Whisks

I wasn’t 100% certain that the (very) occasional references I found on the Net were to ‘my’ Susie until I found that photo. Susie isn’t exactly a rare name; neither is her given name, Susana, not in Spain. And though her surname may be exotic in Britain, she’d told me it’s common in Catalonia, where she was born.

On her last day at the pub I gave…[Read more]

Wow Richard, what a story. I really wasn’t expecting that ending. It’s funny when you meet people who just have this sort of energy about them, who you know in your bones are remarkable. Lovely bit of real life at a deep emotional level, beautifully told

I don’t want to come on like a rampant egotist, but within hours of my posting this latest blog Ath’s new challenge appeared, and all the excitement has pushed my blog out of sight way down the wall. So this blog is another thing that’s going to go…………..BUMP.

That, of course, is because, while ”snwcr’ is one of the many words the Welsh have borrowed from English and re-spelt (rather entertainingly) phonetically in Welsh, ‘heddlu’ (hethly) is a real Welsh word. But the Welsh for policeman is ‘plismon’, and for policewoman – wait for it – ‘plismones’.

Ath: ‘Herald of Free Enterprise’, Grenfell Tower…

Libby: When we first moved to Wales we did a Welsh language course for a couple of years. It’s a hell of a hard language to learn (for example, there are at least a dozen ways of turning a singular noun into a plural and there are no hard and fast rules, so you have to remember each noun’s…[Read more]

Fascinating, Richard. Rich’s words may have been ahead of their time, but that serves to emphasise how persistent the root causes of these disasters are. We still do it, even with our modern safety culture. Sadly, there are forces working to erode what gains have been made. The “Health & Safety Gone Mad” slogan may not belong to a formal campaign;…[Read more]