Chewing the cud

I cannot tell you what a horrible night it is. Listening to Anything but the Girl. Utterly white, middle of the road, bland and unchallenging. It's bliss. I love it. Yesterday i forgot that the time went forward for the summer. Not that it makes a great difference. The weather is still wet. That said each year has been different since i began taking notice. We think that spring should be like that and summer like this. Nothing of the sort. It just does whatever it wants to do. I know this because every year something 'unseasonal' occurs to piss off the good folk of the RSPB. One year it was a really really hot and dry February and March. Then it rained for most of April and all the birds that had built nests had them swept away. The year before last the sand eels didn't show up in the Gulf Stream and the seabirds on Rathlin starved. Another year it snowed in the middle of April. Yet another it rained all of June, July and August. Five years ago blackbirds were building nests in December. Perhaps it isn't freaky nature. Perhaps it's just nature's way of controlling the population - keeping the balance - and then when you get people coming along with tractors and drainage systems it just that feather that breaks the camels back, if you pardon the expression. It shows you how close we live to the edge really. How so many of us are just one step away from homelessness. From hunger. And there are those who are in the middle of this. What can we do for them? their dark sad eyes peer at us, going right through us, as we eat our dinner. Just £2 a month will stop Jamila from starving to death, as i cram my rare breed steak into my mouth. Perhaps we could take out an adpotion with World Vision. It's something which i have been meaning to do.

And that's not good enough i think - it isn't good enough that we have a system that stops food from going to them and doesn't stop it from going into the bins here. On St Paddy's Day we were in McCrakens in Belfast. It was a leary sordid thing by 3.30 in the afternoon with girls lathered in fake tan sporting sashes that dared you to kiss them because they were irish. Boys in tricolour jester hats with bells and flashing lights, all drunk of course, shouting Pog Ma Hon. It was great. Anyway, the waiter came over and proceed to tell us that most of the menu was eaten out. Fair enough, we said. I'll have bangers and mash and Peter would have Steak Pie. The portions were fit for Finn McCool's hunting party, nevermind Finn McCool himself. No wonder they had run out of food. I was literally force feeding myself and could not finish half of the portion. The mountain of mashed potatoes would now go into the bin and somewhere in the world a child is starving.

It makes me sick actually.

I haven't done anything i was hoping to do while Peter was away. I didn't wash the sheets. I didn't get the wires sorted. I didn't get the dining organised. However i DID manage to dig the beds for the wildflower seeds, clean up bits of the garden, tidy up the buddleigh bush which is now probably dead, and organise the composting. We will now plant some beetroot tomorrow. If the weather is ok. My hands are lacerated and smarting from nettle stings. This is because they were cold when i was pulling out some nettles and didn't feel the stings then. Well i feel the stings now, i can tell you. I think, oh i've got a spelk in - no, it's just a stinging nettle after burn.