Marmite

Growing up, if you loved Bambi , Watership Down , Daktari , Skippy , Old Yeller , Animal Magic or Dr Dolittle , then prepare to be possessed by the green-eyed monster. A couple of weeks ago, Hubby and I ‘enjoyed’ (such an inadequate word sometimes) an afternoon at Tiggywinkles, “the world’s leading wildlife hospital.”

I was expecting ‘it’ but not the detail of it. I certainly wasn’t expecting my reaction to it, which was sang-froid with a dollop of chocolate ice cream.

This blog title sounds like the opening salvo of a Boxing Day football score, something like: ‘Forest City 1 –  Meadow Town 0’. Except it’s not. Forest City 1 (FC1) is actually the uninspiring moniker of a mega-development concept spearheaded by a former Guardian journalist in partnership with a 28-year-old something-or-other and backed by a one-time Labour Secretary of State. I’m tempted to stop now but, in the seasonal spirit of following a star in the hope it’ll lead me to the promised land, I’ll persevere. For now. 

… after I’ve first lit the touchpaper, of course.  Not too long ago, I dared to coin the phrase ‘ bashing bats and nuking newts ’, in helpful jest. I’m now going to up the ante and talk about swatting swifts. Ah, swifts. They do what they tweet on the tin – they fly swiftly. Furthermore their numbers are, sadly, swiftly declining in Britain, partly as a consequence of our new homes being more airtight, and our old ones being retro-plugged. Swifts live in drafty places like eaves and crevices, so the decline in drafty homes has led to a decline in the swift population, so much so that they’re now on the RSPCA red list of endangered species.

There’s a soundbite doing the rounds that’s been repeated so often that many believe it to be a simple, straightforward fact, akin to 1 + 1 = 2: ‘The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world’. Everyone seems to adhere to it, even those whom I greatly respect, but I respect my instincts even more.

Last week, Hubby and I boldly went where the cannons are aimed (but regrettably not armed) out to sea. They’re England’s finest antique military hardware: a symbolic repulsion of the huddled (m)asses of fit, fighting-age impoverished males fleeing for their lives, at a cost of thousands of pounds each in sink-ready deflatables, away from a safe, wealthy, democratic terra firma.

The debate that refuses to be extinguished: should game shooting be allowed or should it be banned? It’s another platform for impolite society’s handwringing, self-knot tying and moral grandstanding, while polite society couldn’t give a (s)hoot.

I’ve previously blogged about my personal paradigm shift where I realised, after a lifetime of worshipping at the altar of logical, predictable, universal science, that science is, in truth, unpredictable and irrational. I explained, “For me to say this is like a Christian turning away from God, a Tory voting Labour, or a once-fun person becoming a vegan.”

Hello, blog fans. Apologies for the radio silence, but I’m bi-i-sy doin’ a-lo-ot, workin’ the whole day-and-night through, tryin’ to find lots of things not to put off doing. To no avail. 

This is one of my ‘start typing and see where I end up’ blogs. It ain’t pretty but it does the business. I’ll start with one of those, ‘has anyone else thought of that’ moments. Hubby and I were walking round and about in the crisp autumnal air yesterday morning, most of the autumnal leaves having dropped to the ground, revealing loads-a autumnal red berries still clinging to the branches. The birds don’t need to be fed by us, I mused. Look at all these berries, literally ripe for their picking. Hubby was pretty sure the birds would be following their instincts and only eat what was best for them. I disagreed. At this time of year, on a cold and frosty morning, Mother Nature intended them to gorge on vitamins. The nuts and seeds in our feeders were tastier, more filling, but full of protein, of which Mother Nature, in her wisdom, was depriving them. Therefore, by making protein available, we were messing with the birdies’ natural diets, most probably to their detriment somehow. You don...

Here we go again: an incredibly complex, multi-faceted, more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-cat Government decision is reduced to a smidgeon of its bare essentials by the Biased Broadcasting Cadaver. The BBC's report has in turn been seized on by the increasingly tiresome eco/ego-fringe as proof-positive that it’s the wrong decision. This time, it’s Defra’s announcement that reintroducing wildlife species is not a priority, which has attracted catcalls of ‘pathetic’ from the rude and simple-minded. As with the nutrient neutrality debate of a few weeks ago, the Government stance sounded bad the way it had been reported but, once I'd looked into it, the proposed revised policies were reasonable. And, given that Fishy & Co are desperate for support anywhere they can find it, why would they alienate voters with a crass statement? I mean, what’s stopping them from saying now they intend to do something, then just not do it once / if they get re-elected? I decided to delete the BBC (if o...

In my last blog ( Jelly on a Plate ) I decided that I didn’t “feel sufficiently confident to decide for definite or comment publicly on just how bad the relaxation of the Nutrient Neutrality rules is.” The last couple of days, I’ve read the exchange of letters between the Government and the Office for Environmental Protection (OfEP), extracts from the Levelling up and Regeneration Bill (comically dubbed ‘LURB’) and scanned countless commentaries and soundbites from ‘environmentalists’ that collectively compete with a parrots' enclave. Honestly, I nodded off over my nutrient-loaded, roast (British) beef sandwich. Yes. Beef. Half of the critics of the Government’s environmental policies would cancel Britain’s beef industry and rewild thousands of acres of sweeping pastures with totally inappropriate habitats misinformed by a simplistic ideology that flies in the face of science, history, systems' thinking and pragmatism. 

I had a wobble the other day. A sanity one that is. I went for my usual walk, or at least that’s what I intended to do. Down the lane, round the road, up and down another lane, up and back down a road then retrace my steps home. All on tarmac, albeit Bucks’ tarmac – pockmarked worse than a teenager’s worst nightmare. Not this time. I started off down the lane but, instead of walking past a field opening, I swivelled right and yomped along a farm track, then along a field margin, a few of those actually, until I realised I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. And neither did anyone else.

The rush to redesign communities as ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods’, and the recent pronouncements by Fishy Rishi against them, illustrates much of what is wrong with policymaking in Britain today. LTNs are residential areas that are re-purposed for residents and non-motorised forms of transport by installing some sort of roadblock at the entrances, huge planters are favoured, and maybe traffic calming. Automatic number-plate recognition cameras for enforcement can also be installed. Many LTNs were introduced from 2020, funded by tens of millions of pounds of government money given to local councils. Their intended outcomes are laudable: improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and noise pollution, reduce accidents, encourage walking and cycling and reduce street crime, including muggings and sexual assaults. What's not to like?

This morning, I was enjoying my usual pre-breakfast WhatsApp-fest with my very good friend H, swapping Wordle scores and animal anecdotes: she has a dog and two cats; I had two hares, one bunny and a murder of magpies in the back garden. Yes, I know that’s not the correct collective noun, but it is for crows, and magpies are part of the crow family, and I wanted to murder the magpies because they were chasing the bunny. I notice they didn’t chase the hares, probably because the hares would have boxed their cowardly heinies to kingdom come.

This blog title is inspired by the famous spiritual song that was itself inspired by Ezekiel 37:1–14, where the prophet Ezekiel visits the Valley of Dry Bones and prophesies that they (the people of Israel in exile) will one day be resurrected at God's command. The connection to this blog is either superficial or very deep and cryptic. Reader's choice. It seemed like a good idea at the time, eating, drinking and chatting, dinosaur skeletons watching every move, perhaps waiting to pounce (the dinosaurs, not me). The venue was the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, much more alluring than an Ivy or a Stein or a Ramsay, and the service was better too.

I've blown the dust off this October-2022 blog and reposted it in the light of today's Daily Telegraph article here  and excellent commentary here exonerating Truss and Kwarteng. As I said at the time, the Blob was / is to blame for the extent of our economic ills, not Batman and Robin.

I blogged about climate change last summer (no longer available but I might post it again in due course) shortly after the really really hot spell. In a nutshell I said climate change was real, but we needed to keep on top of the science and continue asking difficult questions, otherwise we’d get our solutions wrong. That made me a climate change denier. Daft, eh? Not only daft, but dangerous. Here’s why.

I ought to walk more than I do. It’s the best exercise for physical and mental health. Unlike cycling or weight-lifting it’s safe, as long as you don’t: twist your ankle in a pothole; get run over by a tipper truck (the way I feel about certain tipper trucks, they’d come off worse); pick up a tick in the spinney; get cornered by a cohort of curious cattle; or, as happened today, get pooped on by a pigeon. As for me fending off axe-wielding psychopaths, at least the village newsletter would have a gripping front-page story.

This blog title sounds incongruous, but we’re used to the mantra ‘death is part of life’; ‘change is part of stability’ is simply a non-morbid variation. John Lewis losses One thing that got me thinking about this was the current predicament of John Lewis and the possibility, floated by Chairman Dame Sharon White, that a necessary cash injection might be needed from outside investors, which is at odds with the long-standing model of employee-only ownership. The company lost £234m last year and has to do something, but those who ought to know better don’t even want to consider Dame Sharon's obvious and sensible idea.