Spring
Last Saturday I bought daffodils, and all week they have shown the way towards Spring. Wonderful yellow bells that also bring a delicious scent, subtle and soft hints of the joys to come.
I spent some time this morning planting potatoes, just a few to provide a plate or two of delight in a few weeks time. There are times when I wish for a larger garden, and a few years ago, before my illness I did have an allotment. They were magic days, spent digging, sowing, weeding and harvesting.
This morning the farming programme on the radio stated that fewer children are now taken to visit a working farm. Health and safety was given as the reason. I'd like to decapitate these do-gooders and the insurance companies they really represent, for they are destroying our sense of wonder. Our children don't know where food comes from. At a recent exhibition of rural crafts children were asking 'what's that?' pointing at a cow! We don't teach children about animals, about food quality, about very much at all, except that they can sue anyone who puts harm in their way.
Pity that principle can't be exercised upon supermarkets displaying absolute rubbish (at really low prices folks) so our children (we are told) now face the prospect of dying from obesity-related illnesses before their parents.
It'll save money on pensions - perhaps that's the idea.
Freedom
Tony Blair is blustering, telling us all that only he and the Secret Service know the answers. Didn't he do that over weapons of mass destruction? Didn't he insist on making us invade another country without due cause, saying he knew he was right? Now he's at it again, acting like a petty dictator, telling us he knows best.
It's not good enough, and the House of Lords deserve our whole-hearted support. That should be their job. I can't accept that an elected house would be any better. If the same party controlled both houses we would effectively have a worse dictatorship than we have today.
Part of the present impasse has been created by Tony Blair's obstinancy. After eight years of being surrounded by sycophants and flunkeys power has clearly gone to his head.
The very idea of imprisoning people without trial or charge or the right to defend themselves is absolutely against our idea of justice.
Blair must NOT be allowed to get away with it.
Moslem idealists today - but it could be you tomorrow.
Quiet Start
Visits to the dentist a not a bad way to start the day. My dentist is a good chap, lately come from South Africa, and he treats me gently, giving me the confidence to let him do his dreadful work.
It gave me the chance to relax over breakfast; scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes on toast, washed down with hot tea. Delicious. There was also the chance to prepare a meal for later. I often use a slow cooker, as it offers convenience and handles cheaper cuts of meat better than anything else I know.
Sweat some onions, chop carrots, celery and anything else you fancy, and throw it all into a slow cooker. Left alone for eight hours it will produce a delightful meal, especially when spring greens, broccoli or cabbage are quickly steamed as you enjoy a pre-dinner drink.
I often cook one day, re-heating the next to improve flavour, having removed any excess fat that may have risen to the top of the stock. Today's meat is b risket, one of my favourite cuts, coming from the underbelly of the beast it is cheap and has a distinctive flavour.
Ah well, time to do something before this evening. The digestive juices are already starting to run.
Treacle
It's like swimming through treacle here today. My email client has a 'temporary problem accessing your account', the lovely expression it uses when I've spent time composing a long complex email, which it then swallows up, loses for ever telling me there's a problem. By that time I don't need telling, I need a large scotch!
There's a help facility, which I email 4-5 times a day. Each time (it seems) I receive an automated message that tells me, from their records, that this is the first time I've had any problems.
Why do we put up with such bad service from IT suppliers? If the local greengrocers filled your bag with rotten apples you'd complain, so why do we let BTInternet.com and all the rest of the charlatans get away with it?
Increasingly it is difficult to find anyone to complain to. Telephone numbers are often charge calls, addresses impossible to find on web sites, and yet these companies plunder our credit cards with impunity, often cutting us off without a qualm when the card expires and their software cannot cope with such a strange happening. BTInternet have done that to me - causing all sorts of problems.
OK, enough moaning for one day. I've got to catch up.
Education
Our education system is failing our children. Too many leave school without basic skills, and that leads to the spiralling erosion of our society. Why work when you can steal, deal in drugs, make money by exploitation? Join the gang, gain protection from fellow drop-outs, and there is a life to be made.
Young men, in particular, need a structure that they can live within. They often need to test that structure, to know its parameters, to discover the strengths and weaknesses. And to know they can influence and change, but that rebellion is not worthwhile.
Recent decades have seen a degradation of those structures. There was a disastrous period when teachers decided that the children knew best, that they only needed to be supplied with materials, space and time, and they would eductate themselves. In some respects we are still recovering from those days as those children, now adults, knowing little of the world, attempt to build something they can understand.
The news today is that the Commissioner for Racial Equality wants young black men to be taught separately. They are failing. Not obtaining the educational grades they require. Not integrating into the wider society. Making them feel different is not going to help. I'd suggest, some 4-5 decades after the start of mass immigration into this country that racial equality should no longer be an issue. It has become a convenient cloak, behind which failure to work and conform, can hide. 'You are only saying that because I'm black' is not a valid excuse.
Too many immigrants to Britain now know that the indigenous population are tolerant so there is no clear reason why young black kids should talk about the colour of their skins being a problem. It's got nothing to do with that. I walked around my local town last week, seeing group after group of young people talking and laughing together. I began to notice that each group contained a mixture of races; black, asian, blondes, dark-haired, it didn't seem to matter. What did matter was that each member of each group accepted the social norms, not just of that group but of the wider social context.
Society needs its people to conform, to speak our language, to accept our rules, to enjoy our pleasures.
Unfortunately some kids are not being taught what these social norms are - and they will have a painful education, because the greater power will subjugate them in the end.
