Fortieth Wedding Anniversary Celebrations

Yesterday was our 40^th Wedding Anniversary

and also of course Easter Sunday. Never shy to celebrate such an occasion we had a small gathering of family and friends.

Despite cool wet weather the day was a huge success. Laura provided outstanding decorations,

Alison magnificent cup cakes,

and Millie a lovely chocolate cake that she had made all herself.

Laura produced some potent cocktails, which meant the whole event started very quickly. Marion had prepared a superb buffet lunch that was completely done justice to. The highlight was then of course the, indoor, egg and spoon race complete with winner’s medals.

 It was a great day and a fitting way to celebrate forty wonderful years of marriage. The photos speak louder than my words!!!

A Little Bit of Politics

Little time goes by without some mention of the Salisbury spy saga and very little of the coverage seems to be measured or have any context. Rather the siren voices of the press make ever more outrageous statements. Before I start this blog let me say that the attempted murder of anybody is completely wrong, it is something that should be tried through the courts and due process.

At the moment we are operating in a fog of uncertainty, the government has told us who the perpetrator is without sharing any of the evidence. Boris Johnson is a serial liar so why should we believe anything he says without something to back it up. In truth the media and we know nothing about the background to this attempted murder, yet we make many assumptions.

To my simple mind there could have been many people who would seek revenge on the victim, this was not a saint we are talking about. He was a serious spy who caused great damage to the Russian spy network by defecting probably at a personal level. Who knows who bore a grudge?

What we also know is that state sponsored killing is not a preserve of Russia, both the UK and the US use assassination as a tool against alleged terrorists, though we should note the due process of the law is not followed. A thoughtful article by Simon Jenkins makes a strong case that there is considerable moral ambivalence in our position.

I think we have to be much more rational in our response, expel some diplomats, that just satisfies the desire for revenge and newspaper headlines, in the end what does it achieve. Why don’t we surprise everybody and start a dialogue. Invite the Russians to play a part in the investigation; the very surprise element would give the UK the moral high ground.

Food for thought.

Parliamentary Play

On Friday we travelled to the West Yorkshire Playhouse to see the play, House, which had transferred from London. It was a work of faction set in the House of Commons during the Labour governments of 1974/79. It used the device of focusing on the two Whips Offices and the main protagonists were the four whips in each office. From my reading it would appear that the play was historically accurate, though obviously it did not reflect the exact words spoken.

Now superficially this is a very dry subject and one would think have difficulty in sustaining nearly three hours of entertainment, yet it was witty, had pace, character development and moral dilemmas. The acting was powerful within the confines of a simple set that wittily had devices like an opening for the member’s bar. It also teased the political nerd in me, apart from the whips the MPs were rarely called name but rather their moniker was the constituency that they represented. This meant that all the time I was trying to identify the name of the MP. Some were easy like the member for Henley, Michael Heseltine, while it took me a long time to identify the member for Newham North East as Reg Prentice.

The play framed the parliamentary session as an adversarial contest between the Labour whips who were trying to maintain a minority government, and the Conservative whips who were hell bent on bringing it down. It did shine a light on a parliamentary system that counted MPs as voting who were on hospital beds in the precincts of parliament. This presented the classic device of the whip agonising whether to bring a member into vote if it could cause them harm.

It did seem like a bygone age in the language, bullying, and treatment/lack of women. Then I read the weekend’s headlines about bullying in parliament and I wondered!

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening helped by good company, and a great Indian meal in advance.

Catastrophists

During the recent spell of bad weather, the so-called Beast from the East, I was watching the local news programme. They featured a primary school headmaster from Bradford who had quote “agonised” over the decision to close or open his school due to the weather. He said he had to take into account the surrounding roads, the pavements and the parent’s safety coming to/from school. This set me thinking; actually he had taken on a huge number of problems that were not his responsibility. To me his role was simple he had to ensure that the school environs were safe for pupils and that there were enough members of staff to supervise them. No more no less, it was not an agonising decision but actually quite an easy one that could be based on simple facts. Extending his responsibility beyond the school gates is ludicrous. If instead of citing the icy pavements he had said that he must ensure that all parent’s cars were road worthy then it would have been obvious.

It is similar to the way that we catastrophise the ordinary events of life. This is particularly evident when there are transport delays, and people state that for instance that it is like being in a war zone. No it isn’t it is a mild inconvenience that will be forgotten a week later. Being in a war zone is being a refugee in Syria. A lady who had been stranded in her North Devon village for two days because of snowdrifts called it “disgusting” that the council had not dug her out. No that is a sensible use of resources; they should be first deployed where they have most benefit. One of the hazards of living in an isolated location is that it is isolated. What is disgusting is that during the cold spell we have homeless people sleeping on the streets.

So lets sit back and let nature take its course, we cannot do anything about the weather other than prepare if extremes are forecast, though quite why my local shop had been stripped bare of bread and toilet paper today is quite mysterious.

View from our house on Tuesday

Yet another review

I feel that this blog is morphing from a travelogue to a film review. Never mind flexibility is the spice of life. It just so happens that since returning from holiday we have watched four of the current top films.

Last night we visited the newly opened Everyman cinema in York. This was housed in the vast old Odeon just outside of the city walls. It had been very sympathetically refurbished into four cinemas, however I thought that the split nature of the space meant that it did not have the same edge or vibe of the Everyman in Leeds.

The small cinema was though very comfortable in the modern style with sofas instead of stalls. We had ventured as far as York to see the UK opening night of Lady Bird the hotly tipped Oscar nominated film starring Saoirse Ronan. It is a coming of age story portraing an eighteen year old girl in her last year at a catholic high school in Sacramento. In particular it shows the moving relationship between mother and daughter within the context of the family dynamic.

It was a good film, time passed quickly, the subject was interesting and the acting strong. In my opinion though the acting and the breadth of the subject was not in the same league as Three Billboards. I thought that Ronan’s portrayel was sensitive and nuanced, however for me it did not have a memorable power. Laurie metcalf as her mother though is superb, channelling he love into frustration and angst. I wonder whether Ronan looked a little mature for the role. Having said that it was a subtle take on the conflicting emotional forces of an eighteen yaer old. A very good film, but not a great one.

Spring is not here, but hope is

Today was a day of hope, but one that I am afraid will be a false dawn. I walked home from the Rainbow Centre today and in front of me the North Bay was displayed in all of its glory.

The tide was very low so I was able to walk easily along the sands. What is more the sun was warm on my back. I felt exhilarated, spring was on its way, and the bulbs would soon be flowering and the lambs gambolling in the fields.

My optimism was soon dispelled when I looked at the weather forecast, next week is not only a return to winter, it is a return to the depths of midwinter, the temperatures will hardly rise above freezing, while night time temperatures will be well below freezing. Added to that snow is forecast for most days next week.

Does this mean that by next Thursday I will be in the depths of despair, of course not. It will be winter’s last hurrah and I know that in a couple of months I will be back in shorts strolling along the North Bay.