People

Our Ian and Henry are BOSH!

When you are miles away from home in a place you have never visited before you are out of your comfort zone.  You meet or notice new people like Giovanni or like Mark and Rachel from Runcorn in Cheshire. They were lovely people and they were on holiday with their daughters aged eighteen and twenty one.

Like us they had not flown abroad since 2019 - before the pandemic. We got talking with them after dinner one night and it went like this...

RACHEL And so what does your son do down in London?

ME Well he's involved in the food industry. He's a vegan chef and he's published a few recipe books with his mate.

RACHEL What's his name?

ME He's called Ian. Have you ever heard of BOSH!?

RACHEL BOSH!? Yeah course I've heard of them. I've got all of their books. So are you guys the parents of the BOSH! boys?

ME Well we're the parents of one of the BOSH! boys - not both of them . We're Ian's parents.

RACHEL Oh my god. I can't believe it!

⦿

We also met two moaning minnies called John and Stella from South London. They had come to Sicily for three weeks to celebrate Stella's seventy first birthday. Nothing was right for them, from the food to their room and from the staff to the swimming pools. Now bearing in mind that I will be seventy this year and therefore  just a year younger than Stella, I asked if they had visited the Greco-Roman amphitheatre in Syracuse...

STELLA When you get to our age, you have seen plenty of old ruins and after a while they are all the same so we didn't bother visiting the archaeological site in Syracuse.

Later with regard to Mount Etna...

STELLA We have visited Vesuvius and we found the trip up Mount Etna quite boring. We have also been to see the volcano on Tenerife. The only volcanoes I would like to see now are in Iceland.

ME Oh I've been to Iceland and I have seen volcanic activity there. I was there back in 1991.

STELLA & JOHN (They are not interested and ask no follow-up questions before returning to their endless grumbles). And the rep is useless. We told her we wanted a transfer to a different hotel. They call this four star? I wouldn't even give it a two star. We just can't wait to get home.

After that encounter, Shirley and I studiously avoided Stella and John. That kind of negativity can be infectious and we ourselves had no significant complaints about the hotel and the services we received. After all, we had done our homework and we knew exactly what to expect.

Of course while at our Sicilian resort hotel, we spent a good amount of time observing Italian holiday makers - mostly from the north of the country - Milan, Bologna, Genoa etc.. On the whole, they seemed like a happy bunch with few histrionics and the children were generally well-behaved. We met an Italian couple who now live and work in Northampton, England. Their little daughter Lydia was fifteen months old and very sweet

Gathering

I snipped this picture from Google Streetview. It is the home of one of Shirley's remaining aunties, located in a small village on The Isle of Axholme in north Lincolnshire. In fact, it is the former vicarage and probably for that reason it stands right next to the village church.

Aunt Marion has lived there for over thirty years. She divorced her husband twenty five years ago and later he died. She lives there with her fifty year old son John who never left home. And that's another story.

Aunt Marion will be eighty in October and she has no intention of having a funeral or traditional wake. Instead she wanted a summer party with friends and family. An event  for the living with chatter and laughter and good food.

We were there with Ian, Frances, Stewart and Little Phoebe. There were perhaps sixty other members of Aunt Marion and therefore Shirley's wider family. I have met all of them before but there are such large time-gaps between family events that I tend to forget  many of the names. It can be quite embarrassing. For example, today  I called the husband of one of Shirley's older cousins John when his name is Steve.

There was a  groaning buffet table in the kitchen filled with savoury delights, followed by summer desserts and plenty of strawberries. Then guests just sat around catching up.

Little Phoebe kept dragging her grandpa away. We visited the church next door three times and she held my hand as though I was the little boy. One time she had a ball with her and she laughed as she spurned my strong advice, "This is the road Phoebe. Cars go by so please don't throw the ball!"

We left around four o'clock for the hour long journey home - along the M180 to the M18 and then a couple of miles north on the M1 to the Sheffield Parkway which takes you right into the heart of the city.

It meant a lot to Shirley to have her immediate family with her at this happy occasion in that cavernous Victorian house.

Feck

Here at Yorkshire Pudding, I have occasionally stopped to consider particular words. This evening I am looking at a word that is used quite commonly over in The Republic of Ireland - mostly as a verb but sometimes as a noun or adjective. That word is "feck".

Of course it sounds rather like "fuck" which is widely thought of as the most impolite word in the English language and the source of much tut-tutting. But "feck" is different from "fuck". It's naughty  but generally acceptable. It has a certain comical quality The word owes much to the  Gaelic languages of both Ireland and Scotland. In Scots Gaelic, it was originally connected with effectiveness and in that sense is linked with the term "feckless" which is used to describe people who are ineffective or lazy and  conduct themselves in a careless, unfocused manner.

My late brother Paul lived in Ireland for most of his adult life and I recall a scene in a busy Dublin pub when he returned from the bar grasping three pints of Guinness. The seat he had been sitting on was now occupied by a wiry little local man who might have been a leprechaun. Without hesitation, Paul said "That's my fecking seat ye little fecker!" After a short stand-off, the little man vacated the stool but soon became the best of chums with my brother. There were more "fecks" and "feckings" but the initial hatchet was soon buried.

Most English people must have first encountered "feck" through watching a bizarre nineties sitcom called "Father Ted". Located on fictional Craggy Island, it highlights the lives of a bunch of Irish priests. The most decrepit of them is alcoholic Father Jack (see the image at the top) who spends much of his time asleep but when he wakes up he is always in a foul mood and his outbursts are laced with "Feck" and "fecking".

"Feck" doesn't sit well on the tongues of Englishmen or English women. The word definitely has an Irish vibe but I have heard some English folk using it in place of its more heinous Anglo-Saxon alternative.

Reportage

Yesterday I picked up my old mate Bert and we went out for lunch at "The Hardy Pick" which is a "Hungry Horse" chain pub. He hadn't drunk any beer since the last time I took him out.

Bert always orders fish, chips and peas because of his ill-fitting false teeth. It's a meal he can chew and swallow with confidence. It was nice to watch him clearing his plate and he drank three pints of "John Smith's" bitter brewed here in Yorkshire.

He is steadily approaching his eighty seventh birthday but he remains cheerful, upbeat and keenly interested in the state of British politics. He despises the Tories and what they stand for, saving much of his venom for Johnson and his legacy. We both wonder how this great nation could be hoodwinked by such a duplicitous blaggard.

Bert

Little Phoebe is currently sleeping upstairs. We have looked after her all day and it's the same tomorrow. Her mum is down in London effectively waving goodbye to the job she had for six years down there.

She joined a start-up company that serviced the recruitment industry with imaginative and effective software. It thrived and grew to a point where it was bought out for almost a hundred million pounds by an American company working in the same field. Fortunately, Frances took out a share option in her first year and has been handsomely rewarded. Joining them in the first place was equally fortuitous as so many start-ups fail. She was the fourth member of staff but at the end there were sixty people on the pay roll. Her job involved Human Relations - not the technical stuff.

It seems that there's a pattern when it comes to business takeovers. Very often the staff of the business taken over will be heavily pared down within months of the takeover happening. 

Anyway, she's about to become redundant as she approaches the birth of her second child. On that front, everything is going well and it's the same down in London where Ian's girlfriend's pregnancy is proceeding nicely. The two grandbabies are due  within four days of each other towards the end of October. It's an exciting but slightly nerve-racking time for all of us. 

Trolls

Whoopee-do! After countless attempts to sign up with ChatGPT, I finally managed to get through the barriers protecting this AI facility and the first "message" I sent was this: "Write a two hundred word blogpost about trolls". Below is the essay that ChatGPT generated in ten seconds flat:-

"In the vast realm of the internet, a pervasive presence lurks beneath the surface: trolls. These digital troublemakers thrive on disruption and negativity, leaving a trail of chaos in their wake. Today, we delve into the world of trolls, exploring their motivations, impact, and ways to combat their influence.

Trolls, often anonymous, use online platforms to provoke and incite discord. Their primary objective is to elicit emotional responses, stoke arguments, and spread misinformation. They revel in the attention they receive, deriving satisfaction from the chaos they create. The consequences can be dire, leading to a toxic online environment, cyberbullying, and psychological distress for victims.

However, understanding trolls is crucial in combating their influence. Recognizing their attention-seeking behaviour allows us to develop strategies to defuse their impact. It's essential not to engage with trolls directly, as this only fuels their desire for disruption. Instead, focus on promoting positivity and constructive dialogue, creating an environment where trolls struggle to thrive.

Moderation and reporting mechanisms play a crucial role in mitigating troll activity. By reporting abusive content, we empower platform administrators to take action and protect users. Encouraging digital literacy and critical thinking skills is also essential, enabling individuals to identify misinformation and avoid falling victim to trolls.

Trolls are an unfortunate reality of the digital age. To counter their negative influence, it's essential to stay vigilant, promote positive online behaviour, and report abusive content. By working together, we can create a healthier internet landscape that fosters respectful communication and productive discourse."

The trouble with "Blogger" is of course that there doesn't appear to be any obvious moderation process and in effect there is nowhere bloggers can go to report trolls or even raise concerns with "Blogger" about them.  Trolls appear to have carte blanche in the blogosphere and this gives them unmerited freedom to be judgemental, hurtful and nasty.  With this in mind, I think that ChatGPT's advice  to ignore troll comments and refuse their authors the oxygen of engagement is probably very wise.

Italianate

An Italian couple from Rome go on holiday to Sicily with their kids. They park their car close to the seaside, unload their swimsuits, towels, and buckets and happily walk to the beach. As they sit down on the sand, Vito realizes that he left his sunglasses in the car. "Darling, I'll just go grab my glasses, I left them in the car. I'll be right back." 

He gets inside the car and shuts the door behind him and starts looking for them. He leans down to look under the seats and in the various compartments. As he searches, he realizes the car is slowly raising in height on one side. Confused, he rolls down the windows and looks outside to see what's going on. 

A man, who apparently hadn't noticed the car was occupied, had lifted the vehicle with a car jack and was now proceeding to unbolt the wheels. Vito, recognizing the man was obviously trying to steal them, yells, "Hey! what the hell do you think you're doing?!" The thief looks up at him in surprise, pauses for a moment, then whispers with a rather reassuring tone, "OK, OK. I take the wheels; you take the radio."

Giovanni

This is not a picture of Giovanni. It is in fact the late Italian fashion designer Nino Cerruti but Giovanni looked rather like him - with a full head of silver hair and a twinkle in his eye.

I met Giovanni last Thursday morning outside the Arenella Resort Hotel. He was going to be our Sicilian tour guide on our coach trip to Mount Etna and Taormina. Around his neck, he wore an identity badge showing a much younger Giovanni when his hair was jet black. He had clearly been a tour guide for a long time.

Aboard our bus there were a dozen British holidaymakers, a dozen French and perhaps two dozen Italians. This meant that Giovanni had to broadcast his tour guide spiel in three languages. He moved between English, French and Italian like a dragonfly flitting between lilypads so that the three languages seemed to intertwine.

It soon became clear that he only had a rudimentary knowledge of both English and French but his delivery was supremely confident and jovial. Much of the time we had little idea what he was saying as he grasped the microphone like Perry Como, talking about vegetables, lemons, tunnels and a petro-chemical  plant that we sped by. "Eet iza shit!" he declared.

It was all off the cuff and lacking in interesting detail. Sometimes he conversed with two Italian passengers at the front of the bus - forgetting that his microphone was still switched on.

I think that in his home environment Giovanni would be a great host, a good friend and an excellent grandfather. He exuded  a certain joie de vivre that's for sure but as an effective tour guide he left much to be desired.

When our bus finally reached Sapienza Refuge on the slopes of Mount Etna, Giovanni insisted that everyone on board should follow him to a particular cafe on the edge of things where we could get refreshment and visit the toilet but he failed to say when we should re-assemble at the coach.

The following day I asked another day tripper what she had thought of Giovanni. She was called Helen and she lives in the suburbs of Glasgow. She replied rather bluntly, "He was rubbish!"

She told me that halfway through our stop on the mountainside, she had returned to Giovanni's favoured cafe and found him sitting there as happy as Larry with a big steak meal  in front of him and a jug of red wine too. This was clearly his regular recompense for directing  a large bunch of holidaymakers  to that cafe on every trip he led.

As we headed home, Giovanni told us things that he had previously  told us on the way up the coast. It seemed that he had forgotten. I am glad that the passengers did not have a whip round for him because I would have contributed a button, a bottle top and a half-sucked mint. I am sorry to say that that was all he deserved.