It’s Not Grey

…. it’s silver.

No it’s not another vanity project, just today’s cloud cover.  A third day of unbroken sunshine was perhaps too much to expect.  The Grasshopper has to remain confined to barracks, for there are other commitments today, but the muscles are slowly returning.

So under that silver cover I stopped, and I stood, and I listened.  Short bursts, an uzi perhaps, a kalashnikov even, close by.  The woodpecker was enjoying himself, much closer than usual.  There I was, mundane chores and washing on the line, safe in the knowledge that the morning mist would burn off soon, that the sun would take up residence once again.  And the woodpecker was drumming life into me.

The binoculars failed to find him, but he was not far away.  Across the road is a small stand of Scots pines, proudly defying the prevailing wind.  He was in there somewhere, still is.

And on the laburnum, a half filled peanut feeder, is the first goldfinch of the year.  There’s a sign to gladden the heart.  The chaffies have retreated, round the back to the dogwood and some seed refilled earlier.

Spring is in the air; have you felt it yet?  Baby rabbits are venturing out, and the cat spends hours at the warren entrances.  One ran for safety the other night, in the evening gloaming, straight under the front wheel as the days stretch out at last.  I stress no more at these events, for the rabbit is the scourge of the garden, and there are more of them than a couple of cats can control.  Moles can be a bigger problem, but I like them; even as I survey a massive task ahead as the garden begins to welcome the coming of spring.

The postie brings another book to read.  I might tell you about it one day.  But I await others, impatiently.  Robin Hobb will be here soon, the final one of her dragons.  And there’s more from Tahir Shah in a few weeks, another beautiful volume to grace the finest shelf.  Jay Griffiths will be here before long, delayed for a bit, a woman timing her entrance to perfection no doubt, but don’t they all?

But before them there will be a new name on the shelf.  I first came across Esther Woolfson in the pages of Earthlines.  Stunning words, a name to note.  Then she appeared in the book review pages.  Digging deeper I find an earlier work on crows; the ones resident with her family and their exploits with them.  Corvus is her blog.  She has been a writer-in -residence; there’s title that tingles and titillates.

So next in from the postie will, I hope, be Field Notes from a Hidden City.  It promises much; mobbing starlings, rats, squirrels,spiders and lots more no doubt.  Here’s a few of her words, just to get you in the mood:

“In the shallows, four sanderlings, back from their breeding grounds in the high Arctic and Siberia, run and dart: small,neat birds, white and grey in their winter plumage.  In Under the Sea Wall Rachel Carson writes of them running ‘with a twinkle of black feet’.  Audubon, a man as devoted to killing as to illustrating, suggested helpfully: ‘the sportsman may occasionally hit six or seven at a shot….'”

Now the washing will be dry when I return won’t it, blue replacing silver.  Here it comes, spring too.

It’s Not All About the Plane

I have been reading some of the works of Rory MacLean for a few years now.  For some reason or other I didn’t read Falling for Icarus when it first appeared in 2004.  It may have been the location, for my reading then tended to be more Siberian Wilderness, or Silk Road Adventure, than Greek island, or it may have been the artwork on the cover – yes I know, but….

But I’ve just finished reading it now, republished by one of my favourites , Tauris Parke, with a sensible cover.  When he travelled to Crete MacLean was grieving after the death of his mother, and in need of a project from childhood and some physical labour.  So he set out to build and fly a plane, and where better than the home of Icarus.  But the tale is of much more than that.  It is of life in a Cretan village, filled with characters, each with idiosyncrasies.  We have a wedding, and a funeral, amongst many other little sidetracks, and I know now why Rory suggested the bereaved open the window.

The Tauris Parke Edition

The real tale of his own grieving is told in a much later work, A Gift of Time, which I thought I had commented on a while back but cannot find, for it is a very special take on the art of biography .  It was some years after the Cretan exploits that Rory MacLean was able to face the diaries of his mother’s last few months.  She is in the background in Icarus but she is there, as too is his wife Katrin who had such a vital role, and some wonderful words, in the later book.  Icarus has hints of underlying tensions between the couple, and not just at her fears of him killing himself with his flying quest.  And again some of this is revealed in Gift.

The new edition has a terrific introduction by Robert Macfarlane, (who else?), and a fresh afterword by Katrin.  They open and close it perfectly.

Now I have to confess to having enjoyed Rory’s company on a couple of occasions, in Ireland and in Wales, and have memories of Welsh mud and Irish stout and good company. A proud Canadian he has roots in the west of Scotland, links to Mull in fact which, as some may know holds a special place for me. Life on Crete proved to be Rory’s version of my nunnery on Iona.

The plane is a thing of some beauty, taking us back almost, to the days of rubber-solution glue and sticky-backed plastic.  But there is an engine, eventually, and a propellor, and much angst.  And a son says farwell to his mother.

Though travelling less, from a current base in Berlin, he still writes, and I’m waiting patiently on his next volume. But we might need your help to make it happen.  For Back in the USSR – Heroic Adventures in Transnistria, is being published by Unbound, which I also mentioned recently.  I think the popular term for this is crowd-sourced.  If enough of us make a pledge then it will appear in print, but if not……

Now the Transnistria project is a joint effort, with Nick Danziger.  In fact the co-author may have been responsible for me ignoring the initial version of Icarus, for I was off on Danziger’s Travels, and his Adventures, and you will find his name on my list.  But Nick Danziger turned his back on writing and is now a top-class photographer.  The dynamic duo work together on occasions, and I fervently hope that Transnistria reaches the Bedside Table before too long.

But Falling for Icarus, what a load of fun; what great writing of people and of place, and a fine yarn to bring it all together.  There is a short video out there on You Tube somewhere of Rory’s Woodhopper on it’s maiden and final flight,  but before you go looking for that – and I’ll provide no links here – read the book.  It needs no pictures and has none, for description is everything.  And it would do no harm at all to read A Gift of Time first.

For now though, I might have to hop aboard Rory’s Magic Bus, but it might be a bit different to the road that Danziger travelled 15 years or so earlier.

It’s Good to Talk

And it started with the woodpecker, drumming his morning greetings from the woods on the hillside as the sun rose.  A smile on the face, so soon?  You bet.

Then The Ghamellawallah and The Mistress wanted to talk too.  Eddie Izzard and that brilliant DNA study, we started with.  Those blue eyes of mine, only from Turkey’s Baltic Sea coast they are, those and every other blue eye on the planet it seems.  Brilliant stuff.  Aren’t you glad those two women walked out of Africa?  How many tens of thousands of years ago?

And so discussions evolved, and we were on to Gaza and the West Bank.  Now my thoughts are very much a gathering process, both sides, but theirs are firmly entrenched on one side of the divide, understandably.  He has his father’s tattoo numbers embedded in his mind; she knows her roots deeply and is concerned over rising anti-semitism and the fears that it could all happen again if too much power was placed in the wrong hands.

From that The Referendum got a thrashing.  There’s no way I’m voting to make Alex Salmond Our Dear Leader for evermore.  Sighs.  It’s not about that, it’s about getting the powers to make our own decisions.  Then, when we have those powers, electing a solid and democratic government to take Scotland forward, to shape the country we want for our childen and grandhildren.  And if you think that Johann Lamont’s the leader we need, then vote for her party, but we need the powers first.

Johann Lamont, three pairs of eyes roll to the skies, and the room convulses in laughter.  The 4th most unequal society in the developed world – they didn’t know that one either.  We have the chance to right those wrongs.

Later I collected some literature, with my friends specifically in mind.  There’s Allan Grogan at Labour for Independence, Women for Independence, and the Jimmy Reid Foundation, yes that Jimmy Reid.

For the talking didn’t end in the jeweller’s workshop, and went on late into the night at the launch of the Yes campaign in my local constituency.  Allan Grogan gave a superb speech and what a role he is going to play in the next year or two.  And Robin McAlpine, from The Reid Foundation, who I hadn’t heard before but had read some artciles.  Well for campaigns and strategy, and a vision for the future, my hopes were raised, soaring even

We had a passionate speech too, from my own MSP, Aileen Campbell, the voice of the young, with her son toddling around in the background.  But this was not about party politics and we were guided forward by our host Elaine C Smith, of no party at all but on a lifelong campaign for independence.  And there was Isobel Lindsay of Scottish CND, another lifelong goal tantalisingly close to being acheived; nuclear free, I’m all for that.  And the Greens, an essential role to play.

We heard of David Mundell, Scotland’s only Tory MP, and his astonishing boast of being proud that Scotland as a nation was extinguished in 1707, subsumed into Greater England ever since, echoed by Darling and Moore, Better Together.  You could almost hear the ker-ching of donations and pledges of votes in the Yes camp as the No strategy gathers pace.  The Mistress hadn’t heard that one, didn’t believe it possible, but it is.  Sad.

Labour’s Anas Sarwar was at it too.  Why spend money on care for the elderly when too few lived long enough to enjoy it, quoth he.  As you stagger under that one just reflect on the fact that the worst cases of child poverty and life expectancy in the country are mainly in Sarwar’s Glasgow, a legacy of a 70 year Labour fiefdom; keeping the people just where they want them.  Better Together; Aye Right, as they say in these parts.

Boss Milliband has been on the road too, a wee tour to get some fresh ideas.  Off he went, to Scandinavia, to those small independent countries leading all the world’s indices of success.  And back he’ll come, and tell 5 million of us with the same natural resources and even better people that we’re too wee, too poor – ach you know the rest.  We cannae dae that, Better Together.

So if you want more bedroom tax and austerity cuts, Vote No; If you’re happy with Trident’s billions Vote No; and if you want nothing, Vote No.  The credit rating’s down, as they promised it would never be – Vote No.

But I loved the tale of the son coming back to the family dinner table, filled with hope for the future, plans for his country.  Father folds the paper and lays it down, joins in the discussion.  Whit’s it to you Dad, you never vote?  Ah’ve never had anything to vote for son, but I do now.

I’d better stop there, for it’s been a long one, but no apologies.  It’s a Big Yes from me.  Now Scotland’s DNA Project, The Genealogist’s birthday.  There’s an idea.

From Dervla’s Gaza to:

Hebron, and our guide is Edward Platt.

The City of Abraham is not an easy read, but I’m glad I opened those covers.  Platt gives us a history of the city and its peoples, and takes us through to the present very difficut times.  Let’s start with some numbers:

The population is around 185,000.  By far the bulk, all but 20,000 are in the H1 sector of this divided city, under the control of the Palestine Authority.  The remainder are in H2 and all but a few hundred are also Palestinians, but security is provided by the Israel Defence Force; provided for a few hundred illegal settlers.

It was Abraham’s city, a few thousand years ago, and today’s warring factions follow the teachings of his sons; the children of Isaac, of Ishmael and of David – different mothers of course, for barren wife one had to be supplanted by others until such time as divine intervention allowed her to give birth in her 90s.  Tel Rumeida was originally settled around 3,000 BCE, a few hundred years after Adam & Eve started it all, and long before Abraham came along in 1812 BCE.  As with all things related to scriptures we have to kid on that aboriginal cave art hadn’t been around for 50,000 years and that there had been evolution in the interim.

There was an appalling massacre in Hebron, of 67 Jews, in 1929 and the deportation of others by the British authorities; still in living memory and certainly fresh in the mind when the State of Israel was declared and through other pivotal events in the 60s and later.  More recently we’ve had the Oslo Accord and a Two Nation State – twenty years on and no progress – and we’ve had the atrocities of Cast Lead.

Platt engages with the entire community.  It is a community that once lived together as all communities should; shopping in each other’s markets, friendship and respect.  It was a city where many daughters of Islam went by the name of Leah or Rachel, given their roots from Abraham.  But today it is broken.

Platt takes us to a house at the top of the street.  The owners have to leave their door open, so that the soldiers have easy access to the roof and a view over the city below.  All rooftop views are impaired for the souks and alleys below are umbrellad with mesh, necessary to catch the stones and rocks being thrown about.  But the bullets get through.

The archaelogists have been working hard at Tel Rumeida, unearthing the past.  The Tomb of the Patriarchs is vital to all, like the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.  So the settlers dump their caravans on the site and think it is the best place in the world to raise broods of a dozen or more children.  It is a place where Brooklyn accents, and London ones too, go about brainwashing the next generation of bigots.

And it’s all done In The Name of God.

I know not what the solution may be.  The Oslo Accord has not worked, yet.  But, as was the case with Dervla in Gaza, I find myself thinking of Northern Ireland at times.  I never thought I’d live to see the day when Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley shook hands, and looked forward.  So there must be hope.

Aside from a lesson in history, of which I knew far too little, what I took from Platt’s extensive researches was more hope, through Breaking the Silence, the words of Israeli soldiers, and also despair through one of those Brooklyn settlers.

I look forward to more from Dervla, when her notes from the West Bank and Jersalem are published later in the year.  But for now I think it’s time to throw a few more shekels in the direction of the Humanists.

Do Grasshoppers Hibernate?

There’s been a rare sighting this week, a couple of them acually.

It seems a long time since those variables that are health, weather, diaries and other commitments all contrived to work together.  But these last couple of days have been such that no excuse would do.  It has been too good not to cycle.

But it’s been hard work, after a long lay off.  Those big strong hill-climbing thigh muscles have disappeared, replaced it seems by a couple of wobbly Stornoway Black Puddings strecthing out, pumping, aching.  And they seem to have a bigger load on board; for there’s a christmas pudding stretching lycra into shapes the designers could never have thought possible.

And having stopped, that last climb back to Grasshopper Towers proving a nice little warm down as I walked slowly home, so the knees begin to complain.  But I shan’t.  For it was a real joy out there.  Under a sky marked only with a jetstream of saltire, life was returning to the hedgerows.  The crisp, dried leaves of the beech are slowly giving up their grip, giving way to buds that will unfurl before long.

But the fields are quiet yet; outdoor lambing has yet to begin.  Strangely I saw no horses, though I returned with an appetite.  There is birdsong where of late there has been wind.  As I type the office door lies ajar, and blue tits and chaffinches serenade me in the way the radio can’t.

But the season ahead is mired in gloom.  For most of the cycleways in these parts seem to be taken over by construction traffic.  Some have been closed since before winter set in.  There is mud everywhere, broken tarmac and deep puddles.  And there are massive lorries carrying loads of who-knows-what back and forward.  These are not roads for a cyclist, not even for a motorist at the moment.

And the alternatives are filled with traffic.  Just this morning, on a brief (but not as brief as it should have been as The Grasshopper did it’s best impersonation of a tortoise) mile long stretch of the A road, two petrol tankers passed, waiting for the right moment and giving reasonable space thankfully, but they left me with a faceful of stour and dirt and fumes, followed by half a dozen cars desperate to get passed them too.  There is no fun to be had on these stretches.

The construction work could go on for months, for there is no sign of anything other than groundworks, timber felling, and road widenings, passing spaces and access routes.  They haven’t even started bringing in the bits that will eventually spring to life as wind turbines.  Still, at least they’re all going to be confined to distant parts, seen only by all the cyclists who use those roads on a daily basis.  It looks as though the single turbine applications along the valley floor may be quashed, but that’s another story for another day.

Now where did I put the Deep Heat?  And what time’s that dental appointment?  Oh pain, agony; it’s great to be back out on the road again.

 

Annemarie Schwarzenbach

It’s not a name that’s ever tripped off my tongue before.  I came across her in a bookshop, as I tried desperately to put the intensity and the stress of January behind me, and sought some retail therapy, a quest for reading material.  But it’s not a name I would have come across with only a search engine for company, though you might, now that I mention it.

Two Swiss girls set off in a Ford Deluxe Roadster, just as Europe was imploding in 1939.  They were headed for Afghanistan, the northern road from Herat to Kabul.  There was a bit of consternation, for they refused the veil.  It was a quite a trip even to get there, via Anatolia, Trebizon, Ararat and more.  You may have read one of the tales of the trip, I hadn’t, for Ella Maillart published The Cruel Way in 1947.  Schwarzenbach was her travelling companion, known in those pages as Christina.

Both were well travelled, and well published.  Annemarie’s expertise was in photo-journalism as we now know it.  The girls parted company in Kabul, as Annemarie’s colourful past caught up with her.  It was on the steamer back to Europe from Bombay that Schwarzenbach wrote a series of articles of her trip, some published others not.

In 2011 Seagull Books published an English translation, and am I glad I found All The Roads Are Open, for it is packed with delight, with descriptions of landscape that sing to you, brim full with colour and with sound.

Much more than The Afghan Journey

Just a week or two ago I happened to be writing a few inadequate words on Isfahan’s Chehel Sutun.  And here it appears again.  It is a palace in Isfahan, translated as Forty Pillars.  Robert Byron danced there.  But there are only 20 pillars.  However, as Schwarzenbach explains, if you take yourself off to the far end of the water tank, and gaze back at the palace under the clear Persian skies – Chehel Sutun.

In a few short pages Annemarie tells more of the Hindu Kush than you may glean from taking a Short Walk with Eric Newby, no matter how much the great man entertains.

Annemarie Schwarzenbach died far too young.  She was only 34 when she fell off her bike.  What a way to go for someone with her adventures notched up, and more lying ahead.  She was somewhat unconventional.  A convenient marriage, and life as the wife of a diplomat, suited her not.  Like her mother before her she was always attracted to the fairer sex, but significantly less discreet.  Scandalous were her affairs.

In Kabul she succumbed to the temptation of the drugs which had seen her in therapy before the trip.  Later she would be released from hospital in Bellevue, where she was treated for schizophrenia, on the condition that she left the country.  She had travelled alone through the Levant, and was passionately anti-fascist.  Let’s find out more, please.

Love is in the Air

or so I’m told.  But really I think it is change that it is in the air.  And to prove it I’m even going to provide links to articles published today in the much lamented Herald.

Yesterday we had polling news, superbly disseminated over at Wings.  There is a nice swing to the Yes camp.  But in one age group, 18-24, the percentage in favour has doubled since the last poll by the same organisation 6 months previously.  Interesting.

Only one thing has changed between the two polls.   The question was altered, following the advice of the Electoral Commission, replacing the perceived offensive ‘do you agree’, with the simple ‘should’.  So that’s a good move then.  But more importantly in the intervening period one thing has remained unchanged, and we have all listened to relentless negativity from the No camp, which continues yet.  Scaremongering does not work.

Also voting will be the younger brothers and sisters of those 18 year olds, the 16 & 17s, but they’re not included in any polling.  Hmmmm.

Anyway, back to The Herald.  Iain McWhirter gives his views on all that negative stuff from the combined unionists.  And then we have the social impact, and the wise words of Nobel prize winning economist Jospeh Stiglitz.  Now that is a message that needs to be spread, for it is the loss of socialist principles that has left the entire UK trailing far behind the modern successful nations –  typically small independent countries with a population of around 5m.  Read on down to the comments on that article and you’ll find reference to the GINI index of statistical dispersion, where the UK lies 46th, and the top countries are, in order:

Sweden/Slovenia/Denmark/Norway/Iceland/Czech Rep/Slovakia

Now ask yourself where your ambitions for your children and grandchildren, for Scotland’s Future may lie.  Then perhaps bring the World Prosperity Index into the equation.  The rankings here stand at:

Norway/Denmark/Sweden/Australia/New Zealand/Canada/Finland

Are you noticing a trend here?  On the WPI the UK entry is at 13th, well behind the much lambasted Ireland at 10th.

So small and independent, socially aware, and successful.  Or more of the same, more austerity measures, more illegal wars, more waste on WMDs, more benefits withdrawn, more suicides.  Need I go on?

I have to say, these are two fine articles in The Herald.  Iain McWhirter has long held to his own principles, but editorial policy is another matter, one perhaps not unrelated to plummeting circulations.  But these are two welcome signs, coming as they do on the back of fine, and surprising, input from Kevin McKenna at The Guardian and Joyce McMillan at The Scotsman.

There’s certainly something in the air.  Do you love your country?

Long Way To Go

I was surprised, the other day, to be asked my views on the Independence issue; and my answer was not what was expected.

But I was quite taken aback to be told I was the very first person heard to have expressed a favourable view, indeed a passionate belief that it was a certainty.

Certainly we mix in different circles.  I was after all in Edinburgh, the douce suburbs of Corstorphine no less; and my host was of a different generation.   The table was ready for the evening bridge session.  The Scotsman is still taken every day, and Scotland on Sunday was on the kitchen worktop, by the ashtray.  The BBC News was on.  And therein lies the problem.

This was a house yet to be exposed to the internet.  Computers were alien, and absent.  There was of course awareness, and wonder at what youngsters could do, how their lives were different, but it was not something to be embraced in the ninth decade of life.  No discussion.  Life is too short and has enough complications.  But I’m thinking of my childrens’ future.

Now I take the view, a very sad one, that The Scotsman will not survive.  Circulation is near a third of what it once was; readers have fled, advertisers follow and clicks on the website will not replace them.  A factor, but by no means the only one, is a political stance hostile to our government of the past seven years and the hopes for our future.  The publisher’s share price plummets to a couple of pence.

It will not survive; but it will still be hear to peddle bias and lies until October next year.  There was a prime example on Sunday, with an article proclaiming the Scottish government to be the root of the current horse meat problem – it was so ludicrous it was removed from the website before the day was out, after the damage was done of course.  As it happened I heard another journalist on the radio pouring scorn on the same article, and on the general outlook of said paper.  He was a journalist with a long socialist record, contributor to The Guardian, as pro-union as they come.  But Kevin McKenna has begun to find his voice, to buck the trend, to see the light.

But I do worry.  There will be many people believing what they read, stuck in a rut of habit, unable to access what the rest of the world is waking from slumber to find.  There is no Wings Over Scotland, no Newsnet Scotland in such households.  There is work to be done.

And now we hear Mr Cameron telling us not to try and fix something that isn’t broken; after spending five years telling us how broken Britain was and how he was going to fix it.  We need online resources to lay bare these ridiculous statements, and to that end I’m proud to support Rev Stu in his quest to turn his outrageously successful quest into a professional resource in the next vital 18 months.  Time to start ‘paying for the papers’.  Here’s a timely reminder that we cannot take for granted all that is reported.

But I don’t know how we spread the word into the homes that remain technology-free, other than by talking to them, an opportunity all too infrequent.  It is possible though that discussions round the bridge table down Corstorphine way may have taken a new turn last weekend.  Meanwhile start the day with a smile, if it wasn’t so damn serious and close to the bone – here’s Munguin.

Jungle Tales

Actually they start in the woods of Galloway, drift off to the fishing grounds of Newfoundland, and wander many places in between.

But for much of his life Donald MacIntosh was in West Africa, a tree prospector and surveyor in places like Liberia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.  He lived the life in the equatorial rainforest; bearers and houseboys, and tales to tell, some taller than others.  And does he tell them well.

Many times had I picked up Travels in a White Man’s Grave in the bookshop.  But never did I buy and read, an error I may have to change soon.  MacIntosh’s previous book was on the prizelists; six he has written, and other writings post retiral.  I’ll need to find out more.

Gone Native was published in 2010.  It is a collection of essays and memories.  They go back to childhood in the lands of Galloway, where he learned of the wildlife and woodland as had Gavin Maxwell at nearby Monreith a few years before him.  He has written about the area and the times in other works and I’ll need to add them to my list for he is a man of some interest, a man with a life well lived and a way of telling it.

He was there when The Dandy launched, translating it into the Gaelic for his grandfather to enjoy; a grandfather convinced that Desperate Dan must have been a man of Mull.  I’d like to read more of the guddled trout shared in a shelter in the woods with the local tramp; of grandfather’s little clay pipe and stash of baccy cached in a dry nook in a tree.  And I’d like to read more of the girl on the beach at Ballantrae.

But those mysteries, of gypsies and Sawney Beane are nothing compared to the tales from the jungle; the characters of the ex-pat club or the whore-house.  Oh yes, I’ll need to read more MacIntosh.

But it was another Mackintosh that swayed my decision to buy Gone Native.  For one of the essays is called Marie of Roumania, and she has been a favourite of mine since I stuck my head round her bedroom door, on the edge of Transylvania, and was dazzled by a room that could only have been designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, all silver and swirls.  So there’s a biography of Marie on the shelf, and even a book of her own, of her life with Ferdinand through the dark days when monarchy fell out of favour.  She was of course related to our own mob, as they all were.  But that is another story for another day.

Anyway MacIntosh has an essay of that name.  I have read it three times now, and I know not why it is so called.  For the lovely Marie is not mentioned, does not feature or even seem to be remotely connected.  It is a tale that starts in a Lagos courthouse – Wife decapitates husband’s penis with one bite – and progresses to a 94 year old seeking advice in an agony column on the wisdom of removing false teeth in giving gratification to her husband, before heading off into the realms of female circumcision.

The tale ends with the visit of Betsy, in Lokoja, cafe-au-lait colouring, pink stetson, scarlet cowboy boots, and an offer he managed to refuse.  All good stuff, but what it has to do with Marie of Roumania I have yet to discover.  Read on, young man, read on.

Supply and Demand

Spring lambs yesterday, coming back from the farmers’ market.  There they were, in the fields, glad the snow has gone, for the time being.  Drooled I did, at the thought; lamb shanks and mutton chops in the bag, bambi liver too.

I did ask, but there was no horsemeat available.  Perhaps if we called it equi-mince, or put it on sale beside the cowmeat, sheepmeat and pigmeat…..

Anyway it’s a bit of a stushie isn’t it?  And where will it end?  Another layer of bureaucracy in the food chain, I’ll guess.  More men in white coats with clipboards, higher prices, but not at the farm gate.  More scope for bungs as everyone finds every way to improve their margins and earn a crust, to pay the wages.  If the vastly over-funded football industry can succumb to the filthy luchre of added loot, what chance the humble abattoir or processor?

Then I read, in the local rag, of the latest disgust at the hands of Atos; a man passed fit for work, and by definition devoid of benefits, too ill to take the bus home and carted off in an ambulance.  A vet it turned out, perhaps there’s openings in the food chain?

Atos, remember them, sponsors of the Paralympics, with some loose change from the largesse given of our public purse, the profits circulating in foreign fields boosting someone else’s ailing economy.  But don’t blame the current bunch of thieving, cheating scoundrels, for their contract was awarded by the last bunch of thieving, cheating scoundrels; the same ones that put the PFI millstone round the necks of our children and grandchildren for decades to come, convinced that it was the right thing to do, but without asking for whom.

Supply and demand; tell that to those having their housing benefit cut.  Well do I remember Gran’s house, with the bedrooms where my mother and her sisters and brother grew up.  Plenty space for visiting grandchildren to rampage, to stay over, all together.  Today she would be moved on, or impoverished, for the house was needed for others.

But there is nothing else on offer, for we have the legacy of Maggie’s Right to Buy.  The housing stock was sold off, at bargain basement prices, and never replaced.  The alternative now is private landlords, sky-high rentals, and more housing benefit to meet them.  The logic defies me.

But the food chain, supply and demand.  Those tales of folk liking their weeky lasagne or whatever.  It was good, but they’re not going to eat it any more.  Why not?  Why the long face?  Back to chicken nuggets is it?  Reconstituted, scrapings from the floor, or worse; once had a life in an A4-sized cage for a few weeks; never tasted the pasture and fresh air of a horse paddock.  But cover it in highly seasoned crispy crumb, and give it a name, some packaging, a marketing budget…..

Somehow I think the horse might just be better, and I speak with one who has buried three, paid for the passports to avoid them going into the food chain; buried them to avoid paying someone to take them away.  Where will it all end?

Alex, Nicola – take me away from all this, please.  See, there is hope.  Now I’m off to lie down in a darkened room.  Off to Edinburgh actually, where Gran’s house was….