Category: Uncategorized

One day I flew away

Today, I came off the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. (I can’t bring myself to call it by its current name. It sounds more like a porn channel than a social networking site.)

It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it made me feel better, especially after two of three accounts I run for clients were also deactivated over the last few days.

I’m keeping the third one for now, although I won’t be updating very much.

In the early years, Twitter was a great way of networking. We even had ‘Tweet Ups’ locally in West Dorset, where we put faces to our avatars. People were a little disappointed I looked nothing like the flaxen-haired Spirit of Bridport but, despite that, some firm friendships were forged.

However, in recent years, with a change of ownership and emphasis, the platform has become increasingly useless for me. And the latest brouhaha surrounding comments made by its owner about the appalling riots we’ve just had in the UK made me feel very uncomfortable.

It was time I was off.

I’m still on Facebook and Instagram and also LinkedIn. These spaces have their faults and, if you listen to the BBC’s disinformation reporter Marianna Spring’s frightening podcast, Why Do You Hate Me? and the equally terrifying The Gatekeepers, by Jamie Bartlett, you’ll understand why we need to be worried.

As Facebook turned 20 this year, Bartlett ‘uncovers how social media allowed a new digital elite and their platforms to conquer the planet and control what we see.’

It’s worth a listen if you’ve ever wondered how this unregulated thing grew into such a monster.

For now, I am staying on Instagram and sharing content about old Hollywood, 70s and 80s bands, comedy sketches from This Country and The Fast Show, and the odd talking dog. And I will remain on Facebook and try to be better at curating my Maddie Grigg page with regular status updates for my followers.

LinkedIn is a great way of keeping in touch with business trends and people in the same line of business. It’s just a shame it seems to be open to attempts by hackers to hijack accounts

I’m not completely ready to wander off and out into the wilderness, but the prospect of getting away from inane and unkind chatter is very tempting to say the least.

To vote or not to vote

Well, tomorrow’s the day when the UK goes to the polls for the first time in five years.

A lot has happened during that time, and in the fourteen years the Conservatives have been in power.

I’m not going to tell you which way to vote – I mean, who cares about my opinion? Actually, I care about my opinion but I’ll keep it to myself.

The key thing is whatever you do, please exercise your democratic right by going to your local polling station tomorrow and using your vote wisely.

I read today that one in five votes has already been cast because so many people have postal votes.

This is interesting because all the stories I’ve heard about postal votes is of paperwork not being received in time. A shambles is an understatement.

I’m currently in France and when the date of this election was announced, I was advised by electoral registration in Dorset to apply for a proxy vote as it had been called at such short notice.

So I did and reeived an email saying I would hear more in due course. I didn’t, although my proxy did but she wasn’t sent a polling card for me. In the meantime, I recieved a postal vote (which I hadn’t asked for) but with not enough time to return it for it to be counted.

I thought I’d be disenfranchised, like I was for the local elections when I didn’t receive a postal vote at all, even when I’d applied for one.

Then yesterday, two days before the election, my proxy received my polling card through the post.

So my vote will count after all. Whether it will make a difference is anyone’s guess but at least I (or my trusted proxy) will be doing my bit.

See you on the other side.

The Summer Solstice

It’s the summer solstice today, when the path of the sun in the sky is farthest north in the northern hemisphere.

It’s the longest day and the shortest night.

I’m in France at the moment and the scene yesterday evening was the calm before the storm.

Last night, it chucked it down, enough to fill up the wheelbarrow in the garden.

And it’s been raining on and off all morning. Not just drizzle but great big stair rods, drumsticks and knitting needles.

In England, there are blue skies and warmth, which makes a change from the wet conditions and cold nights that have resulted in a deluge of slugs and snails.

Strange happenings with the climate have got everyone talking, all over the world.

Yesterday at Stonehenge – the creation of which is inextricably linked to the summer and winter solstice sunrises – the ancient monoliths were sprayed in orange powder paint by climate activists demanding that the new government elected on 4 July legally commits to phasing out fossil fuels.

The climate emergency and the role of humankind in doing something about it is the biggest crisis facing our world today.

But to deface an ancient monument, albeit temporarily (protestors say the paint will wash off in rain) is probably not the best way of getting people to sit up and take notice. It’s counterproductive. All it does is outrage people, which is actually how we should be feeling about the climate crisis and the inability of our so-called leaders to save the world.

We must all do our bit. Rather than glue myself to a motorway, I’m currently allowing great swathes of mullein to grow in the garden in the most inconvenient places.

‘They’re weeds!’ a friend scoffed.

‘A weed is just a plant in the wrong place,’ I replied, rather self-righteously, gazing at all the mullein moth caterpillars chomping on the leaves and the bees buzzing around it in total ecstasy.

I’m lucky to have the space for the mullein but I think anyone with a garden does their bit for nature, with proper grass (not fake turf), flowers that the bees and butterflies love and inventive ways of dealing with slugs and snails rather than using the dreaded blue slug pellets, which killed off Edgar’s little sister when she was only a pup.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the climate crisis. But small things can make a difference, and do.

On the summer solstice, here’s to peace and harmony between nations, individuals and to all of us who want to leave the planet in a better state for the generations that follow us.

The annual family picnic

One day, many years ago, we were at a family funeral on my mother’s side when one of my cousins made a suggestion.

Instead of meeting up with our extended family only at weddings and funerals, why not have an annual family reunion?

Many people do something similar but it’s usually in someone’s garden or house, which can mean that one person or family spends hours getting the place spick and span and is then chained to a teapot all afternoon.

My cousin’s idea was to meet on the second Sunday in June for a picnic each year at Ham Hill Country Park in South Somerset.

This was always a favourite spot for us as children in the 1960s, back in the days when it wasn’t even called a country park but was just a place we knew where we could go and have fun, running up and down the paths or sliding down the hillocks in animal feed bags.

This ancient disused quarry, which was famous for its honey-gold hamstone, is now very popular, but there’s still plenty of space for everyone to enjoy.

My mother, who is 98, presides in a picnic chair over the proceedings, and hands around a clipboard for us to ‘sign in’. This year there were around forty of us in attendance.

Numbers have fluctuated over time – apparently seventy went one year -but there is no pressure. If you can be there, great. But if you can’t, it doesn’t matter.

All that’s required is for you to bring your own picnic, chairs or a rug, and make sure you’re wearing a hat, sunglasses and sun cream. We always meet in the same spot in a grassy hollow. Woe betide any outsider sitting there before the family arrives, like a Greek chorus emerging on to a stage in twos and threes and fours.

There have been years when we’ve shivered in the cold, sheltered under a gazebo in the rain or just chilled out.

This year, the weather was just right – cloudy sun, according to my weather app – and instead of molassine meal and cow cake sacks, the dog food bags came in handy for a bit of imprompt sledging down the hillocks

Every year I’m asked what time the pincic starts and every year I forget and have to ask my mum.

It’s a highlight of early summer, and I’m hoping that with new additions joining the extended family each year, we’ll all want to continue this very special tradition.

It’s very special to see second cousins being coy at first and then cosying up like they’ve known each other forever.

We are family.

D-Day commemorations

Under a vivid blue sky, on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, children from the village primary school walked up with their headteacher to the new war memorial.

They stood at the corner of the crossroads as our parish council chairman spoke about the events that led up to the largest naval, air and land operation in history on 6 June 1944.

A crowd of villagers stood (and sat) on the other side of the road to listen.

And then four pupils took it in turns with a microphone to relay their own research about the momentous event which changed the course of the Second World War.

Codenamed Operation Overlord, the amphibious assault landed nearly 160,000 Allied soldiers and 10,000 vehicles on five Normandy beaches by the end of the day.

According to the BBC, as many as 4,400 troops died from the combined allied forces on D Day alone. Some 9,000 were wounded or missing.

Total German casualties on the day are not known, but are estimated as being between 4,000 and 9,000. Some 200,000 were captured as German prisoners of war. 

Thousands of French civilians died, mainly as a result of the bombing raids of the allied forces.

By August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated.

Today, a large crowd of villagers watched as the ceremony took place. Cars and vans drove past, birds sang in the bushes and trees. A gentle breeze blew the grass and wild flowers on the verges to and fro.

The outgoing chairman of the parish council read out the names of all those in our parishes who lost their lives in the two world wars. The litany echoed along the village’s streets.

Tonight at 6.30pm, church bells will ring out across the land. Beacons will be lit to commemorate and remember. Ours, which was put up on the village allotments for one of the late Queen’s jubilees, will be lit at 9.15pm.

Today, the world still faces tyrannical leaders and pointless wars.

World War II veteran Jack Hemmings, who attended the ceremony today at Gold Beach, summed it up when he said: ‘The older you grow, the more you realise human beings are pretty stupid really.

‘Today, national leaders are waging wars to gain land. It’s barmy, there are enough problems in the world without having to make your neighbour a problem.’