Monday

I see that Orban has not held on to Hungary and his old friend Peter Magyar (what a perfect name for a Hungarian) has won with his new party.  Orban has done the right thing and courteously conceded defeat very quickly.  I hope it remains courteous and there are no claims and counterclaims of vote rigging, fixing or interference and no civil unrest to follow as we saw in Ukraine a few years back when the EU side won over the Russian side and Ukraine crept away to no-mans land somewhere in the middle and Nato upset and intimidated  Russia along borders and upset everything and rubble came  and Ukrainians in Britain came to show us how to organise ourselves when hospitality offered.  

I wonder what the new face of Hungary will be and will the people be pleased.  I suspect there will be things that they did not wish for but hopefully they will be outweighed by other things they do wish for.  They will be able to take their share of refugees now and find space within the towns and cities of Hungary for different cultures and foods, different faces in the queues and different people in apartments, homes, streets, hotels, kerb sides, fields, and the fruits of trees will be plucked and the people will be told and believe they are better for it.  The streets will be cleaner and the queues will get shorter and food and money shortages will be subsidised by bigger gifts of gratitude  from the EU. 

Throughout the world the coal-fired power stations warm the people and flood the grid, that includes Germany and Italy, they step in when oil fails.  In the UK we do our best to keep going with Drax and wood pellets from across the oceans.   The wind rages and the turbines keep us going.  Later this year will be a world heatwave and overseas holidaymakers to the US in November or December will head  for bad weather which will follow them to their rooms where they will stay to keep out of the heat.  They will not be cold but they will bake and tell friends "we are in the US and it is such a disappointment because the weather is all over the place and we cannot leave our rooms and all caused by climate change and it is all somebody else's fault in government". 

Meanwhile before that Netanyahu will no longer hold the coalition government in Israel, the Green Party will hold the majority of local councils in Britain and Labour will continue to destroy small and large businesses alike while the welfare booms and the language courses dominate the adult education halls of learning and the translators surge in popularity.   

Shoplifters will be available for you to do your shopping whilst you sit at home streaming and eating pasta and tortillas and enchiladas and scoops of tomato sauce with herbs.  

The world will look at fields of houses and humans and forget what the use of crops ever were or are to human existence.  New agriculture will look to images of horses and oxen and ploughs and will seek wasteland to cultivate and spread with vegan follicles and food supplements of chalk.

Birthday

Today is my birthday and I will be out later this morning to celebrate with a friend.  She has invited me to a carvery lunch at a local hostelry where we will go together.   She is on her own and I am on my own so it is good for both of us in equal measures. 

 

Israel (2)

Was I disappointed at the lack of support for yesterday's post entitled Israel?  Yes.  Was I surprised?  No. 

Did my initial exchange with Kathy put people off commenting?  Possibly.  Were people scared to say anything?  Possibly.  

Did Yael joining  me  in comments cause problems?  Did sympathy go out the window all of a sudden,  cause sudden cases of the vapours and withdrawals to darkened rooms?  

My reaction by the end of the day when I came in from grass cutting was, go on,  carry on lapping up the BBC News.  It makes you chuffed and happy and you can carry on complaining about the price of petrol and how much you hate Trump. Believe what you want about Iran winning the war and the BBC anti-Israel constant and their total ignorance of the Iranian regime and accurate reporting.   

In fact you might spend a little bit of time considering how and what things might be with the Iran regime  dominating the Middle East from Iran right down to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and everything we have now gone forever.  But you won't do that. Your minds are made up for you by the media. 

And feel anything you like about Starmer but I wouldn't waste too much energy, the biggest let down you can possibly have for a leader of Britain.  Wimp and useless. 

Israel

 Israel is defending itself for survival.  It has a great ally in the United States.  October 7 2023 was a sign of what was or is to come.  Iran mean to end Israel.  

Hezbollah is Lebanon based paramilitary group backed by Iran.  It appears that the in spite of calls for peace from the Lebanon government they are paralysed by Hezbollah and effectively frightened and run by them.  Hezbollah want to obliterate Israel. 

Hamas is funded by Iran although one is Shia and one is Sunni but they have a shared goal to get rid of Israel.  Hamas is a militant, aggressive political movement.  Hamas were responsible for the October 7th attack on Israeli people.  This night should be not be forgotten by writers in the press today.  

Houthis are a militant group.  Shia and aggressive and led by Iran.  Based in Yemen from where they come.  They also call for the obliteration of Israel.

Israel is fighting for its existence and it does not sit and wait for the next October 7th to come.

Neither Israel nor the US work from any document you have seen.   

Support Israel and the US. 

Fuel prices will stabilise.  

Together or Outside

A lot of people need group hug-ins to keep going. Hypothetical ones as well as actual.   I have always been on the outside of this type of assumed, imagined love-in of agreement, group behaviour.   I survive without.  They group round an imaginary candle flame nodding to each other.  I wonder why some  of us survive without that and others need it so desperately.  I don't understand them looking in as the outsider that I am.   How different some of us are.  I like independence from that kind of thing.  I don't really fit. 

MOTs cars, bodies, skipping and football stadiums

 Yesterday my masseuse contacted me in the early morning and asked if I could attend her clinic later and be her model for she is taking on a new lady to help her.  (I take back all I said about her and being unavailable so often because she is doing something about it and realises the problems it is causing for her business).  The lady is another Thai person and is trained in traditional Thai massage which does not involve oils.  As you know, I go for Thai massage and do not have oils myself.  However, to run the clinic successfully and meet demand my masseuse also offers Thai oil massage which is popular.  The new Thai lady was not confident with oils and wanted to have some help.  So I agreed to go along.   She was a very good masseuse and strong in hands but she was hesitant with the use of oils.  I would be happy to have her for Thai deep tissue massage.  I am going again on Monday so that she can have a further training in oil session.  This is a bit of a bonus for me in that I am obviously not paying anything for this and I get to have a relaxation session with the two Thai ladies.   They speak in Thai so I haven't a clue what is going on except occasionally I am asked for feed back.   It is nice to be asked and trusted in this capacity. 

Today my car is being MOT'd so that takes care of the day.  I was unable to get it booked in locally so am travelling 20 miles later this morning.   I will wait with the car whilst it is tested. 

It looks like a perfect day with sunshine and blue sky. 

I am setting myself a new goal in exercising - I am aiming to learn to skip with a skipping rope again.  Much harder than it sounds for a woman of my age.  I don't know why this idea came into my head but I was watching Arsenal play Sporting at the time and was doing exercises on the floor whilst watching.  Arsenal scored in the last minute having dominated the match all the way through and should have been 2 up before half time. The young Dowman (16)  came on in the 70th minute.   Sporting is Sporting Lisbon in case you are interested.  I was thinking that although I have been to Lisbon several times it is the one city I have visited and never sought out the football stadium and I could not for the life of me place where it is.  Others like Barcelona and Prague and Kyiv and St. Petersburg and even Skopje I have not only photographed but visited and walked to in and around and in Madrid even went to a match when there at the Bernabéu.   In St Petersburg I photographed the Zenit stadium from a bus but Irina refused to go to a match as she said it was "too dangerous" and the fans were like "animals"  and in Marrakesh Allal refused to let me go to Casablanca v Marrakesh because, likewise, he also said it was too dangerous in the crowd.  Pfft, chickens.  Back to the skipping rope, I gather I have to take it slowly and it could be many months before I am skipping. 

PS In doing a round up of news commentary this morning on X it beggars belief that people really think that world leaders say on a public platform what they are going to do in conflict of war.  Have people got so wound up in derangement that they have lost sight of common sense? Remember propaganda. Churchill and a big cigar, a romper suit, onesie,  naked and dictating letters to his secretary whilst in the  bath drinking brandy and champagne, WW2.  Just do some exercises and watch a football match tonight and turn off the computer.

Brain Fog and Surreal

 Have you noticed the expression 'brain fog' is appearing more and more?  It appears frequently in medical descriptions on-line and it has appeared in blog posts where some bloggers have used it.  It is not an expression I am familiar with although it is becoming more familiar.   I know what the brain in and I know what fog is but I do not see the two going together in any intelligent way.  Yesterday when coming across the expression once more I decided to Google it.  The answer is that it is an expression that covers things like when you go into a room to get something and you can't remember what it is you went for.  Yep, right.  It is when you think you are a bit slow mentally.  Yep right.   Lack of focus, difficulty thinking and could be a symptom of stress and lack of sleep.  It can affect young or old.  Its use seems to have come in more since Covid and is a symptom of long Covid. 

I think the expression is here to stay but it is not one I will be using.  Yes, I do forget what I went into a room for occasionally, or I forget what I walked across the supermarket to fetch and when I get there I can't remember what it was I wanted.  But brain fog?  No.  Don't like it.  I call it just a sign of ageing and forgetfulness. 

Another word that is getting used a lot these days is surreal.  Everything that is vaguely out of the ordinary is described as surreal.  This word is being misused in my opinion.    I was thinking back to my mother, an educated woman of sharp wit and intelligence and I don't recall her ever using the word.  She narrated her life to me containing fun things and experiences and observations but do I ever remember her using the word surreal?  No, never.  I think of surreal as a kind of out of body experience, not just something vaguely out of the ordinary or different.  A local girl was recently on Masterchef and she  described it in a newspaper interview as surreal.  That was what really got me thinking about it.  I suppose it was exciting and different from her day to day chefs kitchen work, but surreal?  

Language evolves all the time along with everything else like politics in Great Britain with net zero and oil from the North Sea being drilled by us and sold abroad and then we buy some more to replace it from abroad.   Surreal. Or just plain mad.