Shall I tell you a story?

Is there a petition?

17/10/2011

Lovely, very brief, sunrise. Preparing for rain, the weather has laid a flat, dark, bruise of cloud across the eastern horizon. At something before eight, the sun glowed through, never quite visible, bright fading out to purple over one very small stretch of horizon; an oval, pebble-shaped sunrise. Then the sun rose behind the cloud, and here we are in a cloudy day. Eleven new ducklings and their mother in the goose house - spent yesterday afternoon chasing the mother, after she got out as we were buying her - so the day's main task is to pull together leftover bits and pieces and bodge together a run for them.
    The protesters are still camped out at St Paul's, and the radio tells me that the Dean (?) declined the offer of police protection, and instead invited people in. So he should, and no marks for thinking that strange. The big question today is, apparently, what do the protesters want? Things to be different, I guess. A change of status quo. A world that is different in ways that seem obvious to those of us on the outside, but hopelessly naive to those on the inside. If I was to write an alternative history, it wouldn't be the one in which, let's say, the losers won a big way, or a key historical figure wasn't assassinated after all.
    No. It would be the one in which the politicians did nothing. Left us to sort out our own problems. It wouldn't be a utopia, and yes, I know, it almost certainly wouldn't work without some kind of centralised administration, and okay, yes, it would no more solve everything than the present arrangement. But do we really want cabinet ministers going on air to squabble about whether I want my bins collected weekly or fortnightly? Do we really want to buy (apparently non-voting) shares in these ridiculous banks? In my alternative history, the words "Get out of my way. I want to deal with this myself" would have legal force.
    Camping at St Paul's isn't a long-term strategy. But has anybody thought about how to word a petition? I wonder.

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A very green picture. I can't remember where I took this.

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Also available in English. Look further down.

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Categories
(Started 4th November 2017; forgotten shortly after that.)

Kitchen parenting

I have teenage children. When they're home, sooner or later one of them will come to me and say: "Dad! We're going to make a mess in the kitchen!
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Variously available online, in a range of formats.

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Early morning, Church Street, Falmouth

9th May 2014

On the day that I wrote this, the early news told us of a parade in Moscow to celebrate Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Crimea remained annexed, and the Russia/Ukraine crisis was not resolved. At around half eight, the BBC’s reporter in Moscow was cut off in mid-sentence summarising the military display; the Today programme on Radio 4 cut to the sports news. More.

Riddle. What are you? You're a conversation!