Snowflake

We've just come to the end of five days of gloriously sunny and very cold (by our Island standards) clear, icy weather. At one point we even had a few snowflakes. 

When the beautiful snowflakes briefly appeared I wondered how and why the term had been appropriated in the news and social media to describe people. Then it occurred to me that, apart from the fact that the people I know who use it seemed to be regarding it as a derogatory term, I hadn't a clue what it meant. Do you know?

I did some research.

According to Wikipedia the definition is a 2010s derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, OR are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions.

  

However a little further research turned this up from The Independent (UK now online only newspaper): On Christmas Eve 2019 the Donald Trump campaign launched a website called snowflakevictory.com to give guidance to Trump’s supporters about how to deal with their “liberal relatives” over the holiday period. It featured 12 hot-button topics (immigration, impeachment, the environment) and witty comebacks to frequently-cited Democrat arguments.

For someone reading that the year before, it might have seemed odd to include a weather reference. But in the 12 months preceding the website, "snowflake" entered the general lexicon as the epitome of Trump’s opposition. Used to mean everything from weak and wet, to a synonym for the millennial age bracket, snowflake had become a political buzzword.

So it would appear that it can mean all things to all people with one common denominator - it's not a compliment.

I think it is sad that we use beauty to define ugliness.

I had a gift from across The Pond just before Christmas and it greeted all my visitors by hanging in the window of my front porch until this afternoon. It is a crocheted snowflake. In my house a snowflake represents beauty and, of course, uniqueness.

2021 - New Year's Day, First Walk of The Year

Yesterday was a beautiful day: almost windless, just above freezing and sunny. I decided on the spur of the moment in the morning to get back into my practice of walking in the Castle Grounds. So I drove into town and parked at The Woodlands Café as always and set off. The walk up into the woods and along to the River Creed was fairly quiet. There were not even many dog walkers about. Many of you will have seen pictures of the walk, or parts of it, before but I thought I'd publish some of the winter ones I took yesterday anyway. 

An icy stretch

The River Creed in full flow.

The River Creed just above the estuary

The estuary and slack water at low tide. Quietness after the noisy torrent. 

The estuary 

And again.

A good place for a summer picnic

In memory of someone or perhaps of the RAF. Fresh roses.

I have photographed this tree in almost every month of the year.

A gull, a cormorant and a heron sat on a rock......

The Lews Castle resplendent with it's rebuilt stone wall.

Welcome to 2021

I was working in the garden on Thursday afternoon and a sudden shower came through. I turned around and there was a rather splendid view:

I hope that this is a sign of better things to come.

I haven't celebrated The Bells actively since I stopped living in New Zealand. Before then, we use to have a magnificent firework display in Stornoway to welcome in the New Year but the funds dried up as austerity hit. Most of Stornoway and the environs went to that and, indeed, friends in the town always had a New Year dinner party before the fireworks which I loved. Since then I've celebrated the incoming year either very quietly or when I woke in the morning having been fast asleep at midnight.

This year we have little option anyway. Mixing in other people's houses is forbidden. 

I hope that you stay safe and continue writing and/or reading blogs in the year ahead.

Never Hate Anything

Warning: This post may be regarded by some as containing politically incorrect words or sentiments.

When I started blogging 1n 2007 my blog was simply a way of telling my family and friends in the country I wasn't living in at the time, what I was doing on the other side of the world. Since then it has altered and so has my Blogland friend base. The only people, so far as I can recall, who still follow regularly who followed in the first couple of years are Monica (Dawn Treader) and Adrian with Meike (Librarian) following on. There are some who still pop in and out who were New Zealand friends in the very early years too. You may find this post familiar.

There have been a lot of bloggers and non-blogging commenters recently who have become rather controversial and, for me, that takes a lot of the fun out of blogging.

If, as a child (and when I was an adult come to think of it), I ever said that I hated something my Dad always responded by saying "You should never hate anything in this world". I don't think he ever did. I'm not sure that I have ever hated either. I abhor things like intolerance and discrimination but I don't hate them. I have certainly never hated a person. Hate is too self-destructive an emotion.

When I was a child growing up in Liverpool there was a joke which went "What's green on one side, orange on the other and has a white line down the middle?" The answer was "Netherfield Road North". That road was notorious for being the boundary between the Roman Catholic and Protestant communities in Liverpool. The area was poor and largely comprised of slum dwellings. It was not wise to walk down the 'wrong' side of the road.

I digress. When I was 21 I was the deputy in the Housing Committee Section in the Town Clerk's Department (the legal and administration department of the Liverpool Corporation - City Council). That Section also dealt with slum clearance and compulsory purchase. Anthony Wedgewood Ben was the Minister of Technology at the time. He was visiting Liverpool. Even in those days (1965) politicians had press officers spinning for them. We were told that he had to be referred to as WedgeBen of MinTek to make him look modern and with it. He arrived and decreed that the word 'slum' was no longer to be used. Houses were henceforth to be referred to as 'unfit for human habitation'. Never use four words where one will do - unless you are trying to make your own title look modern.

Back to the story. Netherfield Road North was a hotbed for the violence of man on man caused by religious hatred. I recall, for example, the discrimination where the Lybro Overall Factory had a notice in huge letters outside the main entrance "No Roman Catholics (or was it Protestants?) employed". I was a Protestant but I had been sent to a Prep School owned and run by an Irish Roman Catholic family. So why did religions hate each other? Even as a very young child I wondered that and found it incomprehensible.

Liverpool Corporation in one of the most courageous and far-seeing practical acts of anti-discrimination almost eliminated the physical divisions of religion in Liverpool when it cleared the slums to the new high-rise blocks in Kirby. They took a decision to mix the orange and the green. People became next door neighbours with people whom they would not previously have tolerated on their side of Netherfield Road North.

But nothing has changed in the world. Liverpool may no longer have a significant problem with religious hatred. But the rest of the world.......

One amusing thing that always sticks in my mind was my partner's daughter who whenever she said that she hated something and I responded as my Dad had done, used to stamp her foot in mock annoyance and say "OK, Graham, I don't like it a very lot then!". And she wasn't yet a teenager.

As Andy used to say "It's a funny old world, Dad."