There is a tradition in the UK – bank holidays will always be spoiled by the most miserable weather imaginable. Folks look forward especially to the August Bank Holiday weekend which represents one last “hurrah” before school starts back at the beginning of September. Villages organise fetes and other activities and untold millions migrate to the beach to spend the day huddling under what little shelter they can find while their toddlers and young children splash at the water’s edge gradually turning blue with the cold.
Not so this past weekend. It was gloriously sunny with clear, bright blue skies and indeed it turned out to be the hottest August Bank Holiday Monday on record! Perfect, therefore, for a happy band of campers who pitched up in our orchard and had a splendid overnight campout.
Nick and Annabelle have been planning this adventure for some time. What with their myriad of commitments, however, and our occasional ones (not to mention those opportunities when the weather has been cold and miserable) it’s been put off until this past Monday afternoon/evening. It was made all the better for the delay, I suspect.
They pitched their tent at the top of the orchard and did all those things one is supposed to do on a camping expedition – toast marshmallows and tell ghost stories!
We also took advantage of the marvellous weather to trot around the Edgecote estate for the first time in some months – absolutely glorious.
A couple of weeks ago when Bubble stayed the night on one of her recent double-headers, I took her off at one point over to the recreation ground opposite the cottage. When we got there we met a handful of children with their father who was clutching and occasionally attempting to ride (not very successfully) a skateboard up and down the skateboard ramps. Bubble watched intriguingly and, when they left, she decided that she and I should put on a “performance” as if on skateboards. The show was actually pretty easy to put together – all I had to do was to watch what she did and copy her movements to the best of my ability.
This went on for some time until Penny finally wandered over wondering what had become of us. So, the show had its first audience and the performance was sensational, if I do say so myself, especially the finale when she and I slid down the skateboard ramp on our behinds and ended the show with a dramatic flourish. Sadly, however, Penny did not take any photographs and the evidence of the show was lost forever.
So, on Tuesday, after the camp was dismantled, Bubble was keen to visit the recreation ground and perform our skateboard routine again. This time Daddy had to participate as well and once again, the performance was outstanding. Sadly, this time we do have photographic evidence!
The comedy that is the Brexit negotiations continues. This week we’ve had the accusation that the UK is engaged in “magical” thinking behind its proposal for how to remake the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. After Brexit, Northern Ireland will be out of the EU while the Republic remains firmly in. In all other instances where EU and non-EU territories meet there is a “hard” border with customs and immigration checks. No one wants to resurrect such a “hard” border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. So, the UK has come up with a number of suggestions which are being dismissed as utterly impractical by the EU.
The British paper on the Irish border calls for “flexible and imaginative solutions” eight times, a repeated phrase that has left EU diplomats rolling their eyes.
Not surprisingly, since it’s clear that the UK has no idea of what they want out of Brexit other than stopping smelly foreigners from coming here, the chief EU negotiator has suggested that the UK needs to “get serious” about the negotiations. He’s also characterised Britain’s negotiating stance as “nostalgic and unrealistic.”
Asking the UK to get serious could be difficult given the “qualities” of those leading the negotiations from the British side – David Davis was recently branded “Thick as mince, lazy as a toad and vain as Narcissus” by Dominic Cummings who headed up the Vote Leave campaign. Interestingly, Cummings has now conceded that leaving the EU might not be such a good idea after all!
And it looks as if we won’t have to put up with all those smelly foreigners after all – skilled workers from the EU increasingly see their future outside Britain. Quelle surprise!
Oops! But what’s this? With little fanfare it was reported this week that the NHS is spending £100m to try and recruit up to 3000 GPs. From abroad! I.e., the same smelly foreigners the Brexiteers are desperate to get rid of. It will be interesting to see how many can be persuaded to come.
And finally, John Crace is back this week after a summer break and he summed up the absurdity of David Davis’ position quite succinctly:
The summer break appears to have done little to improve David Davis’s powers of logic. As the Brexit negotiations resumed in Brussels, the Brexit secretary dismissed suggestions that the government’s position papers were a bit on the thin side by pointing out that the EU hadn’t even bothered to put anything in writing in relation to finding a solution to the Irish border problem.
Before Davis embarrasses himself still further, perhaps someone would like to remind him that it is the UK that is leaving the EU and not the EU leaving the UK. There is no need for the EU to have a position paper on Ireland because as far as it is concerned there is already a workable solution. It’s the UK that wants to change the rules, so it’s incumbent on us to come up with a mutually acceptable answer. I can only imagine Davis is used to going in to restaurants and demanding the chef come up with something he wants to eat when there is nothing he likes on the menu.
Love to you all,
Greg