick her up at some point later in the day.
These are the kind of things you can do when you are 18. Grandmothers do not necessarily appreciate being woken earlier than planned however.
Happy New Year!
Fireworks, fizz and chat over, we walked home through the crisp night. The weathermen were correct: the skies cleared for midnight and at two in the morning we had stars and half a moon to light us on our way. The weathermen were right about the temperature drop as well. As we walked down the hill there were frost patterns on the roof of cars, the first I have seen this winter.
There was also frost on the roof of our shed when I got up this morning. My plan had been to stay in bed until I just woke of my own accord, no alarms set. Had that happened, I might not have seen the frost. Our granddaughter had other plans however. And so my phone went ping at 9.30 with the following message:
"I'm not sure if you are awake yet, but if you are am I allowed to pop over?"
Now, I assumed she was at home, a bus ride away and told her:
"Yes, I am awake NOW. How soon will you get here?"
The conversation continued:
"Like, immediately."
"Where are you?"
"Delph crossroads. (i.e. Two minutes down the road.) I tried to get a bus but they lied."
"Ok. I'll open the door. See you soon."
"I'm here!"
It turned out that she had seen the New Year in locally with her he's-not-my-boyfriend and his family, had stayed up all night watching stuff on Netflix and had planned to catch a bus home. The bus never came! Nor did the next one! (Later in the day other friends complained about the complete lack of bus service.) So she decided to wake her grandmother and wait for her mother to pick her up at some point later in the day.
These are the kind of things you can do when you are 18. Grandmothers do not necessarily appreciate being woken earlier than planned however.
Happy New Year!
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