Assuaging Guilt

Guilt wraps around me like a barbed wire glove. And what is the reason? Neglecting my blog! Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy keeping an online journal but, it’s rather like the diaries of my youth; a flurry of activity when the logging begins but, after a while it seems like a chore too far. When a pleasure becomes chore neglect seems like a sensible response but, guilt creeps around one almost as if one is acknowledging their own sense of failure.

There’s always plenty of news to share, should anyone be in the least interested, but the doing of events always seems preferable to their recording. So, why do I bother: a simple need to communicate from, but is this arrogance? Could it be quite simply that the opportunity is there, so why not use it? Perhaps I’m attempting to fill an unacknowledged, even unrecognized, void in my life. Should that be the case then, why should I feel guilty about recent neglect, surely that should be a cause for rejoicing!

Anyway, I’m now set to assuage my guilt; after all the primary reason for neglecting my little niche in cyberspace is that whenever stamina has permitted I’ve been too busily occupied in real space. The work of re-moulding the garden goes on apace; it’s amazing how much effort it takes to create a more natural wildlife friendly space. Apart from digging, planting, and removing, sundry nature’s artefacts, I’ve also been assembling a new bird table, and a rather rustic arbour seat (a marginally advance 65th birthday present) in the more (wilfully) overgrown area of the garden.

Although my familiar glandular and muscular aches and discomforts are always to be reckoned with, a recent acupuncture treatment (western localized style), on my back, relieved me of pains of which I’d previously been unaware, finally acknowledged by their absence. Hence the bout of activity, only interrupted by the unwelcome effects of post-exertional malaise.

Whilst the warmer, sunshine bright, days encouraged my out-of-doors presence, I also reacted rather badly to the hotter days – my erratic body thermostat being somewhat better adapted to more typical British Spring and Autumn temperatures. At least the arbour seat will offer me a little more shelter from the ravaging sun and, also enable me to spend a little more time enjoying the environment in less clement weather.

The garden has played host to a growing display of avian juvenile gapes, the young are still quite happy, even demanding, to be fed even after they’re more than capable of feeding themselves. I’ve lost count of the hours spent observing this behaviour, both from the comfort of the lounge and an appropriately placed garden seat beside the pond.

The feeding regime for the piscine inhabitants of both pond and aquariums provides a little structure to my otherwise erratically unstructured days. The only other structure is the preparation of meals in time for my beloved’s return from her workplace.

After all that build up, I’ve little else to say – or at least a running down of my stamina resource demands this hasty conclusion.

Gordon the Unlucky

So, it takes an American journalist (albeit a Nobel Prize winning economist and one of my favourite columnists to boot) to understand Brown's predicament and Cameron's lack of an alternative. It's a pity that Britain lacks columnists of this calibre.

"For much of the past 30 years, politics and policy here and in America have moved in tandem. We had Reagan; they had Thatcher. We had the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, which dismantled New Deal-era banking regulation; they had the Big Bang of 1986, which deregulated London’s financial industry. Both nations had an explosion of household debt and saw their financial systems become increasingly unsound."

"But here’s the thing. While Mr. Brown and his party may deserve to be punished, their political opponents don’t deserve to be rewarded.

After all, would a Conservative government have been any less in the thrall of free-market fundamentalism, any more willing to rein in runaway finance, over the past decade? Of course not.

And Mr. Brown’s response to the crisis — a burst of activism to make up for his past passivity — makes sense, whereas that of his opponents does not."


Paul Krugman - "Gordon the Unlucky", New York Times (8 June 2009)

The Early Years - Verse Autobiography

Mal's Remarkable Murmurings

It's still early in the morning and, I've already posted a blog, REMARKABLE, on 'Mal's Murmurings'.

Linked Reflections

The muse has been pestering me, a bit, recently. A new poem ON REFLECTION can be found on Mal's Factory and, a sequel A PALE REFLECTION on Archive Mined & Freshly Spun.

A Clever Breed

At first the observations are highly entertaining and, the object of the observations is a rather handsome brute. Before long he’s joined by some companions and, we continue to enjoy their antics; we’ve not usually had jackdaws visiting our garden and, after all, there’s sufficient food in the various trays for all the visitors, whether it be the ground feeders or the mounted ones.

Our most common visitors are quarrels of starlings, flocks of house sparrows, scurries of dunnocks and, this year especially, blackbirds. We also have not infrequent visits from blue and great tits, collar doves, wood pigeons and, at the top end of the garden, tree sparrows. We have a variety of hanging seed and fat ball feeders which once were the prerogative of the smaller avian species. Admittedly the starlings could make moderately short shrift of the fat balls but, up until now, they’ve not got the hang of the seed feeders.

To our surprise, the jackdaws are not only rapidly demolishing and devouring the contents of the fat ball feeders but, some of this species have developed the agility to manage even the trickiest of the hanging seed feeders. Their learning process has been at almost lightning speed; at least the seed feeders are a bit too fiddly for them to empty swiftly but, the fat balls are now going down at an alarming rate of eight fat balls per day.

This afternoon, I’ve tried filling a spherical peanut feeder with the fat balls; this will hopefully thwart the jackdaws’ ambition to eat for England!

Frivolously Serious

All Fall Down - what's to become of us?

I'm becoming increasingly concerned about goings on at the Palace of Westminster and, especially, the forthcoming proposals to rid the house of corrupt politicians. It's truly worrying when I think about it, getting rid of corrupt MP's.

After all, if we get rid of all the corrupt politicians there'll be nobody in the house who understands standard business and commercial practises!

Mal murmurs about the garden

Todays small domestic blog post, pretentiously (and probably incorrectly) titled 'avant moi le deluge', can be found on 'Mal's Murmurings'

Verse Autobiography

BIRTH OF AN ALIEN - A work in progress.

The three poems (or three parts of one poem), still in draft form, are of necessity laid out consecutively; ideally (though impossibly) they should be read concurrently as each covers much the same early period of the individuals life.

Autobiography is a new verse game for me but, I would appreciate any comments on the work so far.

The work in progress, BIRTH OF AN ALIEN, can be found on MAL's FACTORY