Well, first up, the Wetherby News was a bit hard to find. The local newsagent has sold out and suggested the Post Office. But an enormous queue there set me off looking for the office of the newspaper itself. And at £1 a go, quite steep for a little local weekly…

I say ‘little’ but actually this is one of the few remaining broadsheets in the country and seems to be packed with copy, so I guess they’ve got a fair few staff writers churning out the stories week-in, week-out (mind you, not many got named bylines!), and a lot of salaries to pay with that £1 cover price.

And what’s the top story in Wetherby at the moment? Sainsbury’s. Yes, the evil supermarkets are trying to muscle in on this bustling market town and the local traders are up in arms against their plans. But, hold on, what’s that monstrosity just behind the market place, with the enormous car park just for their own customers? Yes, it’s Morrison’s.

Hmmm. I know as a Yorkshireman I should be backing Mr Morrison over Mr (or is it Lord) Sainsbury, especially as he began life as a humble butter-seller in Bradford market, but come on Wetherby, what got into your heads to let a Mega Morrison in on such a scale? Call me a snob, but I just don’t like Morrison’s and I don’t care what celebs they use to advertise their quality…

Yes, the problem with Sainsbury’s is that it is on the edge of town, running the risk of a dash to the out-of-town mall concept, but personally I’d rather go there than to the big M.

Tough times for little market traders in Wetherby, then. But not just on future horizons. Second big story on the front page this week is the fact that Wetherby market had to close for the second week running last week, because high winds were flinging tables and wares all over the place (dreadfully sub-edited article, mind you: “because of health and safety reasons”; “the markets’ location”, or is there more than one market in town??)
And to finish off a news-packed front page, we had the railways story. The local Tory MP wants a new branch line to open up to Wetherby when the high-speed train gets to Leeds. Of course, this is a long-term vision, with nothing really planned to be in place till 2030, so don’t get too excited. But it’s yet another reminder of the ghastly mistake made by Beeching in the 1960s. (And the press officer in me couldn’t help remembering all those editors who told me to come back to them with a story when it would really impact on their High Streets rather than referring to things that would happen in 2015 or some other long-distant future target date. Hah!)

On the inside pages I learnt that the local police have a free bike tagging scheme to help when your bike gets nicked. There’s a website called www.immobilise.co.uk apparently. I wonder if there’s one called www.mobilise.co.uk for people like me, whose bike remains locked and chained up, as it has been since I lost the lock keys when we moved a year ago?

And finally, in case you didn’t know it already: next week is Hair Loss Awareness Week and there’s a nice talk at the local hospital next Tuesday evening. So who would be going to that? Those of us who have lost hair are all too aware of it already; is this for partners’ support? Or lifestyle warnings to those who still have a good head of hair? Sorry readers, but I won’t be going to find out…

www.wetherby.co.uk

www.wetherbynews.co.uk

Alan Hansen apparently referred to ‘coloured players’ twice in a few minutes on Match of the Day a few weeks back, causing uproar in some circles. It’s funny because I had a discussion with Des, who sits next to me at the football, which reminded me of this issue. He always refers to the ‘coloured gentlemen’ on the field; and when I recently referred to the opposing team’s ‘black player’, Des raised an eyebrow and questioned whether I was allowed to say that…

I think Des must come from a similar generation to Alan Hansen; it’s the generation that was brought up to believe that using the term ‘coloured’ was ‘right’, was somehow more respectful than ‘black’. There may be racism in Hansen (and Des’s) views, but their use of language does not represent racism in itself.

When I used to work for a trade union in the 1980s and 1990s, I learnt that you were supposed to refer to ‘black and ethnic minority’ people. But when I returned from six years working in Brussels, I discovered that you were now supposed to refer to ‘black and minority ethnic’. When I called friends who worked at the then Commission for Racial Equality to ask why the subtle shift in word usage, nobody, but nobody, could give me a reason.

I now learn, from the Ofcom spokesman (yep, not a spokesperson, apparently) that “everyone knows that the socially acceptable term for black people is ‘Africanos’”. Huh? A lot must have changed while I was living in America, because I have never ever heard the term ‘Africanos’ to describe anybody.

So, I guess my sympathies are with Alan Hansen on this one. It is surely in the intention rather than the words. I would feel far more racism if John Terry, for example, were to shout “You black bastard” to someone’s face, than if Alan Hansen – or Des for that matter – were to speak of the speed of their ‘coloured players’. But maybe I’m wrong…

So, let’s turn to Diane Abbott and the outcry over her Tweet on ‘white people’. I’ve never been a big fan of Diane Abbott: funnily enough, given the current row, I always found she sees the world as a picture in black and white, with not a lot of nuance. But, for the Devil’s sake, this is Twitter, guys. People will generalise on Twitter, so just let it go…

And the guy who on Any Questions yesterday made the comment that she had enough characters left to add the word ‘some’ to her comment on white people, just doesn’t get it. What kind of impact would it have to say: “Some white people like to play divide and rule…”? But the applause from the studio audience showed just how self-righteous we all get when it comes to language.

The sad thing is that, as soon as it is a politician who makes a ‘gaffe’, the reactions all become tribal. And after the Diane Abbot incident, you had all the LibDems and Tories lining up to say she should resign; and the Labour guys defending her to the hilt saying she’s doing a great job. Sigh! Just depresses me, I’m afraid, and shows how glad I am to be well out of the political world for now.

And I can’t help wondering if the outcry this morning over David Cameron comparing Ed Balls in the Commmons to someone with Tourette’s is not all just part of the same sad phenomenon. Outrage from ‘disability groups’; probably people from Labour demanding an apology (oops, he already did…), and I guess he should know better if he is to be Prime Minister, but honestly does it matter THAT much?

And reminder to self this time: watch out Ed Balls’ mannerisms next time I watch PM Questions…

It’s been really nice for the last two or three months just to read local newspapers and listen mainly to local radio. It certainly helps to give someone new to an area like me a feel for what gets local folks’ pulse racing, but it does also limit the number of stories that I have felt able to blog about (having said that, the saga of the Northern Echo and its misinformation on supposedly German companies has got my blood boiling in the last week, and has made me think it’s maybe time to start a separate blog focusing on UK media attitudes to Europe – have to just see if I can work out how…).

But in the new year, I really must get back to reading at least one national newspaper every day; they’re full of rubbish, of course, and the same old stories you see on the Beeb every day, but they sometimes come up with a good feature, or an angle that gets me thinking. And so it was yesterday, when I read in The Independent that some company is planning on starting coach tours of the M25…

Yes, you won’t get off at all, except for a possible loo break at the Clackett Lane service station (that’ll be nice), but there’ll be a running commentary as you drive past key points on the journey. But, hold on a sec, where on earth might those ‘key points’ be?

Apart from the Dartford Crossing bridge, which has a certain beauty, I can’t think of much worth talking about from my experiences, and I’m sure I’ve travelled on every inch of the M25 at some point or other over the years. In fact, the only things I associate with my past journeys on that road are the distinct lack of toilets or petrol, which have both led in the past to pretty urgent action being taken at different points along the way…

According to the operators of this tour, from the vantage point of the coaches, passengers will see things that people in ordinary cars can’t. Hmmmm, like petrol stations and loos, perhaps?

No, really, who on earth will be attracted to such a ‘tour’? Well, the target audience will apparently be ladies over 60 and some geeky men. But ‘geeky men’ are normally obsessed by the minutiae of something specific like the width of the railway gauge or the exact distance to the nearest inch (yes, you won’t normally find such people dealing in centimetres) from A to B. So, what would attract the geeks? Answers, please, on the back of a postcard, preferably in green ink.

This whole story reminded me of a dream I once had of buying up one of the old Routemaster buses and running a kind of ‘alternative’ bus tour of London. In one of my former jobs, I had the onerous task of taking foreign guests on those open top buses around London; and the commentaries always bored me silly, with their meticulous detail on the history of the Royal family or the banking families of the City. But it was all either boring or just fed the myths everyone comes to the UK with.

What I wanted to introduce was a tour that would tell a more varied history: here was the battle of Cable Street; there were the Brixton riots; this was what Ally Pally was for etc etc.

Of course, I never got around to it, not to mention never having the money to buy that bus or get the licence to run the thing. And I’d probably have been rubbish at the marketing, not to mention the driving. But I’m sure we could all write a book on the ideas we never pursued.

But in the last few days, it’s been a different kind of emergency we are seeing talked about. The Daily Express leads on its front page this morning with an interesting twist on the usual German ‘takeover’ story: “Germans beg us to stay” is emblazoned across page one. This is the other angle to the whole Europe myth in the UK tabloids; the basic line is “Well, they need us more than we need them,” and I’m sure many Europhobic readers here today are nodding their heads at that line, with its simple ‘truth’.

And the notion that Germany is prostrating itself, begging the UK to remain in the EU, fits nicely with the Daily Express ‘Get us out’ editorial line. They’d like nothing more than for us to leave the EU to its own mess, and to visualise them all pleading for the UK not to abandon them suits that fantasy totally.

I never did walk the corridors of power in Berlin or Paris, so am not party to what anybody in office really thinks, but the hints I am picking up from the odd social media site I visit suggest that a substantial section of the European powers-that-be have a sneaking wish that we WOULD get out, rather than constantly putting spanners in the works. Nobody would ever say that in public – unlike the Daily Express, with its fantasy world – and I’m sure everyone would be a lot happier if we would just negotiate things rather than blocking them, but I wonder how desperate Madrid, Rome, Paris, Berlin really would be…

Turning to more parochial matters, yesterday’s Northern Echo led with a German story too. The scandal here is that a German company won a contract to do one town’s rubbish collection, chosen ahead of a British company that bid £250,000 less. The angle taken by the Echo (not known for its anti-European editorials) is that this is a waste of taxpayers’ money, and that in these hard times we should be supporting British industry.

Slight problem with that of course, as the front page story says, is that the EU procurement rules don’t allow preference to be given to any national company (though I did think there was some sort of criteria allowing weighting for local firms – but I may be wrong there).

Two things struck me in this story, though. Cheapest is not always best, for a start. Surely most people remember the early days of contracting out public services under the Thatcher governments in the early 1980s: the cheapest bid always won in those days, and we ended up with blood stains and other detritus on hospital operating room floors. To be fair, the Northern Echo does quote the local authority in question which pointed out that they awarded the contract to the tender that seemed best able to deliver the service desired…

Perhaps, instead of griping at Germans winning out again, we ought to be campaigning for our local and national companies to get wise to how the tendering process works these days, to present better-argued bids, especially as they do have the advantage of knowing the local circumstances. Lessons learnt, guys, rather than potshots at Germans.

But then, we are all reeling from David Jason’s interview with last weekend’s Mail on Sunday, in which he apparently really did talk about the Germans’ “4th Reich” being on the way; a German takeover of Europe on the horizon; and everything ‘my parents fought for’ going to waste.

Oh dear, if we could just get out of this 1940s mentality, the rest of Europe just might get on their knees and plead with us to stay…

Having said all that, it did get me thinking…

In fact the Brits use ‘thank you’ far too much! Have you noticed how the words are used to mean completely different things?

Take tennis umpires or snooker referees: Yes, you will often hear them say “Thank you” when actually what they are really wanting to say is “Shut the fuck up and let them get on with the game”. And if the chatter or applause continues in spite of this non-request/demand, you often hear the even more emphatic “Thank you, please”.

Or take the dialogue that plays out at tills in shop after shop up and down the land. Customer hands over the goods he/she wants to buy and says the words “Thank you”, to which the cashier says “Thank you”. I once made the mistake of doing a direct translation of this in a French boulangerie: “Merci” I said, as I handed over the money to pay for my bread. “I haven’t even given you the bread yet, so don’t say thank you yet” came the quick-fire response from the boulanger. But for some reason that’s what sooooo many Brits do, all the time. Have a listen next time you’re shopping…

Of course, I have just returned from America, where you have odd but subtle differences in other linguistic patterns. Where we say ‘sorry’, they say ‘excuse me’. We tend to use ‘excuse me’ when we want to get past somebody, not when we’ve already knocked over their coffee (that’s the US ‘excuse me’), and you know I’ve suddenly got a blank on what an American says when he/she wants to get past somebody (surely not ‘sorry’?).

But this blog is about ‘thank you’ and what struck me very early on in the States was how everyone emphasises their thanks by ‘so’. “Thank you so much” is equivalent to the British “Thank you very much indeed”. Used all the time, but as one of the BBC vox pops said yesterday, “why ‘indeed’”? Why do we all feel the need to emphasise our thanks all the time?

Is it not because we actually say thank you TOO often and it becomes meaningless without the ‘so’ or ‘indeed’?

As always up north, where we are these days, things are a bit different linguistically. People do say ‘ta’ still up here, though an awful lot less than they did when I were a lad. Up here, they used to emphasise the ‘ta’ with a ‘thank you ta’ rather than the posh ‘so’ or ‘indeed’, though I was always tempted to point out that ‘thank you ta’ was on a par with the ‘gateau cake’ they sold down at my local pizzeria for pudding…

And actually, I think one of the most common Northern ways of saying ‘thank you’ is to make the expression into a grammatically rather peculiar ‘Thanking you’, and if they really want to emphasise how grateful they are, you’ll get “Thanking you kindly”…

Today’s Oxford Eagle (serving Oxford, Lafayette County and the University of Mississippi) is no exception. On the front page we have: “Pet owners call for end to shootings” and on the back page “Bullets hit White House Window”.

Now, before you start getting all uppity about local media priorities, ask yourself the question: were the gunshots aimed at the White House nearer to the Oxford Eagles print rooms, or were the shootings of Harrison and Spencer closer to home?
This is the local media after all, and if some crazy gun-toting cat-killer is on the loose around Oxford, I’d want it on the front page too. I hope if I was editor, though, I’d have gone for a harder-hitting headline, that’s all: “Moggie maimed in Mississippi alley” or “Dog disfigured by deranged demon”.

Thing is Americans just don’t seem to do alliteration, or puns, or drama, so we get “Pet owners call for end to shootings” and “Plates painted with compassion” (OK there is alliteration there, but the story is really so boring, I couldn’t believe it got front page placement…)

But back to Harrison and Spencer. I’m sure you’re all anxious to know what happened…

Harrison, a dog, was shot with a .38 calibre bullet which tore through his intestines. He was taken, of course to Pampered Paws and Pets, who sound more like a nail studio for dogs and cats (and believe me, such places do exist over here in the States!), but whose owner had had a similar experience recently with her cat, Spencer.

Poor Spencer was shot in the side with a pellet gun 2 weeks ago, but he’s made of tough material and knows a thing or two about bullets, having also been shot in the face 10 years ago. According to the owner, he just drools a lot these days, which can’t do a lot for a cat’s image, but he sounds like he’s doing OK.

The bizarre thing about this story is that apparently it is illegal to fire a shot of any type within the city boundaries of Oxford, but as soon as you go outside the city line and into Lafayette County, there’s not a lot you can do, unless you can prove that the incidents constitute ‘animal abuse’…

Still, according to the newspaper, police are following up a lead as we speak. A local school boy has said that someone was bragging in the school corridors about shooting a cat and police are due to interview the boy THIS AFTERNOON. So annoying that I have already moved on and am now in Aberdeen, Mississippi, because it looks like I won’t get you the outcome…

Meanwhile, over at the White House…

It seems that shots were fired last Friday night in the vicinity of the White House, and spent bullets have been found near a White House window. Police are not linking the two, however (!), they are not saying which room’s windows were hit (the window is bullet-proof anyway), and all they have to say is that the President was not there anyway since he was on his way to Hawaii (for a conference, silly…). It’s a funny old world.

But as we enter the final 12 months before the elections, and the Republicans still struggle to find anyone to challenge Obama, let’s just hope nobody resorts to other methods for removing Obama.

Now, if you’re into hunting or if you’ve ever given it any thought, what I’m about to describe from today’s Sun-Commercial in Vincennes, Indiana, will be plain obvious. But, I was struck by the detailed preparation that goes into a day’s hunting.

First tip was to check the weather forecast and plan your area for hunting in accordance with wind direction, because a deer’s sense of smell is its biggest survival mechanism, and you need to make sure you’re hunting from down-wind of the deer (Mind you, I couldn’t help thinking: but how do you know in advance exactly what spot the deer are going to be wandering around waiting to be shot? You surely can’t know that in advance, so isn’t it pure chance if you are downwind or not?)

Then when I read the sentence: “It is of the utmost importance to descent one’s clothing,” I thought for a minute they’d got the wrong verb, until I realised that they are using the ‘de’ in a similar way to the request to ‘deplane’, which seems to be the accepted verb these days in America.

So ‘descenting’ your clothes means making sure they are clean, having a shower before you go hunting and generally avoiding any fragrance that the deer’s big nose might pick up on. I’m not even sure how you ‘descent’ your shoes. If they’re smelly, they’re smelly aren’t they? and the only way round that is to hide the smell with more, nicer smells. But the tips guy in the Sun-Commercial doesn’t go into such details, I’m afraid.

Then, apparently, the best place to target a deer is sitting up a tree! That way the deer can’t see you. But make sure the branches are strong enough to hold you, is the tip. My God, it makes the whole thing sound more like a Charlie Brown cartoon or Yogi Bear, the more I read.

Some choose to stalk a deer on foot, we’re told. But our resident expert says that only works on very windy days to cover the noise and the scent of the hunter (Humph, makes me suddenly very sceptical of Robert de Niro in the famous 1980s film: I don’t remember it being very windy when HE was deer hunting…)

Then, of course, come the tips for what to do once you’ve shot your prey. “All deer carcasses have to be brought to a check station for recording.” That’s how they know how good the ‘harvest’ is, I guess. You have to remove the internal organs as soon as possible, of course, and then “stuffing the body cavity with bags of ice will help keep it cool” (ah, so THAT’s why American hotels always have so many people queuing up to get ice from the ice machines….

And finally, of course, you get to eat the beast, unless you’re vegetarian, in which case you probably wouldn’t be out there hunting in the first place, but if you are, you can donate the carcass to charities that help ‘needy families’.

Ah, so many good bits of advice in one newspaper article. And this is only Day One of this year’s season.

I have another 10 days left in America; I don’t PLAN to write about hunting anymore, but if that’s all the papers are writing about, what can I do? Still, you won’t get me handling a muzzleloader or a crossbow: I just don’t have enough pairs of clean underpants…

Yesterday’s edition had so many articles dealing directly or in passing with the Big C.

There was a piece on Joe Frazier’s death at 67 to liver cancer. What struck me was that he was only 15 years older than me, and 67 is pretty young to lose your life. And yet, when I was a teenager and he was having his thrillers in Manilas and rumbles in the jungle, he was almost twice my age and seemed soooooo much older. I know it’s obvious, but these sort of reminders always put things into perspective. And I wonder how compus mentis Mohamed Ali is today, and whether he looks back on those fighting years with any nostalgia…

Steve Jobs’s pancreatic cancer gets a mention in a comment piece by a guy who runs a cancer research foundation, so presumably he’s penning his piece to raise funds for his organisation. It’s so tricky with cancer research, isn’t it, though? You never who to support; there are sooooooooo many organisations all needing more and more cash; but which of them is really on the right path?

There’s an ad for one of the cancer charities in the UK that always annoys me. They have various survivors and relatives urging viewers to give money. “It’s about saving lives” is their slogan. But, is it? The research itself doesn’t save lives unless they happen to find the ‘cure’, but maybe they never will, and maybe it’s better forking out dosh to the health professionals who do what they can to alleviate cancer sufferers.

Page 3 of Pilot News also flags up a benefit for ‘Brenda Klemens’ next month. I guess Brenda must be a well-known local personality because there’s no explanation of who she is or even whether she is still alive. It somehow goes with the cancer territory, though. It’s raising money. And raising money for ‘cancer’ has to be good, doesn’t it?

I don’t know. For some reason it leaves me with misgivings.

I’m working hard to lose any urban liberal misgivings I still have about hunting, while I’m in the States. So, I read the back page piece on the deer hunting season with neutral interest. They’re expecting a bumper ‘harvest’ this year. Yep, the deer hunt really is a ‘harvest’ apparently.

It’s all so controlled, though, and carefully timed. You have the 16 day firearms season; the early archery season (do they really shoot them with bows and arrows??); the late archery season; and of course the ‘muzzleloader’ season. Now, of course, there weren’t many muzzleloaders around in Hull when I was growing up, and the whole term sounds like something from the American Civil War rather than modern-day deer hunting. But whatever it is, guys, you’ve only got from December 3rd to 18th to load them there muzzles, OK?

And finally, Oddfellows. I met some Oddfellows one summer in Leamington Spa, and to be honest they came across as distinctly ordinary fellows really; the only odd thing being their name.

I wonder how Odd the Maxinkuckee Odd Fellows are. I could find out next Saturday, if I can make it to the corner of 18B and Pine Roads because from 6am to midday they’ll be hosting an all-you-can-eat breakfast. Doesn’t say why they’re doing this, but I guess if you’re an Oddfellow, you don’t have to explain anything you do.

What I loved is the breakfast options: pancakes and sausage or biscuits and gravy. American classics. But only my UK readers will know why those menu choices always make me smile…

The landlady of my B&B was up in arms this morning at the prospect of losing her daily newspaper: it seems the Holland Sentinel has plans to go to 3 days a week, instead of daily; and ‘the Grand Rapids Press will surely go the same way soon,’ said my host. “Where am I going to get my news from?” she pleaded.

She added that she had no computer in the house; I didn’t see or hear a telly; and I’m not even sure she had a radiogram. But, with top front pages stories like these two, the Holland Sentinel is clearly struggling to fill its pages with news every day, so maybe 3 days a week will have to do in the future?

“Family visits wife in hospital” should be used in future sub-editors’ courses as the modern-day equivalent of the “Dog bites man” headline you should never ever use. Mind you, in this case, even reversing the subject and object won’t make it any sexier, though I guess there might be more of an intrigue in “Wife visits family in hospital”…

In essence, the story was a follow-up to a tragic road accident, which probably had merited a front page billing in an earlier edition. An elderly couple had been knocked over by a car as they tried to cross the road in Holland just the other day. Now, I’m not sure whether it was the family from the car which had knocked the old couple down, or the family of the old couple themselves (I have to confess I didn’t read it that closely, sorry), but the point was that the hospital visit coincided with the funeral of the old guy who had died in the accident. And I guess they were arguing that it was very insensitive to be with the wife just as her hubby was being buried…Still, front page value? I’m not sure.

The other thing that strikes me as a Brit is that American way of sticking to the singular for accepted group nouns like ‘family’, or ‘team’. It’s probably what I was taught in school 40 years ago, but nobody in Britain uses that form any longer. It’s the same with the football headlines over here: “Manchester goes top of the league” might be a headline here, whereas we’d use ‘go’ in the UK (and I think the Aussies also use the American grammar). Of course they get themselves into an awful syntax mess because most of the teams over here are known by their nickname so you get: “Red Sox goes top” – or do you? I’m suddenly not sure about this…

But what about the other top story this morning, WITH big photo showing the 4 men in the pub last night? The monthly sceptics meeting is actually about non-religious people getting organised over here and getting together just to share views and thoughts on the world and the universe. Quite a brave thing to do I guess in a town where even the university brands itself as a Christian-based learning institution.

Regardless of whether or not it’s a worthy front-page story that a few men got together in the pub last night to air their secular views, what I did learn from the article was that apparently 16% of the US population define themselves as non-religious. Quite high, I thought, in a country where you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was a capital offence NOT to attend church on a Sunday.

Funny thing is, that we also learnt this week that 16% of the US population are officially below the poverty line. And I couldn’t help wondering how much of an overlap there was between the two sets of 16%. Putting aside words like “Marx”, “opium” and “masses”, I found myself assuming that the two sets were probably quite distinct. But I don’t suppose the pollsters do such calculations…Now, that WOULD make a front page story if it were true.

The latest news piece at the end of last week suggested the government was considering scrapping British Summer Time and making us switch to what the article called Central European Time. Hah, was this another attempt to have a dig at those pesky Europeans trying to interfere in our lives? If so, they got something a bit wrong, because anybody who knows anything about Central European Time knows that it too shifts by an hour on exactly the same weekends as we do, making them currently constantly one hour ahead…

So, either the government is intending to switch us to CET and we’ll always be in synch with the rest of western Europe, including its hour changes in spring and autumn; or if we stop British Summer Time, as the article implied, that means we won’t put the clocks forward for summer and we’ll be 2 hours behind Europe for half the year; and if we have BST all year round then we’ll still end up equal to the rest of Europe for only 6 months…

Personally, I don’t really care what they decide to do, but the British media have this obsessive way of constantly seeing the sinister hand of Europe in any proposed changes to rules. This goes back years and years; in fact, I may even have still been wearing shorts to school when the British press first got the idea that Europe was forcing us somehow to change our time in line with the other members of the EU. The truth, though, is that the rest of Europe used to switch to winter time at the end of September and adapted to our tradition of putting the clocks back at the end of October!! But since when did news editors let the truth get in the way of a really good story that might sell a few extra copies?

Ah well.

The biggest problem with the twice-yearly time change is that so many public clocks still need to be changed manually and, probably for various shift-pattern reasons, public authorities just can’t seem to get things right (mind you, nor can private bodies: our coffee shop this morning gave us a shock because it hadn’t changed the clocks back and we suddenly thought we’d been lingering over the Sunday papers longer than we really had). A. tells me that the train station clocks in Darlington and Leeds had already been switched back at some point last week, causing confusion all round. I’m sure many others are like our coffee shop and have still not made the change.

Hey, if Russia can cope with 7 time zones and somehow run a train service (apparently they do the whole national timetable based on Moscow times, so beware if you’re hopping on a local commuter train in Vladivostock), why do we have such enormous difficulties with something we do twice a year and have been for years and years?

I know it’s easy to be smug. It’s probably only about 7 years ago that I wearily went down for breakfast at some health festival I was attending only to be confronted by a client who was waiting for me to give a treatment; and I’ll never forget sitting in a French railway station about 30 years ago and wondering why it was so quiet when the main train to Paris was due in – of course it must have been October and I must have been an hour early. But, isn’t it funny how the French never blame us Brits for messing up their time-change traditions – or maybe they do????