Blue-Sky Thinking

Those whole girls out there, running in the wind for their trains – they can’t think like this can they? What do we see when we get older, and how do we hear differently. The sounds get muffled but so slowly that we never notice until a long-unheard piece of music is nothing like you remember. I have trouble with conversations now; they have lost the top end, all the sibilance that makes speech understandable is gone and I have to lean forward and ask for a repeat of what has been said. Sometimes, especially at times like this when things have been going wrong, I wish I could go back to when I was a kid and start again. The question is, would I have all the knowledge I have now or just some inkling of having already been to the future, a knowledge that it will all be happening again.

I may have said before, that I feel the same now as I did when I was a kid but this is obviously only true for certain elements of my persona. I have obviously noticed an ability to concentrate and to take on complex emotional issues that passed me by when I was younger. Life as a kid for me was like Neighbours; nothing that happened was too serious and was resolved within a few episodes. Now the complexities of real life lead to great long periods of time with various unresolved outcomes hanging over me. I was reading the reviews of the BBC’s Shakespeare Re-told which indicated that the un-resolved plots of the Bard do not go down well with modern audiences and so all the plot lines have to be tied up. I suppose I do not know enough depth in Shakespeare plays to know whether this is true or just some excuse from the modern producers and writers to explain why they have mucked about with the stories. I do remember that Casualty used to leave many loose ends, each episode was self-contained but the long-term lives of the victims was often left only lightly closed. I never found myself upset by this and it chimes nicely with the idea that often medical conditions are not solved instantly by doctors but often take months or even years to clear completely if at all. The current political leanings towards targets actually go against this with their requirement for clear-cut results and ticks in boxes.

And another thing! Why do the government seem to want to override the opinions of experts all the time? They will take on board the findings of unqualified think-tanks and ignore the accumulated knowledge of years from professional bodies. Maybe I am going over the top here but this reminds me of the start of the Khmer Rouge persecution of what they saw as the elitist occupations such as Doctor and Lawyer. Now obviously we are not going to be turfed out of our comfortable homes to work the paddy fields but we are soon going to get to a point where the professions are seriously limited in their work by petty ideas from people who are not as clever as they like to think they are.

Nature Notes

Who do you think you are? Bill Oddie?

The area around this building is mostly countryside, though on one side is a vast area of cleared land which is currently subject to being moved around by various bits of machinery. There are still some leaves on the trees at the front though across the main road outside the business park, the land gives way to muddy fields and stark, black-branched trees. I really think I should try and go for a walk across there one day. Sometimes I think it would be great to just walk around the whole of the country, just trying to go down every road possible though I have been able to nail down the feelings I have about urban places. I was anxious when I first had to go to Chesterfield but I was pleasantly surprised by its low-level appearance. Our cities and just litter-bins these days and in my best misanthropic rage, who is that because of? All of us of course, though I might add that I have not knowingly littered any more than a broken fingernail since I was very small. I was made to carry any crisp-packets or chocolate bar wrappers around in my pocket until a bin was reached. We have not yet been able to persuade our daughter to do this but she will not drop them; instead she hands them back to us over her head. Some education is required there, Come to think of it, Number One Son already does the same thing. If he can do it there is no excuse for the sea of paper and plastic bottles that seems to be everywhere these days. I sometimes wonder why people, who are increasingly image conscious these days, are quite prepared to dump stuff in the environment which they have to go through every day. I was going to write a typical, vitriolic sentence here to describe them but I just can’t be bothered. I suppose some anger should be directed as the companies which use three times as much packaging as they need to. Tax on Plastic Bags now!