Frozen out

Actually, the slow thaw set in today after a very wintry and slippery week. These berries, from the freezer, heading to the blender for breakfast caught my eye.

The gardeners were due to complete their groundworks today but the snow and frost has made that impossible but hopefully it will now happen next week.

We were very sorry to be missing the wedding in Cheltenham this afternoon and evening due to our coughs and colds. It is proving a reluctant bug to throw off. Thank goodness for the ‘flu jags is what we both keep saying.

I have refrained from making comment about FIFA’s world cup until now. Partly because I am conflicted. I worked in Doha for six months in 2014. I worked there when the decision to hold the mens’ football world cup had recently been taken. The Qataris were delighted. Everyone else was astounded. And consternation set in when it became apparent that the temperatures in the desert meant the summer festival of football would take place in December. 18th December is Qatari National Day. No surprise that they chose that date for the final!

When I worked there my daily commute was accompanied by the sunrise over the desert, the sounds of call to prayer blasting from every minaret I passed and the only English language programme I could get on the car radio was a daily reading from the Koran. I learnt a great deal about Islam on those drives to work.

I learnt even more about humankind’s inhumanity to one another. In the traffic lines crawling into Doha City I often coincided with bus loads of migrant workers heading to the world cup construction sites. They were slumped in their bone shaker bus seats, emaciated in body. Vacant in gaze. Their day was spent in 40 degree heat without protection on the precarious scaffolding at the FIFA construction sites. Mine was spent in an air conditioned building which I accessed in my air conditioned car.

At the airport we saw the migrants workers arrive from Bangladesh, Pakistan and southern India. Passports were inspected at the border and then collected by their “managers”. No easy route home from Qatar for these fellow humans.

The tepid following of the Welsh and English teams at this year’s competition is, I think, right. For a home nation to have won this particular completion would have been tarnished with the humanitarian violations upon which it was built.

Last time this tournament was held, it was in The Russian Federation and that host nation has subsequently declared war on Ukraine.

Here’s hoping Mexico, Canada and the USA can restore our faith in the sport and not the politics and cash that swash around it?