HAVE you noticed that the hedges across the rural landscape have been filled with wild rose and honeysuckle?

As children, growing up on the edge of the town, the Sunday family walk to visit both grannies took round the ‘back road’ through the rural countryside and round the long way to St. Jean’s Cottages, and then to the shortcut cut over the ‘burn’, past the workhouse, and back onto the pavements of the Burn Road to William St.

This time of year, we picked honeysuckle flower off the hedges, and ate the sweet end as we rambled along.

We would later raid the bramble for blackberries and hawthorn hedges for its ‘bread and cheese’ berries.

Fast cars, articulated lorries and slurry tanks weren’t a feature of rural back roads back then in the ‘olden days’ of my childhood.

The sweet smell of elderflower has long gone, and that fragrance carried by the wind from the wild meadows is from the white blossoms of meadowsweet.

You can make meadowsweet tea from those blossoms. It tastes a bit medicinal, but is more pleasant than camomile, and contains the same natural pain relief chemicals as aspirin.

A few days ago, I noticed the berries of the rowan trees are already well reddened, heralding the beginning of the drift towards autumn.

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THE weather held up well for The Twelfth. No doubt children and grandparents will have a quick scan through the paper to see who may have been captured in the photos, looking well in the parade, or enjoying their ice cream on the sideline.

I hope all those for whom it was a non-belligerent celebration of their own cultural heritage enjoyed the family day out.

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IF YOU have not signed on to your online subscription, or picked up your copy of The Impartial Reporter by 11.20am this Thursday morning, you will have already have missed ‘The Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee’, happening in Stormont.

The public can watch these live via the Assembly website, https://aims.niassembly.gov.uk/.

Given the ‘vital importance of this victory to the Constitutional position within the UK’, it might just be more enlightening than getting your information via the Nolan Show from the man three doors down from your own house.

The first item on the agenda is Eudamed, and the closed session will deal with legal advice on its gradual roll-out.

Once the committee knows the score on that, the matter will be further addressed in the public session.

What is ‘Eudamed’? You might well ask, since I very much doubt if a single person the length and breadth of the whole region who opened the door to an election canvasser asked: “What is your position on Eudamed?” (Note to new PM: Northern Ireland is a region, not a nation!) EUDAMED is the European database for medical devices. It is a secure, web-based portal that acts as a hub for the exchange of information between the relevant competent authorities and the European Commission.

Its main purpose is ensuring public health and safety by supporting transparency and traceability of medical devices.

This September will see the roll-out of use of the database across the EU and Northern Ireland, but maybe not Great Britain.

The item on the agenda is specifically about the obligation to inform Eudamed in the case of interruption or discontinuation of supply, as well as transitional provisions for certain in vitro diagnostic medical devices.

These are important matters for a health service under pressure, but if that is all too complicated for loyal citizens to divert from waxing eloquent on the radio and getting worked up about, the second item on the agenda of the impact on the Windsor Framework Committee is: (EU) 2024/1849of the European Parliament and of the Council of June 13, 2024 amending Regulation (EU) 2017/852 on mercury – as regards dental amalgam and other mercury-added products subject to export, import and manufacturing restrictions.

I should have warned you at the start that enlightenment and entertainment are two different things, and rarely coincide, but even in the absence of Jim Allister, now gone to a higher calling, I am sure somebody will ensure that the argument for British Sovereignty over public safety will be heard.

It all got me wondering if Regulation (EU) 2024/1860 – to give the ‘EU diktat’ its full title – had been in place before Covid-19, it might have saved the UK taxpayer four billion pounds (£4,000,000,000) which the Government spent on Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) that was unfit for purpose, and destroyed!

Probably not before somebody got legal advice on whether PPE could be described as a medical device, and if the information gained here via the database could legally be shared with the rest of the UK.

£400,000,000 equals approximately two Elon Musks’ worth, by the way.

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SPEAKING of Stormont, did you know it wasn’t always called ‘Stormont’? Up until 1830 it was called ‘Mount Pleasant’. The original Stormont was an area in Perthshire lying between the Rivers Tay, Isla and Ericht.

Around 1830, the name ‘Stormont’ was transferred to the estate in Dundonald. Stormont Castle was built in 1859, replacing the original castle.

In 1921, the new Parliament of Northern Ireland was looking for a site for its Parliament Buildings.

Parliament authorised the Government of Northern Ireland to purchase the 224-acre Stormont Estate for about £21,000; this included 100 acres of woodland.

The Parliament Building was completed in 1924, and both the castle and the Parliament Building became ‘Stormont’, or as the Belfast folk call it, ‘Stormount’.

In the years to come, it might well revert to its former title, ‘Mount Pleasant’, as the devolved seat of administration in an Ireland of four devolved provinces.

That would bring in Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan. We could negotiate trading Cavan for Louth, which would return the ancient Ulster territory and the site of the Battle of the Boyne to Ulster.

Ye wouldn’t hear that on the radio, but would it not be a pleasant outcome all round?