Category Archives: My own

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Thinking of those under the heat in Europe

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The photograph above is of Naples, Italy with Vesuvius in the background, and the Tyrrhenian Sea not far away. We spent two years there, 2014 to 2016, and I remember how hot it did get, but it was not as hot as it is this year.

I grew up with heat in Africa, and experienced it again when working during the summers in the south of Spain, but it was not until we moved to the outskirts of Naples that I got a glimpse of the pressures of urban heat, especially for those living without air conditioning. Even though we never experienced the current extremes we still felt the intensified level of stress that heat in a city produces.

Down in the old heart of Naples, on hot evenings when the sun went down, people flooded out on to the streets, leaving their tightly connected appartments to head for the sea front. On lucky nights there would be a light breeze blowing in over the water like a blessing – an antidote to the heat trapped in the buildings along its edge. Sometimes, if we were there around midnight, we’d see families still up, enjoying time without the burning sun, some taking chairs out on to their balconies to spend the nights there.

I think of everyone now, and of Rome where there is no sea front, as they try to look after themselves, as well as catering for thousands of tourists.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The writers’ strike in America, and its expansion

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The Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are on strike, telling us that their members are without sufficient income, and that they are deeply worried about the threat posed to their work by artificial intelligence.

‘Oh’, you might say and scroll on to the next thing, but it feels like a big ‘oh’ to me, an ‘o’ that comes from my s-o-ul.

I love stories and film, and those who create and deliver them – those who are seen, and those who are not. Together they produce the ultimate emotional takeaway for us to consume almost anywhere, at any time. They fill our worlds with the rest of the world, and way beyond its boundaries, making entertainment that is now so easy to access it’s almost impossible to understand how much work has gone into its making. Embedded in our lives, and loved by all of us, we take it for granted, but sadly its earnings don’t seem to be filtering down properly to its creators.

I hope a way can be found soon through this tangle. It doesn’t feel like a good time to be without the imaginations that help us see so much of what it means to be human.

Here’s a link that provides more information about the strike.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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My tomato plant

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This strange summer is my first attempt at growing tomatoes from a packet of seeds. The plants are trying, but not in a very uniform way.

The one in the photograph above began as a seed, indoors, in late May. Then, together with all siblings from the same packet, was placed into covered sunshine for about ten days, and then transferred with the others out into pots along a wall in full sun. Since then each plant has had the same amount of love and neglect, and been exposed to the same bouts of weird weather.

Their first week out was one of brisk winds and cold nights which turned them all pale and wibbly, and their leaves yellow, but slowly the wind died, and the sunshine switched from feeble, to full beam brilliance. That weather lasted for a few weeks, so hot that on some days the plants were actually put into the shade for protection, before being moved back into the full sun. Then we come to this week, where temperatures have dropped again, and rain is either drowning the plants, or drifting over them in teasing waves.

The question is, how will this crop do? The strange thing is how different each plant’s progress is, compared to its neighbour. Right now it seems that some of them might do okay, and others of them probably won’t, and I’m not sure any will produce tomatoes. The one in the photograph above is the runt of the litter, embarrassed by a few of its bolder siblings who are now twice as tall, and already flowering.

So will 2023 be a good vintage? I have no idea. Just getting a tomato will be amazing … if it happens.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023