One Thousand Ancestors

I worked out in my head that over the last 200 years roughly one thousand of my ancestors existed. 

I was thinking about my ancestors, how many of them there are. We have 2 parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grandparents. Both our parents have 2 parents each so each level of our ancestry doubles. I was thinking that the average person has a child when they're in their 20s so each generation should represent 20 to 25 years, 4 generations of a family is roughly 100 years. 

Generation 0 is me. Generation 1 is my parents. Generation 2 is 4 grandparents, generation 3 is 8 great grandparents; 100 years and 30 ancestors. 

Generation 4 is 16 great great grandparents, generation 5 is 32 great great great grandparents, generation 6 is 64 great great great great grandparents, generation 7 is 128 great great great great great grandparents, generation 8 is 256 great great great great great great grandparents, generation 9 is 512 great great great great great great great grandparents, 200 years and about 1000 ancestors. Then generation 10 had 1024 great great great great great great great great grandparents all alive at the same time. One thousand forgotten stories and lost thoughts. I know very little about them.

The same could be true of my descendants, if my descendants have 2 children each at 20 to 25 years of age on average then after 200 to 250 years I would have about one thousand living descendants. 

Alan-week Two

It is what I call Alan-week 2, the second third of March. I divide the month up into three 10 day periods in my head. This is also what I call the middle of the month. Day 11 to 20 is the middle part of the month. 

I was thinking about prestige-alan in recent days because of what Gary Lineker said about the government on twitter, if prestige-alan was real, he would have nothing to say, just small talk. I think because professional football players earn a lot of money from a young age, they become a little bit out of touch with the real world. They don't really understand how the world works. 

In 1930s Germany, the Gestapo would force their way into people's houses and knock out people's teeth with knuckle dusters because they kept books written by Jews on their book shelves. They gathered the most ruthless people in Germany and gave them SS positions. Then they would throw 'Zyklon b' poison gas grenades into fake showers full of prisoners to kill them all. If you compared natzi Germany to a country that is trying to be responsible about immigration control then you have lost touch with the real world. 

A similar thing happened at the world cup, they went to a country where most people think it is wrong to be gay and it is also illegal to promote gay rights. The football players were trying to make gestures that promote gay rights, they didn't realise they were actually disrespecting another nation's laws, customs and culture. The way they think isn't universal, some nations think it is wrong to be openly gay in public and when you visit their country it is better to respect their ways. 

I honestly believe some pro football players think all homeless people are lazy, they don't know there are people with full time jobs living in cars and abandoned buildings because they can't afford the local rent. Those people are being told there is no social housing available for them because of a shortage. I believe some professional football players don't know that because they're always getting a lot of money, even from their teenage years. 

New Spring New Nephew

At the start of the month I saw some daisies sprouting flowers in the grass verges next to the road. When I see daisies for the first time after winter, I kneel down to look at them closely. They look like boring little white specks at first, but then when you look at them closely they look like a little white paper valley with little golden yellow trees in the middle; a little world on a little flower. There is usually  3 or 4 of them together in the grass . I consider it to be spring when I see daisies flowering for the first time. A week or two later, the dandelions open their flowers. 

Not long after considering it spring, I learned that my nephew Lucas was born, there were some complications but everything was settled the next day during the 1 day spurt of snow we had here in Britain. My nephew Lucas was born at the start of spring but it's not spring in his part of the world. I will remember he was born between what I consider spring and what the government consider spring, a day before the one day spring snow shower of 2023. 

The government consider it to be spring during the equinox on the 20th of March. 

On the 20th of March, the day and night are both equally 12 hours long; they call this the equinox. A week later the day is 15 minutes longer than the night so on the nearest Sunday, they move the clocks forward one hour. I think it will be on the 26th this year. I find it very annoying when they change the time. 

My Poker Face

My society is changing quite a lot. The thing I noticed is people are more angry when they don't have their way. They want everything to go their way and when it doesn't they have some kind of visible outburst. 

Not long ago I saw a car speeding out into a single lane road where it squared off with a bus, either the car had to reverse or the Bus. The Bus was there first and was full of people but the man shouted several times for the bus to go backwards, the bus driver refused so the car driver started kicking the bus. These sort of angry selfish outbursts are becoming more and more common in my community.

When I'm driving into a car park, I slow right down to almost walking speed, I often see a car approaching my car from behind at over 30 miles per hour. But my car is in their way so they have to slow down, then as soon as they can turn off they speed up again and they go the long way around the car park and make sure they park near me so they can see who I am or tell me I'm driving so slow. They want to see if they can confront me. 

All they see is my poker face. I breathe in deeply and hide all my emotions, no anger, no laughter, nothing. Sometimes I don't even think about it. I just think about my own little happy thoughts and my own little world. 

It's not just on the road, everywhere people are being selfish and angry, they can't control themselves anymore. I'm not a talented man, my gift is my patience and self control. 

I don't get Camden

I'm quite familiar with London, there is a giant 8 lane Motorway ( freeway) called the M25 that circles the outside edge of the city, it is the proverbial wall of the city. The A1, Britain's longest road from Edinburgh in Scotland cuts through the middle of north London straight through high Barnet. The second largest river in Britain, the Thames (🗣️"Tems") flows through the centre of London. Then there is the circular dual carriageways that serperates the inner and outer parts of the city, the north circular and south circular. The south bank of the River Thames is mostly for leisure, with a Ferris wheel and art centers. The north side is the institutional side with government  buildings and offices. The thing I don't get is Camden Town. 

Camden is a district of London that tries to be different from the rest of the country, it is filled with street art and street food, it has vast market place that weaves in and out of buildings. Many shops cladded in bizzare sculptures. Most of the British musicians want to leave their mark or their name on the place; they want Camden to be known as their playground. It is like the place itself is trying to be different or the opposite to Britain. All the buildings in Camden have lights on them for night time. Every street in Camden has its own smell. It has a canal flowing through it. Why so different though? 

Spring Starts

Yesterday I saw daisies in the grass so I'll call it spring now. Some people in Britain call it spring when the temperature outside rises to double digits >9°c, others call it spring on the 1st day of March. Some people in Britain call it spring on the equinox; when the days and nights are equal in length on 20th of March, some people call it spring on Easter, others call it spring when daylight saving pulls the clocks back one one hour. I call it spring when I see daisies or dandelions sprouting their flowers in the grass. 

I saw on the news that a snow blizzard is coming to Britain out of the blue on Tuesday  and Wednesday. The funny thing is my smart speaker didn't acknowledge any march snow, it told me no snow is expected in my town on Tuesday. Let's see who is wrong. The smart speaker or the news. Here in Britain we get spurts of snow in the middle of spring sometimes, even after a warm spell. 

Windsor Framework

Britain is an aggregate of 4 nations, about 300 years ago the kingdom of Scotland, England and Wales merged together; they said to themselves we all live on the island of Britain, why don't we have one kingdom for the whole island. We then became the United Kingdom of Britain, one state for one island. 100 years later the island of Ireland joined the union but recently Ireland broke off from the Union except all the Irish that wanted to remain British, the Pro-british unionist communities clumped together on the northeast side of Ireland. Ireland became a two state Island, UK northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. 

When I was a kid in the '90s I saw the Ira fighting to make the whole of Ireland separate from Britain. One Ireland that was independent of the kingdom. The loyalists and Ira were constantly fighting a paramilitary civil war. They were even detonating powerful bombs in Britain itself. 

During Brexit the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland had become the border between the UK and EU because the Republic of Ireland remained a part of the EU trading block. 

The problem is the EU member states don't want products and services from low income, low tax countries to enter the EU trading block without being charged a tariff to make the products less competitive with theirs. For example Britain could buy 12 tonnes of olives from Brazil and send them across the Northern Ireland border and undercut the prices of Spanish and Italian olives. The farmer's incomes in Brazil are less than in Spain and Italy. 

Apparently our government have negotiated a deal with the EU member states that allows Northern Ireland to have full access to UK and EU markets without tariffs and stipulations. They call it the Windsor Framework. Northern Ireland can sell their products and services to the Republic of Ireland and the Republic of Ireland can do the same with the UK. Northern Ireland has become a unique place on the continent. 

Let's see if it works. My local MP is the minister for northern Ireland and he is a Brexiteer, he approves of the new deal. It's a small world.