Back on track

- June 21, 2015

Happy solstice!

I am now determined to get back on schedule. This was inspired by a lovely package sent by Natasa which i only saw today after i sorted the mail. Yes i am not very good with this sort of thing. Now that all my energies are channeled into the school, i am even worse at this sort of thing at home.

It is a photograph of the ladies who stayed at Thomas Hall in my first year in university. This means that photograph is almost 30 years old. We all more or less look the same, which makes me wonder when or how aging takes place. I think i have a few wrinkles and some white hair, but all in all, it's not bad. But the photograph also coincides with my minor epiphany about the time of my life. The transformation. Today i sat in the car and waited for the boys to come down from the MAC and i was listening to a CD which was given to me by a friend a few years ago. In the rain i listened to Shearwater sing Rooks and it was very very beautiful. Yes, i thought, life is good. Someone took the trouble to make me this incredible CD. I am a good person. Natasa took the trouble to send me some pencils and a photograph and a post it pad in the shape of a magnolia flower. I am a good person.

I mean, i know i am a good person but every now and then, there is evidence - feedback - that i am a good person.

All is well with the world. So i decided, i need to make the effort, repay the universe for these blessings and kindnesses and stop faffing about.

I did clean the house - did a load of laundry and sorted the kitchen and began sorting the conservatory and the living room. I am going to start throwing away things or repurposing ir recycling them. It is time once again i took control of the house. One house per day.

You know, like one house being seen to each day. I quite like the house thing - it gives me a focus. It means that i never run out of things to do.

I was talking to Peter at the MAC today while waiting for Oisin. Is it not ironic that now we know everything about the natural world and none of this knowledge has actually managed to save it from us. Why is that? There seems to be a disconnect between what we know - intellectual knowledge - and our respect for it. This now reminds me of a discussion with some friends about the morality of the intellect. This person said, the intellect is completely immoral. Or at least amoral. What we know bears no relation to how we act. This makes me think about the wrong headed approach to many organisations who think that science will change how people behave. Conservation organisations especially. The truth is that people change the way they behave because of how they feel. This is why advertising never appeals to the intellect. It appeals to our emotions. Namely it appeals, most of all to our stupidity. It tells us to do things we don't want to do, to buy things we do not need and to behave in such a manner as would compromise the planet and our loved ones. And WE DO IT. So advertising works and academia does not.

Research does not.

To entertain someone who enjoys wildlife it is very useful. To help us save the species it is supposed to be studying, forget it.

The only thing that will save the animals which are not yet extinct is right behaviour, and that has nothing to do with how much we know about them. Sure when we knew nothing about them, they were very safe from us. So bollocks when people tell me they are studying something to save it. No, you are studying something because you are interested in it. You are doing something because you want to save it.

OK, i digress.

Just like me, i can write all the schedules in the world about cleaning the house, but unless i actually do it, it will simply remain a plan.

That said, i am now going to fold the clothes and hang out the next load of laundry. Then i am going to clean the toilet. And i love it.

But before i go, here are more photos of the garden. We now have salad on tap and we also have a few strawberries every day to nibble on. Next year i am planting heaps of them for the boys - because the boys love them.

These rockets have an interesting story to tell...

I planted these in a like one of those trays - whose name i have forgotten - i will never use them again, because most of the seeds i planted died. Except these five. They survived despite being given up on. So i picked them up and replanted them in this planter and they have done well. I think we will have rocket in two weeks time. To eat.