Fish and disappointing chips. A good concert. Solving the Gaza problem!! Language rules.

 Well, we got most of the family together for a fish’n’chips lunch yesterday, by way of celebrating my birthday. Disappointingly the local chippy was closed, as was the next closest; clearly local people don’t expect to eat chips at the weekend. Maybe they all have more sophisticated plans in mind. So we ended up going further afield. The fish was excellent, the chips themselves less so. Some of our party decided to liven their portions up by popping them briefly in the microwave. Modern living!

In the middle afternoon, we went for a family walk-about, just around the village to help our digestion. The sun was still shining in a practically cloudless sky but clearly the sun was about to dip over hill. The days are longer since the winter solstice but not very noticeably so!

And suddenly it was time for Phil and me to get organised to go into Manchester to listen to the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in concert. There was an excellent cello concerto by Elgar, played by a Finnish cellist, Senja Rummukainen, on a beautiful ancient cello, from 1707, on loan from from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Imagine the responsibility of travelling around with such a treasure in your luggage!

The percussionist who clashed his cymbals so excellently in Stravinsky’s Firebird was presented with a huge bunch of flowers in recognition. I would taken a picture of him with his reward but my phone was tucked away in my handbag. 

So that’s another birthday over and done with!

Today there are weather warnings for strong winds, apparently, but so far they have not manifested themselves around here very much. It’s just a bit damp and breezy.

According to news reports, Donald Trump has set about bringing peace to the Middle East by resuming shipments of huge bombs to Israel and saying that he would like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip. This from a man who doesn’t want refugees in his won country and who wants to send Mexican immigrants back to Mexico!

As regards Gaza, he told reporters on Air Force One, “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”

Here’s a link to a fuller report. 

What can you say?

It’s no good, I’ll have to think about something less infuriating.  

I read something about unwritten rules of English language. There is a rule about vowel sounds, which says that if there are three words that the order of vowel sounds must be I, A, O, and if there are two words, the first is I and the second A or O. So we have mish-mash, chit-chat, tick tock, ding dong, ping pong, sing song, dilly dally and so on. Just try saying pong ping! It sounds completely wrong, unless it’s the name of a character in Rupert Bear stories - a rather dubious and possibly racist name for a supposedly Chinese character.

Then there is the order of adjectives: opinion - size - age - shape - colour - origin - material - purpose: for example: a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.

And the vowels rule can trump the adjectives rule, so that we have a Big Bad Wolf not a Bad Big Wolf!

Isn’t language fun!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Odds and ends on my birthday. Contrasting USA and UK.

 Things to do on your birthday:

Get up and go for a run because it’s a beautifully crisp and sunny morning.

Return from your run in a snowstorm because that’s the sort of weird weather we are having. 

Mix up all the ingredients for a cake because Granddaughter Number Four (8 years old) says you can’t have a birthday lunch without cake.

Put the cake to bake in the oven while you have a shower and get properly dressed for the day.

Organise a light breakfast because you’ll all be having a birthday lunch. 

Generally get organised. 

Such has been my birthday so far.

Donald Trump has been pardoning people in the USA, some of them violent and convicted of murder, or so I hear, and letting them out of prison. Here in the UK we have a woman not much older than I am today having her prison term (for being a Just Stop Oil protestor) extended because they can’t find a tag to fit on her wrist and allow her to finish her sentence in the community. Here’s a report:  

“A 78-year-old climate protester has had her prison term extended for being “unlawfully at large” when government contractors were unable to find the right-sized tag for her wrist, which would have allowed her to complete her sentence in the community.

Gaie Delap, a retired teacher and Just Stop Oil protester, was sentenced to 20 months in prison for her participation in a climate protest on the M25 in 2022 and was released last November under the home detention curfew (HDC) scheme.

She was recalled to prison just before Christmas. Because of a history of deep-vein thrombosis, she could not have a tag attached to her ankle and no wrist tag that fitted her could be

On Friday she learned that the time she must spend in prison had been extended. Her supporters said she was shocked to receive a letter delivered to her cell saying that her time behind bars had been extended by 20 days as it corresponded to the period of time after she was notified of her recall to prison. During that time she had been at home with her suitcase packed, waiting to be arrested and reincarcerated.”

And here’s a quote from Tony Benn: 

“If democracy ever dies, it won’t be the Red Army: it’ll be the media that destroys democracy by denying people the voice sonthat they can tell the government what they want.”

And here’s a link to a story about a Portuguese politician accused of stealing suitcases at airports. You couldn’t make it up.

However, it stopped snowing and the sun came out again.

Life foes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

Wind. Falling trees. Executive orders.,

It’s a fine sunny but very windy day:here. Storm Éowyn is blowing stuff around but so far that’s all she’s doing … here at any rate. A tree has been blown down on my running route and there are lots of bits of tree all over the place but that seems to be all, for the time being at least.

Granddaughter Number One reports that she and her housemate decided to leave the bathroom window open after one of them showered late last night. They wanted to air the room a little. During the night Éowyn sneaked in through the window, tore down the shower curtain and generally created a bit of havoc!  So it goes.

Donald Trump has been signing executive orders on all sorts of matters. Here’s the reaction to one of them: 

“Judge blocks Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.

US district judge John Coughenour ruled in the case brought by the states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, which argue the 14th amendment and supreme court case law have cemented birthright citizenship.

That executive order, which Trump signed on Monday after taking office, directs US agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or legal permanent resident.

The executive order has already become the subject of multiple lawsuits, with civil rights groups and Democratic attorney’s general from 22 states calling it blatantly unconstitutional.”

Here’s a bit of background information on birthright citizenship: 

“As a concept, jus soli comes from English common law, which held centuries ago that people born in England were natural subjects.

But unrestricted birthright citizenship in the US that includes people of color - not must white Americans – derives from the US constitution. In 1857, the supreme court ruled that Black descendants of enslaved people could not be US citizens. To right this injustice, just over a decade later, the US ratified the 14th amendment.

The first line of the 14th amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Known as the Citizenship Clause, this phrase  - alongside a number of related statutes and regulations – establishes the modern basis for birthright citizenship.”

There you go!

I’ve just had lunch with an old friend, a Bruce Springsteen fan. She told me that she had heard that Bruce Springsteen and Robert de Niro were planning to leave the USA and maybe move to Canada, to Italy, to who knows where. So far there is no confirmation of this but now I am imagining a mass protest where lots of rich and famous folk move away!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Storms and their names and their consequences. Frozen iguanas. Violent settlers. Marcus Rashford.

It was just starting to rain, but only lightly, as I returned from my run earlier this morning. By late morning it was raining properly. I don’t think Granddaughter Number Two and I will be walking to Greenfield this afternoon, as we have done the last two Thursdays. Heavy rain and a moderate breeze is forecast for today! Tomorrow we can expect Storm Éowyn. 

Éowyn is the fifth named storm of the year and potentially the most destructive. It’s predicted to be the worst storm since Storm Debbie in September 1961, which wrecked homes, cut power and led to the deaths of 12 people in the Republic of Ireland and six in Northern Ireland. Goodness! I wasn’t aware that storms were already being named back then! But what surprised me most was the statement that Éowyn is the FIFTH named storm of the year. Surely we’re only three weeks into the year. When did these other four storms slip past me unnoticed? 

Investigating further I discovered that it's the fifth named storm from the Met Office of THE 2024/25 SEASON, not the calendar year at all! The list of names is announced on September 1 each year, running in alphabetical order. The season started with Ashley, then Bert, followed by Conall, Darragh and now Eowyn. 

They’re advising schools in Ireland and parts of Scotland not to open tomorrow as the weather will be so dire.

It could br worse though. Apparently it’s getting very cold in Florida, a place I mistakenly always associate with wall to wall sunshine. And as it gets colder, Iguanas, some of which can be up to 6 feet  long, are cold-stunned (ie semi frozen) and start to fall out of the trees where they have been resting(?) / perching (?) / doing whatever iguanas do in trees. A 6 foot long iguana dropping from a tree! That must be like having a full-grown man drop out of a tree. Advice for people in Florida is as follows: “If you do come across a cold-stunned iguana, the advice is to ignore it. Like a lot of us, they get very cranky when they first wake up.”

On the whole, I’m happy to live in a place without such extremes.

It’s cold in Palestine too. (Am I allowed to call it Palestine?) And they have other problems to contend with. Gaza has a ceasefire, which we hope will hold, but the West Bank still under attack. In addition Israeli settlers have been shooting Palestinians, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails into their houses, breaking windows of homes, businesses and vehicles. They’ve been targeting villages to which prisoners released from Israeli prisons under the hostage-exchange arrangements are returning. A protest against that prisoner exchange - here is a link to an article about it.

Here in the UK I saw on social media a reminder of the good things  Marcus Rashford has done for the country:

• Started a charity that raised £20m and helped feed 400k children.
• Launched a campaign with Selfridges to help the homeless.
• Learned sign language to judge a poetry even in a deaf school..

There was some fear that government funding for his scheme was to be cut but this article says that funding will continue. Other wealthy footballers (and wealthy not-footballers) should follow his example to bring about change!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Disappearing skills. And mistaken voters. And outspoken bishops.

This morning it was foggy, not just dull but foggy. By midday it had brightened up sufficiently to be just dull. Dull and cold - winter in the NW of England. 

From time to time I have a discussion with one or other of the older grandchildren on the best way to revise for exams. Their preferred method has always been to highlight printed notes or to read through stuff on one screen or another. Mine has always been to make (written) notes on notes on notes, condensing down to a point where key words are enough to remind you of what needs to know for testing. (A fellow language teacher friend of mine always used to teach her students a tune to associate with grammar rules - declensions, word order and so on.) I always maintained that there is a connection between writing stuff down and fixing it in your brain - actual, physical writing rather than typing stuff on the keyboard. 

Now it seems that experts agree with me. “Psychologists Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer compared students taking class notes by hand or on a laptop. They studied how laptop use affected the learning process for students who used them. They found that “even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing”. In three different experiments, their research concluded that students who used laptop computers performed worse on conceptual questions in comparison with students who took notes by hand. “Laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning,” they wrote. In other words, we retain information better when we write by hand because the slower pace of writing forces us to summarise as we write, as opposed to the greater speed of transcribing on a keyboard.”

It’s all to do with having to process information as you take notes. But there seems to be a problem: we might be in the process of losing the ability to write. In some places - Finland I think is one such place - they no longer teach cursive - joined up writing or real writing, as we called it when I was a child. “A high-school student who took the preliminary SAT used for college admittance in the US confessed to the Wall Street Journal that “audible gasps broke out in the room” when students learned they would have to write a one-sentence statement that all the work is the student’s own, in cursive, or joined-up handwriting. “Cursive? Most students my age have only encountered this foreign language in letters from Grandma.”

Granddaughter Number Four, 8 years old, by the way, is very proud to be the first in her class to be given her “pen badge”. This means that she no longer has to write everything in pencil but is proficient enough a writer to be allowed to use a pen. No doubt that’s a ballpoint pen, not quite the same as the pens we used to have to dip in the inkwells with which all school desks were provided, and which got clogged up with blotting paper and other such absorbent material! But the important thing is that she has made that important step. And she writes her own little stories and illustrates them herself. 

Research shows that learning to write helps children learn to read. I have a theory that the process begins before children begin to learn to write. Scribbling is an important part of the process, in my opinion. When a small child picks up a crayon and starts to scribble on a piece of paper they learn to manipulate the crayon and discover the most efficient way to hold it - drawing recognisable pictures and eventually forming letters follows from there. Nowadays children start school unable to hold a pencil properly. 

Even though I type this blog directly onto my iPad, I still like to have a notebook on the go to keep track of ideas and events, to write poetry when the mood takes me. And I have always been intrigued but the fact that different nations have different writing styles. As a young teenager I had pen-friends in various countries, each country with a distinctively different way of writing. There’s a generational aspect too; my grandmother’s generation learnt one style, my mother’s generation another, and no doubt my children will see my generations style as different again. Superimposed on those generational styles is usually a personal style - rather like siblings being recognisably related and yet each one different.

I’ve gone on at some length about this. Here is a link to a long read on the subject of losing the ability to write by hand. 

Here’s a new word: “snaccident” = eating an entire bag of crisps by mistake. 

And last night on the news I heard about an AI development, a kind of mechanical AI glove that can be used by aspiring piano players to train their hand to extend the fingers further and faster in order to play complex pieces of music more proficiently. The report even suggested that wearing it overnight allowed you to wake up a better pianist. And wearing it on one hand also made the other hand improve as the brain passes the information along. It all sounds futuristically strange to me.  

Finally, on a different topic altogether, here’s something about second thoughts that popped up on social media:

First person: “I’m Hispanic and voted for Trump. Nobody told me this dude hated Mexicans. All he’s talking about is deporting Mexicans.”

Responder: Surely you’re joking.:

First person: No, I don’t keep up with politics much so I wasn’t aware of a mass Mexican deportation.

Just one of the Trumperies. 

Meanwhile it seems at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday “the Episcopal bishop of Washington has appealed directly to Donald Trump to “have mercy upon” communities across the country targeted by the new administration’s immigration and LGBTQ+ policies.” 

“Asked later about the sermon, which amounted to a bold public criticism of the new president, Trump told reporters it was “not too exciting”. “I didn’t think it was a good service, no,” he said as he walked into the White House on Tuesday. “They could do much better.”

On Wednesday, he went further, writing on his Truth Social platform: “The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart … She and her church owe the public an apology!”

So much for the division of Church and State! 

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

Oddities. Prime ministers and other politicians. Things such people say. Trying to return home in Gaza.

 When the recent snow was turning to slush we went for a walk and Phil suddenly realised he had wet toes. The sole of one of his boots had unstuck itself. Last week I got round to taking the boot to the cobblers in Oldham market for repairs. Today I went to collect it. For £5 he now has perfectly usable boot once more.

Two odd things happened while I was out and about. I went to a cash machine, withdrew some money and received for the first time ever a £50 note. In Spain and Portugal cash machines regularly give me €50 notes. People appear to use them all the time. Once I even saw someone pay a relatively small bill in a supermarket with a €500 note, much to the consternation of the cashier.

Secondly, as I left Sainsbury’s supermarket and returned my trolley to the trolley park, someone approached me and said, “Excuse me, but did you used to be a teacher at Grange School?” Well, yes, I did but I left the school just before my son was born and he’ll be 47 on his next birthday. It turned out she was one of the many Julies, from a time when there were at least 5 Julies in one class. Imagine still being recognisable so many years on. We had a nice nostalgic chat.

We didn’t watch any of the song and dance about Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

Our Prime Minister didn’t go, wasn’t invited I think. 

The MP for Clacton on Sea was there. I wonder what his constituents think about that.

Here is a quotation from our Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, from the lunchtime news: “Southport must be a line in the sand.” He was talking about terrorism and how it is changing in modern times and how he plans to take strong action. I’m not sure that terrorism really defines what went on in Southport in the summer. Random act of violence would be better.

Somehow though his statement was appropriate when talking about a seaside place whose natives are known as Sandgrounders! 

Mr Starmer has also expressed his concern about the numbers of people who have been killed in Gaza. Here is Michael Rosen’s response:

“The Prime Minister said 

that people in Gaza 'lost their lives'.

That was careless of them.

They must have been careless

about where they were standing,

or sitting

or sleeping.

They didn't get out of the way.

They were forgetful about health and safety,

perhaps.

Like walking out on to the road

without looking,

perhaps.

He seems concerned.

Maybe he hopes that they will get their lives back.

Someone kind person will hand them back to them

perhaps.

Maybe he wonders where they lost them.

Now that he's seen pictures

of streets turned to rubble

maybe he thinks 

that they got lost underneath

some bricks or slabs of concrete.

This may, perhaps,

lead him to wonder what it was

that caused the buildings to fall.

He must have found out by now

that it wasn't an earthquake.

Perhaps he wonders 

if it could have been anything like

the London Blitz

an event we remember with horror and sadness.

So why would anyone do such a thing

today?

Why would anyone 

use weapons against civilians

so that they end up 'losing their lives'?

Surely this would be something

that our prime minister would think of 

with horror and sadness.

But it seems not.

It just seems to have happened

because the people of Gaza

were careless.

Thousands and thousands of people

were careless.

The careless people of Gaza.

The concerned Prime Minister of Great Britain.”

Although attacks are still taking place in the West Bank, aid is getting into Gaza and people are returning to what is  left of their homes:

“Even those whose homes are still standing are without water, power and other basic necessities.

Noha Abed, 28, had returned with her husband and three children to the family’s home in the southern city of Rafah, which now has only one liveable room. “Our house was beautiful, a one-storey building with three rooms. We lost everything,” she said.

But after cleaning it and putting their belongings in what is left of the house, she said the family “want to live in it until the rebuilding happens”.

For now, her focus is on securing “food, water, electricity, beddings and blankets” for the family, who had been sleeping in a tent further north for about 10 months, she said.

Despite the difficult conditions, she said that this was “the first night I sleep without being afraid for my children””

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!