Dear Ebenezer Knobdonkey …

Listening to 10 by Kate Rusby

Well I didn’t get to read any poetry – I suppose there was plenty of time but usual routines got in the way. So what to ramble on about now? What about people who can’t the difference between an Error Trap and a Gin Trap? Nah! Too easy! The parlous state of the National Tiddly-Winks team? Well in that case everything seems to be hunky dory at the moment.

Oh yes! Putin seems to be on a roll at the moment . Offering to site the Missile Defence shield in Azerbaijan seems to have stunned everyone. The first time I heard about SDI all those years ago my systems tutor said that it was a great example of a system that could not possibly work – ever – and as far as I can see it still is. Unless you can get decrypted access to the launch codes then no system will ever be certain of catching every missile and of course the chances of the implied aggressors in all this actually using anything particularly sophisticated to lob their boiler-plate nukes at us is quite low. I see a few thousand fireworks stuck together in a giant, milk-bottle shaped launcher leaning in our general direction. Who’s most likely to get hit by that? Probably not us! At least we can feel safe behind the billions of pounds worth of hi-tech retaliation in our possession. Meanwhile – back at the ranch and home on the range.

I do wish it would rain again. I now have Air conditioning in the car and I have been feeling a little disconnected from the weather. It’s not that I am complaining – it’s preferable to being sticky and uncomfortable but it just seems that the seasons don’t matter any more. As well, it seems that in general people are unaware of where their food comes from and I suppose this gels with our disconnectedness from the world around. It wouldn’t be a hardship for some people to live their lives in windowless cities with nothing outside – like being in a space-station. I’m not a mad outdoorsy person despite growing up in the country but I do like to feel the weather and see the sky, the stars and trees.