56 FEATURE
15 SEPTEMBER 2021
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From the front line…
May our next year be sweeter than the last. Please!
BY JACQUELINE CURZON You know what it's like: you're finally going out. You've booked a babysitter, found a long forgotten dress that still fits, you dash to the mirror for 2 minutes to put on an improved face and straighten your wonky sheitel. Okay, I'm talking here about the average Jewish housewife, with 5 kids and no free time. (Any gentlemen who would like to self-identify with me, just pop on your pearls.) Done! Then you go out to a much awaited simcha, reach for your main course at the famed Yoni Rothan's Diner [yup, you missed the entrees because of your toddler's tantrums as you tried to leave] when your phone trills and buzzes loudly at 11pm (I forgot to put it on silent. So, go on then - show me someone who's perfect?) to say the 'kids are still up,' 'the washing machine is flooding the kitchen,' 'the dog has escaped,' or 'the babysitter left' (....two hours ago)! but mercifully not all on the same night. We've added 'the paintpot through glass door,' 'chair versus oven door,' 'microwave fire, defrosting bread,' 'lost child,' 'newly found free kitten' and so forth. All perfectly normal of course, but the hijinks don't end here. Our Thursday night invariably includes the making of the renowned [insert your name here] delicious chicken soup. Like all busy mums under pressure to keep up, she uses the pressure cooker to take the pressure off. Ours is a rather gargantuan steel version - a busy mum's best f(r)i(e)nd:- an impressive 18 litre industrial construction, and we'd never had a problem with it. The resultant chicken soup is quickly rendered fantastic, served and enjoyed, regardless of whether partaken in the kitchen, the dining room, the library or the doghouse. But it really is not ideal when served directly across the kitchen floor. There was about an inch of boiling hot soup lying innocently over the floor, with steam wafting around the house, altogether making it an onerous - if olfactory pleasant - task to remove it. (If you think cleaning up a broken egg is a nightmare, try a pot of jewish penicillin). Anyway I dithered as to whether I should run back to do the job myself, or stay at my friend's 60th birthday tea. It was a tough call, but the barbecued salmon and glittery party hats won the day, and I returned home later to find the mess pretty much cleared up. (I gather it was a really dreadful job!!) How had it gone so wrong? When the pressure valve had popped up, screaming with all its strength, nobody came to the rescue, and so the pot finally blew its top. Now, my interest in 'News from the North' has flagged up quite a few stories. Nicola Sturgeon is back in the news, or rather her younger sister is. Gillian Sturgeon (46) was arrested recently over a domestic incident, although the mother of two has since been
Jacqueline Curzon PHOTO: LARA MINSKY PHOTOGRAPHY
released with an undertaking to appear at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court. This followed on from a previous incident only a few weeks earlier, where she was challenged for not wearing a mask on a Glasgow to London train. She claimed she was only unmasked whilst eating, but there must have been more to the story. Quite the story teller, I think. A man of 27 has been charged over the death of 31-year old Fawziyah Javed, a young woman who fell 800 feet off a Scottish hill to her death. Ms Javed, who was married only last December and was believed to be pregnant, had belatedly celebrated her wedding with a party just days before. She fell from the top of Arthur's Seat, in Edinburgh, and sadly could not be saved. Anwar Kashif (27), her husband, is helping police with their enquiries. DialaDeal Scotland Ltd has been fined £150,000 for making nuisance calls in a green energy scam. The Glasgow based company made calls marketing funds for schemes that did not exist, including boiler replacement and loft insulation. More than 550,000 unsolicited calls were made over a 7-month period, with 500 complaints. Dawn Swift (41) a pub landlady, was assaulted in a car park by a 13-strong mob before pulling out a taser to scare them off. She didn’t discharge the weapon but was still charged over the incident in August last year. She admitted to having a taser, brandishing it and then putting it in the car's glove compartment. Swift has been warned that she could be jailed, as guidelines suggest a starting point for the court's consideration is a custodial sentence. This reaction by the CPS is surely disproportionate, as she could hardly fight off the equivalent of a football team with her fists or her handbag, and whilst the taser was an unexpected - if illegal - choice of defensive weapon, in the circumstances it was likely both fortuitous she had it, and was effective. If the punishment is indeed to fit the crime, what about the crime committed
by the 13 youths attacking her, some of whom may have had previous convictions? They too were guilty of offences, but sadly their predatory behaviour has obviously paid off in this case. Jobs advertised on a government website are promising nearly 10% in salary increases for those living within the M25 and working in London, regardless of whether office based or home based. So, you'll be offered an uplift if you work in London, but if you live in London and work outside the M25, you won't get it, even though you're on much lower pay, travelling for hours to be a good egg and getting to your office. There is already a huge disparity between salaries in the capital and the surrounding environs where those out of district are struggling constantly. Why are so many choosing the home-working option? Could be several reasons; lack of professional oversight means some can stay at home and do 'less than' a day's work; some may enjoy the flexibility of start times and attendant travel savings; others may truly be anxious about covid transmission. Dr James Hiddleston wrote [Telegraph, 5th September] 'Zero Covid is an illusion, as New Zealand is finding out.' We know since Delta that we may just have to live with covid and develop a strategy for dealing with it. Double vaccinations will help prevent serious illnesses and reduce morbidity, but essentially everyone is likely to catch it. However mitigating measures should include: throwing masks away, except in hospitals and extremely crowded places; lifting travel bans for fully vaccinated people; aiming to bring hospital backlogs under control within 2 years; reinstating f2f GP consultations and finally, making civil servants go back to work and offices. We need to reclaim our lives. Well said, Doc! From docs to dames now. Dame Jenni Murray, the former presenter of Woman's Hour, has spoken out about the salary excess of presenters in the BBC. Dame Jenni, who was paid £100,000 per year has been slamming other presenters earning variously between £245,000 (Sarah Montague), up to £425,000 (Huw Edwards). Graham Norton is on a staggering £4 million, whilst her successor, Emma Barnett, is on £245k. One has to ask if in such times of financial hardship, it's absolutely necessary to pay so much to presenters on the tv and radio for doing what is essentially a regular day job, albeit generally quite fun and delivered in a lilting Welsh accent, or with quirky humour. {Bet I could do it.} Murray was apparently paid pro rata for 2 ½ days a week, although one wonders if that was 200k down to 100k for pro rata? Barnett's salary is based on 0.8 fte on Woman's Hour, plus Newsnight and other BBC work. Nice work if you can get it. Indeed - are you still wondering why they are chasing you for your licence fee?
Now finally. In case you're wondering what a bashed (only slightly!) and trashed (nu, seriously?) oven door looks like? Beautiful, definitely- - for a few hours, then slowly it unwinds like a DNA helix, crashing out in a glittery glassworks display before reluctantly resting on the floor. So: yes, it IS absolutely trashed, (not to mention dangerous, irresponsible, unbelievable, anti-social, manufacturer sue-able or even clockwatching ticktocking. Whoa - stop there. There are much worse problems in sight….. it's almost yomtov, the whole family is coming [let's pretend] and you forgot some of the shopping, including getting a cake and the mandatory fish head) but look on the bright side. Firstly, Uncle Dov is vegetarian and watching his weight. Secondly, it was an accident and t'G no-one got hurt. Thirdly and seriously, if your oven were actually on, and happily running at a steady 220°Celsius ……, well I take no liability for having said 'oven doors were beautiful and safe.' I can only speak for smashing cold ovens though, 'coz I'm from up north - we wear gloves and scarves at home. We need them when the generator fails. And finally, I'd like to have a little word in your ear now about eggs. On motzei shabbat it's my favourite treat to have well done cheesy scrambled eggs on toasted cholla. Absolutely divine! So when eggs appeared in the media menu, I was all ears and eyes. However the story was not about cracking eggs, but preserving eggs - biological eggs. Women will now be able to freeze their eggs for up to 55 years, under new government plans to give people greater choice on when to start a family. The current DHEA legislation states such genetic material can only be stored for a maximum of 10 years; and could be stored for 55 years if there is a specific requirement, such as the woman being at risk of infertility or premature menopause. Ministers have proposed that storage limits should no longer be governed by medical need. Well, I just wonder why any woman, let's say in their twenties and thirties (when quality is at its best), would want to freeze her eggs with a mindset that she might come back 30, 40 or 50 years later to take them on an antenatal journey. To the best of my knowledge there aren't many 75-year-old new mums in the world, and if there were, they'd need to live to 120 to see the child grow up. However, as I always do my homework, I read Daljinder Kaur, from India, was believed to be over 70 years old, when she gave birth in 2016. The baby was the first for Kaur and her 79-year-old husband, Mohinder Singh Gill, after nearly 50 years of marriage. Well, there you go. It's possible Love Jacqueline x
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