Sue's stockings....

“You’re the bridge…. Bridges have two sides….”
Sue and Brian have featured in previous blogs (Pushing The Boat Out and Bring Me Laughter.) They live near York (and there’ve been plenty of blogs featuring York – see Tags opposite.) But the generosity of Sue and Brian is what has prompted me to reboot my blog in the 24 Days of Advent leading to Christmas Eve 2019. The quotation in the sub-heading is from Frozen II (yes, I’m a sucker for Disney films) and, although we have plenty of robust debate with Sue and Brian, there is a pretty sturdy bridge between us – ironic, really, since to get to their house you have to cross a very rickety wooden-slatted toll bridge!

Epictetus
The stoic philosopher from Ancient Greece, Epictetus, suggested: “Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.” Sue (Sally’s longest-standing friend from Primary School) gave us a present this year (the pictures in this blog should make it obvious what that present was.) That present became an example to follow – something borne of sheer will, love and dogged endeavour. Mark Twain might cynically suggest that “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” But Sue’s Advent Stockings had the opposite effect for me – they inspired me.

Daily Treats
It was a blast each day finding quizzes, walking routes, toiletries, sweeties, chocolates, coffee gizmos, useful gadgets (excellent torch, by the way) and miniature bottles of alcohol…. Sue and Brian are the kind of friends who build metaphorical bridges for others to walk across (click here for an example.) The 24 Advent Stockings spurred me on each day to walk across another bridge, post another blog, catch up with events over the past year. (I’d been a tad disheartened at the state of national and international politics and the only thing that made sense was to bury myself in the ongoing editing of my retirement hobby, Rhenium Tales. My imaginary planet made more sense than the real world.)

“All you can do is do the next right thing”
Yes, another quotation from Frozen II, this time from the Grand Pabbie (which Anna thankfully recalls at a key moment….) – so Sue’s stockings (as it were), made me do the next right thing. One day at a time. One word at a time. One picture at a time. All you can do is the next right thing. You can’t beat an inspirational Disney quotation! (Unsentimental Disney haters, look away now! - you might vomit....):

• A dream is a wish your heart makes
• A true hero isn’t measured by the size of his strength but by the strength of his heart
• If everybody got somebody by the hand, maybe everyone could learn and understand
• Our fate lies within us – you only have to be brave enough to see it.**

** OK, OK – Pinocchio, Hercules, Little Mermaid and Brave.

Sustainable Christmas

Sustainable Christmas Decorations
Last year (pictures click here) we made a pilgrimage to the different Christmas decorations in Burton Agnes Hall, Chatsworth House and Harewood House. We return to Burton Agnes as often as we can for two reasons: the Hall and Gardens are beautiful, and the Cunliffe-Lister family marshall friends and colleagues to create very distinctive decorations, sometimes hand-knitted, sometimes using folded paper; often using foliage from the grounds to mount the displays and this year there was a focus on sustainable decorations.

Friendly staff and welcoming atmosphere
Often the room guides can point out their own individual contribution so there is a team-spirit and homemade feel to the Burton Agnes Christmas celebrations. This year snowmen were “hiding” in every room for the eagle-eyed and I was glad to see the local primary school’s regular contribution, this year made of recycled items (in top picture above.) Our Christmas Crackers this year are recyclable and homemade and presents are wrapped in old paper or newspaper. Every step, they say, is a step in the right direction….

Next Christmas….
The Hall dates from 1598 and there are three features that impress me every time I visit: the Great Hall is awe-inspiring; the Oak Staircase is a marvel of engineering and restoration; and the Long Gallery at the top of the house is perfect for “taking a turn about the room” with its curved ceiling. I’m already looking forward to visiting next Christmas. Meanwhile, here are my immediate families' four trees: two in Bradford, one in Leeds, one in Badby...

No Excuses Now

 

I hope Tory Voters are right
I hope the new government will turn the UK into a huge post-Brexit success. WHAT DID THE TORY MANIFESTO PROMISE?

• Get Brexit Done
• Take measures to reverse the climate emergency
• Protect and enhance the NHS
• Boost the Education Service
• Improve the national Criminal Justice and Penal systems
• Develop an immigration service appropriate to the 21st Century
• Build enough social housing
• Protect and enhance the lives of all vulnerable people
• Unleash the potential of the UK’s forgotten towns with major investments
• Improve our transport infrastructure
• Protect jobs and human rights
• Be taken seriously on the World Stage.

THAT’S WHAT THEY’VE PROMISED IN THEIR MANIFESTO. That’s (I hope) why TORY VOTERS voted for them because TORY VOTERS BELIEVE THIS WILL HAPPEN. I hope so too. Really hope so. I love the UK. I love its history, its culture, its countryside. I wish we had voted to remain aligned to Europe in the Referendum back in 2016 but we didn’t, so I have always thought that Brexit in some form should happen, despite my reservations about the honesty of the original exercise.

Well, the Tories have had three-and-a-half years to deliver Brexit. They haven’t – and for two of those years because of their own in-fighting – and NOW the country has voted to give the mendacious Boris Johnson a chance to Get Brexit Done. So, I watch with fascinated interest – and hope the Tory Voters are right – and within months the country regains its pride, strength and stability. Time will tell.

Right Left Divide
My final comfort is that (in the graphic below, with one result left to call):

• the Right of Centre Vote Share (Con + Brx) = 45.6%
• the Left of Centre Vote Share (Lab + LD + SNP + GRN) = 50.3%

with the rest made up of Northern Ireland parties and Independent individuals. If only a New Left Alliance could emerge from the ashes of the 2019 election…. a Rebel Alliance?

Rolled on by a horse....

(Genuinely) Clever Clive and (Genuinely) Buffoonish Boris
The late (clever and funny) Clive James wrote after an early Boris Johnson appearance as (short-lived) Foreign Secretary:

Boris gave an immediate impression of total dishevelment. It’s not his clothes and coiffure, but his personality that makes him look as if he had been rolled on by a horse and then seduced by it.

Clive James’s later poetry, like his TV and cultural criticism disarmed as well as skewered pomposity – he was that rare beast in public life, someone who wore his learning lightly. Unlike our current Prime Minister who likes to obfuscate the truth beneath bluster. Only Boris Johnson could answer a question on the traitorous Fake FactCheck site set up by the Tories with reference to:

“hunting the snark.… Fermat’s last theorem…. the riddle of the Sphinx…. the Bermuda triangle…. croutons….”

(Search for it on the internet if you don’t believe me – Boris Johnson answering question about fact check website.) His answer was designed to provoke laughter and to deflect from the serious accusation in the question. It’s a well-known technique that clever students use in Debating Societies in schools and universities time and again.

A sheep, a shark, a drunk and a lozenge
Check out the Jeremy Vine account admiring Boris Johnson’s apparent genius when Johnson gave what seemed like a spontaneous after-dinner speech…. It’s a clear example of our current Prime Minister’s elusive smoke and mirrors trickery. The winter election next Thursday seems to be framed around the future. Promises, promises…. But I find myself considering the present and the past decade. Do I want more of the same? Do I believe the Tories? Since the imposition of austerity in 2010, has the UK become a stronger, safer, more prosperous, more cultural, more law-abiding, more civilised country? If not, who has been in power since 2010? Answer: the Tories, along with five years of LiberalDemocratEnablers. They have presided over:

• an increase in the national debt (so those austerity measures worked, didn’t they?)

1. £850 billion in 2010 to £1.786 trillion by December 2018
2. £175 billion spend on Emergency Brexit stimulus by Bank of England (Brexit, remember, was initiated by the Tories and they have had over three years to implement it and the first attempts to make it happen were THWARTED by the Tories themselves)
3. 86 million pounds spent on non-existent ferries
4. £1 billion to bribe the DUP into a form of coalition that ended disastrously
5. shameful increase in child poverty (32 - 35% of UK children in this category now)
6. 80% of the 5.3 million self employed live below the poverty line
7. 185,000 deaths attributed to the austerity measures brought in by the Tories and LibDems
8. 150% increase in student debt (student fees up 300%)
9. GDP fallen to -0.1%
10. Sterling against the Euro and the USD fallen by 15%
11. 25 – 30 % cut to all government departments
12. 25 – 30 % cut to local councils, mainly centred on Labour councils

• a degrading of health

1. 2400% increase in the use of food banks
2. 10,000 fewer medical professionals and there is now a dangerous nurse shortage
3. 25,000 fewer bed spaces for mental illness
4. 25% cuts for our disabled community
5. 80% cuts to Mobility allowance
6. increase in teenage suicide by 70%
7. suicide up 12% in the year 2018
8. self harm among young women up 70%
9. life expectancy down 3 years
10. NHS satisfaction level at lowest recorded rate
11. and don't get me started on the current lies about what hospital "buildings" they are currently promising

• education

1. over 1000 Sure Start centres closed
2. over 700 libraries closed
3. eradication of the Education Maintenance Allowance
4. 36,000 teachers have left the profession and there is now a teacher shortage

• crime and justice

1. 25,000 fewer police
2. 20,000 fewer prison officers
3. increase of 50% in hate crimes
4. increase of knife crime by 150% to 22,000 per year

• infrastructure (especially housing and transport)

1. 1000% increase in homelessness
2. 1,200% increase in rough sleeping
3. mass evictions caused by the bedroom tax
4. Zero starter homes built, despite Tory flagship programme
5. Council home building down 90% since 2010
6. 200,000 social homes lost since 2010
7. one million families on council home waiting list
8. 100,000 increase on the council home waiting list since 2010
9. 10,000 fewer firefighters
10. over 650 football pitches closed
11. manufacturing, contruction and auto industries in recession
12. half of local councils are facing bankruptcy
13. Claims of “job creation” are masked by self-employed, ZeroHoursContracts and gig economy causing the OECD to suggest the unemployment rate in the UK is really 13% if you calculate the 3 million hidden unemployed

Voting for more of the same?
We are an entrenched country of foodbanks and multimillionaires. How can that be? And yet it is likely that many people in the UK will still vote for the Tories, the “nasty party.’ The party of the few, not the many. How long, in normal life, would you give someone the benefit of the doubt? Has almost 10 years been long enough to make improvements? 10 years! Are you going to vote for more of the same?

Pasta fresca

la madre e la figlia producono la pasta

Bright Cold Skies
Whilst I hacked and coughed with a dispiriting bout of man flu and eldest daughter Emily got to grips with nurse training, youngest daughter Harriet went walking with Sally along the river in Otley, soaking up the low sun, avoiding slipping in muddy patches, chuntering and chatting and setting the world to rights and, more importantly, planning an evening meal of pasta fresca – pasta made from scratch with flour, eggs and old fashioned table-top kneading.

Along the River Wharfe in Otley

Fresh, Dried or Freshly-Made?
The prevailing wisdom, I’m told, is that good dried pasta is better than the “fresh” sold in supermarkets but that better than both is the pasta made by hand using the techniques of swirling the eggs in a flour well, then rolling the springy dough until you can read a love letter through it. Job done, I’d say. I can testify it was delicious with the garlic and artichoke sauce, not to mention the crumbly parmesan biscuits (see BBC recipe below) which got everything off to a zingy start.