Afternoon tea

was once an elegant occasion - sandwiches, scones, cake and tea.
"Ladies" dressed for it. Their hats stayed firmly on their heads as they held the tea cups in the approved manner.
I  thought of all this yesterday. Despite the atrocious weather we went out to afternoon tea. Our dear friend P....collected us in her car and we went off to visit her niece C... and C's partner. We had cake and cheese and biscuits and nibbly things and mugs and sat around the long table. When the Greek neighbours arrived we had more Greek food as well.
And everyone talked a lot.
But I also thought about afternoon tea. I make the Senior Cat a cup of tea for what would have been "morning recess" and "afternoon recess" at school. He doesn't eat cake or even - except on the rarest occasion - a biscuit with it. It is simply a cup of tea.
I know other people who grab the biscuit tin but the biscuits will be the commercial variety. There is an entire aisle in the supermarket which has one side devoted to biscuits. I have never tried most of them, indeed have no desire to do so. 
And I know C... is not at all keen on such things. She is one of those people who takes an intelligent interest in food. C.... knows her cookbooks. 
So yesterday I made one of the few things I can usually make reasonably successfully - a savoury cornbread. It has cheese in it. I have, over the years, experimented. You can add other things to it in a way that it ends up being almost a complete meal in itself. Yesterday I added courgette (zucchini), carrot and chives. I made two loaves - just in case one broke as I was turning it out of the tin.
Neither did. When it was cold I wrapped one ready for C...  I cut the one which was slightly overcooked in half and gave one half to P... so she could share it with her housemate B....
And the other half is there for us today. We won't eat it as afternoon tea but it will, I hope, be good with soup for our light evening meal. 
But I do wonder about afternoon tea. There are all those cakes and biscuits I have never tasted .... not the shop bought variety but the real thing. 
Am I missing out on something?

Reading schemes

- remember those?
And yes, they are still around. I was reminded of them this week because a friend posted a message about her granddaughter being disappointed when she had to read a reading scheme book. Apparently she wanted to get on with whatever else she was reading at the time.
I started school at a time when "Primer One" and "Primer Two" were still in use but the "Schonell" reading scheme was just starting. (The Schonell scheme had the dreadfully smug and good Dick and Dora, Nip the dog and Fluff the cat.)
I had read all these before I started school. I was bored silly by them. Looking back I must have been the biggest nuisance in the class. 
I went on to the primary school years where we had the "Radiant Readers". Our "readers" were given to us at the beginning of the  year. I read mine the day it was given to me. I can still remember the halting reading of so many other children as we were expected to go around the room and each read a sentence in turn.
    "Slowly Cat, so everyone can follow it."
Ugh! I must have been a horrible child.
For the last two years of the primary school my family headed into the almost-outback. There was no school library. Will the Children's Country Lending Service people ever realise how much borrowing those books meant to me and my brother and the eldest son of the bank manager? Probably not. We devoured what we considered to be "real" books.
And there was the reading scheme again. The Senior Cat somehow persuaded the "school committee" to spend limited funds on something called the "SRA Laboratory". (SRA was/is Science Research Associates.) There were "levels" for this. There was a test beforehand and you were put into the appropriate level. Then you read cards with stories on them and answered the questions.
As the Senior Cat was teaching four different year levels and supervising a fifth all in the same room I have no doubt at all that this made his life easier.
The cards had colour bands for the level you were on. I remember the top level for that particular box being "gold". The Senior Cat put me (and the bank manager's son) into the level below that. 
    "I have to give you something to do," he told us.
My brother (two years younger) was on the next level down for much the same reason. 
We all zipped through the cards anyway. I read the entire box and then helped some of the slowest readers work their way painfully through their cards. (There were some very slow students in the school. Intermarriage in the area was common.) 
I wonder now what those children made of the stories on those cards. I remember the stories being American in flavour. All they had done in those early versions was replace American spelling with British spelling.  There were stories about Red Indians and the Mayflower and life on the prairies. The prairie stories were nothing like Little House on the Prairie of course.
The Senior Cat and my mother went on to write books for another reading scheme. I wrote many more outlines for them to use with the vocabulary which was considered appropriate. It all got lost with the demise of the excellent Reading Centre - a resource teachers should never have lost.  
Ms W had a reading scheme at her school but I never saw the books. She brought other books home from the school library. We went to the local library for more.  She reads - a lot.
T.... across the road started school this year. He is still learning to read of course. He brings home "reading scheme" books. Some of them are rather good.
    "But my mummy or daddy reads to me every night from a proper book."
T...knows what he considers to be a "proper" book and it isn't one from his reading scheme. Those are just for learning to read. There is an entirely different world of "proper" books out there - and he is impatient to read them. I am glad he knows about such things.

Woolly socks

are essential.
The Senior Cat has chilblains. This is hardly surprising. He is old, very old. His circulation is not as good as it used to be. He cannot exercise as much as he once did. (How many years ago did he stop riding his bike to school each day? It set a wonderful example to the teachers and students under his care.)
The Senior Cat also has good woolly socks. He has a number of pairs of good woolly socks. They have been made for him by a friend of ours....and one pair by yours truly. (I am not particularly fond of knitting socks.)
    "Wear your woolly socks," I kept telling the Senior Cat. He was complaining his feet were cold.
    "They are too good to wear around home. I might wear holes in them too."
Pause here for a silent scream from me. 
The Senior Cat went to the podiatrist. Middle Cat took him. The podiatrist said,
      "I think you have cellulitis...make an appointment to see the doctor."
Middle Cat did that and muttered to me, "She might be right but it might just be.... a chilblain."
They went to see the doctor yesterday. It was a chilblain.
      "Wear some good woolly socks," the doctor told him. Middle Cat bought another pair of good woolly socks for him while she was in the chemist. 
He came home and grumbled about "those woolly socks" being too good to wear around home.
I gently pointed out that he does not often go out these days and that he might feel more comfortable if his rear paws were warmer. 
Nothing more was said.
I have just heard him get up for the day. He gets himself dressed - sort of dressed anyway.
Will he be wearing a pair of woolly socks? 

There was a maths problem

someone put on her timeline yesterday. She asked for answers. Here's the problem.
 50 + 50 - 25 x 0 + 2 + 2 =?
Now I thought I was reasonably good at counting on all four paws and I came up with answer I thought was right. It was the same answer that a good many other people came up with as well. 
Apparently we are all wrong. "You don't do maths like that anymore."
That bothers me. 
I was never wildly fond of "arithmetic" in my primary school days. I could do it but it wasn't particularly interesting. I was always losing marks - not for getting the answers incorrect but for "untidy" work. There is not much fun in that.
In high school the subject was divided into things like geometry, algebra and trigonometry. (I have forgotten how to use "log tables".)
I went on to university and had to do statistics. I hated statistics but I knew I had to pass the subject. (Yes, I did.)  Even now I have to know about statistics. I read them with a jaundiced eye. Yes, it is all too easy to manipulate them.
But I thought basic maths had not changed. I thought that in the ordinary, everyday world "two and two" still made four. Perhaps it does. I am not sure.
Maths is important, very important. We need mathematicians. 
I remember my friend J..., now sadly deceased. He had a doctorate in maths. His thesis was a mere eleven pages in length. After he had explained I think I understood what he had done but I didn't understand the thesis itself. It was full of symbols I had, to the best of my knowledge, never seen before. Despite that J... and I were good friends.
I have seen my friend R...'s son giving a lecture - and the board he was working on was filled with the same sort of thing. I have waited and waited and waited while two more mathematical friends argued over how something should be worked. (I put my paws over my ears and read some of a half written thesis while I waited.)
I don't really need to know the complex sort of mathematics but I do need to know the basic sort - not just arithmetic but the occasional bit of geometry and algebra and - of course - those damned statistics. 
What I also know is that I won't be helping the young ones do their homework. 
And what is the answer to the above problem...? I'll let you work it out - answer later.

I was given an unexpected gift

yesterday - a bag with cats all over it. I have other bags with cats on them (I like them!) but this one will be especially useful because it folds into a smaller bag. 
The cats are not in the least bit realistic and that somehow makes them even more fun.  They are blue, red, purple, green, yellow and more. They have checks and spots and stars.
It was a lovely present to get - especially for no reason at all. 
And I thought about such things as I pedalled home. 
I like to give people things too -  unexpected things. I gave someone a biscuit (cookie) cutter recently. It was just a little thing I happened to find on a rack in a shop. It should not have been where it was. Someone had obviously picked it up and put it down in the wrong place. 
No, they don't need to be big. I can remember someone, who knows about such things, telling me that one of the personal gifts Queen Elizabeth has really appreciated is a "handbag clip" - something that holds her handbag down at a table she is sitting at. I can well imagine that might be very useful for someone in her position. 
I don't often go deliberately looking for something for someone I will just happen to see something and think, "That's just right for X.... " If I have the money, and it will usually only be a tiny amount, then I will buy it. I might put the object to one side for a bit knowing that the time is not yet right but it will be there waiting to do the "thank you" or the "you need a hug" or "I just wanted to say..." or even "there is no reason but I saw it and you need it".
I have had varying reactions to such gifts but they have, apart from once, been positively received. I have seen the things that can be used, used. I made a scarf for someone who has moved interstate. Recently she sent a photograph of herself wearing it.  I was told about the outing. The scarf wasn't mentioned again but it was there and I could see it was being used. That's good. It's the sort of silent thanks that means so much.
I can't remember all the small gifts I have given. I wish I could remember all the small gifts I have been given.
What I do remember is that one gift which was rejected but even that gave me something - the determination to go on doing it to others.. 
I will go on giving the people I love and know and like little things - for no good reason at all.   

It seems we are being told what we can say

 (or the case of Israel Folau) and, now, perhaps what we can think as well.
Two interesting things happened yesterday.
The first was that the GoFundMe page set up by Israel Folau to help fund his "unfair dismissal" claim was taken down. GoFundMe refused to allow it.
Now I happen to find Folau's views abhorrent but he was quoting 
this:
1 Corinthians 6:9–10;
Or do you not know that the unrighteous  will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:  neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,  nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

 and when someone gets dismissed for quoting the Bible then we do have a problem. It is something which needs to be resolved in a court of law - not for Folau's sake but for society's sake. Members of the legal profession I have spoken to are concerned about the situation. 
And yes, GoFundMe has allowed support for legal costs for "egg boy" - the teen who threw an egg at a politician during the election campaign. They have allowed fund raising to build a mosque - the imam of which has preached hatred towards those who practice homosexuality and much worse. There are all sorts of dubious demands being made on GoFundMe but I don't see Folau's as being one of them. It isn't that I support his view. I don't support that passage in Corinthians - but then I don't believe in hell so it would be difficult to do it. Indeed if Folau had left out the words about "homosexuality" it is unlikely that anyone would have said anything. That is the problem. He isn't advocating violence. It might, I suppose, even be argued that he is expressing concern. 
The Bible is not a banned book. Quoting from it should not cause you to lose your job. Suggesting that, simply because you are a high profile sports figure, you can't say those things but others can may well be discriminatory. That is something for a court to decide - not an organisation which is afraid of losing sponsorship dollars.
I suspect that all GoFundMe has succeeded in doing is increase support for Folau. 
The other interesting thing which happened was that Ravelry - a group around eight million knitters have joined and many more know about - has banned, effectively immediately, posting anything in support of Donald Trump or his administration. I have to confess I wasn't aware that anyone was even doing that - but then I don't spend much time there. I don't "chat" on the groups there. I use the site in other ways. Why would anyone want to mix knitting with politics?
I am grateful I am not living in America under the Trump administration but the blanket ban does bother me. It wasn't handled well. People don't like to be told "you can't do that" when it is legal to do something. It would have been better handled in other ways. 
Perhaps what is really bothering me now is that there seem to be more and more moves to try and control not just what we say but, in doing that, control what we think. We are being asked to simply accept that contrary views are wrong and that there is no room for debate.
That is very dangerous indeed.

We once lived on an island

and, despite all the romantic notions, it was not a good place to live. The Senior Cat was posted to the big "area" school in the middle of the island. There were problems there and he had been given the posting as the school principal specifically to try and sort the problems out.
Some problems could be dealt with, others could not. "Area" schools by their very nature have problems. Most of the children will come on buses. When the Senior Cat was in charge the buses were driven by teachers who lived at the end of the bus runs. The longest of these was over 70km to school in the morning and then 70km back after school.  The children lived in isolated farmhouses along the way. Their fathers were, for the most part, "soldier settlers" - men who had been to war and had been put onto the land as part of a scheme to provide employment after the war was over. They had problems too - and the isolated life often exacerbated it. 
These men and their families were regarded as "incomers" by the early settlers and were not made welcome. That had added to the problems.
Despite that, due to the isolation, the islanders tended to know each other. There were only about three and a half thousand people living on the island. You might not know a name but you tended to know the faces. Everyone knew your business. They knew whether you went to church and where, if you had been to the doctor, which young people were going out together, whose car had broken down and where - and much more. The entire island knew about my one and only time behind the wheel of a car - and the way I hit the hay bale. (No damage was done to the car but I was made aware that I was never going to learn to drive.)
It was, and probably still is, that sort of place. I have not been back. I have no desire to go back. People say it has changed in other sorts of ways. It is now a tourist destination. Ms W and her father went there for their summer holiday one year. She said it was "good" - but she would find anything like that good. Just going away with her father and not having a lot of other people around are her idea of a good time.
But in this morning's paper there is a report of a long time resident of the island, a man in his sixties, being arrested on charges of sexually abusing young boys. It will be devastating for the islanders. There is very little violence on the island. It may once,  in the very early days of settlement, had a reputation for being "wild" but that was in the 19thC. Crime is not unknown but it isn't common. When everyone knows the business of everyone else everyone will know who has been arrested and why.
It is going to be hard on the islanders - but they will be there for each other.