Minnie’s Musings

Random ramblings of a middle aged, middle class, middle income woman

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  • Universal Grumblings

    After being deposited at Cornwall station – which was so empty it had all the atmosphere of a remote outpost in the American West. If it hadn’t been for the nearby houses one would have expected tumble weed to roll across the tracks. I am talking about atmosphere here, not environment.

    Our train tickets were very specific. We had to get on our booked train and our booked train only. Which was a bit of a problem as there was an incident back up the line which was delaying all trains.

    As various locals pitched up to pick up their no doubt tired, hungry and deeply annoyed relatives the muttered conversations decrying the state of Canadian railways whispered through the waiting room.

    We all do this. Complain about the railways. Though I am less prone than others as my husband is the bloke in the hi-vi who is walking down the track to sort out whatever the problem is. Do wave to him. It may not cheer him up but he will come home and say, “Don’t know what was going on today, but all these passengers were waving at me…” and I will smile.

    My primary complaint about Canadian railways as the system is sparse. You can travel down the St Lawrence corridor or across to British Columbia. There are one or two lines that stretch to the far reaches of Nova Scotia and up through Northern Ontario. But that is it. And you cannot find a national or regional bus service to save your life. I know. I tried.

    Anyway, when a very, very large train eventually chugged into view we talked the conductor into letting us on the train with our tickets for the next one, some two hours hence.

    He was most polite but somewhat hesitant. And when we boarded it involved a quick discussion with the chief steward who nodded seriously as though authorising a boarder crossing for someone without their passport but who was clearly a national.

    Peculiar, me thought. Because there were enough empty seats in the carriage to sit a small army.

    I will return to the topic of the polite but firm addiction to the rules of Canadian railway personnel in a later post. And I may have a grumble.

  • One Has Moved

    From the bed to the sofa.

    From The Archers to A Place in the Sun.

    Then one remembered that one has run out of milk and one needs something for supper. So one has now moved to high street, bought essentials and collapsed in local cafe after exertions.

    One is exhausted after a wonderful day taking the train to Cardiff to meet uni chum and then stop off in Bristol for catch up with a niece.

    Uni chum and I compared haircuts (both chopped short, mine a tad drastically) and shopped in Clarks for sensible shoes. Between bemoaning the greys and planter fasciitis we took up residence in an independent cafe and gutted the lives of our children (now all growed up) before getting frightfully excited during an exchange of resources in the way that teachers do.
    I have just moved into adult learning and she has been at it for 12 years. She showed me her favourite quiz app and I showed her my diagnostic excel spreadsheet. Deeply satisfying. We are going to meet term we have decided.
    Well that’s the hope. For despite being all growed up offspring still seem to require an inordinate amount of tender care.
    The trains seemed ultra busy with people pouring in and out of cities for a day or evening of fun. Lads in jeans and polos, girls in the skimpiest of skirts. I still hear mother’s voice warning “You’ll get a cold in your kidneys in that.”

    Stopped at Fulton Abbey Wood which appears to be slap bang in the middle of an MOD site. Lots of high fencing and razor wire. Panic was assuaged by niece appearing in the distance, arms outstretched for a big hug. Dinner, dissection and discussion of house sales and wedding plans ended a delightful day.

    And then I earned a brownie point for supporting a neonatal nurse who had just pulled her back lifting a baby. She could barely stand once I helped her off her waiting room seat (the cold metal of which will not have helped).

    A crowded platform including a variety of large inebriated lads who were good humoured but raucous meant our acquaintance was extended to finding seats together on the train and me digging around in the bottom of my bag for my stash of painkillers.

    The sisterhood is a good thing. It recognises when a situation isn’t necessarily dangerous but is intimidating, however unintentional. Some of the sisterhood aren’t big or strong. Sometimes we need a marginally bigger, not much stronger but much more belligerent sister to see a way through.
    Bout of virtue signalling must come to an end as I have to get ready for the coming week. Was enjoying day on the sofa. Hey ho!

  • Just a Sentence

    As previously discussed ad nauseam, reaction to the news can be a mixed bag.

    After all the reports on the synagogue attack and the new plan for peace in Gaza, the thing that made me gasp out loud was the death in a car crash of that young man who has just been released from prison in Qatar, for the heinous crime of sleeping with a young woman.

    This item was just a sentence. It’s not even on the BBC News website, so I can’t check his name or where he was prosecuted (please excuse errors).

    He has been killed in a car crash in South London. He was a passenger. Perhaps the driver was also killed. Another family blighted by grief.

    And lurking behind this is the tiniest, faintest hope that the protagonists in Gaza have been shoved into a peace deal. Every light at the end of a tunnel starts as a glimmer.

  • It’s A Bit Grim Out There

    I say with the deep understatement we Brita are known for.

    Sooner or later someone would attack a synagogue (again). People are killed and wounded. Condolences and prayers are offered. There are calls for unity.

    And then it starts. The demand to tone down anti-Israeli rhetoric, the debates on whether a Palestine Action march should take place this weekend due to stretched police resources; barely concealed anti semitism and it’s other face, the extremes of Zionism.

    Three men lost their lives. One because he made a choice to wear a belted bomb -however unviable- a seond a victim of the terrorist. And the third a man apparently caught in the cross fire.

    To this I would add the armed officer who now has to live with the consequences of firing a weapon whose bullet destroyed an innocent life.

    Therefore I think it a good time to pause and reflect. Put down a placard, put down a pen, stow a keyboard. Just stop, pause and reflect on whether this is how we want to live in our supposedly green and pleasant land .

    Stopping and thinking, pausing for reflection before returning to fight the good (or bad) fight is what is needed. And for the families of the victims let’s spend more than a soundbite considering their loss..

  • Etiquette Dans La Gym

    As I write this I am peddling away on one of those armchair type bike things in our local gym. Yes, I am taking exercise and it doesn’t involve traipsing through the drizzle in the hope of a hot cup of tea at some strategically located establishment half way through walk.

    And I have just had one of those deeply satisfying exchanges with a fellow woman of a certain age who overheard me cursing the half dozen or so supposedly empty lockers. Well, cursing the owners of various jackets etc which had been stowed by those without the requisite pound coin to lock stuff away.

    She offered me access to the locker she had just vacated as I stumbled over using the correct word for this misuse of gym facilities. “It’s just inconsiderate,” she said. “That’s the word I was looking for,” I replied.

    Her next remark made be smile.
    “They’re taking a risk, given that a woman might want to use one.”

    For indeed I had just had that very thought. Or urge. Or malevolent idea.

    So should a dame on a white charger not gallop to my rescue in the future I will empty a locker of its unsecured contents and use it.

    The locker. Not the contents.

    And, because I am considerate, I will not chuck said contents onto the floor. I will simply fold it up and place on the nearby sofa.




  • A Difference of Manners

    Apart from a joint history shared with those of European descent and a shared common-ish language there are many cultural differences between ourselves and our cousins across The Pond. And while some differences are gaping chasms (gun control, abortion rights, religion in politics) others are way more subtle.

    Americans – legendarily – do not doff their caps according to social status,but they are formal in the way they address each other’s parents . We still doff our caps to our social ‘superiors’ so reflexively that to not do so requires us to make a pointed stand in not doing so. However the only people we would routinely call ‘sir’ or ma’am’ are the King or lately the Queen.

    Americans are far more likely to say what they are thinking (which we regard as decidedly blunt if not rude much of the time). While we – as I explained to more than one incoming teacher from the US – can say a thousand words in one pregnant pause, not one of which is a compliment.

    Our sense of humour is different. Americans like sarcasm and goofball comedy. We base ours on irony and value wit above all else. We like slapstick as well (a la Benny Hill). Each to his own.

    The antics of the US crowd at the Ryder Cup may be considered to have stepped over the line. Though I do not think we can say our sports fans are paragons of virtue. However, as I was about to point this out to Best Beloved, I was treated to a long discourse on the self-regulation of the modern day football fan. Apparently, I am told, it is rare for anyone to cross the line these days and if they do they are gently slapped down. Hmmmm.

    The New York crowd has just been described as brutal and boisterous and having a disregard for golfing etiquette.

    There are two ways to deal with this onslaught. Well, three.

    Rise above with swan like grace.

    Respond with deadpan humour or icy politeness a la Justin Rose to Bryson Duchamp’s caddie yesterday.

    Or thrash them into the ground, pulverise them into a pulp and/or squish them like gnats on a Summer’s evening.

    If we do throw away our current commanding lead we shall congratulate them with the stiffest of upper lips and hoist ourselves onto the petard of our moral high ground, having donated our fees etc to charity without being shamed into doing so. Ha!

  • Waking Up from Compassion Fatigue

    The problem with long running conflicts and acrimonious international relations – for which read The Congo, Sudan, India/Pakistan etc – is that you eventually become immune to the images. They have to rise to a new catastrophic level to register. Therefore when – many moons ago – we woke up to starvation in Ethiopia, it was because Michael Burke brought back images of “biblical proportions “ and the wave of compassion was immediate.

    In that instance, people around the world could do something about it, through copious fund raising (whatever the ins and outs of where some of the monies raised actually went). For the most part we are usually powerless to help unless there is an election in the offing when we can exert the clout of our vote. We can protest, we can write to our MPs, we can opine on social media, but the impact of those actions is inevitably limited.

    Therefore in the catastrophe that is Gaza I confess to a certain degree of weariness as two sides indulge themselves in murderous revenge. Rarely do my eyebrows raise or my face wince, so familiar is the destruction of the cities and hospitals full of wounded children.


    Periodically I wake up. The minutiae of what Hamas did to young women back in October 2023 brought bile to my throat. This was after several days of the numbers floating up into the ether like those associated with the genocidal despots of the 20th century.

    The rubble that Gaza has been reduced to has periodically caused me to think how on earth so many people are still in the strip at all.

    Dodgy provenance aside, the BBC documentary presented by the son of a Hamas official, struck me for the sight of a child running errands in a hospital.

    And either yesterday, or Wednesday The Today program talked to a surgeon in the midst of a shift. She spoke the injuries she was treating, in increasingly graphic detail. She rang off when more casualties arrived, the urgency in her tone encapsulating the strain she and her colleagues experience every day.

    So, I have woken up again. I feel sick at the horror of the genocide and admire the resilience of the people who endure every day . Whether this will inspire me to join a march, write to my MP or opine on social media (which I suppose is what I am doing now), I don’t know.

    But the voice inside my head mutters ever more frequently, “How much more has to happen?” Before those with actual power pull their collective fingers out.

  • More Than a Chip Off The Old Block

    She would kill me if she finds out I am posting this… but Whizz Kid has been outed. Hurrah!

    No, not that kind of ‘outed’.

    Her new work colleagues have discovered that she is really good at Maths. She can do sums in her head at lightning speed. Well perhaps not lighting. But bloody quick.

    Which reminds me that she doesn’t do them in her head. She does them in a cloud above her head. Like a cartoon think cloud.

    A friend observed this when she was in Year One. Whizz Kid gazes towards the heavens and does the sum as though she is writing on a whiteboard. It’s amazing to watch.

    As an advocate of positive attitudes towards Maths I like to celebrate anyone who finds a way to do it. I frequently tell my students that counting on your fingers is fine. Who cares?!

    Mini Me used to duck under the dining room table to count on her fingers and then pop back up again to jot down the answer. She eventually progressed to doing the arithmetic in her head and got herself a top grade.

    His Nibs was an adherent to the rules of Maths. Well, sort of. His teacher taught him to add using fruit loops. If he added the sum correctly he got to eat them.

    Then they started on subtraction.

    Having the literal bent that those with autism are known for, he decided that if the Maths needed to work for him it needed adjusting. So he changed all the subtraction signs to addition and ate the fruit loops.

    Back to Whizz Kid. She is now cursing that her secret is out. Everyone in the office is now asking her to check their figures. Am very proud.

  • Creating Fear and Confusion

    FFS That idiot is going to cause the deaths and disablement of children with his unfounded claims relating to paracetamol and regurgitation of unfounded claims about vaccines.

    More damage can be done to a foetus by a fever that can be brought under control by paracetamol than by a pain killer that we regularly dose our teething babies with (Calpol, wonderful stuff).

    Because we have vaccines infant mortality due to measles has fallen from our collective memory.

    Because we have vaccines male infertility due to mumps has disappeared.

    Because we have vaccines pregnant women and their unborn children are protected from rubella.

    And now thousands of women all over America (and perhaps the World) have yet another thing to worry about (on top of every glass of wine consumed before the thin blue line appeared).

    When friends with children on the spectrum have looked back on their pregnancies not one of us have a similar story. And some have no story. Because nothing was consumed or done or happened during the whole nine months that clearly points to potential damage.

    Autism happens. It is on the rise because the definition has broadened to absorb a vast variety of previously differentiated conditions and the label at the high functioning end has changed. End of.

    If there is a crisis it is one of funding. Because there isn’t enough in the system here or across The Pond to create schools which can afford the smaller classes, more in-depth training and specialist resources to support young people who are square pegs rather than uniform, rounded models that produce straight As and sports trophies. They have always been there, their parents are simply more aware of what will help them get through the education mill and are prepared to fight for it.

  • What I was going to say…

    Before I got waylaid by fond memories of a sunny stroll… was I wonder whom Donald Trump heard using the phrase, “I am very disappointed in…”. Perhaps his much lauded mother in her Hebridean brogue.

    Speaking of familiar phrases. I am now never going to say “Yum, yum” again, thanks to the Dark Prince. Yucky, yucky, yucky.

    And I have literally just had an epiphany – no, really, in the last 10 seconds.

    Having spent part of our train ride listening to America’s and hearing the ever delightful Sarah Smith and Marianna Thingummy joking about discussing the fashion choices of Melanie and Kate, I was initially “so disappointed “. Haven’t we spent decades wanting to be recognised for our brains not our choice of shirt-waister?

    But now I think, “why not? “. Why not discuss frocks and hats. It’s what we women do, frequently. We collectively spend millions on fashion and there is a special place in many a woman’s heart for that expedition where you go and buy a frock and a hat with heals to match in the certain knowledge that you are highly unlikely to wear it more than once, twice at a push.

    It is so good to hear two women secure and confident enough in their hard one positions to express this interest in frocks and hats knowing that the only people who will slate them for such girlie chatter are people who merely aspire to their achievements. Without the talent or drive to emulate them.