' No it isn't ' .

 

Two cases of wine have 'gone missing'. Half a dozen phone calls later the wine merchant agrees to send on replacements. It seems that 'liquids in glass' aren't covered by insurance so the merchant has to cover the cost himself. No wonder he was so slow in authorizing replacements. All our courier companies are reliable and friendly... with one exception. It goes without saying which company the vintner  used. I discover , during our conversation, that the sales of wine at restaurants and hotels is down 19% since the start of the pandemic. It seems that millennials and Gen-Zers are drinking less but spending more on their wine.

Valentines Day a distant memory and the supermarket now turns its attention to Easter .

Last year we'd noticed that Easter Eggs had been superseded by Easter dinosaurs. This year 'Flossy the Highland Cow' appears on the shelves.

Yesterday we drove into Dundee. A group of women in sensible clothing were busy with a pot of glue and brushes pasting up a poster. " Good morning " I say as we pass them. ' No it isn't ' comes the reply. There is an expletive added between the 'it' and the 'isn't '. We opt to move on in silence.

By the time we return from our walk the angry women have gone. This enables us to read the poster they'd been pasting up. It contains more information than one might imagine possible. Small print and a mass of text isn't perhaps the best  structure for a roadside poster. It would seem the climate activist ladies are very angry.

This mornings radio music :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX5xdbhKbzA

A Los Angeles museum :https://eamesfoundation.org/house/eames-house/

The Dundee women would agree with this but I'm not sure that climate risk - although serious - tops the list of threats over the next two years. I'd also think older citizens might have a surprising degree of agency and experience to deal with the unexpected  :https://www.cna.org/reports/2024/01/the-impacts-of-extreme-weather-on-older-adults