There was a letter in the state paper

yesterday, the first letter. I finally got around to reading it after several people had asked things like, "Did you see...?" and "Was that you? and "Do you remember?"

The letter was talking about the writer's experience of the school library at a school where I was the librarian for a year. It, embarrassingly, mentioned me by name. 

I do not remember the child that was then. If they came up to me in the street and introduced themselves I may still not remember them. This would not be through any lack of interest on my part. There were around six hundred children there and I simply cannot remember all of them. I wish I could. 

I especially wish I could remember all those who came rushing into the library at lunch time to change their library books before going off to play. I wish I could remember all those who came to learn the basic chess moves or call me over to demand an end to a dispute about the way a word could be used in Scrabble. I wish I could remember the name of the child who, not having finished a jigsaw puzzle, wanted to know if I could "keep it safe".  I would be really interested to find out about the career of the boy who wanted to know about dinosaurs other than the muttaburrasaurus. He would have been about six at the time and it was not the usual childlike interest. It would be so good to know whether the regulars went on reading and what they read now.

The school library was the place where I felt I could make an actual difference to the lives of children who came from mostly poor backgrounds. The library was "free". All they had to do was come to school and head for the library at lunch time. I know the other staff thought I was odd. I could have done occasional lunch time "yard" or "playground" duty like they did. Instead I kept the library open. Often it meant I had a ten or fifteen minute "lunch break" and not the half hour I was supposed to get. It did not matter. I had children in there and reading. I had mothers coming in to help cover new books and talk to me about what book to buy their child for a birthday or Christmas present.  There were parents who thought reading was not important but I hope I changed that. I know at least some of them told others how important reading was for their children.

I almost stayed in school libraries. Being a school librarian then was a fascinating job. Encouraging children to read was something I felt passionate about. It was very difficult to leave but I knew it was only part of what I needed to do with my life. I went on to other things.

I know I made the right decision but it was a difficult one. To stay in school libraries would have been easy in many ways. I miss the thrill of a child asking, "Are there any more books like this?" or telling me, "It's an absolutely super book and you really ought to read it." Now there are schools without libraries. Those that do seem to have computers rather than books. If a child wants to read fiction then they need to belong to the local council library network. 

We have lost something along the way, something important. The letter in the paper might have caused me some embarrassment but at least it told me that there is one former child out there with grandchildren. Those grandchildren are being encouraged to read because the child is now a grandparent who had access to a school library. The expense of rebuilding school library resources has to be met if we are going to meet the needs of all children. 

Yes I do have "private health insurance"

and yes it is essential and yes it is a lot to pay. It will soon be even more. 

I resent paying it but it really is essential. I am not just older but, when I need a hip replacement or cataract surgery or something else which comes with age, I cannot afford to wait for years.  Nobody can afford to wait for years but, for me, it really will be the difference between living reasonably independently or existing in a nursing home. 

I cannot expect my family to care for me. In my case "family" means Middle Cat. The reality, as our GP pointed out to Middle Cat, is more likely to mean that I will be doing things for Middle Cat. We live close to one another and she has multiple health issues which have led to time in hospital.  Middle Cat is the one who travelled with a backpack of medication. 

Yes, she has private health insurance too. Without it she would likely not be alive. 

Brother Cat would almost certainly have had a lower limb amputated if he had been forced to wait for treatment for a serious infection. It was initially thought to be something else but help brought in because there was insurance to help cover the cost means he is walking around on his own feet. The long term saving and his ability to go on helping his family and his community is surely worth it? 

Private health insurance really is not an "indulgence". You are not "fortunate to be able to afford it". You are simply doing the responsible thing. It is not, as some people suggest, "queue jumping". It is saving the public health system for others who also need it and ensuring you can give back where possible.

The present government sees this differently. They are about to make private health insurance for older people more expensive. It means I will struggle to pay for it but others will not be able to afford it at all. They will go on to the "waiting lists". They will become less rather than more able. Eventually it will cost more to care for them. The move is a short sighted one designed to suggest they are "saving" money and spending it in areas where it is needed even more. In typical government fashion they can make it sound good until you start to actually think about the consequences.

Does the government really want me to stop paying a contribution to my own health cover?    

It seems "Book Week" is now

more about dressing up in a costume than reading a book.  Has this happened because books are not being read any more? 

This morning's editorial is talking about some schools no longer having libraries and there is the inevitable article about "bought" or "home made" costumes. Going to school dressed up as a character in a book is becoming competitive it seems.

I worked in school libraries for a time. I might have stayed there if I had not had the burning desire to see that as many people as possible had a means by which to communicate, that they could read and enjoy books. School libraries were important back then, very important. There was actually a "School Libraries Branch" for the Education Department.  Money was spent on school libraries. 

Other staff thought I was odd because I took just a few snatched minutes to eat a sandwich at around lunch time. It meant I could keep the library open through the lunch hour. It meant the library was over flowing with children almost all the time. Libraries should be like that. 

And "Book Week"? Yes, we had Book Week. It was the week I would talk to the "Mothers' Club" and the School Council about how much the books we had bought were being used and how many more we needed. It was the week I would talk to the young readers about more "book things" as they would call information about how books actually came to be. There was the competition run by the state newspaper where you "wrote a book" and illustrated it. Much of that would be done in the classroom but there would be children lined up in the library to get help from me or older children. The best of these would go up to a big store in the city centre to go on display. There would be author visits to schools. New books would come out just in time for Book Week.

There was not a costume in sight. There was no need for them. The children would draw pictures of their favourite characters and there would be "morning talks" about books they had been reading. There were endless questions around "are there any more like that?"

Half a century later we seem to have lost sight of what a library is in a school. Some schools do not even have libraries. They have become classrooms. The textbooks and any non-fiction material is sought on line. Reading fiction for pleasure? It is still done of course but it is not considered nearly as important any more. 

I am not sure how we expect school students to move to university and do the research of the future if their imaginations have not been stimulated by fiction.  Putting on a shop bought "costume" is not going to help much. 

I don't have much time for the "Brethren"

by which I mean the "Exclusive Brethren" or "Plymouth Brethren". My personal contact with them has been varied but I am wary of them. Let me explain.

Those that I know, and they vary from place to place, lead lives which are separate from the rest of the community. They mix as little as possible. They do not eat with anyone outside their own church and those people must be "in fellowship". They do not live in any form of communal housing. There must be no common walls or shared facilities. 

Out in the community they do not normally engage in social conversation with other people. Their manner with shop assistants is abrupt. Self-serve in the supermarket suits them nicely although their use of computers is otherwise limited to business use or essential study. Their children are now educated separately if at all possible. While certain things must be taught the Brethren elders will remove "unsuitable" material from the text books.

Outsiders are not welcome to attend their Sunday services. Inside their buildings women sit separately from men. Their participation in the service is limited to singing the hymns and, sometimes, choosing them. During the week there are prayer meetings and Bible study. They use a version of the Bible that is slightly different as well.

Women are subject to the authority of men. They must wear skirts or dresses. Their hair must remain long and they wear a "token" (ribbon) or headscarf to show their "submission" to male authority.

I have known several of them from time to time. There were quite a number of them living in this area some years ago. I still see some of them around. I came to know them through their children. 

They are not barred from voting but many of them abstain from voting on the grounds that only God has authority over them. This does not mean that they feel free to break the law, far from it. They are generally very law abiding people. They will drive excessively hard bargains but they generally do not break the law. 

There is an inquiry of some sort going on in another state at present which has, among other things, been questioning their involvement in an election campaign. Their involvement has been considered very right wing. The left wing dominated inquiry is trying to suggest their support for the opposition candidates amounted to a "political donation".  I find this curious.

I find this curious and a little disturbing. I am not sure I would welcome their involvement if I was attempting to enter politics. It may actually have done more to harm than to help. 

There is however something very odd about all this. Those running the inquiry have apparently not considered that, on the left, there are organisations like the union movement and "Get Up" and more which also involve themselves in political campaigns. 

Is the involvement of the Brethren really any different or is it because they are seen as a "cult" by some and they are involving "God"? I may not like all the Brethren do and believe but, so far, they have not harassed me the way some union members and the Get Up group have.  So, tell me, are they so different they need to be stopped from their political activities? 

I have never eaten and Oreo

and I am not likely to do so by choice. The same goes for all the other sugar laden "cream" biscuits on the supermarket shelves. I had the occasional "Monte Carlo" or similar as a child. This would happen if we were visiting someone else and they were offered to us. We had to check with Mum first and there was no guarantee she would say "yes" but, on most occasions, permission would be granted and we would "remember our manners" and then nibble them slowly to make them last. I still prefer shortbread (the sort which is homemade with a recipe which comes from Scotland and is made with actual butter) or ginger nuts.

Now it seems the "Oreo" is a thing. I have seen them on the shelves in the biscuit aisle of the supermarket and apparently they appear in school lunch boxes. It is their appearance in school lunch boxes which is apparently cause for "jealousy" and a mother has demanded they not be allowed because her child is envious of a child who gets one when her child does not.

I wonder what on earth is going on here. Since when did the appearance of a biscuit in a lunch box mean your precious little darling was so upset no other child could have one. No, we are not talking about an allergy here. We are talking about "I want one too" and a parent saying "no" for some reason or another. 

I can totally understand the allergy issue. It would only be the most irresponsible of parents who would knowingly pack something which would cause another child to have an allergic reaction. The question apparently does not arise with the biscuit. There may be little or no food value in the biscuit as such but they appear to be sweet and it is likely a small treat in a lunch box that probably contains a sandwich or a wrap and perhaps some celery or carrot sticks and some fruit which has already been cut up in the hope that it will be eaten. 

The idea that all children should be denied something because the parent of one child cannot afford or does not want their child to have something is plainly ridiculous. Where on earth would that have to stop? 

I remember all those days at school when the "lunch orders" would be brought in by the "lunch monitors" and the classroom would be filled with the smell of hot pies, pasties and sausage rolls or fresh yeast buns. These would be for those we thought lucky enough to be buying their lunch that day. Envious? Of course we were but we would not have demanded they stop buying their lunch. My brother and I were allowed to do it just once a term. It would be on the last day of term and we had to get full marks in arithmetic, mental and spelling in some weekly tests in order to do it. Yes, we worked for it. We might have thought it was "not fair" but we did not dare say it and the idea of our mother complaining other children bought lunch more often would have been unthinkable.

I wonder about the mother who made the demand. What is she teaching her child? Does she also demand her neighbours do not have a new car or a holiday because she cannot afford it? 

"Oreo envy" is surely part of childhood. It teaches us we cannot have everything we want and that is surely a good thing.  Telling us other people should also do without is not.   

I do not understand football

and I understand the passion some feel for the game and "their" team even less. I suppose I should say I do not understand the passion for any form of competitive sport or the support of any team. I really am not interested. I am of Mark Twain's view that golf is a good walk spoilt, that physical competition of any sort is good exercise spoilt. 

This is not simply because I have never been able to participate in any form of competitive sport myself. That is not even quite true because I have been required to throw balls at certain times in my life. I have even done so quite successfully. Did I enjoy the experience? No. It was simply something which I was required to do so I did it. I have also been required to score for netball and softball...and had difficulty not yawning while doing both.

My interest in any form of sport starts and ends with the game of cricket. I cannot pretend I understand the game but the psychology of it does interest me if there is nothing else going on. I would go to a cricket match with some knitting and a book.  

I know. I am absolute heathen when it comes to sport. I cannot even get interested in the medal count for the Olympics.

So the current uproar about the footballers who allegedly behaved "inappropriately" towards a woman who had agreed to attend their celebrations at their request leaves me wondering yet again about the whole sorry business called "sport". Yes, "sport" is a business. It is not a recreation. It is there to provide "entertainment" to the masses but it is also there to buy and sell a commodity and make a profit. That commodity of course is the individual player. A good one can be bought and sold for an extraordinary sum of money. This is a human being we are talking about but how many people actually think of the player in those terms?

The idea of the selling and buying slaves in the old Roman market place is abhorrent to most people. It should be abhorrent. Buying and selling slaves to and in America was even worse. We tell ourselves how bad "white" people were for doing this while conveniently forgetting that there were any number of African "kings" and "chiefs" who were also complicit in the trade. That the same thing is now happening in sport is something we do not recognise as problematic.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. Do the players themselves have an inflated belief in their worth? High on adrenalin after winning a match shouldn't someone have kept them together and watched them? How can they be responsible human beings when they are also being told they are a commodity worth a great deal of money to someone, especially when they have won a game? Those who "own" the players are no better than the "whites" who bought them to sell to plantation owners or the "kings" and "chiefs" who sold them to those whites. 

If we stopped paying people to play what should be normal, ordinary exercise an entire industry would collapse - but would we really be any worse off?  

There was always going to be an appeal

in the "Mushroom" case. Men are much more likely to commit murder than women. Men commit 85% to 90% of known murders. It is also interesting to note women who commit murder almost always do so in an "intimate" setting. In other words the victim is likely to be a partner or family member. 

In the case of Erin Patterson, the woman found guilty of murdering three people by feeding them beef Wellington containing death cap mushrooms,  extended family members were involved but the intimacy was at one step removed. That alone makes it a little more unusual. 

I am not watching the appeal as such. Most of what goes in a court of law is, to be blunt, dull. It is not "exciting" in the way a television series will try and suggest. I am, for the benefit of some students, keeping an eye on what is going on. So yesterday I looked at the grounds the defence is making their grounds for appeal.

There are apparently seven grounds for appeal by the defence. These are things the defence thinks are "wrong in law" or "not fair" or "a mistake". The defence is raising several which relate to the actual evidence presented. I do not know enough to comment on those, nor do I wish to comment. I can comment on a couple of issues.

The first of these is the claim the jury should not have been staying in the same hotel as any of the prosecution or the media.  The thing to note here is that there can be no communication between them. The defence is attempting to argue that it is a "fundamental irregularity" and that "it has fatally undermined the integrity of the verdicts".  More than once a case has been thrown out of court because a juror has discussed, searched and even spoken to someone they should not have spoken to but it has to be shown to have happened. It cannot be a matter of "we think having them the jury and others involved in the same case in the same place influenced their decision".  Jurors who are sequestered are kept separate by court officials and the matter was raised at the time of the trial. Will that succeed as a ground of appeal? It is unlikely. If it did then it would not be cause for the case to be dismissed but could result in a retrial. 

The other interesting thing being argued as a ground for appeal is that the defence is arguing the defendant's right to silence was "compromised". Why are they arguing this? A defendant in a murder trial does not have to give evidence. The defence is arguing that the prosecution attempted to bring in evidence that was ruled inadmissible. The defence now says they had to bring in that evidence instead. They are claiming this forced the defendant to give evidence in her own defence but they apparently agree the evidence itself was of a speculative nature. Yes, the defence can sometimes bring in evidence ruled inadmissible for the prosecution to bring in. Choosing to use it as a ground for claiming the defendant had to give evidence may alone be enough to cause this to fail.

The treatment of the defendant in the witness box is being appealed too. There is a suggestion here of "here is this poor woman being accused of murder and you are being nasty to her". That is not the way the law works. If you give evidence in any trial you have to expect to be treated harshly by the side which has the most to lose. You can be sure the KC working for the defendant came down hard on every member of the prosecution's team.  

There are other matters also being claimed as grounds for appeal. They relate more closely to the case. 

There are three possibilities here/

The appeal succeeds and the defendant is found "not guilty". This is highly unlikely.

The appeal succeeds and the defendant is granted a new trial. This is possible but there will be serious issues with this. Finding a jury without a knowledge of the case would be well nigh impossible.

The appeal fails. The defendant stays in prison. That might lead to an attempt to find a means of appealing to the High Court. The issue of the sequestering of the jury might have some possibilities there but again it would likely result in an order for a retrial.

And on the other side the prosecution is appealing the sentence. Thirty-three years or life? 

I wonder about the other family members - especially the two children.