This unassuming little flower is Sea Mayweed, its scientific name is Tripleurospermum maritimum, which is a very long name for a common plant. I prefer the Icelandic name which is Baldur’s eyelashes. It generally flowers between May and September but possibly as a consequence of climate change it’s still flourishing at the end of October. It’s a tough plant being able to withstand sea salt and rough winds (there was a force 7 westerly blowing today) and it’s happiest in poor sandy soil.
So, where did I find it? On the beach at Seasalter appropriately.
The Mayweeds on the Common in Woolwich disappeared at the end of June. Clearly, soft city types in comparison with their coastal cousins.
When I pay at the Asda checkout I am invited to add a small amount to the payment for their Tickled Pink charitable cause. It can be as little as 10p or as much as £1. I choose 25p as a matter of course; it's a round number. Well it isn't really; actually a square number.
I'm not actually sure that Tickled Pink is a charity; more a programme which supports and partners with breast cancer charities Breast Cancer Now and CoppaFeel! Asda has been doing this since 1996 but the checkout option is a new initiative I think. I imagine it's a really effective one, done to celebrate Tickled Pink's 25th anniversary; they have raised more than £71 million in that time.
Is this a lazy, unfocused way of giving? It's not as if I am making a choice to adopt this particular charitable cause. It's the only charity available in this particular way but it's not one that would really have been at the forefront of my mind if I were to decide to give £15 a month. I guess there will be lots of people like me making a donation because someone has had the clever idea to add it to the checkout screen.
This Friday, 22 October is Wear It Pink Day. The only pink item I have is a pair of garish pink trousers. I've got them out ready for Friday.
Remember all the hype about Emma Raducanu? Won the US Open tennis as a qualifier and spent the next few weeks doing PR, glamour shots for the front pages and generally swanning around and luxuriating in her astonishing victory. Sacked her coach. First match back on court, a bad first round defeat at Indian Wells to a lower ranked player. Currently ranked 24th in the world.
Cameron Norrie: British male tennis player, won the Men's Singles in that same Indian Wells event. The first British man to win a Masters 1,000 singles title since Andy Murray in 2016. No need for qualification for Norrie - he has reached six tournament finals this year and is now ranked 15th in the world. No swanning around for him, he is studying for a sociology degree in his off-court time. No PR, no glamour shots, no front pages, just working hard preparing for the next tournament.
So, first thoughts on being invited to be a guest on the distinguished Just Chilling’s blog:
It’s taken a lot of effort to find out how. Perhaps that’s because the font is so small or perhaps because I’m IT challenged and am struggling to achieve Level 4 - levelling up is a flawed concept.clearly.
Secondly, I see my avatar is the church cat. She’s called Suki and is temperamental, unlike my own dear Coco. But when I had to post on Google for some reason now forgotten, Coco was not yet born and Suki was a beauty.
And the last thought was that it’s much easier to comment on someone else’s thoughts than produce ones of my own.
However, all that football needs an antidote, even if my host is as antipathetic to wild flowers as I am to football.
‘One day’ I promised MiceElf I’ll make an effort and learn to identify the wild flowers in my local area. And when lockdown arrived it proved be the catalyst. My son and DiL bought me two definitive reference books and on Christmas morning 2020 we set out for Woolwich Common. It was cold but the watery sun made the mist rise and the Common looked lovely. We were the only people there. I found two flowers: the first was a solitary knapweed down amongst the nettles and brambles, its deep cerise flower being the only spot of colour in the 150 acres, and the other was a single white blossom on the bare branches of a cherry plum. It took me the best part of an hour to work out the keys and discover their names.
Since then I’ve found 163 plants which I post on the Friends FB page and acquired an undeserved reputation for botanical knowledge. I suspect I’ve also damaged the knees of a certain chilled gentleman for which I sincerely apologise.
New Zealand has an official Wizard. Until yesterday, when Ian Brackenbury Channell was given the sack by the city of Christchurch.
You can understand NZ's desire to embrace wizardry; after all, their Australian neighbours have their very own Wizard - of Oz. In 1990, Prime Minister Mike Moore proclaimed Channell the Official Wizard of New Zealand, appointed to “protect the Government, cast out evil spirits and upset fanatics”. In other words, New Zealand's Alistair Campbell.
Channell describes himself as an "educator, comedian, illusionist and politician", although he basically travels the country casting spells and mixing potions. He must have cast a spell on the Christchurch city councillors, who decided to pay him $16,000 p.a. to "provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like-services – as part of promotional work for the city of Christchurch".
Rod Liddle, that unreconstructed anti-wokeist and Sunday Times columnist, writes today that Chiristchurch's act has "aroused fury among occultists" although given Channell is 88 years old it could just as easily be his fellow octogenarians who are up in arms. One man who will surely be delighted is Ari Freeman, who is the Wizard's Apprentice and, with a bit of corporate smooching, could take over this lucrative contract. Freeman is known around Christchurch and beyond as the front man of the psychedelic funk band Rhomboid. Despite all this weirdness, their stuff has a certain magical [gettit?] charm:
I could find no record of any other country or city having a wizard on the payroll, although the Ku Klux Klan has its Grand Wizard. I'm willing to provide wizard services for St Austell, for a small fee of course.
