Sunday 25 July 2010

Red Robin Take Two


This little guy is so cute he's cutting into my gardening time, 50 blackcurrent cuttings went in yesterday, going to try transplanting the gooseberries too, but must admit to looking dubiously at the length of the thorns and finding myself other things to do.

Little Red Robin


Every time I turn over a clod in the garden I have a little red and blue army of watchers appear. The red robin's pose nicely on any available post, raspberry cane, fence, branch. While the blue wrens tend to hide becomingly behind clumps of grass and scrutinise every lump of earth. The moment I walk away they dive in and help themselves to a squirming worm dinner.

Monday 12 July 2010

The Stark Conspiracy and Total Toxic Overload

Years and years ago I read Ben Elton's book Stark - and over the years the memory disintegrated to vague recollection of a guy called Zimmerman and the plot involved a camel. So it was with interest I watched the movie adaptation of the book, which starred Ben Elton himself as the whimpy pommy anti-hero. Written in 1989 and destined to become a million seller (a rariety for a first time author)it's a comedy based on environmental issues and set in Australia. A link to the wikipedia entry Out came the remote control when super bad guy and meglomaniac has his monologue. De Quincy says,

'Recently our politiicans have been playing the green card in the grubby scramble for support. As we STARK conspirators know, such tokenism is entirely cynical, the ecological situation can never be reversed while market forces remain superior to political will'.

I think we all recognise that, but how does it change, or even stronger how 'do we'as a personal responsibility, make the change? In the past great change has only ever really come about through bloody revolution. But our stomachs are too refined for such vulgarity (at least in the West), so a bloodless coup? But our current system is a great machine that swallows idealism whole and spits out personal interest/greed in a cynacism shaped cookie cutter.

It does seem as though, as the inventive species, we need to find a new and relatively harmonious way to tap into change on a broad scale. Any ideas how this can be done?