Farewell, John

I was sad to hear the news this afternoon that John Sergeant has decided to leave 'Strictly Come Dancing' but, having read J.J.'s post, I am disgusted. The judges have been quite nasty to him over the past few weeks and I thought that last week they had possibly been told to lay off him as they were a little more positive, but this piece seems to indicate that his position has been made untenable by the other contestants. If this had happened in school or the workplace, it would have been denounced as bullying. Have they forgotten that all but one of them is going to be voted off during the next few weeks anyway? How sad that what should have been family entertainment during the weeks before Christmas should instead have deteriorated into a back-stabbing free-for-all for prima donnas.
For me, the fun has gone out of it and I'm not sure that I will bother watching the rest of the series. At least John Sergeant kept faith with the spirit in which the programme was conceived and remained a good sport throughout. It doesn't seem that anyone else did.

Baby-minding

"Ella and Mason are coming for a couple of hours," Keith announced yesterday afternoon. These are two of his grandchildren, aged two and ten months respectively. Forewarned is forearmed so I dashed around removing anything I thought might attract the attention of baby exploration and inquisitiveness. Laptops, phones, ornaments, all were removed - out of sight, out of mind, but I forgot about the imitation coal on the fire, the post-it notes pad and the ornamental grasses. Still, we had a lovely time with them and were still alive to tell the tale afterwards. It's amazing how easy it is to forget how much energy babies and toddlers need though!

It's a girl thing

I heard it on Radio 4 this morning as I was contemplating getting out of bed. Vicky Tuck, Head of Cheltenham Ladies College was being interviewed about her presidential address to the Annual Girls' Schools Conference. According to her, one reason why single sex education is more beneficial to girls is that their brains are wired differently to those of boys and a change in teaching approach to accommodate this allows them to attain better results, in maths particularly.
As a lifetime, fully paid up member of Maths Phobics Anonymous, my ears pricked up at this. It appears that girls and boys use different parts of their brains to learn, with girls veering more towards the cerebral cortex and boys the hippocampus. One result of this is that girls tend to relate more to the real world and therefore maths teaching needs to take account of this. While boys are quite happy dealing with the core properties of numbers, this tends to deter the girls; they do better if the teaching is rooted in practical aspects.
Now this not new, but it struck a chord with me. Guess what? I'm not an idiot when it comes to maths (and physics and chemistry - the same concept applies). No, I just haven't been taught properly, being thrust as I was into a mixed sex class.
So, Mr Hemmings, Mr Devonald and whoever else had the misfortune to try to teach me maths, it's all your fault. Just think, I could have been a maths genius under different circumstances.

The hippocampus, incidentally, also plays a major role in spatial navigation, but I'm not going into that one!

Shopping, shops and more shops

Doing the weekly food shop at my local Sainsbury's on Thursday morning was quite an eye opener. If the media is to be believed, we are all busy counting our pennies, tightening our belts and generally hunkering down for a long, hard recession. Maybe some of Sainsbury's customers know something the rest of us don't but I was amazed at the sight of all the extra deep trolleys piled high with food and drink everywhere I looked. At the checkout next to mine a 'mature' couple had two trolleys, one full of food and the other full of bottles and cans and they were not the only ones to be struggling with two overloaded trolleys. I began to wonder if I had done a Rip van Winkle and woken up the week before Christmas.
Mind you, anyone who has money to spend or suffers from shopaholic tendencies is now spoiled for choice in the fair town of Wrexham. Not content with a bustling town centre and various other small retail parks on the outskirts, we are now blessed with Eagles Meadow. I haven't ventured in there yet although it opened last week but I am told that by no means all of the units have been let. Apart from the fact that we have suffered two years of traffic diversions, road works and widescale disruption for this white elephant to be built, many of the shops which are opening up there are closing their branches in the town centre, which leaves us with the strong possibility of that area becoming a ghost town with the attendant problems that boarded up shop fronts generally attract.
However, it was interesting to note this morning that the queues of traffic were not making their way towards Eagles Meadow. Maybe they were still all stocking up at Sainsbury's.

Lest we forget

This year I was at home this morning to watch the BBC's coverage of the Armistice Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in London and found it incredibly moving, particularly the laying of wreaths by the three centenarians, Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and Bill Stone, all sadly, wheelchair bound now but still retaining a strong presence and dignity. I should imagine that the occasion was a challenge for all three and it was obvious that memories of former friends, companions and experiences were as if from yesterday.
As I watched, I wondered if the dispicable thieves who stole the four bronze plaques from Mountain Ash in the Cynon Valley and all the other thieves and vandals who have despoiled war memorials throughout the country were watching.
Sadly, I'm sure they were not.

Sixty? It's the new forty.

Over the last couple of days, I have been looking at some of the comments, posts etc on the internet about John Sargeant and his situation on 'Strictly'. From what I've read, he still has a lot of support out there but what REALLY annoyed me was a comment on one site which referred to him as 'an old man'. He's 64, for heaven's sake!! Don't they know that 60 is the new 40? In case I haven't got my message across - 60 is NOT OLD!
Oh, and Arlene Phillips, one of the judges who has been less than polite towards him, is the same age and apparently, doesn't dance at all any more.
By the way, anyone who thinks I have a personal axe to grind here on this age issue is definitely barking up completely the wrong tree - completely.

Yesss!!

Yes!!! He's back to fight another week! You just can't keep a good man down...