New Year

So after the wild, wet, windy and general disaster prone year that has been 2012 the world is looking towards 2013.  Can we expect a better year than last year?

In my opinion, we can if we work for it.

I will agreed that it is fairly hard to avert natural disasters (a reminder perhaps that we don't actually own this planet, we're just squatters here) but, as I have mentioned before half of these natural disasters won't be happening if we weren't mucking up the environment.  For example - flooding.  It has been proven before and will be proven again, unless the human race grows up and stops being so damn greedy, that it you chop all the trees down not only does down stream suddenly start having trouble with flooding, all the nutriment in the soil gets washed away leading to, guess what, famine.  It happened on Easter Island, it's happening in Britain and it is definitely happening in the Third World.

Another natural disaster - drought.  Again it has been proven, put the trees back and it starts to rain.  It is true that trees don't make it rain however, it is equally true that trees make the sky rain.  How does that work?  Rain comes from the moisture in the air, if the air is very hot it cannot condense enough to fall as rain.  Trees loose moisture from their leaves, significantly cooling the air around them.  Plant enough trees and the air will become cool enough for the clouds to form and fall as rain.  Advised reading on the subject - 'The Man Who Planted Trees'.  It may not be historically accurate but scientifically it is bang on.

So that is three major world disasters that can be adverted by simply planting trees.  And the U.K. government wants to build houses on Green Belt land?  Did they leave their brains in the dust bin or something?

I know it is very easy when you look at the world's problem to be so discouraged that you say 'they're so big, what can I do?'  Well it puts me in mind of a story Mr Evans, my primary school headteacher down in Wales told us one assembly:

"One night there is a big storm down on the coast and the following morning a young man goes for a walk along the beach.  Around his feet thousands of starfish lay on the sand, dying in the sun.  He is feeling sad for all the lives lost when away in the distance he sees the figure of an old man who, every couple of steps or so, bends down and throws something into the sea.  As he comes closer he realises that the old man is picking up the star fish one by one and throwing them back into the sea.  Walking up to the old man he says 'Why are you doing that?  There are thousands of them, what difference can you make?'  In reply the old man bends down, picks up a starfish and throws it out to sea.  'Well it made a difference to that one,' he said."

Think of what a difference it would make to our landscape if every single person who owns a garden planted just one tree!  Think how much carbon dioxide would be sucked out of our atmosphere, how many more water catchers there would be.  How much more food and nest sites for our endangered garden birds.  And if we all planted one fruit tree we would be able to share in the bounty.  Instead of buying fruit, in about five autumns time after planting, we'd be able to enjoy fruit that had grown in our own back gardens, making the pennies stretch that much further.  Think of all the extra help it would be to the bees.  Does no one remember the motto of Britain during the Second World War 'Dig for Victory'?  It stands just as much in a recession as it did during the war and it would make our planet healther as well as ourselves.

Come to think of it that's four natural disasters that can be averted or at least controled by planting trees - flood, famine, drought and species extinction.  Isn't that something to think about?

Christmas Spirit

O.k. I've just sat down at my computer ready to write about what is generally in the news and how quickly they gloss over great tragedies. (To the families of the children lost in last weeks school shooting, my prayers.  Though they are but a small thing I hope that they bring you some comfort in this dreadful time.) Only then I realised that it is almost Christmas.  (Why is it that family tragedies are always worse at this time of year?)

Where has this year gone?  This time last year I was preparing to fly out to Oman in some unGodly hour of the morning the next day.  It has not been helped by the ever increasingly interesting house move at the beginning of August.  Nearly five months and we have only managed to do two rooms.  Five months, two rooms and another six to go.  This could take us years and I haven't been out on my bike since we moved.  At this rate she's going to have rusted to a lump by the time I can get her back out from under tarp.

Yes my room is now pretty much done.  I am going to have to wait until January for my new bed to arrive but I managed to take advantage of a special offer at Furniture Village so my double bed, Tempur mattress, Tempur pillow and desk chair all came to the normal price of just the mattress.  I love it when I do that.

However because of the house renovating it does not really feel like Christmas.  Normally we would put the decorations up on the first Sunday of Advent.  This year we put them up today.  Due to this none of us have really gotten into the groove of Christmas, which for us is a crying shame.  Normally Advent and Christmas is such a special family time for us and the build up of Advent is what makes Christmas so special.  Normally I baking the Christmas cake in mid-November to give it plenty of time to mature.  This year I doubt whether I'm going to have to chance to make one at all.

All this self-pity routine has made me think though.

The families that can't stand the sight of each other but force a get together at this time of year because it's 'traditional'.  Do they have any idea of what they are missing?  And the greater part of me asks 'why do you dislike each other so much'?  Have any of these nightmare families we hear about in the popular fiction tried have some family time regularly?  And is a family meal invariably ends up in a fight, why not just have the afternoon together doing say a jigsaw?  Or maybe a board game?  (Not cards, there is nearly always a fight over whether or not the winner cheated.)  I think the most important part of Christmas is TURN THE TV OFF!  Even if you've just received your most favourite film in your stocking, the TV has to remain off.  Actually talk to one another and more importantly listen to each other.  If for no other reason leaving the TV on while you have guests is the height of bad manners and even if it is just family, if all you remember of Christmas Day is what you watched on the TV what makes it any different to any other day?

Strike Two

The house has struck again.

Regulars to my blog may remember that the birthday present I received from the house was a torn muscle and a trapped nerve in the bottom of my spine that felt like someone had drive the business end of a rock pick into my back.

Well, I can now report that the house has struck again - I have Achilles Tendinopathy.

I woke up with it about a week ago (life is running pretty manic here) and thankfully it is only in my left Achilles Tendon because what it means is that I wake up some days with an extremely painful tendon that does not want to stretch for love nor money.  Apparently it is a condition most sports people run the risk of as it is more common in those of us who use their legs for heavy exercise.  I'm pretty sure cycling twenty miles a day for several years counts as heavy exercise.  How the doctor explained it to me is that over the years of cycling I've been doing micro damage to that tendon.  That has caused minute amounts of scar tissue and to try and compensate my body has been growing hundred of extra blood vessels within the tendon to try and keep the area flushed with oxygen and proteins to aid healing.  Now something in all the lifting and crouching and stretching I've been doing to work on this house has resulted in one of those blood vessels going pop.

Sounds painful?  Believe me it is and not conducive to walking easily.  So I now have exercises to do every morning to try and improve it.  Most days its barely noticeable (the joys of being Autistic = low pain sensation, sometimes dangerous, mostly useful), other days it makes me limp worse than Mad Eye Moody (sorry for the Harry Potter reference).  What is more it could take up to six months to be truly healed so watch this space.

On the good side, despite the house's attempts to scupper our efforts my room is now painted, floored, coved and skirting boarded.  I have some of my furniture up and I've started unpacking boxes so here hoping that I'll be finished by the New Year.

The only thing is that I need to buy a new bed.  Now that I have the room for one that sits on the floor I really don't want to have to go back to a bunk bed.

Vampires Rock

O.K. I know that I'm almost a week late but life has been chewing me up one side and spitting me out the other.

Went on Tuesday the twenty fifth of November to see the show of the above name at the Norwich Theatre Royal and had an absolutely fabulous night out!  If you are a fan of classical rock played so loud you can feel it in your guts, tongue-in-cheek comedy and of course, vampires, then this show is a must see.

A warning - if you are easily offended by innuendo, don't go.  The humour of this show is most definitely adult and for the adults who have dirty senses of humour at that.  Bossley the Janitor (brilliantly played by John Evans) is especially rude.  Let's put it this way, at one point Baron Von Rockular, the vampire of the title (acted by writer, director and producer Steve Steinman), actually apologised for Bossley's behaviour.  His actual words were:

"I'm so sorry Sir...(pause for the laughter)  I have to apologise for him every night.  One of these days he's going to get me into trouble."

Let's put it this way, you get a feel for Bossley's character the moment he walks on stage wearing a tool belt with the hammer hanging down in the front.

Any way the show itself is set in the 'Live and Let Die' club, owned by the Baron, who is looking for a new singer for his establishment and a new bride for himself.  Que some thumping good rock anthems, very sensual dances and a good splash of humour.

I defy any fan of rock music who goes to this show not to be on your feet and yelling by the end of it.

The only problem is that you have to book the tickets nearly a year in advice as it is a sell out, so keep your eyes on the venue list.

Oh What a Lovely War

Just went on Friday to see my actor friend in 'Oh What a Lovely War'.  It is an extremely good but very hard watch.  I would say that it accurately portrays the stupidity and futility of the Great War of 1914.

For example, accompanying the action on stage was a projector screen showing some of the statistics of the various battles such as Battle of the Somme, one and a half million British soldiers dead, gains = nil.  What many people don't realise is that the Battle of the Somme was not one day one battle affair.  It was several months of slaughter that nearly killed off an entire generation of young men, all because the old soldiers (generals) who were making the decisions believed in a war of attrition, not a war of mission objectives.

"Old soldiers never die, never die, never die.
Old soldiers never die,
The young just wish they would."

There again says that, considering the mess out in Afghanistan, it seems that the old soldiers are swinging back that way.  That or the politicians won't give them a clear cut objective.

The musical side of the play was also very well done, used to great affect to increase the pathos of the whole piece, especially the Christmas Day Cease Fire.  I wonder how many people realise that the Christmas Day Cease Fire was not official?  The leaders had promised that it would be over by Christmas so the men acted as if that promise had been fulfilled and called the cease fire themselves.  I will never understand how they could have made friends over No-Man's Land and the next day go back in the trenches and start killing each other again.  I know that they were ordered to and they had to obey or be shot by their own side.  That is what my head knows but my heart won't accept that knowledge because I could not kill a friend because he spoke with a difference accent to me.

"A soldier in a far off land
Fighting for peace in that far off land
And if somebody had to kill him
Why did it have to be me?"

The other thing I liked about 'Oh What a Lovely War' was that, especially in the first half, they included a lot of stuff from the point of view of the Germans.  The most touching piece was a single man sitting on stage, acting the part of a German soldier writing home, reading out what he was writing:

"The bodies around the guns are piled from the horizontal to an angle of sixty degrees.  Two or three men go mad... every day."

As the pacifists said "Nobody wins a war."  One side just looses less than the other.  And I wonder if those who shouted down the pacifists and pushed their young men into going to die, be wounded or broken for their King and Country every had the decency to feel the weight of their guilt.

One final thing and this one from real life.  One of my other friends, her great uncle signed up in 1914 to fight when he was just fourteen years old.  In 1918 he came home, having survived everything the Great War had physically thrown at him and threw himself into the Wensum.  He was just eighteen.

The cost of War.

Benefit Frauds

Is nothing sacred any more?

According to the newspaper a women told her young son that he had terminal cancer so that she could claim a bomb load in benefits.  Besides the fraud, it's the total breach of trust between a parent and child that horrifies me.  This is a child who has gone through years of the fear of waiting to die only to find that his mother, the caring parent who has lavished so much care and attention on him, lied through her teeth to him.

In fact, come to think of it, does this sound like a raging case of Munchhausen By Proxy?

It seems to me that over the years the Western World has gradually lost it's reverence for that which is sacred.  Churches have been robbed, graveyards desecrated and the oath upon the Bible has become pretty much meaningless for many.  However, I would have thought that the bond between parent and child would remain sacred even when all else is devalued.  Children are the immortality of the parents, they are the future of their families and their people.  Without the care and nurture of children we would cease to be civilised human beings.

So how come it seems be that in the so called civilised Western World that children are no longer valued?  Parents no longer take the time to earn the respect of their children by making them behave.  Instead they are pushed off to family members or child minders so that both parents can go out to work.  In that light why do people wonder that families are breaking down?

So having a mother who stays at home and does her job of raising her children means that the family might have to stay in a rented home instead of buying their own?  So what?  Is having happy, well balanced children not worth more than owning a house?  Let's put it this way, when my father first left us my mother sat down with me and my sister and  put it to us like this "I can go out to work and we can have our own house or I can stay at home and you will continue to be my career but that means that we will have to stay in rented accommodation.  Which would you rather?"  (Bare in mind that at this time I was eleven and my sister eight years old so we were both old enough to understand the pros and cons of both options, due to the time and effort Mother had put into us because she stayed at home and made us her job.)  Having discussed the value of both possibilities between us, my sister and I said that we would rather stay poor and still have a mum.

How many other children would make the same choice if they were given the chance?  I don't know but I do know one thing - my sister and I went through Hell at school because we had a Mum who loved us unconditionally and the other kids didn't and they knew it.

The Cost of War

O.K. here's some interesting little facts that I've recently unearthed.

In 1921 the Allies handed German the bill for the First World War - £6,650,000,000!
In 2010 the Germans finally managed to finish paying this enormous bill off!

I had no idea that no lessons were learnt from the Second World War and that we left Germany with that millstone around their necks.  I have to admit I have no idea what sort of bill we gave them for the Second World War.

What I mean by lessons from the Second World War is this - we will hand a country an extortionate bill for a war they didn't actually start (if you look at your history books) having already crippled it by taking away its best industrial and agricultural land.  We will then wonder why a nutcase of a leader gets into power by telling his people "it is the Allies who have crippled our country, who have robbed us of our land and of our jobs.  It is the Allies who have destroyed our national pride, our national standing, who have reduced our homes to squalor and our families to poverty."  At which point his people agree with him because he is right, when you stop and think about it, and go out to give the Allies a right good kick up the back side.

Hang on a minute, am I talking about pre-Nazi Germany or modern Afghanistan here?  Because put in those terms I'm not sure if there are any differences.

From where I'm standing, Developed West hasn't learnt one single thing from the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles.  We crippled a country and then wondered why it turned round and tried to bite our leg off.  Using a not-so-open trading market we are doing the same to Afghanistan and Africa.  Africa can grow sugar cane more economically and environmentally friendly than any where else in the world.  However, they cannot sell on the open market because the cane farmers in America are subsidised one hundred percent before they even put a seed in the ground.  The African farmers cannot compete with the prices of their subsidised rivals so they remain poor.

It is the same in Afghanistan, only in Afghanistan they had a leader turn up who gave them a target for their understandable anger - the West.  Throw religious fervour into that mix and it's a powder keg just waiting to explode.

And explode it did, taking the Twin Towers and hundreds of people as trapped in the system as them with it.

I totally agree that the Taliban are evil but, like the Nazi Party before them, they are an evil that could have been prevented if the governments of the West hadn't been so damn greedy.