Getting the cleaning done … or not. Shopping. Donuts.

 On Thursday I had planned to deep-clean the kitchen. Then Granddaughter Number Two came round to visit and we did other things. Yesterday I planned to deep clean the kitchen. Then I went shopping with my daughter and Granddaughter Number Two (who needed items to take to university with her tomorrow. Grandson Number Two had to come along - he’s only just 4 and, despite his own opinion on such matters, is not really old enough to be left independently at home. 

His presence necessitated a visit to a toy shop, where he had been promised he could choose one SMALL Hotwheels car. Inevitably he gravitated towards the bigger toy cars. Some bargaining was attempted. The grown-ups won. I was on the lookout for academic year diaries so that we can organise our lives a little better. Of course, we were waylaid into looking at notebooks and other stationery items. We managed to acquire some of the necessary items for Granddaughter Number Two, but the new duvet she wanted was eluding her. 

And suddenly it was past midday and food came onto the agenda. It was proposed that we go to Tim Horton’s as there was such an establishment on the retail park. I was not previously acquainted with Tim Horton’s, which is, I believe, an American import, but the grandchildren and indeed my daughter and her partner rave about it. There are no waiters as such. You place your order on a touch screen when you go in, wait for it to be packed up and you select a table to your liking.  It specialises in donuts. 

Now, when I was in sixth form they allowed an outside provider to sell donuts at midmorning break. These were quite old-fashioned plain lumps of dough, deep-fried and coated on sugar and then injected with a dose of strawberry or possible raspberry jam (one of the red ones). Delicious when freshly made, they did not merit keeping until later in the day. 

The donuts I encountered yesterday were quite different: mostly smaller and denser and flavoured with chocolate, cinnamon, caramel, and goodness only knows what else; some varieties were glazed, iced, sprinkled with jelly sweets. And people were buying them in tens and taking them away! There were also fried potato waffles, served with ketchup or mayonnaise. And of course, there was coffee! 

Then back to shopping! Later we located a shop selling a duvet to meet Granddaughter Number Two’s requirements - hurrah! And then we went to collect Granddaughter Number Four from her primary school. The plan was to have light refreshments at our house and then daughter and granddaughters would depart to collect Granddaughter Number One and take her to their house for a family chippy tea - Granddaughter Number Two’s request before she departs for a while.

In the event my daughter’s partner had had a stressful day at work and felt decidedly anti-social, or so said on the phone. Not wanting to be grumpy over a family tea, he asked could they not do it at my house and leave him to his own devices. Quite a sensible attitude! So daughter and I went out later to collect Granddaughter Number One (and dog!) and to purchase fish ‘n’chips, sausage ‘n’ chips, scampi ‘n’chips, Granddaughter Number Two looked after the small people and organised seating around the table! 

The last big family gather for a while.

Then they all departed. We tidied up. And I never posted anything! 

Today I have done the deep-clean - a sort of autumn clean instead of a spring clean. I am feeling virtuous. All is well. Tomorrow is another day. 

Oh, here’s a new and interesting word, ideal for the sort of weather we have experienced this week: 

“thunderplump”: the sudden downpour of fat, heavy raindrops that leaves us drenched and dripping in minutes.

In Galicia they call it “la tromba”! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Thursday activities. Food. Bicycle thieves. More about food.

Today began with blue sky and sunshine. The cloud came and went. We had the odd spit and spot of rain but not enough to worry about. In the late afternoon we had some torrential rain but it didn’t last long and the sunshine came back. What a nice change after some of the dull stuff we’ve had. 

In the late morning Granddaughter Number Two turned up, just to spend time with us, which was nice. She’s returning to university at the weekend. Having spent most of the summer working and squirrelling away her savings, she has spent this week running around visiting people, going out with friends, packing a summer’s social life into one week. We had a nice walk round the village in the sunshine. 

I had a list of things I had intended to do today but they’ll keep. 

Thursday is chess club day. Usually our daughter and the two smallest members of the family come round for tea and then run Phil to chess club in the early evening. Today an old friend, one of the original chess club people, one of those who introduced so many youngsters to get involved, offered to give Phil a lift. So our daughter was not needed. We offered to feed the old friend. I made a tortilla, a proper Spanish tortilla with potatoes and onion of course. A bit of ham. Salad stuff. Some olives. All good. And off they went, leaving me the washing up. I rarely wash the pots, except for Thursday evenings! 

I was reading about bike theft. Here’s an article about it. Apparently it’s rife in some parts of London. People are losing expensive bikes … and some of them cost thousands of pounds. Mine cost about £300 pounds, but that was almost 20 years ago so I suppose it would cost a lot more now. When I cycle to the market I spend a good deal of time locking and unlocking my bike, making sure the lock cable goes around something solid and through the spokes of the front wheel. Reading the bit of the article just below, I am reassured that my decision to lock it up every time, even if I am only going to a market stall a few yards from where I have parked it, is the right one: 

“It took thieves just 47 seconds to steal Rosie Wetherhill’s ebike from outside a Chinese takeaway.

Wetherhill, a 23-year-old bike courier from Leeds, had considered locking her bike to the railing when she went in to collect the order, but she knew the takeaway was fast. So she locked the back wheel with a D-lock instead. A mistake. As she saw her £1,300 ebike disappear around a corner, Wetherhill felt a sense of dread. “I knew I would probably never see that bike again,” she says. “Because I know how it is.” The bike wasn’t insured. She’d only had it for two months.”

The article makes depressing reading from the point of view of retrieving a stolen bike. I suspect the police are too thinly stretched to deal with such thefts properly. We may be more fortunate here than in big city centres but still I have been tempted to knock on the door of one of the neighbours. One of their children’s bikes is regularly parked in the front garden, not locked up at all. A little careless!

We tend to think that Americans, because they speak our language, are very similar to us. (Actually, even their use of the English language is rather different to ours, but that’s a different story.) not necessarily so. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist, married to an American. Her wife holds her hands up in horror at the idea of butter on the bread to make a sandwich. Mayonnaise is what Americans use apparently. Who knew? Not me! This is what Arwa Mahdawi writes by way if explanation: 

“So why aren’t buttered sandwiches popular in the US? It is easy to understand why Marmite might not make the leap across the Atlantic, but butter is surely a staple. The explanation, I think, is that, like their horrible chocolate, a lot of American butter is substandard, because of looser regulations; European butter has to have a higher butterfat percentage  than American butter and those extra percentages add a lot of flavour. American butter is usually designed for cooking and, unless you go out of your way to look for the good stuff, it doesn’t add much to a sandwich.

Anyway, having cleared that up, we can move on to harder-hitting issues: why have Americans not discovered the late-night kebab or the sausage roll? Now there’s a question to sink your teeth into.”

There you go! I do like a nice sandwich, with butter, of course. I had a cheese on with my tortilla.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

On words and names and generational stuff. And inappropriate dressing up.

 It’s always interesting to come across new words. Recently I have found these, although one is an acronym:

Debank - what happened to the odious Nigel Farage - to deny someone banking and financial services, especially for political reasons. No matter what tour opinion of Mr Farage, his views are not a reason to deprive him of banking facilities.

PEP  - politically exposed persons. According to Wikipedia “In financial regulation, a politically exposed person (PEP) is one who has been entrusted with a prominent public function. A PEP generally presents a higher risk for potential involvement in bribery and corruption by virtue of their position and the influence they may hold. 

BookTok - again according to Wikipedia, it is “a subcommunity on the app  Tiktok that focuses on books and literature. Creators make videos reviewing, discussing, and joking about the books they read. These books range in genre, but many creators tend to focus on young adult fiction, young adult fantasy, and romance. The community is cited with impacting the publishing industry and book sales. The creators in this community are also known as BookTokers.

Wikipedia may say the books tend to focus on young adult stuff, but then I read this!

“In August 2020, Kate Wilson, a 16-year-old from Shrewsbury, posted on the social media video platform TikTok a series of quotes from books she had read, “that say I love you, without actually saying I love you”. Set to a melancholy soundtrack, the short video plays out as Wilson, an A-level student, holds up copies of the books with the quotes superimposed over them. “You have been the last dream of my soul,” from A Tale of Two Cities. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” from  Wuthering Heights. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own,” from Jane Eyre. It has been viewed more than 1.2m times.”

So it may be new to me but it’s been around for a few years. And it’s good to know that the old classics still move young readers. Thinking about it though, the books Kate Wilson quoted were undoubtedly the young adult reading of my youth. I wonder if any of the fantasy Granddaughter Number Two reads will be studied in A-Level literature courses in the future. 

Incidentally, when I asked Granddaughter Number Two if she was aware of Booktok, which seemed to me to be right up her street as she never goes anywhere without a book in her bag, she replied of course she had and that my asking her was “the most grandparent thing”. 

I’ve just read yet another of those articles about the most popular baby names. It must be a seasonal thing; every year someone writes about the names that are in vogue. What I think of as old-fashioned names are back in fashion. Our 4 year old grandson has little friends with names like Archie and Stan. Among girls’ names Phoebe, considered old fashioned when I was a child, has come and gone. Likewise Martha and Clara - the names of my grandmothers. I am waiting for my mother’s name, Phyllis to make a comeback. One name they mentioned in the article I read was Wren, not a name I have come across as a forename at all. “The name Wren, for instance, spelled like the bird, celebrates nature at a time of ecological peril – and while it’s often been a girl’s name, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen used it for their son.” Who knew? But what I want to know is what little X AE A-XII Musk is called affectionately and, indeed, how you even begin to pronounce it.

Finally, here’s n item from the Metro:

A group of men who dressed as Nazi soldiers at a 1940s festival in Sheringham, Norfolk had to be escorted from the event by police, after they were attacked by angry locals.

At least 10 of them appeared in SS uniforms with Swastikas, regimental markings on their collars and the ‘death’s head’ Totenkopf divisional insignia, which is a skull and crossbones. 

Trouble broke out at the popular annual event in Sheringham High Street on Saturday as unimpressed crowds clashed with the group.

Eyewitnesses say the group were outside The Lobster pub when they were confronted by furious onlookers – with many reportedly shouting at them and telling them they weren’t welcome. 

Who would even begin to think that such costumes were remotely acceptable?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

September weather almost 10 years on. The right to protest. Ministers for odd things. Loneliness.

 This morning Facebook threw up one of those “memory photos”, as it does. According to that photo, on this date in 2014 I went out for a walk with my friend Heidy. I was wearing shorts and a lightweight hoody. Today I woke up to the sound of heavy rain. I looked out and saw that the rain was accompanied by fairly strong wind: not quite a full-blown storm but stormy enough to put me off going out for a run. It’s not often that the weather manages to put me off running but today it did. And yesterday evening we gave in and put the heating on for a while! 

Not the most drastic climate change but still it feels as though the seasons have got confused this year. I must ask my son if the grapes that grow in his garden have managed to ripen; when we visited a few weeks ago he said they needed some sunshine. They’ve had some sunshine since then, but has there been enough? Similarly, the next door neighbour, who hails originally from Florida, “The Sunshine State” has expressed concern about her pumpkins. I’m not sure whether she grows them for Hallowe’en or for Thanksgiving. Last year she had a splendid crop. This year’s are growing slowly but they’ve not really had much warmth to ripen them. And with all the damp they may succomb to mildew.

I’m not sure I can complain about the climate. Complaining and protesting maybe frowned upon. Climate protestors have been on trial. I read that a judge imposed restrictions on defendants that prevented them from mentioning climate change, insulation, fuel poverty or their motivations for taking action during their trials. That sounds wrong! Trudi Warner, a retired social worker who witnessed some of the trials, sat outside Inner London crown court holding a sign that read: “Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.” Now she in turn is being prosecuted for contempt of court by the solicitor general. 

That also sounds wrong! 

Are we gradually losing the right to protest peacefully? 

I’m not very likely to go on a protest march these days but I like to think I still have the right to do so.

Now, who knew that we have a Minister for Loneliness? Maybe he doesn’t have capital letters to his title, maybe it’s not really an official title but that’s how he was referred to in something I read yesterday. His name is Stuart Andrew and he has launched a loneliness awareness campaign, in partnership with with the charity Sporting Wellness, Student Radio Association, Student Roost and Student Minds. They are concerned that among the millions of teenagers across Britain who will arrive at university for the first time this week as freshers’ week begins, almost all will experience bouts of loneliness with nearly half being worried they will be judged if they admit to it. A sample of 1,000 students’ opinions was collected by YouGov for the government, so it’s all official. 

Goodness! I can remember having moments of sitting alone in the students’ union building in my first days at university but I think I was more excited than actively lonely. But then, I hadn’t grown up glued to a mobile phone that gave me instant companionship. Maybe today’s freshers are mostly wimps! 25+ years ago our son decided to step out of his room in his hall of residence and introduce himself to the people who became a group of friends for life. Granddaughter Number Two tried the same strategy last year but was rather less fortunate in her flatmates and still spent a good deal of time in her room alone studying. But she did take steps to make friends. And she succeeded to some extent. 

Anyway, here is the Minister for Loneliness’s 10 point plan for reducing loneliness:-

• Spend time helping other people, such as volunteering with student groups or by offering a regular conversation to someone feeling isolated 
• Keep in touch with friends and family over the phone 
• Arrange something fun to do with your current friends 
• Join a club or society at university to connect with others who have similar interests 
• Do things you enjoy, such as playing sport, reading or listening to music 
• Be open to everyone, as university is a great place to meet people from all different backgrounds 
• Remember some people only share the good things happening to them on social media so try and avoid comparison 
• Talk to someone you trust about how you feel 
• Get in touch with the university’s student services about the welfare and support it can provide 
• Remember that others may be feeling similar, so you are not alone

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Pre-school. Naming or numbering school years. Disappearing cash.

 Our smallest grandchild has just recently started pre-school. This, by the way, is an institution that I’m sure didn’t exist when our children small. In the school during which your were going to be five you joined the  reception class. Then you went into section year infants, third year infants and on into junior school. That’s pretty much how it had always been.  Now you have pre-school (not obligatory), reception, year one, year two and so on, seemingly for ever. 

When people talk about school years by numbers, I have to stop and work out what it means. This applies right through secondary school too. I have to remind myself that the notoriously awkward “Third Years” of my secondary school teaching days (that age when hormones kick in - although that seems to happen even earlier nowadays - and teenagers turn into stroppy know-it-alls) are now Year Nines, but just as awkward! And Year 12 and Year 13 are still really Lower and Upper Sixth for me. 

Actually I think a form of pre-school did exist long ago but it was not available to all. They called it the Nursery Class. Or at least they did in the one my older sister went to. We lived at the time with my paternal grandparents in their council house. My grandfather was a bed-bound, difficult and demanding invalid. And suddenly the house was very full with my grandparents, my parents, my sister and then baby me. And then it seems they offered my parents a place in the nursery class at the local primary school for my three- going on-four-year old sister, on the grounds of relieving pressure on the family or something of that kind. All the nursery class children were put to bed for a nap in little beds in the afternoon. So my mother told me. I never went to nursery class as we moved into a council house of our own and overcrowding was not a problem. 

Anyway, getting back to our smallest grandson. He needed a “book bag” - one of those odd, usually blue, bags, slightly larger than A4 size, rather similar to music manuscript bags. All primary schools appear to use them to send home with children messages about events, pictures the children have drawn, and reading books to practise their developing literacy skills at home. Little Lewis hadn’t been given one. It turned out that parents needed to pay for them! Did I have £4 in cash, my daughter asked me. She never carries cash on her person, she told me. She always uses a card. This is the modern way. It was starting before Covid but during lockdown it was encouraged for fear that we might spread the virus through contact as cash changed hands. 

And suddenly even the market stall holders were equipped with handheld card readers. All, that is, except for the fruit and veg man at our market who resolutely accepts only cash. Some places initially insisted on your spending £10 in order to be able to pay by card but in my experience that restriction has largely gone. You can even buy your bus ticket contactless! I’ve even heard of homeless people with card readers but that may be an urban myth. 

I usually have proper money around, so I was able to provide £4 to go in an envelope for the small boy to take to pre-school. 

Mind you, getting hold of actual cash can also be difficult. We are quite fortunate as there is a cash machine in the local co-op store, which is handy as the bank in the village closed years ago and it’s cash machine disappeared. Predictably, the bank is now a trendy and apparently popular bar called, also predictably, The Bank. Banks and cash machines are disappearing all over the place. David Mitchell, writing in the Guardian, says that the GMB union general secretary, Gary Smith, said last week: “Losing face to face services in more places throughout the country is a huge problem for many. The consequences are real and disturbing… These moves to use tech and digital as the primary way to do anything impacts on our older citizens and those poorer hardest of all.” He’s calling for paying in cash to be made a legal right.

David Mitchell (again) reports: “In recent years the banks have moved swiftly to cut costs and so reduce our access to cash and, as a result, force more and more payments to be made electronically. Nearly 15,000 cash machines have been removed in the past five years; between 2019 and the end of this year 2,277 high street bank branches will have closed. This makes cash harder to acquire and it also makes it harder for businesses to deposit cash at the bank, further incentivising them not to accept it.” (Gone are the days when, as a shoe-shop assistant I would occasionally have the job of depositing the day’s takings in a safe deposit box outside the local bank!)

The thing is that if we pay for everything contactless or digitally our banks know exactly what we are spending our money on. So do the advertisers! Which is why we get emails and messages on social media advertising deals on stuff we’ve just bought! Big Brother is indeed watching us!

 Besides, it seems silly to me to pay by card for something that costs maybe 50 pence! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Treating pets as humans. Therapy animals. One reason why we have so many boats crossing the Channel.

Further to the demise of her last rat, Granddaughter Number One has taken to sending us photos of her Welsh border collie curled up in small spaces, under a desk, on a shelf beneath the tortoise enclosure, making a nest of cushions of the sofa. (Note to self: try to avoid sitting on that sofa where the dog has been curling up!) Her mother has responded by suggesting that maybe the dog misses the rat! It’s possible, says Granddaughter Number One, after all, they were friends.to which her mother responds that she (the dog) probably thought they were friends, buy the rat may have had other ideas! My daughter should not encourage her daughter to attribute human characteristics to her pets.  Next thing we know, she’ll be buying more fancy rats! 

And now my daughter has posted this: 

“🛑 WANTED: Teachers who have a dog!

We need your help.

You’ll have seen on the news - and you'll have seen first hand in your classrooms and corridors - that there is a huge crisis in school attendance since the pandemic.  Persistent non-attendance is still DOUBLE the pre-pandemic rate.

Which child in your class or year group comes to mind when you read that, who you know is finding it hard to attend, to stay in class, to behave calmly?

Children are struggling.

And as a teacher, you know the huge effect this can have on both their short and long term happiness and outcomes.

The good news is that we can help.

Therapy dogs are proven to improve attendance, lower stress, reduce anxiety and improve self esteem.

But - and here’s where you come in - we need more dogs to be trained, to be able to help the young people who need them.

We’re looking for Teachers who want to introduce their dogs into school, to deliver extraordinary and life-changing animal-assisted interventions.

At PAWS we witness incredible life-changing moments that are supported by our therapy dog team, but we can’t do it on our own.

To see if you and your dog have got what it takes for this special work, check out the short vid here:

👉 https://paws-therapydogs.com/ 👈

You taking this simple step today could impact your students for the rest of their lives… including the child who came to mind when you read this.”

Hmm! The sceptic in me wonders about the children who are scared stiff of dogs. But maybe having a therapy dog would help them get over the fear.

In the wider world, it seems that Kier Starmer wants to strike a deal with the European Union in order to stop small boats crossing the Channel. Of course, he needs to get elected first of all. Some people are saying that if he really wants to be elected he needs to let Jeremy Corbyn back into the Labour Party fold as he will be able to reach those voters Starmer can’t seem to attract.wekll see where that goes. 

And I hear that Good Morning Britain asked if proposed cooperation with the EU meant that Kier Starmer was weakening his stance of EU withdrawal. No way! seems to be the answer. We’ll just tinker around making agreements with he Eu that won‘t be as good as what we had before. One of those being a deal,about sending boat people back to France. 

But back in February Professor Thom Brooks published a report on the small boat phenomenon, concluding that the the primary factor behind the current problem” is the government’s post-Brexit deal, and specifically its failure to reach a “returns agreement with the EU”, whereby unauthorised migrants to the UK could be returned to the first safe EU country they had entered. People traffickers spotted the opportunity almost immediately, offering to take people to a country, Britain, from where they could no longer be sent back. Staggeringly, Brooks found “no records of any individuals travelling by small boat to claim asylum in 2017 or before” – not one case. But as “the UK prepared to leave its returns agreement, small boat journeys started”. And the people making those journeys grew in number, from the low hundreds in 2018 to tens of thousands in 2023.

There you go - a Brexit “benefit”!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!