A Country Diary 75
I’VE JUST read a diary entry I wrote for 15th March, but never posted. It makes for rather depressing reading: “Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Children and wives wreck everything… the pony is just an expense and a hassle, and now we’ve got this new puppy. Do the children look after it and feed it? No. They’re stuck on the computer… Brave New World has conquered. I have lost. Goodbye.” Yes, it’s been a depressing couple of months. The English gloom never quite seems to clear. Occasionally, very occasionally, we are treated to a bright, sunny day, and all seems right with the world. But the next day, the gloom descends again. This bad weather combined with the sorry state of the nation makes for a miserable outlook. The bureaucrats attack from all sides. In my case, I have had another call from the pig police. You’ll remember that so far we’ve had a home visit, two phone calls and a letter from the Food Standards Agency. To add to this onslaught, I received a phone call in late March from Devon County Council, asking me what I did with the pig by-products, the heart and liver and so on. I said that we’d thrown it away. Also, we’d eaten the blood and the kidneys and made paté from the liver. The woman on the phone told me that by law we were supposed to have had the by-products transported to an approved incineration facility. A few days later, one hundred pages of bumf arrived in the post, various pig movement forms, record books and the like, and a list of the incinerator companies. None is local. I called one up and it appears that the cost for incineration would be £29 collection fee, plus 22p per kilo of waste. So that would total around £40 to £50. Well, the bureaucrats have done their job well. I am thoroughly dissuaded from ever keeping or killing pigs at home again. It all seems like far too much headache. Better go to fucking Tesco’s for my plastic-wrapped bacon and watch TV every night with my cans of Stella. That’s the modern British ideal.
THAT AWFUL dog Lulu, our neighbour’s Scottie, came round again yesterday. She yelped, whined and chased chickens, and that was bad enough. But then she did something worse. Earlier in the day two ducks had arrived, a pair or mallards. Delilah and I talked to them and told them we hoped they would stay. I said that they were looking for somewhere to bring up their fmaily. So we made encouraging noises, and the ducks stayed all day, waddling up and down the stream, and investigating the pond. Then Lulu arrived, saw the ducks, chased them, whereupon they took off into the sky, quacking noisily, and never returned. Thanks, Lulu.
THINGS in the vegetable patch are very slow indeed. The potatoes show no signs of sprouting. The broad beans have finally germinated and are about an inch tall. A few of the peas have emerged above ground, but only a handful. Some animal had dug up one of the pea trenches. The radishes and turnips have all germinated and are thriving: I really think turnips are a good bet. They are very easy to grow, delicious and unusual and also they’ve got that medieval vibe. Also the garlic is doing well: I put a load every foot or so around the sides of one bed, and they’ve all sprouted beautifully. Again, garlic is a very good bet as it’s easy to grow, deters slugs and should save you a lot of money. On the window sill I have sowed kale, leeks, marigolds, blauhilde purpple climbing beans, courgettes and a variety of squashes, the seeds of which were sent to me by a kind reader last year. I think seed collection is the next step. Sometimes I hope for a global financial collapse of some sort, so we can really concenrate on the smallholding, despite the setbacks and my grumbling, it is a hugely enjoyable way of life.
THE HENS are looking much prettier and plumper, their feathers having grown back. But still no eggs. Our landlady says that they will start soon enough, though. So I am feeling less despondent on that score. They are sharing their coop with Blossom the bunny, who is proving to be good entertainment. But I am considering banning after-school computer sessions. Arthur runs straight through the kitchen on his return form school and plugs in immediately, which I find depressing. “You wrecking your chldhood!” I exploded at him the other day. How was your childhood? What are your memories from four to fourteen? “I stared at a screen.” Instead, they should play with the animals. Surely once released from schoo, chldren should want to run outside and play! Oh woe and alack! What is the world coming to? Hemmed in by interfering do-gooders, oil prices going crazy, bureaucrats halting any attempt to live freely, smoking banned in pubs, drinking banned on the street, pubs closing every day. Our village shop and post office will probably close next year. The wonderful Royal Mail service is being slowly destroyed as small post offices are closed. And the the shop is simply not busy enough. That’s because all the brain-washed television-watchers of the village obediently troop off to Tesco’s to do their shopping, shunning the shop on their doorstep. Or they get the Tesco’s van to deliver to them. It’s the same in other nearby villages. The villagers themselves do not use the local shops. Our local butcher recently closed down and now he has a job working for - Tesco’s! Why? They are sending their hard-earned cash straight into the pockets of the Tesco’s shareholders, making the faraway rich richer and the local poor poorer in the process. Last week I read in the papers that Tesco’s announced record profits. Wake up, England! Is everyone fast asleep? Can’t you see what’s happening! BOYCOTT TESCO’S! Get on your bicycles, grab your shopping baskets, go to your local shops! Burn down the supermarkets! There will be nothing left soon, nothing except vast retail parks selling sofas and pizzas, surrounded by crumbling roads. WAKE UP!
ENDS
We are born free but are everywhere in chains.
"I do nothing and then I do something. But it's taken years of investigating idleness in all its forms to be able to achieve this. My discipline is borne out of concerted study of idleness."