Old friends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPTOY8FrvN

We grow up taking so much for granted. As we get taken over by careers and families, ambitions  and disappointments, we do lose track of things that are important, and often we do not realise that until it is too late.  This year it is fifty years since I left home and started college in Portsmouth, an event which sometime this year will probably be marked by a small and simple reunion. I know that when I left home, I did leave behind a lot of friends almost completely. I was never a writer of letters and of course we had no mobile phones and no computers in those days, so maintaining relationships was not easy. Moving on meant making new friends, and that was pretty easy in those days with all those young bodies oozing hormones were thrust together into a quickly declining regime of partial retriction. The sixties were a time of teenage rebellion as we all know and were a time when respect for established authority was changing somewhat.

Hall rules were paid lips service to and by the time we left they had almost vanished except in the small print of the college handbook.  So people could spend a lot of time together, in groups of in pairs or whatever you chose to do. Many deep relationships were forged in those days and many couples were drawn together into lasting relationships. My wife and I met in my last year at college and apart from her my links with college are now very few and far between.

Thanks to social media, a dear friend from 1967 recently made contact and we have been in communication on a more or less daily basis, sharing memories and histories. We of course took different paths and our stories are very very different. It has been lovely recalling some of those shred memories and it makes me struggle to remember others that mattered at the time, even if it was only for a short time.

There are phases to our lives as we grow up, one phase is weddings, then christenings then a long hiatus, followed by funerals. It is the saddest of phases in that we slowly lose those people that we once held dear.  I seem to have lost all but one of my original family and many of my old friends, so finding some that still are there is a wonderful thing.  

Old friends are the best friends - they have stood the test of time.      

Jean Genie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQo6zpVzt8

Futility is arguing with fundamentalists, or should I say that arguing with fundamentalists is futile, either way I have spent too much time arguing against the creationist idea, largely because I find it entertaining.  Recently they have been citing the existence of DNA as evidence for a creator. The argument being that something as beautiful and amazing could not possibly have arisen by chance alone, therefore it must have been created.

DNA is of course the mechanism of inheritance, it is in essence who we are and much of what we will ever be. Even the means of our demise is possibly coded in our DNA.  Family traits, strengths and weaknesses are transmitted through DNA and yes, it is amazing.

I read the other day that intelligence is inherited from your mother, suggesting a link with the X chromosome but it was a newspaper article and I skimmed it so cannot really comment.  We are, of course much more than the product of our genes, we are capable of making decisions and choosing the way we live. Thus if you have a genetic propensity towards certain diseases, you can, by choice, avoid the conditions that favour the development of that disease.

Talents and skills may be to some extent genetically determined, but most great skills are learned through sheer hard work as much as by innate ability. We would not wish for our doctors, dentists or any other professionals to inherit their positions, even from their mothers, neither would we expect them to be inbred so as to maintain a family line, and yet many people think that Royalty is a good thing.  We as a nation support a growing band of inbreds that have simply inherited their positions because they have been allowed to do so. They serve no real purpose and surely they have become an embarrassing anachronism as well as a huge expense.  I know that there are vested interests in maintaining them as a symbol of the ruling class but in the interests of unification, can we not grow up and realise that they are not needed.

Napolean Bonaparte said that religion was the only thing that stopped the poor from murdering the rich; I think that ignorance has a role there too.

The sound of silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7RVw3I8eg

If  you have never heard this cover version, then I strongly suggest that you try it to the end. Rarely does a cover version change the meaning off a song in  quite the way that this one does. I suppose that Joe Cocker's  With a little help from my friends had the same sort of impact, but that one never reduced me to tears in the way that this one does.

Cover versions are interesting and I do like to  compare  originals and covers. In the days of Napster, I once downloaded 20 different covers of The House of the Rising Sun, a traditional song arranged by Bob Dylan and made famous by the Animals in the sixties. No two recordings are the same and they vary in length too. The longest is by Santa Esmeralda and is a sort of disco version that I actually like. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkgIlXqIfzk

Most bands at some time in their careers have done covers of music that went before them, I am sure that there are exceptions to that but I can't think of any apart from Maybe Jethro Tull.  Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery after all.

If you listened to Santa Esmerelda I told you it was long :-)  I love it though.

Does anyone ever listen to the songs by the way? or am I wasting my time? Anyhow in the interest of symmetry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4oInT79CUk

Je t'aime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Fa4lOQfbA

I was reading today about a man who has been banned from a Weatherspoons pub. Allegedly he complained too much about the food. Now look, if you want cordon bleu you don't go to a Weatherspoons pub and expect to get it for less than a tenner. This got me thinking about bans and of course these things are becoming topical again. Some of us hope that the Trump creature will be barred from his state visit, though that could have consequences further down the road, while in his turn Trump is banning some peoples from entering his country on the grounds that he hs no business connections with them.

There was a time when the BBC would ban the playing of certain songs on the basis that they were rude or risqué or in some way insulted the status quo. I remember the above song being banned and then we all heard it on pirate stations and bought the record anyway. There is nothing like a ban to persuade people to buy it.  I once bought a book - Spy Catcher - only because Margaret Thatcher said I couldn't. It wasn't even a good read but I was in New York and they were on sale.

I was banned from the cinema once. We were watching a movie called The Trap, Oliver Reed and Rita Tushingham. There was a very tense and dramatic scene where she has to cut off his gangrenous leg with an axe, as she did so, the thought that came into my mind and out of my mouth was "Wrong Leg" at which all within hearing range fell bout laughing.  I guess we had been nuisances before because I was singled out and escorted from the premises.   It didn't last though as staff constantly changed and no one really recognised me anyway.

I think being banned from a Weatherspoons pub must deserve some sort of accolade though. It takes some doing, not that I have tried.

Women

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKBgolojkhU

Now before I get controversial, let me just say that I love women. Not all women of course but the  group as a whole. I have total respect for those that I know and see most as equals, some as superiors and none as inferiors.  I also believe firmly that women should enjoy the same rights and freedoms as men, including equal pay etc etc.

 Ok got that out of the way, and if you start to get angry just let me refer you back to the first paragraph.

What I wanted to say goes along the lines of - do women make good leaders?  My own view is that they on the whole do not.  I know that is is just an opinion but I can only name it upon my own experiences and what has happened in my lifetime.  Some people believe that Margaret Thatcher was a good leader.  They are entitled to that belief of course but she presided over a government that divided the nation like no leader ever had before. It was also a deliberate act, divide and rule seemed her mantra. She promoted hatred that still endures in many parts of the country and never before have I seen a death celebrated in the way that hers was.

Our current leader seems little better. I do not envy her job but she seems to ebb and flow like the tide, pushed this way and that buy her own party and again continuing the divisive processes of her previous heroine.  Perhaps she is incapable of standing up against those that really wield the power, and maybe like Thatcher she will eventually be stabbed in the back by her supporters.

I worked under five head teachers in my career, and the only one who managed to divide the staff was a woman. I won't name her, obviously, but she seemed to feel the need to wield power and make people tow whatever line she threw them. She was not a good negotiator and insisted always on having things done her way.  She probably was the cause of a number of nervous breakdowns among staff, people that she did not like were victimised and fell by the wayside.  She eventually fell herself and was not missed by many.

Ok I am sure that there have been good women leaders.  I can think of none off the top of my head apart from Helen Clark in New Zealand, though I am sure that is the fault of my limited education and some people out there will come up with good examples. Marine Le Penn could be the next leader of France - personally I hope not.

Rat Trap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=024UcB1m7Do

I cannot begin to describe how much I loathe rats. Even the tame little buggers with pink eyes and noses are anathema to me.  A few years ago, when I was able to do such things, I was turning over my compost heap when a rat shot out; I say a rat but it looked as big as  a cat and was probably as scared as I was because it just ran in circles around me while I tried in vain to prong it with my fork. I panicked I admit and eventually gave in to my fear and scarpered.

Another time at an open university summer school I found myself in a cubicle with a woman who smelled of cigarettes, having to condition a rat. Admittedly there were bars between us but even so....

Anyway the point of this is that we have a leaky toilet once again.  The waste pipe that is is leaking behind the tiled and boxed structure that hides those pipes. The smell gave it away and so again we wrecked the structure that took so long to rebuild last time in order to determine the cause of the problem. The pipe is leaking again and why? Because bits of it have been nibbled away by rodents.  I lifted an inspection hatch and sure enough there are plenty of fresh droppings, though they look big enough to have come from an elephant. So not only do we need a plumber, we also need a rat man or woman to exterminate the creatures that are causing me so much irritation and expense.

The plumber is coming tomorrow and the rat man/woman next tuesday.  I just hope that the pipes can hold out until the rat man/woman, gets here or the plumbers work will be pointless.  Fortunately we do have an alternative wc but I, like the little bastards in question like my own territory.

Video killed the radio star

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ

If ever I feel the need to watch daytime TV, feel free to shoot me.  TV has become utterly banal; maybe it always was but today it seems that the programming has been designed for those in care homes.
My first experience of TV was at my grandparents house when I was very small. memories are very  thin but I do recall a tiny black and white screen that took an age to warm up and when switched off, the picture diminished slowly to a small bright dot that gradually faded.  The only think I remember seeing was a program called What's my line? in which a group of posh people were required to guess the occupation of someone from the  real world.    Much later, when we were teens probably, my parents rented a TV and we began our absorption of whatever garbage was pumped into the house.

We are all influenced by what we see and hear, the news is carefully edited and filtered so as to make us think what we are meant to think and do as we are meant to do. In the meantime we sit on our sofas and get fat and unfit, consuming more and more garbage.

Radio is more stimulating in many ways and  with digital systems there is so much to choose from.  We recently  bought a SONOS sound system and can now access digital radio stations or the music stored on my computer from all over the house.  Listening to music means that I can forget about Brexit and Trump for a while and remember better times.

There is a petition around that is calling for the government to sell the BBC on the grounds that it has lost its independence, the right think that it is biased to the left and the left think that it is biased towards the right. Maybe they are both right and that it lies somewhere in the middle. We do need an information system that provides truth, though for many people the truth is what they want to believe, and I believe that daytime TV is the beginning of the end.

These boots are made for walking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2fPkzJsMU8

I have a love - hate relationship with shoes. Give the choice I will go barefoot or wear leather flip flops all of the time, but of course in the winter that is really not a practical option. I do have two pairs of shoes that I actually wear, and both of these are really coming to the end of their periods of usefulness, which means that I'll have to replace at least one pair.   That means a. going to shoe shops and b. trying things on. The former I do not enjoy and the latter I find quite hard as it it difficult to reach my feet.

Nowadays people have shoes for every purpose.  Trainers costing a small fortune have replaced pumps which didn't, and it seems that every activity has its own specially designed footwear.

As a child we may have had one pair of shoes for school/best, and a pair of slippers. Outdoors we wore wellington boots most of the year round, not the green ones, just plain black wellies. Buying shoes as fashion statements was not even a dream and even my sister had a very limited selection to choose  from.  There was no money for shoes and no storage space either and so we contented ourselves with  what we had.

Then came the sixties and it seemed that all changed. For many of us that was when we began to care about how we looked. Haircuts, for example, became battle grounds with fathers. I was sent every two weeks for a short back and sides, until one day I decided that I was going to have a "Boston". That began the transition. Baggy denims changed to skin tight pale blue jeans and normal footwear became winkle pickers, long pointed toes that were derided by the parental generation.  Having said that, I never really had the shoes that I wanted; mostly they were beyond my budget and so I have always settled for what I could afford.

At school, we were forced into membership of the Army Cadet Force, which I didn't much care for, and hd to wear a dreadful uniform that included gigantic and inflexible hobnailed boots. This had to be kept rigorously clean and were also a  centre of conflict on a regular basis. I kept them for years afterwards and used them for pot holing.  

It doesn't bother me anymore. few things do, but I do look forward to warmer days when I can manage without having to  put on socks.

Home thoughts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5M5xljdCI

My first bid for freedom came in 1965. I applied for the RAF. I n those days, if you were not considered good enough for university, you were bundled off into nursing, the police force or the services. Opting for the latter I found myself being offered an interview at RAF Biggin Hill, which is strangely just down the road from where I am now. It was however a long way from my home and not just geographically. They sent travel warrants and directions and so I set off on what for me was a huge adventure.  The outcome of the interview I have talked about before, but the feeling of being away from home, despite my desire to escape, was ambivalent to say the least.

I know that I need a base, I need home comfort and the familiarity of things around me. I like to know where things are and where I am.  Unlike many people these days I do not have a wanderlust. It seems that there are many who are always going somewhere and who never really arrive.  I do feel bad though that my wife feels very differently and that I hold her back. 

We have travelled a little in the past, but never in a truly adventurous way. I wish sometimes that I could be different but I know that I can't. My heart is just not in it.  Car travel was ok but now I cannot drive, that pleasure has gone, and so I am limited really to being driven or taking public transport, which is either unreliable or uncomfortable or both.

Travelling around is a fairly modern phenomenon; in the past it was limited to the wealthy and those with nothing much else to do. Now relatively cheap air fairs and package tours make that possible for so many, and the skies are filled with metal tubes, polluting the air and consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels.  People thrust together by choice in glob trotting pseudo adventures, dragging themselves out of their daily routines, only to recreate those routines in a different location.

I wonder how many people fly out to exotic places and spend the days lying on the beach, or sitting by the pool reading a book?  Ok it is nice to experience a different culture but you can do that wandering around any big city in this country.

I have yet to visit anywhere that did not have flaws. There is no paradise, everywhere has advantages and disadvantages and on balance I think that this country is not so bad.

ps - the track above was filmed in 1969 at the great Woodstock festival.

The end of the world as we know it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODqj9Mq39FM

An historic day in an historic era. The most powerful nation in the world has become a dangerous joke in the eyes of the world. For years the west has been mocking the leader of Both Korea but now we have clowns in charge of both the UK and the USA and neither of them is at all funny. Both we and the USA are hitting the brakes on black ice with no one in charge who has any idea how to control what is happening.  Both countries are being led by people with minority support and yet who have emerged from the democratic process like frogs from a pond.

They wonder why they are mocked and derided, they get away with aiding their own, but for how long can either continue. Trump has a huge swell of middle America set against him, mainly the educated, and yet these are the very same people that he claims to represent. Nobody seems to want to align themselves with him today, and he has found it hard to find any acts to help celebrate his inauguration, and that should be a warning sign. Many of the big celebrity bands are high earners and probably Republicans and yes they are keeping so far away, they might as well be in Moscow. 

I cannot bear to watch today's events as they unfold. It is bad enough watching our own prime minister who has even less dress sense than I do, drowning in the Brexit swamp and promising things that she and her patty have no intention of delivering.

The growing nations, China for example, must be rubbing their hands in glee as the west degenerates into a pathetically chaotic state, and maybe it is their turn. Unfortunately I cannot imagine that the USA would go down without a fight, Armageddon seems like a possibility once more.

Fashion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj3bkqhUQM0

I have never been accused of being a dedicated follower of fashion. Those who know me, generally see me wearing Jeans and tee shirt or a top designed for comfort.  My own take on fashion was to a great extent imposed upon me by never having enough money to do otherwise, and thus my attitude was formed.

I know that fashions drive the consumer market and thus keep certain industries afloat and alive, and for that reason they are justifiable, but look into any  women's magazine or sunday supplement and you will see the most ludicrous things being sported by androgynous models; items that no sane person would ever be seen in public are held up as haute couture, stretching credibility well beyond breaking point.

Of course it is not just clothes that are subject to the pressures of fashion.  Recently it has become fashionable in some circles to support right wing politics. This of course is driven by the highly dumbed down dailies that have appeal to many. In this country we have Brexit, in the USA they suffer Trump and in France they have Marine LaPenn. Inevitably these will go out of fashion but probably not until they have caused a great deal of damage.

Tattoos used to be the province of sailors, stevedores and prostitutes. Not any more.  Look at the bodies of many professional football players or second tier actors, their bodies adorned with ink. That of course has trickled along to ordinary people and tattoo  parlours are everywhere; some producing tasteful and artistic work, though many do not.

Recently, or so it seems, we have available all sorts of body adjustments available.  Liposuction, boob jobs, belly tucks, botox treatments, hair implants and so on, all designed to promote the illusion of a body beautiful as described by the fashion industry.  What a tragedy that people cannot be satisfied with what they have. 

Next week I am booked in to have my nipples resized.

No Man's Land

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWhOO9Q323Y

No Man's Land is a work by Harold Pinter, first performed in 1975. We saw it last night, not up close and personal as it were but a live relay from a London theatre to screens all over.  We went to the theatre at Tonbridge School, a wonderful and rather plush theatre, the province of the school drama department.  Tonbridge is a high ranking public school and serves the needs of the wealthy, keeping their offspring in an opulence that state school students cannot even imagine.  I am sure that they have huge expectations of the students, after all they pay enough for the privilege.

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were superb in this rather strange play; a mix of comedy, mystery and tragedy. There were moments of hilarity and also sadness, and the hole production was wonderful.  They of course received a standing ovation, though not in our theatre, and although forty years old, the play seemed timeless.

No man's land would seem to be a zone, somewhere between life and death. Maybe it is a metaphor for retirement in a way, or perhaps he intended a more spiritual element to it. There seemed echoes of the Caretaker and similarities to Beckett's Waiting For Godot.  I don't claim to have fully understood any of Pinter's plays and this was no exception. Maybe that is a good thing, after all we cannot hope to understand everything.

The sound of silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Dg-g7t2l4

One of the sad parts about getting older, is that one's ability to interact with the world diminishes. We slow down, we become more susceptible to everything. Our senses dim and abilities, both physical and mental wane and fade.

I struggle with short term memory at the moment, though it seems that long term memories are still intact,  I struggle to walk any distance,  I already have a plastic lens in one eye, an artificial hip, and have lost the hearing in one ear.  

We have had many discussions about mortality and approaching infirmity and I know that there are some things that I cannot and will not tolerate.  I could not cope with losing my sight or my hearing. I could not tolerate a life without music or books, and I will not go into a home of any description. I started my life in an institution and will not end it in that way.

There are so many people out there living lives that are intolerable to them. Some live for years trapped inside shells and asking for escape; the law of course will not allow assisted suicide and for some they do not have the ability to end their own lives, and need release from their intolerable situations.  The facility for dignified exits is not allowed in this country, largely due to the protests of groups with a strong religious leaning, most of whom are young and fit and able. None of them can possibly empathise with those trapped.

We should all be able to decide when we have had enough. The able bodied can make that choice, so why not everyone. Having an organisation like Dignitas would prevent so many botched attempts at suicide that leave people in a worse state than they were before.  I have an escape plan in place but I don't know if it will work; I guess that time will tell.

Substance abuse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxaOItEmu3U

Many people think of the sixties as a time of rebellion, exploration and rejection of the status quo, fuelled by a plethora of substances designed to enhance one's state of mind. They say that if you can remember the sixties you were not there.  

Escaping from home in 1967 was life changing for me and I confess to over indulging in alcohol on many occasions. I am not sure how I managed that on a very meagre income but we definitely had our moments. Beer was affordable in those days, wine less so.  Drugs at college were not obviously in use, at least not to me. I lived in hall and as such we were under more scrutiny than those who lived in other accommodations.  There was some pot around but for many of us it was best avoided as being caught would have led to the end of your place at college and the idea of going home again was not one to consider.

I first tried pot at my sister's place in Notting Hill. I remember sitting around in her flat listening to the Incredible String Band and sharing a joint.  It was a pretty good experience - the stuff was very strong and all four of us were pretty stoned by the end of it.  I did enjoy it but afterwards felt no need to try it again, though I did once or twice in later life, and on neither occasion did I enjoy it as much as that first time.

Harder drugs scared me, and I was never tempted to try anything, not that it ever came my way. I suppose in that sense I was lucky. Lives change on random meetings as we know, and i was fortunate to have met mostly good people.

Of course going into teaching is a good incentive to avoid anything illegal and so from 1970, alcohol became my only drug of choice. It remains so and I sometimes think that I drink too much or at least too often, and then I think what the hell and carry on anyway. I know that my body is falling apart and that sooner or later it will fail completely - it happens to us all.  I can't remember where the story came from but it goes like this - Someone was told, eat less, give up drink, give up smoking and you will live longer." The reply was "Why?"

Who knows where the time goes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sNPorNyME0

Much to my delight, I have reestablished contact with a dear friend from the past. We met at college in 1967 and have not had any contact site that time. The first year of college is a strange time I guess and it is one in which a transition takes place. The majority of us were straight from school, so eighteen years old and for many away from home for the first time. The reins were off and the new freedom gave us all scope to explore our own boundaries, or as they would say today, to find ourselves.

For many that year has become a gap year. We could not afford that luxury, but on the other had we did not have to pay huge sums for the time in college and therefore accrue huge debts. Rather like life, I arrived at college with nothing and left with nothing; having said that I met some wonderful people and thanks to them learned a lot about myself.

That year introduced me to many experiences. Until then I had not been to an orchestral concert, an opera or eaten a curry. My eyes and ears were opened to so much it seems impossible from where I sit now.  I'd like to say that I was educated in the official sense of the word, but I was never a good student; I like many of those that I gravitated to were more interested in the other things that college had to offer. Most of us passed of course, but it wasn't about exam success, it was about your competence to run a classroom or to impart a curriculum to children and to be mindful of their safety. A few were weeded out along the way, they just didn't appear again after a teaching practice and they probably found other more lucrative pathways and met other groups of people.

For me that group of people will always be with me. I hadn't thought of my friend for a very long time, but now her memory is crystal clear. I can recall her 18 yr old face, her voice and so much more. Memory is a strange thing and it seems a shame that when we die, those memories will die with us. I think that is why I write this blog; maybe some of my memories will be read buy others in time to come.  Who knows?

Im Abendrot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppoqUVlKkBU

In a few hours, 2016 will be consigned to the history books. In some parts of course it has already passed and much of the world is asleep in 2017.  It has been an interesting year in the Chinese curse sense.  Health issues apart, the rise of the right wing both here and abroad have raised spectres that most of us would like to forget, and now we have increased antagonism between the superpowers, fighting like children over their toys.  

The world should be uniting, there re so many problems that we face as a species and yet we continue along ridiculous isolationist pathways. The likes of Nicola Sturgeon have set in motion a very dangerous and undesirable cascade.

I wish my reader a happy New year. It is being delayed by a second but the inevitable will arrive for most of us just after midnight.  I don't suppose that 2017 will be much better for the planet than this one has been but we can still hope that people start thinking again.

At Sunset (Im Abendrot)

We've walked, hand in hand,
thought hardship and joy,
Now we both rest
from walking across the silent countryside.

All around us the valleys are fading,
it has already become dark. Just two larks are rising,
dreamlike into the heavens.

Stand here and let them fly about,
it will soon be time to sleep,
lest we go astray
in this loneliness.

Oh further, silent peace!
So profound at sunset.
How tired we are of travelling:
Is this perhaps death?

Christmas song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I65_S78WHJY

Agricultural Caress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TAa1ghqKwc

Apart from the Archers, most of us have no idea about the realities of agricultural life and the nitty gritty of food production.  My own experience of farming was on a very small and inefficient farm back in the sixties. It was run by an alcoholic Irishman, though his son probably did most of the management. They had a small herd of cows and the rest of the operation seemed to be centred on them. How they made any money is anyone's guess and such enterprises probably no longer exist.

In those days everything we ate was seasonal. Well ok maybe we had Corned beef from Argentina and baked beans from the USA but most stuff was locally produced. Now we have any produce we like at any time of year and farms have become huge businesses and part of the global economy. It is the only way that enough food can be produced to feed the burgeoning population.

Farms are much like factories today, employing highly technical solutions to most processes and in some instances employing migrant workers on very low wages to do the jobs that machines cannot yet do.  having done many of those jobs myself, I can empathise with those people, but for many, a job of any kind is better than no job at all.

The farm that was a part of my childhood had its seasons and we would participate in most of the processes that went on; probably out of boredom more than anything else. We may not have been a very reliable workforce but neither were we paid. For us the work was an entertainment of sorts as well as an educative process.  I learned a lot of pretty useless stuff in school but the learning on a farm is about reality and that has stayed with me. I value and appreciate food because I know that producing it is a long and complex business and one that we should not take for granted.

Hell, fire and damnation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD_zuTjtKdI

I just got back from shopping.  I know that some people love it but I could see little evidence of that as I wandered aimlessly around the high street today.  Most people seemed as clueless and desperate as each other and as for christmas spirit - well!

Ok I put my hand up to being a bit of a scrooge on the surface, but underneath there is another one. It does seem to me that most people find this time of year very stressful, and while it benefits local shopkeepers to some extent, the real winners are the corporations who are. like gigantic hoovers, sucking people's hard earned money from them. People are as always spending money that they don't have, incurring debts for plastic crap that nobody needs and few want. We will buy huge amounts of food, much of which will go to waste, and all of this for one day of lunacy. Black bins will soon be piled high with garbage, and that holy of holy, the christmas tree will be heading for recycling and another bloody silly season will be done and dusted.  

In the meantime we smile and wish each other merry christmas and send off the usual pile of cards to people we never see and may think about once a year. We realise that we have forgotten some and have to get more cards to reciprocate, and so do they. It is a time when we find out who is dead and who is dying, who has split up and who have paired, who have reproduced and who has left the country. 

So for me the shopping is done, I won't disclose what I bought but I did find a Pratchett book that I haven't read and a really good DVD compilation of the Old Grey Whistle test in a charity shop. That takes the edge off a little.

Solid Ground

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLqVWsSJC0o

I went to the grandchildren's nativity play this afternoon, and while it was delightful to see the kids perform and show their families what they have been working towards for the last few weeks, it struck me that they are all being prepared to take their places on the treadmill. Ok they have a few years to go yet, but they will be taught to compete, to value property and to fit into the machine that is our society. They will strive to succeed in jumping through whatever hoops are fashionable and hope to find employment that pays them enough to afford a mortgage, which they will spend the rest of their lives paying back. They will then  build homes which they will spend very little time in because they are too busy working to make money, and then at the end of it all their accumulated things will end up in black plastic bags and landfill. Their houses of course will be taken over by the next cohort coming through who will have to raise even more money because the prices of properties has gone up, and so it goes on. Welcome to the machine.

We own nothing. Property is a myth but it is a powerful one that the capitalist system depends upon; in the words used at most funerals, we bring nothing into the world and we sure as hell can take nothing out of it. We are stardust - all of us and simply passing through. Maybe we should think less about ownership and and more about sharing of what we have. You cannot own the land, the land owns you, and to it you will return.