Back to Scotland after a great trip on the new Sun Princess out to Florida
Our first port of call, Weymouth
We eventually get back from our extended trip to the States. The massive new Sun Princess that took us via Spain and the Canaries over to Fort Lauderdale did it in great style. Although the devastating Hurricane Milton stopped us getting into port, culminating in three extra days, hidden away in the lee of the Cuban North coast, sheltered from all the effects of the storm. The only clue being the evening storm that produced a fantastic light show.
If you would like to see the trip on the travel app, Polarsteps, hit the following link. Follow me on my trip ‘Autumn away, chasing the sun’ at https://www.polarsteps.com/PhilipParker1/14060519-autumn-away-chasing-the-sun?s=5FAD37AA-CDD2-466D-99E8-080A9C364A76
Click on the photos, scroll down to read all about our day. Then scroll to the side to see what happens next
Polarsteps is a travel tracking app that helps you map out your trips – past, present and future. By automatically recording your route and locations, Polarsteps allows you to create a comprehensive travel log with minimal effort. Much like a digital scrapbook, you can personalise with photos and journal entries to help you relive your favourite experiences.
Presently busy trying to find little surprises to wrap up and place under the tree for Christmas. We both still have that inner child inside that loves Christmas. Or a least the thought of it. Chasing up missed and cancelled deliveries is a different matter, although Amazon seems to get it right 99% of the time. It’s also the only service that doesn’t charge a surcharge for posting to the highlands. In fact, many companies won’t even send to this area. Then again, it’s also because we took out the Prime subscription that offers free postage, along with other benefits. TV, Books, and of course my trusty friend, Alexa. Can always be guaranteed a pleasant greeting at any time of the day. Sad really.
Talking about Christmas celebrations. If you want a decent Champagne, you won’t go far wrong with Tesco’s non vintage @ £25 bottle. It has beaten Moët & Chandon to be crowned the best Christmas fizz, says The Guardian. A blind taste test by Which? saw four independent wine experts try a selection of non-vintage champagnes costing up to £50. The Tesco Finest Premier Cru Brut won the top score at 82%, followed by other supermarket buys from Waitrose and Aldi, while Moët & Chandon’s £44 Brut Impérial lagged behind at 77%. The consumer group also put supermarket mince pies through their paces, with Waitrose’s No 1 brown butter mince pies winning first place.
On the way up from Southampton picked up the latest magazine and paper to read on the train. Always informative with lots of fresh ideas for the kitchen. Gets me back in the mood for cooking and baking. Although still have to do a few conversions around the house. Remodel the utility in the apartment downstairs, and make a laundry room up stairs. Giving the guests a new eco washer, whilst bringing up our big washing machine and fitting into our entrance lobby. Another great idea from Judith. Just have to sort out the electrics, waste and water supply!
Back to Waitrose. It seems that the latest middle class status symbols are extra virgin olive oil, posh tinned fish and fancy salt.
These Chic pantry staples are rushing off the shelves. Sales of Cornish salt flakes are up by 79% year on year, and premium olive oil, olives and vinegar are apparently starting to replace wine as the go-to gift at dinner parties. Presumably they will adorn their designer kitchens, and become a visual accumulator of dust.
It has a large and small drawer, so you it can cope with large meals and small, with the opportunity to sync both dishes, so both finish at the same time.
And it’s faster, supposedly 40% faster and saving up to 70% of the energy used in a conventional oven.
Up to now tried roasting vegetables and potatoes, which crisp up wonderfully. More importantly without any added oil to achieve a great colour. Meats cook well, as do frozen fish, yet l haven’t tried a whole chicken yet. Will be trying one marinated with curry this weekend, when my son and daughter in law come over for the weekend. Willing Guinea pigs.
There are hundreds of recipes on the net, and plenty of videos on YouTube. Recipe ideas Check this link for some ideas. It’s great fun, yet not necessarily for the waistline. But it’s Christmas.
Winter has truly arrived in full force this week! With fresh snow seen across Scotland, although only a slight sprinkle for us near the coast in the West. But we have benefited from the haw frost, it’s magical. The whole wild garden is transformed.
it’s a perfect time to get wrapped up warm, even though l look a Wolly in my scarf and winged eared hat.
The frost-covered trees look like something from a winter fairytale, icy branches and the muffled quiet of white tufted grass as l gingerly walk down the hill to inspect the ponds and windswept woodland.
Whilst away one section of fencing had been demolished by the gale force winds, but all the trees seem to be intact, both old oaks and newly planted saplings. The Gunnera has dropped its enormous leaves, so l quickly cut back, piling them around the heart for protection from the freezing cold. Considering they started from one small plant and a cutting , they have taken amazingly well. Would imagine it’s down to the copious amounts of overflow water from the top pond that meanders its way through the base of the plants, delivering a constant supply of moisture and nourishment.
The ponds have a thick coating of ice, so l open sections up for the birds. Topping up all the feeders along the way, yet the various bushes, shrubs and trees are full of berries, and sections of long grass are still standing, untouched with their seed heads still intact. So they should not need to worry about food for the winter.
All the monkey nuts that l put down in the woods have disappeared, presumably hidden away by the red squirrels that inhabit this area. We are fortunate not to have the larger grey squirrel. The Clyde is a barrier as well as the hungry Pine Martens that would quickly decimate the intruder. They don’t seem to trouble the smaller red squirrels. They are too agile and can scamper away through the lighter tree canopies.
I was reading that they are testing an AI tool in England that can tell the difference between grey and red squirrels.
Grey squirrels, which arrived in the UK around 200 years ago, carry a virus which they have immunity to, yet lethal to red squirrels.
The AI, called Squirrel Agent, rapidly analyses the animals’ markers including their whiskers, tails, ears, size and weight and can distinguish between red and grey squirrels with 97% accuracy.
Squirrel Agent can then automatically control access to squirrel feeders for reds, and only allow greys into feeders where food has been replaced with contraceptive paste. Amazing.
They are also moving mating pairs of Pine Martens from Scotland into areas overrun with greys to try and manage their numbers, allowing the reds room to establish.
In the UK, we are witnessing a mental health crisis.
The media is awash with reports about the mental health crisis in the UK.
It seems that there will be about 4.2 million adults claiming personal independence payment by 2030, up from just over 3 million today. According to estimates published by the Department for Work and Pensions. Predictions of a relentless rise in claims means the bill for working age disability benefits will rise to £31 billion in today's prices by 2030, up 40 per cent from an estimated 222 billion this financial year.
There are about 2.7 million people who are neither in work nor looking for a job owing to ill health. All contributing to our work-lessness crisis, which has dogged the cconomy since the pandemic. 1 million under-25s who are not in work nor studying. The highest figure in a decade.
It begs the question what can be done. Are we becoming too reliant on the state, are people’s work ethics changing after the pandemic. Do we make it too easy to stay at home.
There are many questions, yet not many answers seem to be appearing to combat this worrying situation. It’s very difficult to differentiate between those abusing the system and those that need assistance in coping with a mental issue that will enable them to function in a working environment.
Personally, l believe that getting people into the open, perhaps a market garden helps calm the body and mind.
There is a strong body of evidence that engaging with nature supports good mental health. Wholeheartedly agree, get me outside in the fresh air away from flocks of people, l am at my best.
An interesting report from the Prescription for Nature campaign is worth a look.
Get out into the wild this Christmas
The Wildlife trust is encouraging people to get out this festive season. They have put together a festive nature challenge, called 12 Days Wild.
They are encouraging people to do one wild thing a day from 25th December to the 5th January.
check out there website by clicking on this link https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/12dayswild
Decided to give Jackie Lawson animated cards a miss this year, they don’t seem to have progressed. They’re still very similar to the ones that we purchased nearly 20 years ago, so decided to get dressed up and put on our Christmas jumpers, drink some bubbly to set the scene and do our own thing this year.
It's early, dark outside, but the red sun is glowing through the ink black sky and I'm writing to you today armed with my French blend coffee. Strong, yet fresh flavoured and my usual overnight soaked porridge, drizzled with honey and topped with thick Greek Yoghurt. Low calorie l add, must at least make an effort to keep the weight off.
I hope you're also somewhere suitably cosy as winter settles in.
For once we missed the worst of the latest storm, Storm Darragh, as gusts of 93mph battered many parts of the West Coast, to the south of us. In fact Wales took the brunt of the wind and rain.
Hundreds of thousands of homes were left without power. Thousands are still without supply as of today, four days later.
Yet we didn’t miss out on the disruption. We had ferried over early Friday to the mainland to pick up my son and daughter in law, who were flying in from their home in Barcelona. Due at 4pm, they eventually arrived at 11.30 pm. The last ferry was at midnight. So we had to depart earlier to get back, leaving them to organise an overnight hotel room. Returning the following morning, in the hope that our Western Ferry would be able to cope with the forecast winds of force seven and eight.
In fact, Saturday was a stunning day. Bright sunshine , bitterly cold and winds that were less ferocious than forecast. As was the remainder of the few days they were with us. Pleased to say, their return flight via Amsterdam was perfect.
Have since vowed never to go anywhere near Glasgow airport again. The road network is a spiders web of twists and turns, specifically designed to confuse and disorientate the driver. The aim being to disgorge you at a barrier where they fleece you out of your well earned cash. You have only 15 minutes to navigate, pickup and depart. One minute later and it’s lotto time for the airport, as the fee rockets to unbelievable heights. My trip through the cash maze was made even worse. I had taken the wrong turn. I shouldn’t have needed to have gone through this section enroute to the Marriott hotel to collect Justin and Milli.
I will be suggesting for them to travel by train next time. More reliable, and it goes straight to Gourock, next to the ferry terminal for Dunoon.
Then l read that the Avanti West Coast service that runs from London to Glasgow is expecting strike action on 22, 23 and 29 December. For our sins, we have tickets booked on one of those days. What do they say about Sod’s Law. It’s going to be a cold Christmas without you
I don’t know, but it seems as if the worlds turned upside down.
Matthew Syed From the Sunday Times put it into a nutshell. Europe is living in “fantasy land”
The old order of France, Germany and the UK are crumbling. The rest of the world can see this, “and is, frankly, astonished”. After the defenestration of French PM Michel Barnier, the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s coalition, and the “absurdist relaunch of Keir Starmer” last week, one wag wrote on X: “It’s like witnessing the fall of Rome but with wifi.” That’s overegging it, but what’s baffling is how incapable the elites of old Europe are at “even diagnosing the rot, let alone addressing it”.
For five decades, French governments of all stripes have delivered policies of “stunning consistency” – and chunky fiscal deficits – because it is the “immovable will of the French people to live beyond their means”.In the UK, similarly delusional voters demand Scandinavian public services with American tax rates, “gleaming new energy infrastructure but not in my backyard”, and triple-locked pensions “but not the bill”. Germans live in their own “dreamworld” – ripping off the US on defence and relying on Russia for cheap gas.
Looking around the world amplifies the sense of “creeping unrealism” in Europe.
India is “building like crazy”; Vietnam is securing huge inward tech investment and growing faster than England in the 19th century. Poland and Romania have been backwaters for centuries, but “their time is coming” – people there don’t talk about “rights and entitlements” as we do in the West, but of “responsibilities and duties”. Old Europe is still the best place in the world to live, but we’re drifting ever further into “fantasy land”. Time to wake up.
On a lighter note, it seems that Vegans are not actually saving the world, they are killing it.
Oxford researchers who examined 24 meat and dairy substitutes found that once land use, water use and so on are factored in, almond milk and veggie bacon are worse for the climate than the products they are intended to replace.
And in France. Japan’s pâté en croûte makers are continuing to beat the French at their own game. Japanese chefs scooped first and second place at the World Pâté en Croûte Championship in Lyons this week, marking the fourth time in five years that they have trumped their French rivals.
Here in the UK, the fantastic achievements of fund raising for the National Health during Covid by Captain Tom Moore have been sullied by his family, who personally pocketed more than £1m from the centenarian’s Covid fundraising foundation.
A Charity Commission inquiry concluded that the late war veteran’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband, Colin Ingram-Moore, were culpable of “serious and repeated” instances of misconduct, mismanagement and failures of integrity.
A good reason for reintroducing the village square stocks, public humiliation, rotten tomatoes and bad eggs is perhaps too good for them.
Let’s get back into Christmas mode.
Why is Holly Associated with Christmas?
Christians used holly to symbolise Jesus’s crown of thorns, with the red berries signifying drops of blood. But before that association, Romans made holly wreaths to honour Saturn during their Saturnalia festivals around the time of the winter solstice. The druids also wore holly wreaths to celebrate the Holly King, while Celts believed that a bit of holly in the house would help to protect fairies during winter. The fact that these other traditions happened during Christmas made it easy for Christians to adopt the holly plant for their own religious festivities. In the carol ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, holly represents Jesus and ivy his mother, Mary.
In the dark of winter, in a place where there are no street lights, a Christmas tree has grown so tall that people can see its sparkling lights from miles around.In fact, the entire town of Inkberrow in Worcestershire, England, gathers on Pepper Street every year for the annual “Switching on” ceremony.
A definite must see
Dick Van Dyke Dances in New Coldplay Video Premiering on His 99th Birthday
(WATCH) it will bring out all the emotions - absolutely fantastic
An inspirational artist is giving patients a “window view” with murals designed to spark an escape from the sterile environment of chemotherapy. The artist, Colleen Wall started back in 1995, when she was diagnosed with cancer while four months pregnant.
After beating cancer, she served as an Artist in Residence on the oncology floor at Women’s & Children’s Hospital. A fantastic and inspirational idea.
It’s a bottle of transparent Heinz ketchup that has racked up more than 113 million views on Instagram, says Wired – despite being completely fake. The ersatz sauce, posted by the account UK Snack Attack, is a “snackfish”, or made-up version of a popular snack designed to trick people online. The account’s owner has also created chocolate-dipped Pringles and pistachio Nutella – both hoaxes made in his kitchen and dressed up on Photoshop. Confectionary companies have been so inundated with requests to buy the treats that he has agreed to start labelling the posts as fake. See more of his creation Here
Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Award
The winner of this year’s Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards is Milko Marchetti’s perfectly timed picture, “Stuck Squirrel”. Other prized pics include a male king penguin telling a love rival to back off; a racoon whispering into a pal’s ear; an owlet getting a surprise visit from a woodpecker; a praying mantis “dancing” in Spain; and a contemplative chimpanzee. See the rest Click here
Quote
“In a disastrous fire in President Reagan’s library both books were destroyed. And the real tragedy is that he hadn’t finished colouring one.”
American lawyer and politician Jonathan Hunt
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