I am Jack's complete lack of surprise

It's Friday night and it's too short a life to drink awful wine. So i'm pouring the rest of this bottle down the plug. I'm sort of sick and tired of listening to the anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers. The media love thinking they've like survived this really terrible crisis. It's like reporting from a war zone. You can see the egotism of the reporter all over it. Look at me, i'm so brave and macho and wonderful. Risking my life like a fecking eejit to bring you this bulletin. See i'm in this flackjacket and i may be killed or kidnapped at any moment. Aren't i wonderful - and i feel like i'm on TV...

I know, i'm in that sort of a mood really. But i think, for all the universities, academics, reporters, TV and radio 24-7, for all the universal sufferage we've had, dear god we seem to have made things WORSE, not better. I think that if people stopped just pretending they were important and did something simple like, i don't know...no actually i do - i told Helen when i visited Derry, if they put the people who worked in all of Derry City Council to clean the city centre once a week they would be doing more good than anything they're currently up to. Practical work, there's nothing like it.

It's going to be Hari Raya Puasa, or as the rest of the world knows it, Aid. What be this Aid i asked when i arrived here and everyone was talking about Aid? Oh it's like Hari Raya Puasa, which literally means celebrating the fast. Deepavali was also know as Deevali - it was a bit confusing. Christmas was Christmas though, so that was ok. And Chinese New Year did not have a new name.

I'm now about where i was when i sprained my foot in Easter - fitness wise and weight wise. Since Ma and Pa left i have managed to drop a dress size. Just goes to show how much i was overeating. I'm now able to fit into the pink trousers Ma mended for me. I figure in three weeks time i'll be on the correct side of the weight i want to be. Today running in Belvoir Park i was struck by the number of people who were using the place. It has really increased over the years - i've been doing the run in the forest now for about seven years and there have been so many changes. The Lock Keepers' cottage for a start is now overhauled and the cafe next to it is never quiet. They're dredging Lock No 2 or something like that. There's certainly more overgrowth in the water - just the streams filling up with grass and stuff. And more cyclists, defo.

Now the West are outraged at the denial of the Holocaust. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. The West has done a fair bit of denial in its time as well - in fact they're doing it now - and forgetting is actually worse than denying. Forgetting things like, oh i don't know, what took place in Bhopal, what takes place in oil spoiled landscapes across the world, forgetting the glassy eyed stares of malnourished children in their helpless mothers' arms, forgetting that they were the ones which colonised and raped and pillaged and now are closing their doors to the very people whose countries they have devastated... it would be far better if they response was, what do you expect from a pig but a grunt...

Especially the pig metaphor, that would start a diplomatic incident, i'm sure.

Yesterday the Age of Stupid was being shown in Holywood. I couldn't bring myself to see it. How many times must people make films about how shit the state of things are? I said to someone yesterday, why the hell do i need to see another film about how idiotic we are when i'm issuing press releases about it everyday? Sometimes working in the environmental sector can be a little bit soul destroying. You know we work so fucking hard to be reasonable - talking to government, talking to people who own land, talking and talking and showing and showing - and people don't seem to get it. They don't seem to get that their behaviour is illogical. It's like when i was a child - i didn't ask questions like where does my electricity come from? Or how did the water get into the tap? I just took it for granted. It really does seem like people are stuck at that age - how did this apple magically get to my table? No, that i pay 20p for it and eat it - that's all that matters. How our actions, our lives mesh with others doesn't figure at all.

I watch the families of soldiers berating the government at sending their sons to die. HELLO!!! your son signed up with the army - you could berate the circumstances which forced him to do that - like perhaps there are no jobs here, or that he education he was given stinks, or that you live in a drug filled estate and that was the only was he could escape from it, but you can't really say that you're that surprised that he, who is being trained to kill, is also killed by someone else who was trained to killed. You could berate the system which has oppressed the young men who have entered jihad, the economic and political circumstances which have created an intolerable situation where by staving families can only be fed by the taking up of arms, but you can't really say i'm utterly surprised that my son is going to be going into a conflict zone, especially when he signed up with the army in the middle of a few wars.

I really think the UK has lost its way you know. Ten years of labour and thirteen years of Thatcher have really taken its toll. There is a section of the population who seems utterly incoherent, who are unable to articulate themselves and spend whole years of their live watching TV, smoking, drinking, drug taking, whinging and dying. And then there's another which are utterly selfish and don't really care about everyone else. As long as they can get their two holidays a year, family car and grammer school are perfectly happy to do the middle class equivalent of the former's lifestyle. And let's not talk about the Paris Hiltons of this world. There isn't a sense of commitment and purpose in society in general. I admit i exist in this happy green bubble - sometimes i step out of it and it's a bit scary. Like stepping out of a gated community - really the equivalent of. I suppose that's why i feel the way i do. How the hell do you rectify this situation? There are no more leaders in this world. No more men or women who are able to say i divest myself of ego and work selflessly for the greater good. It seems to go without saying that everything must have some sort of personal kickback - what's in it for me? is the underlying question everyone asks. From the expenses scandal at Westminster or the self preservation of a mining militia chief, the attitude of consumption and consumerism has infected everything we do, everything we are.

It's so fucking depressing.

I must start looking at my poem a day thing again. I sort of took forgranted the succor they brought me. My little corner of paradise.

I need to get started on the housework and have been delaying it for as long as i can. But later today i need to get started. Sigh. Got some roast silverside today. The cheapest cut of meat from SPAR, it doesn't get any worse than that. I shouldn't have gotten it, but i did. It was like the wine. Awful. I'll have to try and think of using it somehow. I suppose i could roast it. Even to look at it made me think of dog food.

OK, must stop rambling. Sorry about the lack of photos. I have no excuse at all.