Making “days”. Good boot company actions. Reportiing the virus. Numbers. Asylum seekers. And out and about photos.

It seems that today is International Left Handers' Day. Who decides these things? Every slightly different-from-the-norm group has a “day” in the present world. As a left-handed friend of mine commented, “once they give you your own special day you know you're part of an oppressed minority”. Which is a bit extreme and possibly insulting to truly oppressed minorities. But then, left-handed children used to have their left hand tied so that they were forced to use their right hand. And I am told that my grandmother used to frantically rinse her hair with camomile to calm its colour down, flaming red hair being too embarrassingly noticeable!

I read yesterday that the Doctor Martens boots company has repaid its furlough cash to the government. Their sales rose nearly 50% in the year to June and the group’s profits nearly doubled. The company claimed furlough payments in line with the job retention scheme but now they have returned the money. Just think, they could have given shareholders extra dividends or paid the CEO a big bonus! But, no, they have decided to give the money back and help the country out. Well done!

The Guardian’s Coronavirus blog gave a “closing summary” yesterday, beginning: Closing summary Kevin Rawlinson We’re going to close down this live blog now. Thanks for reading and commenting. And ending: If you’d like to continue following the Guardian’s coronavirus coverage, head over to the global live blog. Does this mean the crisis is all over in the UK? I don’t think so. Our town is still getting warnings of a possible total shutdown unless things improve quickly. And I am getting confused about numbers, especially numbers of people who have died from the virus. This is because of this report:

“UK government removes thousands of people from Covid death toll after redefining it The Department of Health and Social Care has reduced the UK’s death toll by more than 5,000 following a review of how figures are calculated. Officials said that, as of Wednesday 12 August, the number of all deaths in patients testing positive for Covid-19 within 28 days was 41,329.
Earlier government figures said 46,706 people had died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK, as of 5pm on Tuesday. The DHSC said the change came after the UK government and devolved administrations agreed to publish the number of deaths that have occurred within 28 days of a positive lab-confirmed Covid test result each day.”

It rather smacks of manipulation to me.

I suppose all reporting is selective. We have been hearing lots of reports of the small boats full of asylum seekers crossing the Channel, as if it were something new and unusual. And yet one report said that boats have been making the crossing for years. It’s just not received a lot of attention. And possibly there are actually more of them this year. This year more than 4,000 refugees have made the treacherous journey across the waters to Dover, often in dinghies. Now it appears that British First activists have got boats out patrolling the Kent coast, vigilante self-appointed immigration officials. I dread to think of how they will treat any asylum seekers they come across.

Mid to late afternoon yesterday my daughter and I cajoled, badgered and otherwise nagged my eldest granddaughter to go for a walk with us after she logged off work. So she donned her shorts and we braved the heat, walking along wooded bridle paths and canal tow paths. En route we spotted the handiwork of young den makers - quite impressive. On the whole, I have been impressed by the way young teens have been out and about on their bikes and rambling around doing all sorts if adventurous outdoor things: making rope swings, building ramos to do stunt cycling and now building teepee-like dens.

I also snapped some fine reflections.

 

And we picked, and immediately ate, blackberries, which are ripe very early this year in my opinion.

Of course, the best-looking berries are always the ones just out of reach.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Looking (or not) for meteors. Cockerels crowing. Vaccination.

There were meteors last night, so someone on the radio told us. After midnight would be a good time to look out for them. The advice was to find a spot with as little light interference as possible, lie down on your back and look at the sky. There should have been several every hour. As usual we had cloud. We also had a thunderstorm and lashings of rain. So it’s a good job I wasn’t stretched out on the grass in the back garden. I saw no meteors but I did see a flash of lightning and heard some thunder. A friend of mine said he sat in his garden in Bolton in the small hours watching out for meteors and another lightning storm. He’ll be complaining next that his five year old twins don’t let him sleep!

Today was already warm at 9 o’ clock when I set off on my bike to go to the market. I must say I was glad to have the shopping in the panniers of my bike to carry home rather than walking with it all in a rucksack. The temperature had already gone up by the time I was riding home. By midday my weather app was telling me it was 28 degrees. A number of people are saying it is too hot, some of the same people who regularly go on sun-seeking holidays ... or at least did so before the pandemic came along. 

When we are in Galicia we have often noticed cockerels with no sense of time, cock-a-doodle-doo-ing at three or four in the afternoon. Crazy poultry. I read a news item about an Italian pensioner who was fined because bis cockerel kept waking the neighbours ar the crack of dawn, as cockerels are supposed to do. The police staked out his house to check that the neighbours were not just being vindictive. And lo and behold, at 4x30 am Carlino the cockerel crowed and Signor Boletti was fined €166!! Apparently there are rules that pets must be ket at a minimum distance of 10 metre from neighbouring homes, which was not the case with Carlino’s cage. Mind you, I reckon that even if he kept him 30 metre from other houses, his crowing would still have woken everyone!

The irony is that after the fowl had lives in his garden for 20 years Signor Boletti had given him away to a friend. The cockerel was just back on a visit while the new owner was on holiday! Rather an expensive favour if you ask me!

We are still waiting to see whether they decide to impose further restrictions on Oldham with the rise in Covid-19 cases here. Will pubs have to close again? We shall see.

Russia has supposedly got a Covid-19 vaccine sorted out. Much discussion is going on about testing the vaccine. Meanwhile, I read that almost 50% of people in the UK would not want not be vaccinated against Coronavirus. Fewer young people than older people want to be vaccinated, presumably buoyed up by the belief that young people are less badly affected by virus. Crazy people!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Thunder and lightning. Living on the edge of town. Crisis nostalgia. Language matters.

Apparently there was what has been described as a “silent lightning storm” over Greater Manchester last night. Presumably this means lots of fancy lightning but no thunder. We saw none of it. Our daughter in nearby Ashton and our granddaughter in even nearer by Mossley both commented around midnight on the fantastic light show they were having. It didn’t make it over the hill to Delph though. Sometime in he wee small hours I heard thunder but still no lightning.

This morning looked dull but was in fact warm and rather humid. (The sun came out later.) I went into the village for a few things and came back needing a shower. There is nothing like a cold shower on the back of your neck when you feel hot and sticky! Breakfast was late as a result!

Maybe we did not see the lightning storm because we are right on the edge of Greater Manchester. A few miles up the road and you are in a different county, probably Yorkshire, which Delph used to belong to, but with shifting boundaries you never know. We are also on the extrema edge if Oldham, which has its advantages as Oldham now has the second highest coronavirus infection rate in England, just below Pendle where the rate has jumped from 44.5 in the seven days to July 31 to 96.6 in the seven days to August 7. But we seem to be little affected by it here on the edge of town, thankfully. Maybe that’s why so many people wander into the coop store without a face covering? But I guess we won’t be coming out if extended restrictions any day soon.

And now even New Zealand is seeing some new cases, and they have been super careful!

However, a kind of Coronavirus nostalgia seems to have set in with articles like one by the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent, Sam Jones, looking back at the early days of the pandemic. He was reporting on Brexit at the end of January and has this to say:-

“The following day, after filing my Brexit dispatch to the Observer, I rang a Spanish pilot to ask about one of the stranger missions of his career. Francisco Javier Martínez, an amiable aviator with more than 40 years’ experience, was just back from flying his 747 to China to evacuate 120 people – most of them British and Spanish – from Wuhan. Those were the early days: the coronavirus outbreak had yet to become a pandemic and the virus was still vying with Brexit to become the story of 2020.

Martínez was modest and matter-of-fact about the trip but, when I look back over his quotes seven months on, his description of flying to China reads rather differently.

“Wuhan looked like a desert; there wasn’t a car on the motorway and the airport was totally empty,” he said. “It was as if a bomb had gone off and left the city totally empty. No people, no cars, no movement, nothing. It was all a bit overwhelming.”

Six weeks later, his words could equally have described Spain as it folded itself quickly and compliantly into one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns.”

Sam Jones ends his article like this:-

“As the months roll on and we are pitched from peak to trough, I sometimes wonder whether the foresight could ever have matched the hindsight. And I remember something else that Martínez told me about flying into Wuhan. A thought had occurred to him as he approached the city, and his nine words still provide as fine a précis of the Covid crisis as you’ll get from anyone. “This was all a bit bigger than we’d thought.””

Indeed! And it’s not over yet.

And here is a story which brings together the pandemic and the Beirut explosion, a “we might have been in Beirut” story.  The writer describes how she left Beirut for a new job in Sidney Australia. She left Beirut in March. Her husband stayed in Beirut working for the United Nations high commission for refugees, but they knew they could always hop on a flight to see each other, and then Coronavirus hit and Beirut closed its airport. Her husband could not catch a repatriation flight because there was nobodybto replace him in his job and so he stayed, finally flying back to Australia only a couple of weeks ago. Friends in Beirut tell them they had a lucky escape.

And finally, a Spanish friend of mine has posted a list of expressions she thinks should be used in Spanish instead of their English equivalents:-
 Pasatiempo ... not hobby.
 Asesoría ... not coaching.
 Compras ... not shopping.
 Vestimenta ... not outfit.
 Apariencia ... not look.
 Registro de entrada ... not check-in.
 Registro de salida ... not check-out.
 Apoyo or respaldo ... not back up.
 Contraseña ... not password.
 Versión ... not cover.
 Fecha límite ... not deadline.
 Experiencia ... not knowhow.

I suspect she has a losing battle on her hands but there it is!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Is this summer? Out and about. Extreme sports. The ongoing education quandary.

It’s not quite what my friends and acquaintances in Galicia would call “un verano”, what we might call “a proper summer”, and yet the air is warm and when the clouds shift the temperature shoots up. The wind keeps the clouds moving. It also brings the temperature down in the evening.

Yesterday evening, on our after dinner stroll, we were struck by the strange sunset, with curious rays shooting upwards into the sky. Most impressive.

Earlier in the day I had been on yet another “adventure” with our daughter and the children. The small children have to come along willy nilly but we persuaded to two older daughters, 17 and 23, to join in the fun. Their 15 year old brother was having none of this outdoor activity however. The younger of the two sister was enthusiastic as we planned another walk up to Heights Church, one of the local high spots as its name indicates, because she really likes the old churchyard up there.

The older sister was at first rather reluctant - “What? All the way up to Heights?” - but we dragged her along anyway and her enthusiasm grew as we walked. Once up at the top she spent quite a long time examining old gravestones and exclaiming at brevity of some people’s lives and the sadness of family on the late 1800s who seemed to lose one child after another before the children reached the age of one year old.

Sad times indeed!

We go on fairly sedate adventures, admittedly making our way up fairly steep hills and occasionally following rather dubious-looking footpaths.

Other people are much more truly adventurous.

I read about a young girl who has aspirations to represent the UK on her skateboard in the next Olympic games. 12 year old Sky Brown has described the film, captured by someone’s mobile phone, of her last skateboarding accident as “cool”:-

“Brown’s arms and legs flail helplessly as if seeking some kind of invisible traction while she plummets 15 feet. The camera drops to the ground as her father runs towards his little girl. She was still only 11 years old and Brown suffered multiple fractures in her skull, lacerations to her lungs and stomach, a broken left arm and busted fingers on her right hand.”

She reckons her helmet saved her life - quite so! Some six weeks later, however, still with limbs in plaster, she was back on her skateboard, not doing flips and somersaults though but still being rather daring. My question is this: what were her parents doing allowing a child with limbs in plaster even look at a skateboard?!

Sky Brown and her younger brother Ocean (yes, Sky and Ocean!) live in California, as you might guess, but she can represent the UK because her father is an Englishman. She would like to be a role model and encourage other girls to take up skateboarding.

In Australia, meanwhile, at least three women have been injured swimming in an area where there are whales and their calves. One of the women, who was on a snorkelling tour at the reef, said, “The calf decided to come check us out and ended up being between us and the mum, so mum went into protective mode and swung back. As she did that to put herself between us and the calf, her fin came out and got me.”

That sounds like a large female animal protecting her young. Once again I have a question: why would you swim in a bay where there are large, protective female mammals with their young?

I wonder, as I have often done before, what motivates some people to engage in dangerous occupations, especially if they don’t add much to the sum of human knowledge.

I am getting a little annoyed with some of the arguments being brought to bear in the discussion about schools opening. I just heard a politician on the radio say that if if we had imposed on supermarkets the conditions demanded by teaching unions for schools there would have been no supermarkets open during the lockdown. Yes, people needed to buy food but, looking at it all realistically, nobody obliges anyone to spend 6 hours or more a day in the supermarket. The important question, as the same politician said, is “What about the kids?”

And so the debate rolls on and on. Some people are finding positives in the lockdown and our continuing social distancing. According to this article  “lockdown and physical distancing measures have helped reduce the incidence of flu, colds, bronchitis and a host of viruses other than Covid-19 in England, monitoring suggests.” That sounds fairly logical, given that we have largely not been in buses breathing on each other so much. Even measles and other childhood illnesses were reduced as children were not in nursery and school. Nobody knows whether there will be an explosion of colds and bronchitis as we move out of lockdown and into winter.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Reactions to reintroducing restriction. A bit of education stuff. Interesting stuff about a film.

A friend who lives somewhere or other in Greece, posted this on Facebook:-

“It's getting deathly serious again: "...all activities, including religious services, for the August 15 Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a major festival time in Greece, will be cancelled this year...". Wow. This is the rough equivalent of cancelling Christmas celebrations in the UK.”

Asked if the place where she lives is much affected, she replied:-

“Not yet, which I count as a small miracle. There are some cases in the Cyclades, but I don't know for sure which islands are affected. More worrying, in the opposite direction, is Attica. Even more worrying is the attitude of young people, who seem quite unable to get by without huge parties. The rest of us are baffled and not a little horrified.”

I thought of this exchange as we were out on an walk yesterday evening, around 8 o’clock, doing a longish circuit of the village, past a couple of old millponds, now converted into duckponds, through the village centre and back home. As we went past the first duckpond we could hear and then see a moderately large group of young people out and about. They seemed to settle down at the bottom of the hillside in a spot out of the wind. Was this the start of a British botellón? we wondered.

Clearly, however, the spot they had chosen was not sufficiently sheltered for their purposes and they upped sticks and set of along the bridle path leading back to the village, with a fair amount of goodnatured pushing and shoving and laughter. We were rapidly catching up with them and, faced with the prospect of either pushing our way past them or settling for a slow walk in their wake, we took a turning off the path, back into a housing estate and eventually onto the main road back towards the village. Not quite the walk we had planned but it was quite acceptable.

In fact, the young people were a good deal quieter than the people who had gathered in the pub garden next door to our house. And those people continued their revelries until at least midnight. Goodness knows where the young people ended up.

So the pubs and restaurants are getting going again. Debate about schools opening continues.

There is really no official suggestion that they should remain closed but teachers’ unions are voicing their concerns. Consequently teachers, and particularly the unions, are being described in some of the media as deliberately obstructing the reopening of schools. Once more teachers are portrayed as lazy and selfish! 

Thinking about education, there has been something of an outcry from poets about the government’s decision to make the study of poetry optional for GCSE English students next year. This is all to do with the students having missed a chunk of this year’s teaching. It always seems to me that other countries in Europe give their students a broader overview of their countries’ literature than we do here. It would be a shame to remove poetry from the curriculum. If 16 year olds can cope with Shakespeare, surely they can manage a bit of poetry as well. Poet laureate Simon Armitage and former children’s laureate Michael Rosen are among the top UK poets decrying the government’s decision, describing it as “a dangerous first step”.

We’ll be restricting our curriculum to the purely utilitarian at this rate!

The other day I came across an interview with Dan Aykroyd and Jon Landis about the making of the film “The Blues Brothers”, one of my favourite films. Dan Aykroyd said this:-

“Southern cinemas didn’t want to screen the film because of the African American artists but when it became a hit they opened up and people got to see it. It acts as cultural preservation. We made sure the writers of the material kept their publishing rights. John and I took performers’ rights only. Every one of those songs we recorded remunerated the original artists 100% due to album sales. It was an ethical decision and the songwriters today and their estates have benefited from it.”

Wow! Bear in mind that the film was made in 1980 and still southern states did not want to show it, until they realised it was becoming a popular money-spinner!

And really, it was all about the music, among other things. Jon Landis said this:-

“I put the whole “mission from God” thing in as a homage to Dan because he was downright evangelical about the music. It’s hard to believe, but in 1979 rhythm, blues and Motown was in decline and the popular music was disco. People ask: “How did you get all those amazing acts?” We called them up! The whole point of the movie was to showcase these extraordinary artists.

The Blues Brothers is a testament to John and Dan’s passion for the blues. They took advantage of their celebrity to focus attention on soul music. I’m proud of it, I also think it’s a totally insane film. There’s many reasons to make a movie and you’re successful or not on many different levels.

On the level of Dan wanting to proselytise about this music, it was an enormous success. It brought everybody involved with it back with a vengeance.”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Restrictions and rules and being careful, whatever you do!

Preston has been put into extended restrictions, like the ones imposed on Greater Manchester. A ban on mixing in homes and gardens, came into place from midnight and will stay in place until August 14th at least. But a lot of people in the area have said “they expect many of their neighbours to ignore the renewed coronavirus restrictions imposed in the city.”

I rather like the wording of that statement, suggesting that those speaking are good, law-abiding citizens but that they believe their neighbours are not!

One good citizen commented: “I was happy the restrictions were brought in because I think we do need the police to get involved. The pubs around us were still 30 or 40 deep outside last night.” Certainly the pubs seem to be filling up and staying open late, if the one next door to our house is anything to go by. I woke up for some reason at about 1.30 this morning and could still hear loud and animated conversation from the pub garden. A little bit of summer and the British become continental in their social habits, chatting and drinking into the small hours. I predict that things might be a bit quieter out there at 1.30 in the morning in mid-December!

Personally we have been a bit careful to obey the rules. Or rather, our daughter has been quite strict about reminding us that if we let the children play in our garden or invite Phil’s brother in for a cup of tea we could find ourselves facing a largish fine. Would our neighbours report us? I certainly hope not.

Yesterday most of the family - our daughter and her gang and my brother-in-law - met up for a rather hot walk to Diggle chippy for a fish and chips picnic lunch by the duckpond and a return walk along the canal towpath.

We were impressed by the log-sitting ducks and the boldness of the robins.

After we said goodbye to the younger end of the family, we risked inviting my brother-in-law to have a cup of tea with us before he set off for home. After all, I had gone to the trouble of baking a gluten-free cake with him in mind. I don’t think anyone noticed. And besides, the younger members of the household next door seemed to have invited guests themselves in the early evening, setting up a barbecue in he garden.

In between reading updates in the Coronavirus crisis status I have occasionally read other odds and ends. Among that stuff I found something about the writer John Boyne, who wrote “the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. His new Novel, “A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom”, ranges from AD1 to the twenty-first century and at one point involves the narrator trying to poison Attila the Hun. The ingredients for the poison include “Octorok eyeball” and “the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms”.

Now, it seems that these come straight from a popular video game “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”, a game quite unfamiliar to John Boyne as he does not play video games. Another writer, Dana Schwartz, pointed out his accidental “borrowing”:-

“if those ingredients look weird to you, it is because they are straight of out of the Zelda game Breath of the Wild”.

She suggested that John Boyne might have simply done a google search and found these odd components.

“He found a site listing monster parts and accidentally put them in his Very Serious book. I am very embarrassed for him and this is my nightmare but it’s also very funny,” said Dana Schwartz. “Anyway. Let this be a lesson to all novelists to read the full context of the things you’re looking up for your books but if you do make mistakes, at least let them be hilarious.”

John Boyne decided against changing his book but decided to add the video game to the acknowledgements page when the book comes out in paperback.

It just goes to show that you have to be careful in all things.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Fighting with nettles. Feeding pandas. Melting glaciers. And speaking Welsh.

Towards the end of yesterday afternoon we decided the time had come to stretch our legs. As the previous day’s walk had been stymied by sudden rainfall, Phil suggested a walk up the hill “to give ourselves a bit of gradient. Fine! Having been up the hill and down the other side, he then proposed returning home via the “forest path”, something of an exaggeration as names go as that bit of woodland does not really constitute a forest. We also call it the “secret path” as that was the name our son gave it when he was about nine and we first discovered this path off the main road, linking two villages together.

There was an ulterior motive to this walk. On Wednesday, as I have undoubtedly mentioned, I purchased a handy-sized pair of secateurs. This was a chance to try them out. Already, going up the hill we had come across blackberry brambles and rambling roses trying to take over the pavement and block the way. A quick snip here and there and the way was much easier. And so the proposed return via the forest path gave the perfect opportunity for “a bit of snipping”.

At the point where we got onto the path, it looked like this. Brambles there were but it was the nettles that really encroached, reducing the width of the path to diminutive proportions. We have walked this lath with our almost 4-year-old granddaughter and the idea of someone her size pushing the nettles was simply not good.

So Phil got to work. I held his jacket and worked as his consultant/advisor/chief “nasties” spotter. Now, Phil is a very determined person and when he gets a bee in his bonnet he will not give in easily. Consequently, something like an hour later we had progressed about 100 yards.

The path, however, was now much clearer.
I hope it is appreciated by all who tread it.





By the way, we also saw some splendid toadstools, worthy of any fairy tale.

It’s a good job I had put our evening meal in the oven on a slow cook. Otherwise there is no knowing when we would have got around to eating.

On the subject of eating, one of the odd, sad co sequences of the pandemic is that pandas in a Canadian zoo are in danger of starving as the supply chain for bamboo has broken down. Calgary Zoo said in May that it planned to return Er Shun and Da Mao to China, after coronavirus disrupted bamboo supply lines, but on Tuesday the zoo announced that due to the pandemic, it was still unable to secure travel permits. And so the pandas stay in Canada for the time being but the keepers are unsure about how they will manage to feed them.

Here’s another story, not Coronavirus this time but the environment and global warning. The glacier on Mont Blanc is melting and people are having to be evacuated. Some 65 people, including 50 tourists, have left homes in Val Ferret, the hamlet beneath the glacier. Roads have been closed to traffic and pedestrians. “We will find [alternative] solutions for residents,” siad Stefano Miserocchi, the mayor of Courmayeur. “The tourists will have to find other solutions.”

It’s not the first time this has happened. Experts are keeping an eye on it. Glaciologists monitoring Planpincieux say a new section of ice is at risk of collapse. Homes were also evacuated in September last year following a warning that 250,000 cubic meters of ice could fall. The movement of the glacial mass was due to “anomalous temperature trends”, the experts said. The glacier has been closely monitored since 2013 to detect the speed at which the ice is melting.

But still there are climate change deniers out there!

And among the problems besetting schools at the moment and the big question of whether or not they will be able to open for the new school year, in Wales they have another problem: not enough Welsh-speaking teachers. Like many places in countries all over Europe where minority languages exist, Wales wants to promote the use of its language through bilingual teaching in schools. But too few young teachers, coming newly qualified into the profession are able to work in the languages. In some cases they have grown up in Wales, even been educated themselves in Welsh, but because their families mostly communicate in English, they do not feel confident about delivering lessons in Welsh. I can sympathise; you aren’t completely confident about keeping control of your class and less so if you are asked to teach in what is for you your second language! This minority language business is very tricky. However, I can’t help feeling schools have more serious problems to deal with at the moment.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!