Scary fireworks

People are becoming more aware that pets can be very frightened by fireworks and loud noises, and they're doing what they can to calm their pets.

A woman whose dachshund Buddy ran away and was found dead after being frightened by fireworks has said tighter rules on their use could prevent other pet owners facing the same loss.

I was amazed to learn that dog disappearances can increase by over 80 per cent during firework seasons, and about 20 per cent of lost pets go missing after being scared by loud noises.

Buddy's owner, Joanne Sloan Allen. from Templepatrick in Northern Ireland, said fireworks also affect her horses.

She would like fireworks to be confined to organised public displays with set times, so she knows when to take measures to calm her dogs and horses.

We don't have any pets, but we can imagine how frightened they must be with fireworks exploding all round them, especially if they have no idea what the fireworks are all about, and especially as dogs and cats have much sharper hearing than we humans.

Out of our league

Jenny and I have finally faced reality and admitted we aren't up to the intricacies of chess games. We packed up our lovely glass chess set and it will go to a new owner with the necessary high-powered brain.

We've been in the habit of holding a chess tournament every Christmas to stretch our brains a little and have a bit of fun. But you need a brain that can consider several possible strategies at once and how all of them might develop.

We're just not up to the job. We were fumbling around making silly mistakes and letting our pieces be taken too easily. We were taking longer and longer to make our next move, while the other person got increasingly bored and impatient.

So we finally accepted that chess is too sophisticated for our puny brains. We've given up trying to master a game that's way out of our league and we've gone back to something more manageable - Scrabble.

We're both good with words, so Scrabble suits us much better. And we don't nod off waiting for the other person to move.

Playful fun

Since when did poking fun at someone, teasing them, become normal? The person being teased is expected to laugh along with the teasing, even if they find it upsetting or offensive.

If they object to being teased, they may be seen as a wet blanket, a party pooper, a tight-laced individual who doesn't want to have a bit of fun.

If you know the person who's doing the teasing, you might assume they're just being friendly and don't mean any harm, but if it's a stranger you might think they're having a dig at you out of malice.

Jenny teases me from time to time, and obviously I'm not offended because I know she's not being malicious. Usually she teases me about my odd quirks and habits, like getting the last tiny scrapings of peanut butter out of the jar.

Misogynists are especially prone to teasing, or rather pretending they're teasing, They'll make some unwanted remark about a woman's appearance or behaviour and claim it was just teasing, just banter. "Don't take everything so seriously, love".

But it can undermine a person's confidence if they're teased a lot, and however well-meant it inevitably seems like a judgment on their character.

Teasing isn't always the playful fun it seems to be.

Family friction

There's a general assumption that we spend Christmas with our families. But what if you don't get on with your family and bristle at many of their views?

There's no good reason we should spend time with our families if it's just going to mean hostility and bad feeling. We don't hear much about it, but a lot of people no longer feel obliged to visit their family and are much happier spending Christmas on their own or with friends.

Readers responding to a newspaper's agony column were unanimous: If you don't get on with your family, ditch them and make Christmas your own.

Readers shared stories of walking away from tense gatherings, spending the day alone, heading off on trips, or celebrating with friends - and loving it.

The overriding response was simple: protect your peace, reclaim Christmas, and make it a day you actually enjoy rather than an exercise in pleasing others.

I spent Christmas on my own for many years and relished it. That was partly because my father and I didn't get on. Also because my parents had political views very different from my own and it would have been too stressful keeping on the right side of them.

Now my parents are both gone, I don't miss them at Christmas. Jenny and I have a great time on our own and wouldn't have it any other way.
 

No hankering

In general I've never hankered after someone else's life or imagined they're having a better life than me. I've never thought the grass is greener on the other side.

Another person's life may look desirable from the outside, but if you knew anything about their private life no doubt you'd discover all sorts of problems and disappointments and disasters they're carefully hiding from the rest of us behind smiling faces.

They don't have some charmed and magical existence but face the same setbacks and tragedies as everyone else.

I don't understand those people (especially youngsters) who think their lives will be wonderful if they could just become a super-model or a movie star or a famous footballer. Or any kind of celebrity. Be careful what you wish for.

If you have personal experience of any of those supposedly glittering lifestyles, you'd know the reality is very different from the glamorous image. Models for example will soon tell you they don't just swan around the world looking gorgeous, they have to work in freezing cold and scorching heat and maintain an ultra-thin figure. Hardly a magical existence.

Keep it simple

Jenny and I like to have a simple, unpretentious Christmas.

Plenty of coffee (as we're teetotal), a gripping book, a game of Scrabble, a game of chess, an enthralling film or two, a box of chocolates, and a tasty home-made (vegetarian) meal.

Just the two of us, as we don't have any children, our parents are long-gone, and my sister is bedridden with MND.

But we're not supposed to want a simple, unpretentious Christmas. We're supposed to want a totally over-the-top Christmas, and in the four or five weeks run-up to the big day, we're urged to buy Christmassy stuff by the lorry load.

If you don't have a Santa hat or a Christmas jumper or a Christmas tree or a "Santa stop here" sign, or anything else that says "I'm celebrating Christmas big time, what about you?", you're clearly not pulling your weight.

It's not as if Christmas has any obvious purpose apart from boosting commercial profits and hosting family reunions.

I'd like to see Christmas disappear in favour of Thanksgiving, which the UK doesn't bother with. I like the tradition of giving thanks for all the good things in one's life, all the year's unexpected blessings.

That seems like a better idea than getting paralytically drunk and compulsively over-eating.

Forgetful

My poor memory is a constant embarrass-ment. Jenny remembers about four times as much as I do and is always reminding me of things I've completely forgotten.

Do you remember that woman we met in Sydney, who had serious sunburn and persistent hiccups, she asks me, and I have no recollection of her whatever.

Sometimes, when I don't remember a whole string of things, I'll pretend I remember some of them just to reduce the embarrassment.

It's sad that whole chunks of my life have vanished without trace. I can remember very little of my schooldays for example. I can remember the schools I went to and a lot of the teachers and pupils, but nothing much beyond that.

If someone asks me about the book I've just read, it's all I can do to recall the basic details of the plot and the main characters. Even while reading the book, any character who disappears for 50 pages and then resurfaces is an enigma. I struggle to remember who this person is and how she fits into the plot.

My poor memory does have a few advantages though. I forget bad experiences as if they never happened. So I don't nurse grudges and resentments.

Did I have a normal memory as a child? I don't remember.

Secret spending

It seems a surprising number of adults hide their purchases on things like beauty products, gambling and clothing from their partners as part of a pattern of secret spending.

A survey of 4000 adults showed that men on average spent £2545 without their partner's knowledge in the past year. Women spent an average of £1769.

The young are more secretive with their spending than older generations, with an average of £4303 in the past year. Those over 55 spent an average of just £384.

Jenny and I have never bought anything secretly, except presents to each other. We wouldn't dream of such sneaky behaviour. And we aren't embarrassed by anything we buy. I might think Jenny has been a bit extravagant, she might think the same about me, but secret spending never crosses our minds.

I think it says something negative about the nature of your relationship if you feel you can't be upfront about what you're buying. Especially if your secret purchases are so hefty that you're getting into alarming levels of debt that the other person doesn't know about.

How can you justify the secrecy?

PS: The figures above are mysterious. How are they compiled? Do people really remember every secret purchase they've made over the last year? And the exact price they paid? Or are the figures based on estimates?

Clean living

Although I loathed my boarding school in many ways, I have to admit it was a very good influence in some respects.

It was a model of clean living. There was no smoking, no alcohol and no drugs. And of course no girls. So I left school as a remarkably abstemious individual, shunning any unhealthy activities, unless an enthusiastic interest in politics is unhealthy (it probably is).

At home I was equally abstemious because of the attitudes slowly engrained at boarding school, and because my parents were equally abstemious. My father was a light smoker and both my parents were happy with a single glass of wine.

No doubt some of my fellow pupils relapsed as soon as they left school and were free to indulge themselves, but I kept fairly "clean". I've never smoked. I took drugs once or twice before deciding they weren't for me. And I drank wine for many years but only in small quantities.

No doubt if I'd gone to the local state school clean living would have been dismissed as puritanical nonsense and unhealthy behaviour would have been the norm. So thanks, Berkhamsted School, for keeping me on the straight and narrow.

Pink furore

What is it with men? Why are they no hung up on whether things are masculine or not? Why are they so terrified of anything that smacks of femininity?

A pink J Crew jumper with a Fair Isle pattern has sent countless Americans into apoplexy. Why? Because it's pink, and they can't be seen wearing anything pink.

After a social media commentator voiced her aversion, thousands of her followers rushed to agree with her.

"No man in my family would wear it" wrote one. "My husband wouldn't use a pink bathroom towel" said another. Others responded in similar vein.

The irony is that pink hasn't been seen as feminine for all that long. If you go back to the 18th century, boys happily wore pink (and girls happily wore blue). Pink was considered a masculine colour right up to the mid 1940s, when the roles of pink and blue were gradually reversed (it's not clear how it happened - something to do with marketing strategies).

I don't have any pink clothing myself, but that's mainly because men's clothing shops often don't stock anything pink. I would cheerfully wear the J Crew jumper, though I might get some funny looks from traditional males).

Pic: Not the J Crew jumper, which I was unable to copy.

Religious setback

In a remarkable judgment, the British Supreme Court has ruled that religious teaching in Northern Ireland is unlawful!

The court says it's unlawful on several grounds - firstly, it's not conveyed in an "objective, critical and pluralistic manner" but focuses uncritically on the Christian doctrine; secondly, it doesn't include religions other than Christianity; thirdly, pupils are stigmatised if they decide to opt out of religious teaching.

This is quite a bombshell for Northern Ireland schools, which will have to radically change the way they teach religion. Of course schools should  cover a range of religions and not treat Christianity as the only religion worth studying.

The legal action was taken by a father and his daughter who attended a Belfast primary school. She was being taught that Christianity was an absolute truth.

The school defends its religious teaching, saying it's "Bible-based" and follows the core religious syllabus for religion.

I had a look at the core religious syllabus (all 38 pages of it) which says pupils should develop an awareness of the key Christian teachings. Nowhere does it mention any other religions.

I'm astonished that such an obviously biased syllabus wasn't updated decades ago.

Foreign words

Every now and again someone will rail against the number of French words (or Italian or German) in the English language, and suggest they be banned and replaced by good old English words.

Well, they're onto a losing battle there, because 29% to 45% of English words are of French origin, with something like 7,000 to 10,000 words borrowed from French. French words are so well-established in fact, you're looking at a fait accompli.

I can't see why this should be objectionable. It's very healthy for a language to absorb all sorts of foreign words as well as new English words.

I'm much more concerned about words that are over-used, like fucking and awesome, or words that are insulting or demeaning. I'm more concerned about the use of baffling jargon and lawyer-speak.

France has a history of fighting to keep English words out of the French language, but it's like Canute trying to resist the waves. Fleur Pellerin, France's minister of culture, declared in 2015 that trying to ban foreign words was doing more harm than good.

Personally I'm happy to ask for a croissant or an hors d'oeuvre. Bon appetit!

Organ donor

I've had an organ donor card since 2001. It requests that after my death any part of my body can be used for the treatment of others.

It seems to me like a harmless and altruistic thing to do. What could be more generous than bequeathing parts of my body to others who urgently need them?

And yet there's still a large number of people who oppose organ donation. Transplant waiting lists are growing and yet 2½ million people are refusing to help. The number of organ donations is actually falling.

What on earth is stopping people from becoming organ donors? Once you're dead you have no further use for your bodily organs so why shouldn't they be passed on to people who desperately need them? The dead person isn't going to object, so what's the problem?

So what if granny was totally opposed to organ donations? Surely the urgent need of a living patient for a vital organ trumps the well-meaning observance of granny's wishes?

Vanishing innocence

Is there such a thing as an innocent childhood nowadays? Or is it just a relic of the past that no longer exists?

I was an innocent child for most of my childhood. My parents always tried to shield me from the horrors of the outside world. And then as a teenager my boarding school also hid the outside world from me.

It was only when I started work as a journalist that I was rapidly exposed to the outside world and its atrocities - homelessness, poverty, crime, war and everything else. I was profoundly shocked for a while.

It was normal when I was a child to preserve children's innocence, their cheerful outlook, and spare them from the sort of appalling things they weren't psychologically equipped to process.

But now, because of so many news outlets and so much social media, children are coming up against the outside world and all its barbarities at a very early age.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I would say it's a bad thing because young children who haven't yet cultivated the necessary cynicism or detachment or composure to take sickening horrors in their stride can find them extremely disturbing.

I'm sure this premature exposure to the outside world is partly what's causing the epidemic of mental distress among young people. But how to put the genie back in the bottle?

Cancelled!

Good grief. Cancel culture comes to Tesco.

While Jenny was at the checkout of our local Tesco supermarket, waiting to have her shopping totted up, she overheard a woman ahead of her voicing her opinions on immigration.

The woman was being very anti-immigrant, so Jenny was prompted to voice a more pro-immigrant opinion.

At this, the cashier refused to deal with Jenny's shopping and said she would have to be attended to by another cashier - which she was.

But what are things coming to if a supermarket cashier can refuse to deal with you because she doesn't like your opinions?

I've never seen that before, and I wonder if Tesco staff are actually allowed to refuse service to a customer, or whether the cashier was acting improperly.

Jenny has emailed Tesco's chief executive, Ken Murphy, to complain. His reply will be interesting.

Update (November 8) Tesco has apologised for the cashier's behaviour and says "This member of staff has been spoken to about her actions and this kind of interaction will not happen again". Result!

The lap of luxury

How would you define luxury? Is it something only available to a few people, or something that costs a fortune, or just something you want rather than something you need?

My personal definition of luxury is none of those. It's something that lifts me out of my everyday existence and makes me feel on top of the world.

Some of my personal luxuries are:

• Eating out. Hugely extravagant but a lovely occasional treat.
• Extra-delicious food. In particular bread, cake, desserts, chocolate.
• A trip to the theatre. Only rarely given such crazy prices!
• My weekly chat with Jenny in the local coffee shop.
• Books. I love being totally engrossed in a really good book.
• A beautiful piece of furniture that cost a lot but I can enjoy it for years.
• Ditto a beautiful painting.
• Lazing in the garden on a hot, sunny day. Not that frequent in Belfast!
• Holidays, especially in places I've never been to before.
• A long hot shower. Or a long hot bath.

I suppose these could all be summed up under the heading of pampering. It's all very relative though. To someone really hard up, getting a taxi, having a hairdo or buying a new duvet might be the height of luxury, while to someone hugely rich, to get any sense of luxury they'd have to buy a new yacht or a £10,000 watch.

Coffee blunder

I love stories about officialdom gone mad, and this is a splendid example.

Ms Burcu Yesilyurt was fined £150 by Richmond Council, London, for pouring coffee down a drain before getting on a bus. She was told she had broken the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which makes it an offence to dispose of waste in a way likely to pollute land or water.

Apart from the fact that she was totally unaware of this obscure law, probably like the vast majority of us, she couldn't see any obvious harm in pouring a small amount of undrunk coffee down a drain.

We don't get fined if we pour coffee (or any other polluted liquid) down our kitchen sink. So why is it an offence to pour it down an outside drain?

In any case there must be many people, and companies, causing serious large-scale pollution that really does merit a fine - a huge fine. Is Richmond Council pursuing them with the same diligence? I doubt it.

The council quickly responded to the ensuing uproar and rescinded the fine. But why was she fined in the first place? Couldn't the council officials simply have pointed out the law she was breaking and warned her not to do the same thing again?

Pic: Burcu Yesilyurt

Under pressure

School sports days used to be very innocent affairs, known for such harmless activities as egg and spoon races and three-legged races.

But that's all changing now, it seems. Parents are shouting abuse at sports teachers and putting pressure on children to excel. It's got so bad that parents have been banned from attending sports events at a number of South London primary schools due to "concerning behaviours".

Sports days are meant to be fun, not competitive occasions on which children have to be pushed harder and harder.

The sports days I attended at school were the innocent events you would expect. Yes, the egg and spoon race and the three-legged race and the sack race. There was a friendly and good-natured atmosphere and no hint of competitive striving.

I wouldn't have liked being pressured to outdo the other boys. I was never a competitive person so I would have hated it. I would have invented some clever excuse to opt out.

Exceedingly odd

Like most people I've had plenty of odd experiences in my life. To list a few:

Being on a tube train going through Kings Cross station, London, in 1987 minutes before the station was engulfed in a massive fire.

My first day at work. In 1965 smoking in offices was normal and I virtually suffocated from the thick fug of tobacco smoke. Alarmingly, I soon got used to it.

A very informal interview for the Guardian in 1970. It took place in the local greasy spoon over bacon sandwiches*. I didn't get the job.

Having food poisoning on a flight to Australia and finding the woman beside me also had food poisoning. So we were able to pinpoint the source - we had both had an egg sandwich at Costa, Heathrow.

Losing my sense of smell. No idea when that first happened, but it was well before covid so that wasn't the cause.

Being with a rather drunk girl friend (not Jenny) when she lost control of the car and drove into a field. Luckily neither of us was injured.

I could go on but I won't.

* I didn't become a vegetarian until 1975

Hung up on celebs

I'm always intrigued by those people who get totally hung up on celebrities - following their every move, absorbing every little detail about their lives, copying their tastes and preferences, lavishing them with constant praise and adulation.

Personally I might have a high opinion of a singer or novelist or artist, but I don't worship the ground they tread on. I see them as another human being, talented in some ways but probably deeply flawed in other ways.

There's a general tendency to idealise celebrities and put them on a pedestal as if they're somehow far superior to the rest of us.

Even when the celebrity is dead, the worship goes on. There are hundreds of people who dress like Elvis and perform like Elvis. Why oh why?

As for those people deluded enough to think they have a romantic relationship with the celebrity and badger them non-stop with love letters, I feel for the person who's on the receiving end of it all.

Meanwhile Taylor Swift mania has passed me by. What's all the fuss about?