Family visit – and Election puzzle…

Hastings Battleaxe’s life continues to get back to normality.  Philosopher is so much better…  A few weeks ago I was afraid we’d never get here, but we have. This weekend we were visited by Philosopher’s daughter Anna and her partner Gareth. Of course, having been dry and sunny for weeks, the weather chooses Saturday to collapse. But never mind. Last Thursday we had the local Council elections. Hastings Council has gone from being Labour to No Overall Control – the Greens took three seats off Labour, and although the Tory vote was down, they kept all their seats. Nationally, if I (not in a million lifetimes) was a Tory, I’d be very worried. Instead, they are busy distracting us by slagging off Keir Starmer…. with our gutter-press media in full support.  But the first picture here is the annual retina-burning display of azaleas in our front garden. Planted by our predecessors, I hasten to say. Too pink by half.

A and G stayed for 2 nights.  Philosopher has now returned to the Marital Bed upstairs, leaving the downstairs rooms free for visitors.  On Saturday we all went down to the Old Town and first thing, saw these people doing bungee jumps off a crane for St Michael’s Hospice. That hospice is an absolute demon for fund-raising – I think the Conquest Friends need to set off in pursuit… am not diving off there like that though.

We had coffee/exhibition viewing at the Hastings Contemporary. The new exhibition ‘Seafaring’ is excellent – Battleaxe recommends.  This is very good – Small Titanic by Chris Orr. If you can blow the picture up you’ll see that everyone is doing very naughty things. If you can’t see anything, you’ll have to go down to the Gallery and take a look.

Just a couple more photos. Look at this stray echium plant growing out of a shed on the Stade. We have two echiums coming into flower in the garden – seeds brought from the Ventnor Botanic Garden in the Isle of Wight. They are absolute monsters – photos in a bit when they have done their business.  I liked this photo of the trains, too.

 

We went out to the Two Sawyers at Pett for lunch. Had planned to do the walk from Guestling Church to the pub but it looked like rain, gulp, so we just walked out the back to see the bluebells, which were looking better than ever. See the last post.

So what of politics and the election? Well, Labour may not have totally smashed things, but they did pretty darn well, and the Lib Dems did excellently. The Tories lost getting on for 500 seats, and lost control of a good number of Councils, including big ones in London – Wandsworth, Westminster, Barnet. They now do not control a single council in Wales, or in Scotland, where the Scottish Nationalists increased their grip on power. Northern Ireland now have a Sinn Fein majority.  All this would be enough to make any sane Tory feel very worried indeed. Instead, they go banging on about Keir Starmer, and we get this sort of thing from the Tory puppet right-wing red-tops.  What universe are these people living in? The government have effectively lost control of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the capital. They have lost innumerable votes and seats in their southern heartlands… I will say no more.  It sure is a puzzle.