Another One Off the List

I read geography at university and so, including at 'A' level, I studied that subject (in between playing cricket and rugby) for 5 years.  Geography is a study of the relationships between people and their environments across space and time.  

I always found geomorphology, the study of landforms and the processes that create them, much more interesting than human geography which is the way people react to and live within those environments.

Like everyone else, I have experienced some of the natural processes such as wind, rain and temperature extremes that shape the earth.  I have seen glaciers but have never walked near or examined one - a study of a glacier is impossible when sitting in an aircraft flying 20,000 feet above the Alps.  There are many natural phenomena that I have never seen, felt or heard.

But, I have experienced two earthquakes.  

My first earthquake was on July 26th, 1963.  I was 16 years old and on a camping holiday with my parents and Peter, my younger brother.  The earthquake was sizeable, measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale.  More than 1,000 people died; 4,000 people were injured and 200,000 were left homeless.  The quake happened at 5:20 a.m. when most people were still in bed.

We were camped on a hill about a mile from the centre of Skopje which is a city in North Macedonia or Yugoslavia as it was then.  Amazing as it seems, we all slept through it.  I wish I knew the manufacturer of the camp beds we were on. Think of the advertising possibilities:  

“THE BEDROOM COLLAPSED BUT I SLEPT THROUGH”

We only became aware of what had happened when, after breakfast, we drove towards the city centre and found that all the roads were closed.

The second one was on January 19th, 2010, at 9:23 a.m.  As usual at that time of the day, I was sitting in my recliner in the living room of our cottage in Prospect, Grand Cayman reading the online Times newspaper.

The chair suddenly began to shudder and a framed photograph fell from the wall shattering the glass on the tiled floor. There was no sound and the shaking lasted for about 15 seconds.  Instead of the sea being flat calm, it looked choppy as though a steady breeze were blowing across it.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun and within a minute of the cessation of the agitation, the sea was flat once more.  It was a 5.8 magnitude earthquake and its epicentre had been 40 miles away and at a depth of 6.2 miles. There were no accounts of injuries on any of the three Cayman Islands and no structural damage was reported.

Experience of the tremor was very localised.  At the primary school where I helped out two days a week, I was told that one block of four classrooms felt nothing, whereas in the rest of the school, the children and their teachers followed the emergency procedure and sought refuge under the tables.  People who were driving on the island, felt nothing.

Exactly a week earlier Haiti, which is only 590 miles from Grand Cayman, had experienced a 7.0 magnitude earthquake.  Almost 300,000 people were killed.  When Cayman’s earthquake happened, many Caymanians panicked and there were reports of parents barging into schools and taking their children home.

The Richter scale is logarithmic and so the magnitude 6.1 earthquake at Skopje - that I didn’t notice - was twice as powerful as the 5.8 Cayman earthquake that shook me in my chair.  A difference of 0.3 on the scale is much bigger than it seems, as a magnitude 6 earthquake releases approximately 32 times more energy than a magnitude 5 earthquake.  

Volcanos and earthquakes are found together at the margins of continental plates.  I have never seen an active volcano but in 2011, Caroline and I went to Dominica, which has 9 volcanos that are classified as active but a volcano doesn’t have to be erupting now to be classed as active.  Any activity that has occurred in the current epoch, which began around 12,000 years ago, makes it technically active.

The last volcanic activity in Dominica was in 1997 although that was more of a fart than a full on evacuation of lava.   No lava was emitted and only a relatively small area was covered in ash.   Needless to say, while we were there, we saw no activity.

As I’ve written before, (Click Here), we did witness a total solar eclipse in 1999 and the vivid beauty of it remains imprinted in my memory.

While sitting in a restaurant on the bank of the Gironde estuary in August this year, I saw a tidal bore and managed to film it.  

To see it better, go to full screen.

Bores happen when an incoming tide is forced up a funnel‑shaped, shallow estuary. That water piles up so that the incoming tide is strong enough to produce a travelling wave that moves upstream against the river’s flow.

The height of that Gironde bore appeared to be less than a metre, whereas in the UK, the River Severn’s bore travels for several miles and so creates an upstream wave which is typically around 2 - 2.5 metres above the river level.  People surf it.  The Gironde has less of a rate of narrowing and so the bore is weaker.

I think I have seen a drumlin which is an oval hill.  Drumlins are formed when ice passes over unconsolidated glacial till, the unsorted sediment that forms a ground moraine.  I was being interviewed by Professor Fisher, the head of the geography department at Durham University. 

After about five minutes, he pointed out of his office window and asked, “What’s that?”  All I saw was a rounded hill.  “A drumlin?” I suggested.

He said nothing but asked me something about landforms in a hot desert.  I assume that I was right but he never told me or mentioned it again.

Living on Grand Cayman for five years made me realise that some of the “facts” that I had been taught in ‘A’ level geography and that I had taught students for 30 years were just wrong.

There certainly are seasons in the tropics.  The Poinciana tree blooms in the beginning of June and stays in flower until late July and that is also the period when Mangoes ripen.

Royal Poincina tree

It does not rain in mid-afternoon on most days in the tropics as I had thought.  There are wet and dry seasons.  The rainy season is from May until November when there is an average of around 180mm of rain a month.  The dry season has around 40mm of rain a month.

I had learnt about buttress roots and they are more spectacular than I imagined.  Some trees in the tropics are shallowly rooted but those roots are large and wide roots . They help to prevent the tree from falling over during a hurricane, hence the name buttress.

It would take a very powerful hurricane to blow that thing over and as you can see from its buttress roots, the tree is pretty secure too.

Carolina and I joined the Cayman Astronomical Society.  Cayman has virtually no light pollution and we once spent a wonderful evening glued to a powerful Celestron telescope looking at Saturn with its rings clearly visible in fine detail.

The last thing I saw in Cayman that I had learnt about but never seen was a mangrove swamp and much of Grand Cayman’s undeveloped coastline is covered with them.

Features that I would like to see and could with some planning and luck are the northern lights, a tornado and an erupting volcano.

Times Have Changed

From the age of 11 until I was 16 or 17, I spent every summer weekend and every day of the school summer holiday at Oulton Broad outdoor swimming pool. 

My friends and I were all members of the Oulton Broad Swimming and Diving Club.  Becoming a member meant that a five shilling (25p) fee was paid and then, admission was always free.  Not only that but members changed in a wooden hut at the pool’s edge and not in the cubicles used by the public and so we were not constrained by time restrictions or limitations.  

A member of the public was allowed 45 minutes whereas my friends and I could arrive at 10:30 in the morning and stay until 5 p.m.  Of course, we didn’t swim all day but once every hour or so, we would muck about doing “bombs” from the 10 foot diving board or retrieving objects thrown into the deep end.

I was reminded of those happy days while looking through archived copies of the weekly local paper - the Lowestoft Journal.  I was looking for press reports covering cricket matches I played for Lowestoft Town in the years from 1963 until 1972, the year when I left the town for ever.  

Times have changed.  My innings of 47 not out, at home in 1969 against Suffolk Club and Ground, was described in the Journal as “one of the gayest innings to be played on the Denes Oval for some years.”  It may well have been gay but no one at the time commented on it.

This feature from the middle of June 1964 under the headline “Weather”, is interesting:

“Temperatures in Lowestoft have been pleasantly warm this week reaching well into the sixties.” (16-20°C)

I can remember that the first thing I used to do on entering through the Oulton Broad pool gates was to look at the blackboard on which that day’s water temperature was written.  The pool was never heated. 

If the number was less than 60°F (15.5°C) and it often was, I knew that unless I dived straight in, I never would swim at all.  It was much too cold to enter the water gradually.  However, if the reading was more than 64°F (18°C), we could imagine that we were in the Caribbean.

Incidentally, my two grandsons aged 8 and 10 visited last us week.  They live in Honley in Yorkshire and we took them to the lido in Woburn where they moaned about the cold water.  The floating temperature gauge read 23.7°C  (75°F). Wimps!

Times have certainly changed.  The warmest temperature felt in Lowestoft in June 1964 was 76°F (24.5°C).  This year, the highest temperature in June in Lowestoft was 36.9°C or 98°F.  If it were still there, I wonder what the Oulton Broad pool temperature would have been in June this year. 

I remember that while studying ‘A’ level geography in the mid-sixties, being aware of a fuss in scientific and geographic circles because of something suggested by Nigel Calder, a science writer.  

He maintained that talk about man-made global warming was based on fallacious arguments and that the earth was in an interglacial period and we should actually be preparing for the return of the ice age.

In 1980, Calder predicted that by 2030, people will realise that heating of the earth by the man-made carbon-dioxide has failed to occur.  Instead, he predicted, there will be renewed concern about global cooling and an impending ice age.

That’s about as wrong as anyone could be about anything.

Born on a Monday

July 19th, 1976, was a Monday.  I know that it was a Monday because that was the day that my elder daughter was born.  Alice was premature, born a month before she was expected and the first time I ever saw her, she was wrapped in foil and lying in an incubator.  

There was another new-born baby in that room; a boy who was also foil-wrapped in an incubator, receiving  constant, vigilant attention from the medical staff.

He was noticeably bigger than Alice and his name, written on the notes attached to the incubator, was Solomon and that was appropriate as he had been born on a Monday. 

I had never met anyone named Solomon before and I’ve never met one since.  It is not a common name.  I met Solomon’s mother a couple of times but I never saw his father. 

Over four days, I spent many hours looking at the two babies as they were being fussed over by the nurses.  They were both treated with boundless care and meticulous attention.  Once they left though, I supposed that things might change because, as they would both find out, life isn’t fair.

I knew exactly what sort of life Alice was going home to and I recall wondering what future awaited Solomon.  

While 20-year old Alice was at university, I read in the Evening Standard that a twenty-year old man had been found dead on a London street about seven miles from the hospital where Alice had been born. There was a photograph of the victim accompanying the story.  

The photograph was of a young black man.  I can’t remember his full name but I was startled when I saw that his first name was Solomon and Solomon, the baby who had been in the incubator next to Alice’s twenty years earlier, had also been black.  Surely, it had to be the same person.

I know absolutely nothing at all about what kind of life Solomon had experienced or in what kind of home he grew up.  The newspaper story revealed that his death was believed to be a result of feuding between gangs involved in drug dealing and so I doubt that he had experienced a stable, sheltered and financially secure upbringing. 

I thought about Solomon again three years ago when Sarah, the daughter of someone I have known for a few years, invited us to her wedding reception; not to the wedding itself, but just to the reception. 

Sarah is 31 years old and wants for nothing, materially.  When she got married, she was earning less than £30,000 a year and yet she was already well established on the property ladder.

Sarah was married in a Register office.  Only about 30 people - mainly family - were invited to the wedding.  

However, more than 100 of her friends and family, and that included Caroline and me, were invited to the Reception six days later.  There was an unconventional twist to this reception, however, in that it took place on an estate in Tuscany, some 850 miles away from the wedding venue.  

I suspect this is probably because a Register office in Milton Keynes is not very Instagrammable.  (I am told that instagrammable is the modern word for picturesque.)  

The location of the “party” is 50 miles from the nearest airport and so all guests would either have had to hire a car at the airport or pay for a costly taxi ride.  This was in addition to acquiring accommodation in central Italy for two nights at the height of the tourist season.  

I estimated that the total cost of staging this event was about £115,000.  You may be wondering how the couple could afford to spend a lot more than their joint annual salaries on what, when it came down to it, was nothing more than a social gathering. The answer is that, of course, they couldn’t. 

Sarah, desperate to impress her friends who are more interested in the moment than the meaning, wanted to have the event captured for posterity on Instagram and Facebook so that everyone can see how special she is.  Luckily, her future mother-in-law is the divorced wife of a multi-millionaire.  

She told Sarah that, as her own daughter’s wedding two years earlier had cost a lot, she would help out with at least the same amount for her son.  

What a stroke of luck for Sarah (and her parents).

I estimate that every guest had to find more than £800 to go to this party.  We didn’t go and the reason was nothing to do with the cost.  I don’t suppose that Sarah noticed my absence or cared much, even if she did.

I had what seemed to be an insoluble dilemma.  Should I to tell Sarah and her parents the real reason I wouldn’t go and upset them or, did I make up some wishy-washy excuse and so avoid bitterness and argument?  I suppose that if I were a man with the courage of my convictions, I would have told them the truth and the truth would have been something like: 

1.  Thanks for the invitation but we won’t be coming. 

2.  It’s not a wedding reception that you’ve invited us to because the wedding is taking place six days earlier.  This is nothing more than an extravagant party.  

3.  You and your future husband live within six miles of most of the invited guests.  The only possible reason that this “Reception” is in Tuscany is to impress your friends but it doesn’t impress me.  

4.  You chose the location just for the photo opportunities.

5.  ‘Extravagant’ and ‘Wasteful’ are nothing like strong enough words to describe the amount of money being spent on this display of vulgar, poor taste.

6.  So, thanks once again for the invitation but I’m afraid I will have nothing to do with it.

Of course, as I am certainly not a man with the courage of my convictions, I didn’t say anything at all like that.  I said, 

“Sorry, but I have one of my very important biannual liver check-ups on that Friday.”

Would Solomon’s life experiences have been different if, spread over his short lifetime, his mother had somehow received just a fraction of the obscene amount of money that Sarah’s mother-in-law blew in just 12 hours.  I suspect that things started to go wrong for Solomon the moment he was taken out of hospital.  

Sarah has done absolutely nothing to deserve her comfortable life.  Fate has been good to Sarah, while Solomon seemed to have never had any good fortune and almost certainly did nothing to deserve the wretched start to life that he seemed to have.

For obvious reasons, there’s no way that Alice and Solomon could have been mistakenly swapped at birth in 1976.  If they had been, my guess is that today, Solomon would be an employed family man, while Alice would be a single mother with children, dependent upon state benefits.  Both would probably still be alive.

Life isn’t fair.

A Complete Anticlimax

There was a total eclipse of the sun over parts of Europe on Wednesday August 12th, 2026.  Totality was visible over a swathe of central Spain.

For the past ten days, Caroline and I have been staying in a cottage in Talais, a village in the Medoc region of France, 180 miles north of the Spanish border and we seriously considered driving 300 miles south to experience totality again.  But when we read that totality here would be close to 98%, our thoughts were something like:

·    We’ve seen it once before in 1999 and it was wonderful.

·      If it is cloudy, it could be a wasted 600 mile round-trip journey.

·      It would involve an overnight stay in Spain. 

·      98% is very close to 100%. We might as well stay here.

So, that is what we did.

We booked for dinner at an open air café in the Port de Talais and at 7:15 pm, we sat down at our table overlooking miles of flat marsh and woodland with absolutely nothing to spoil our view of the sun that was still beating down from a cloudless sky.  97.6% totality was expected at 8:24 pm.

The restaurant was packed and because everyone, many of them with specially bought lunettes spéciales éclipse, was frequently peering up at the sun, it was clear that the eclipse was on everyone’s minds.  

At 7:29 pm, the eclipse began.  Based on my experiences from 1999, I assured the English speaking people at the next table to us that without special glasses, nothing would seem any different for at least 45 minutes.  I also mentioned that it might all be a bit of an anticlimax.

My memory of the total eclipse 27 years ago, is that, about a minute before totality, I had noticed that the shadows of the leaves on the wall were shaped in crescents in exactly the same shape and proportions as the crescent of the visible sun.  Approximately 30 seconds before totality, all the hundreds of birds feeding on the ground in the field around us suddenly took off, squawking very loudly and we heard dogs barking.

At around 8:15, many of the diners, including us, left their tables and went out on to the scrub land to get an even better view of the sun.  As I expected, it all looked very much as it had an hour ago.  At 8:20, the restaurant turned on all their interior lights.

The birds carried on feeding from the mud at the side of the river; no dog barked and the shadows of the leaves of the mulberry tree on the white wall of an outhouse, never altered in their shape.

Forty people stood there like idiots, staring at a sun that had not seemed to have changed its appearance in any way whatsoever.  At 8:25, we all drifted back inside and carried on with our meals.  The lights were off.

This is us at 8:24, the moment that 97.6% of the sun was obscured.

“Maybe, it got a little darker?” Caroline said.

What a complete anticlimax!

*  I look more scruffy than usual because I had a procedure done on my face recently and I mustn't shave for 8 weeks.

It obviously was not cosmetic surgery!

 

 

 

 

221. What has gone wrong with the world?

Caroline and I are in France.  This afternoon, we were driving past a Carrefour supermarket when she asked me to pull in and park there because there were “a couple of things” she wanted to buy.  Pretty sure that meant three or four bottles of wine and knowing that would take no longer than 10 minutes and I didn’t need to accompany her, I did so without demur.

After 40 minutes of sitting in a parked car in heat of 33°C (91°F), I was becoming slightly fed up.  I was parked opposite a row of about 30 bicycle racks and there was a constant flow of mainly young people using them.

What interested me much more than the cyclists themselves was that every single one of them, without exception, locked their bike to the rack so that it wouldn’t be stolen.

How different that is from the days when I cycled regularly.  From about the age of 8 until I was 16, I rode my bike whenever I left the house without my parents.  At weekends and during school holidays, my friends and I rode everywhere: to each other’s houses, parks and playing fields, the swimming pool, a youth club and to the railway station to catch a train to see Norwich City play.

Not once did I or a friend, lock up their bike and never was one stolen.  What has gone wrong with the world?

I virtually stopped riding my bike when I was 16 and bought a Vespa motor scooter.   That scooter was started just by treading on the kick-start lever.  That was all you had to do.  There was no ignition key that had to be turned on.  When it was parked, whether in the town centre or in a cafe car park, anyone could have just walked up to it and driven off on it.  But no one ever did!  

What has gone wrong with the world?

220 Why Make the Call?

I’m sorry that this is so soon after my last post but there has been one story that has dominated our news for the past three days and I need to comment.  

This story has been the front page headline in virtually every newspaper and has been the lead story in every television and radio news programme.  It has dominated every phone-in and discussion format.

Those of you resident in the UK, will already know that I am referring to the tragic event that culminated in the death of an 18-year-old student in Southampton.  There is one aspect of this case that bothers me, however.

To summarise the events of that evening, Henry Nowak was a student at Southampton University and was in his first year studying accountancy and finance.  One evening in December 2025, he met friends in a pub and at around 11 o’clock, left to walk home.  On his way through the Portswood area, he encountered Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh and his brother, Gurpreet.  

Words were exchanged that resulted in an altercation, during which Vickrum Digwa stabbed Nowak five times using a pesh-kabz, or maybe a shastar, martial blades, larger than the kirpan which Sikhs legally carry as prescribed by their Code of Conduct. 

After the fight was over, Gurpreet dialled 999 and reported to the police that he and his brother had been involved in a racial attack and asked for medical help.

When the police arrived and this is what has made the story so shocking and newsworthy, they immediately handcuffed and arrested Nowak, who was lying on the ground, dying.  Even after he had told them four times that he had been stabbed, they ignored him, siding with the Sikhs and treated it as a racial hate crime.

It is the attitude of the police that has caused all the acrimony, hostility and uproar.

Vickrum Gurpreet, the murderer was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment.  His brother is facing charges of possessing offensive weapons such as a baton and an axe in a private place,.

The aspect of the case that really bothers me and which no one has commented upon in the media, is why was that 999 call made and once it had been made, why did the murderer and his brother wait for more than10 minutes at the scene until the police arrived?  It almost appears that they were showing compassion towards their victim by making the call and ensuring that medical aid was on its way.

I have never before heard of a case in which a murderer acts in that way.  They always seem to leave the scene of the crime as fast as possible.  Their behaviour seems extraordinary.  Vickrum Digwa knew that the stab wounds would be discovered and that he or his brother were the only possible suspects and yet, rather than quickly leaving the scene, they hung around.  

Surely, they must have realised that a long prison sentence was inevitable for one or both of them when the police questioned them.  

While I’m on the subject of the police, in 2010, the ITV police series, “The Bill”, ended.  It had run since the mid 80s.

The opening credits of every one of the 2,400 episodes included shots, from their knees to the ground, of two police officers, a woman and a man walking along a pavement.  They were walking their beat.

If you are over 60 years old and watched BBC television from 1955 until 1976, you will recognise these lyrics to the theme of “Dixon of Dock Green”.

I’m an ordinary copper who’s patrolling his beat.
Around Dock Green.
’Hello, Mister Dixon!’ shout the kids in the street,
Around Dock Green.

The programme featured George Dixon, a police constable in his 50s who was honest, likeable and always trustworthy and dependable.  He had all the characteristics that every police officer should have.

Those words of the song epitomise what policing is meant to be all about.  Dixon was a local policeman who was known and trusted by everyone in Dock Green.  Above all, he was visible.  He walked his beat.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw a police officer who wasn’t sitting in a car.  Do the police still “walk the beat”?  It must be 40 years since I saw one.  I wonder if a teenager knows what is meant by a “beat”.

I have no idea what the average police constable does all day but I suppose that as offences that a “bobby on the beat” might deter, such as shoplifting and street knife crime are virtually unknown nowadays, there is absolutely no need for a visible police presence of any kind.

 

219 Muddle and Confusion

Do you ever use the same wrong word instead of the word that you should use?  Two of my friends often made that mistake and caused problems for themselves.

One of them was a teacher colleague of mine.  He was from Langho in Lancashire and was a staunch and passionate supporter of Blackburn Rovers. When he came to teach at Fortismere School in North London, he learnt very quickly that to admit to supporting any team other than Tottenham Hotspur was a big mistake.  Nonetheless, he was so used to saying  “Blackburn” in any conversation about football and it was so embedded in his consciousness, that he couldn’t stop doing it.

He told me of a lesson that deviated from his aims and degenerated into chaos because of a fierce argument that arose due to his carelessness when answering a question.

“Sir, do you think we’ll win on Saturday?”

“Should do. Leicester have got a terrible away record.”

“Eh?  What are you on about?  it’s us who’s away - at Chelsea.”

The other friend kept getting into trouble using the wrong word because he often called his second wife by his first wife’s name.  Sadly, for him there’s not much that can be done to put that right.

There must be a cause but I have no idea why it is that there are two words that I keep mixing up.  

Caroline and her friend, Denise, are walking the Greensand Ridge that runs through Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridge, stage by stage, over a number of Saturdays.  It’s a total distance of more than 40 miles.  I would join them but I have a sore toe and I’m really very disappointed indeed and devastated that I can’t join them.

Stage one is the nine miles from the southern end of the ridge, northeast to Woburn.  One Saturday morning at  9:30, they set off.  As I left the house to go shopping an hour later, I bumped into Patrick, our neighbour who asked after Caroline.

“She and her friend are doing the first stage of the Greensand Ridge walk stage from High Wycombe to Woburn,” I told him and Patrick was very impressed.

Last Friday, I left home to get a haircut.  I’ve told you before about Lena who is Romanian and who was recommended to me during the Covid lockdown.  Even though it’s a 32 mile round trip, I continue to support her through a sense of loyalty.  

I missed the exit from one of Milton Keynes’ many roundabouts and prepared to do a U-turn.  However, when I saw that the traffic on the other side of the road was stationary because of roadworks, I pulled over to look at the car’s satnav to see if there is an alternative route.  There is and as I don’t know Lena’s full address, I entered “High Wycombe” thinking I would recognise the route once I was close.

After driving for another half an hour, I was wishing that I had braved the log jam back at the roundabout where I had made the original mistake.  I was passing through village after village that I had never seen before.  

When I reached the town centre, I got out and asked a few people the way to Grovebury Park.  None of them had heard of it.

When I was young, about fifteen or sixteen years old, I had an almost uncanny sense of direction and distance.  It was so good that on family trips in the car, my Dad would never bother with a map but trust me instead.  I never remember being wrong.

I decided to see if I still possess those skills and drove in the direction that felt was right.  It soon became apparent that I don’t.  

I was in an electric Mini and was shocked to see that the range had dropped to 19 miles.  I stopped again and put “Home” into the satnav see how far away I was.  6 miles!  

I had driven for over an hour and was only 6 miles from where I had set off.  Then, I saw a road sign which read, “Milton Keynes 10 miles, Leighton Buzzard 4 miles.”

Leighton Buzzard!  That’s where Lena works - not High Wycombe, the town I put into the satnav - you stupid old fool.  

Those two towns are 30 miles apart and so why does it keep happening?  Why do I keep thinking of High Wycombe when it should be Leighton Buzzard?  What should have been a bit of a jaunt, ended up with me driving 77 miles in more than two hours.

I suppose that I’d better tell Patrick that after all, Caroline didn’t walk the 36 miles from High Wycombe to Woburn in 4 hours.  

Nine miles from Leighton Buzzard to Woburn is a fairly respectable trek though.

Ramble:

Here are a couple of thoughts I’ve had for the first time today.  Do you know the answer to either query?

 1. What is the origin of the meaning of the word “after” in the sentence, “I bumped into Patrick, our neighbour who asked after Caroline.”

2. Why is a person who runs a restaurant known as a “restaurateur” and not a “restauranteur” with an ‘n’.

218 Liquid Gold

I like retail websites that easily allow you to return goods you’ve ordered and refund the cost of those purchases.  This happened to me when I returned a pair of shoes to Skechers.  

They were advertised as “slip-ins” and certainly would have been for virtually everyone but me.  I couldn’t just slip into them because of the three screws I have in my left ankle that prevent me from flexing my ankle like other people.

Within two days of their return, the full purchase price was back in my bank account.

A week ago, Caroline was grateful for the returns policy of a company that sells olive oil online for absurdly high prices.  The company justify the ridiculous price on the grounds that it is organic, small batch, ethically sourced and direct from the farmers.  It is a niche “luxury” olive oil and is “obtainable from Harrods”.  

The olives that produce the oil come from Koroneiki olive trees and we all know how wonderful the Koroneiki tree is. With global warming upon us, perhaps it would be a wise investment to get hold of a few Koroneiki olive trees and plant them in the garden. 

The 500ml bottle cost £70 and Caroline bought it as a birthday present for her sister.  Although that is a ludicrous price, the most expensive oil they advertise is £499 for a 250ml bottle - £1,996 a litre.  That’s even more expensive than diesel!  They do offer free delivery though.

Research I’ve done into this oil, reveals that the retail markup is enormous compared with what the farmers/producers were actually paid for the oil,  A large part of the price is for packaging and luxury appeal - and for mugs like my wife.

The oil is so luxurious that consumers, or fools as I call them, are advised not to use it in any form of cooking.  It should be served untainted as, for example, a dressing on salad or as a dip for fresh, crusty bread and also, on dark chocolate mousse.

When the oil arrived, there was an obvious problem and Caroline wrote to Customer Services:

I recently purchased a bottle of olive oil from your website.  When it arrived, although the outside packaging was completely intact, the inside box containing the bottle was damaged. This was very disappointing as I bought it as a gift. 

It appears that you have selected a damaged product to send when fulfilling my order.

The company replied:

Hi Caroline,

Thanks so much for reaching out about your recent order. I'm really sorry.  Receiving a damaged order is always frustrating but especially when it's meant as a gift for someone special. That's really not the experience we want for our customers.  I have arranged a replacement to be sent out to you right away. 

We're sorry again for the stress this has caused, and we really appreciate your patience with this. Please don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything else I can do.

Best wishes,

Scout

What is all this “reaching out” nonsense?  Why has the word “contact” fallen into disuse?

“We are going to get a free bottle of luxury olive oil,” Caroline told me, excitedly.  “We’ll have salad every day for a month.”

This morning, the doorbell rang.  It was the postman and he was holding a large, flat cardboard package about 60cm x 40cm.  It was about a centimetre thick and much too big to pass through our letterbox.

I opened it, wondering what on earth it could be as I had never received a package that looked anything like that before.

It was, as promised, the replacement from the olive oil company.

No oil.  Just new, flawless, pristine packaging.  

Oh well, it’s ham, egg and chips this evening.  The salad will have to wait and perhaps I’ll try dripping tomato sauce on the chocolate mousse I’ve made.

 

217 Who, What, When, Where, Why ?????

It’s been four months since my last post and I thought I’d finally run out of ideas but then, as has often been the case, Caroline said something that produced a deluge of thoughts and ideas.

 

If someone asks you, “What is the capital city of France?”, you can answer straight away.  You answer, “Paris,” in the confident knowledge that you had supplied all the information they needed.

Some questions, however, need at least one preliminary response before a definite and accurate answer may be given.  

“Where did you leave the book?” would probably need at least one query (“Which book?”) before a precise response could be given.  

There are questions that have to be answered immediately.  Any delayed response that seeks clarification, could result in the questioner becoming offended or upset.  

“Do you like my hair?” is a query that in theory, has two or three possible answers but in reality, there is only one answer that can be given and that answer is an immediate, “YES!” 

Some questions are so vague that an immediate answer is impossible.  I was thinking about this a week ago when a question was asked by a woman on a closed Facebook group of which I’m a member.

“Where’s a good place to get a MOT?”

I could think of a number of questions I would need to ask before giving an informed answer but I wrote nothing because, very soon, 11 people had named about 20 places.  

I couldn’t see how they were any help to the questioner whatsoever.  She could have discovered them and many others by using Google.  Also, the places recommended were in an area of about 200 square miles and so some of them must be much further from her than others.

That thought obviously occurred to another member who wrote: 

“This is a strange question.  MOTs are objective assessments. There can be no leeway given and so no place is better or worse than any other. 

If any business gets a reputation for passing vehicles that would fail on other places, that business would lose its MOT licence.  

If, what you are actually asking is,  “Where can I take my car for a MOT where they will pass it even if there are faults with it?” you should delete it now for the safety of all road users.”

Her reply didn’t answer his point in any way:

“I'm not asking for a MOT place where they will pass it just like that.  I have grandkids in the car.  Safety is my first thing.”

He came back with: “So, what was the point of your question? Go to the one closest to you.”

From that point the “Lady” who had asked the question became vitriolic and her comments were abusive and liberally scattered with obscenities which, for some reason, the group administrator allowed to pass.

There is at least one question that is often answered with some degree of a lie and that is when someone asks, “How are you?”  I and almost everyone answers with some variation of, “Fine thanks,” but sometimes, that isn’t the case.  However, it would be crass and tiresome to answer by telling them exactly how you really are feeling.

I’ve been trying to think of a question that someone might ask me that would necessitate me asking the greatest number of follow-ups before I could give a reliable answer.  

Recently, as I was walking out of a shop in Milton Keynes Centre, a woman asked me where the nearest bus stop was.  Of course, I had to ask her where she wanted to go before I could help but because of that, I think that question scores very highly on the Vague Scale.  

“Can you tell me where there’s a bus stop please?”

The elucidatory question that would have to be asked is, “Where are you going to?”

Follow up questions could be:

1               How far are you able to walk to reach it?

2               Would you prefer a covered, sheltered bus stop?

Caroline and I drove into the local Garden Centre car park recently.  I thought we were there just to visit the Food Hall but it immediately became apparent that Caroline thought we were there to collect bags of compost that she had ordered.  

The place was very busy and there were more than 150 cars in the car park.  Caroline asked me a question that scored so highly on the Vague Scale that it broke it. 

“Will you get behind that car in the compost collection queue, please?”

“Where’s that?”

“That car in the queue.  Get behind it.”

“Which car?”

“That one.”

“Which one? There are loads of them.”

“The silver one.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“The one going up a slight slope.”

“What!!!!!”

Eventually, by pointing her finger (and raising her voice somewhat), she was able to direct me to the collection point.

What she could have said was, “I need to collect some compost I’ve ordered.  Keep driving slowly and I’ll direct you to the collection point.”

But then, this post would never have appeared.