Entertaining Brenda

We were delighted to have Brenda come to stay with us in Whitby. She is George’s widow so she is my cousin-in-law. Not that the precise family relationship is important as we have been friends for at least 20 years.

Brenda came by train. Travelling via Newcastle and Middlesbrough she came direct to Whitby. The only national rail service for Whitby is from Middlesbrough. Travelling along Eskdale the line traverses the North York Moors National Park which extends to just outside Whitby.

One of our trips was to the Moors centre at Danby. The centre is made up of a series of former cottages now mainly interlinked internally. There are the usual facilities of a moorland exhibition, an art and craft exhibition and of course a small shop. I took the opportunity to buy a large scale road map of Yorkshire roads. I hoped to find an alternative route around York, as the main road, towards Scarborough and Hull is a bottleneck, but nothing obvious emerges.

We had a snack in the café. I had easily the biggest bacon roll I’ve seen which with a large salad was an excellent value for £3. The café has also a pleasant ambience in the end house of the moorside centre row. With traditional fish and chips for evening it was too much and we had to put some chips aside for reheating.

Brenda’s son John and his wife have bought from Whitby Art Centre which is actually a smallish shop. We searched it out. It is in two parts with an originals exhibition and a print shop. The two are not linked internally and it wasn’t obvious they were connected. We also took the opportunity to visit two larger art shops, one of which is very confusingly called the Reading Room.

To me this brought out another facet of Whitby shops. On one hand there are a tremendous number of charity shops ( I would think every major national charity is represented ) and on the other a number of very high end and expensive shops selling jewellery, art and collectables..

After Brenda had returned home we took a long riverside walk inland to the village of Ruswarp- Russup in local jargon. We took the opportunity to visit the village pub. This was further than I intended and I was very glad to get a bus back which took us almost to our flat.

We had our first block meeting. It wasn’t a complete success as the owner of three ( of the six total )  flats didn’t turn up giving a slightly lame last minute excuse. There were a number of urgent matters not least the filing of some information at Companies House which was overdue and the subject of a warning letter.

Trump and Comey

There is an irony at the centre of the Comey affair. As head of the FBI Comey threw the US election to Trump by resurrecting a previously cleared allegation against Clinton and then dropping it just before polls opened for lack of evidence. This highly partisan behaviour has been rewarded by being fired by Trump. It seems amply clear that the motivation was partly that the FBI were investigating Republican Russian links and partly that Comey didn’t somehow manipulate the Clinton charges more. The appointment of a special prosecutor appears amply justified and perhaps eventually more facts will emerge.

It is already clear that Trump will claim everyone is against him- he believes in getting his retaliation in first. Sadly it is the case that US media is very polarised with some sections supporting Trump with wild “facts”- Alt-truth is very much alive and well among Trump supporters.