As I ran past the millpond just outside the village this morning I spotted the heron hunched up against the cold. He looked about half his usual size. Would he not have been warmer if he had fluffed up his feathers? I sympathise though; today is the kind of cold that makes you tense all your muscles in an attempt to curl up and keep warm. On the plus side, the sky is clear and blue, and it isn’t raining or snowing.
The news is full of the post office scandal, which Phil and I heard about in BBC radio reports more than a year ago, I think. I am finding it hard to understand why they don’t just issue a public pardon to all the sub-postmasters whose reputations have been ruined and who have in many cases lost their savings in an attempt to put right things that were not their fault. Surely if each case has to go to court, or even if bunches of cases go to court en masse, the only people who are really going to gain much are the lawyers. And besides, surely that will take ages as ghere is already a backlog of cases pending for all sorts of things. The other thing that really puzzles me is how it ever got so. Did nobody notice the coincidence of so many apparently corrupt sub-postmasters? Did nobody stop and ask how it was that so many criminals wanted to work for the post office? The mind boggles!
Here’s an additional bit of silliness about Boris Johnson, reported by Robyn Vintner:
“The guest seat in Nick Ferrari’s LBC studio was bolted to the floor after Boris Johnson kept escaping off-camera in tough interviews during his tenure as mayor of London, the presenter has revealed.
In an interview with Radio Times, Ferrari said the chair was now firmly attached to a plate in the studio floor so interviewees stay in shot of the webcam and avoid doing what LBC staff refer to as the “Boris bolt”.
The former prime minister was regularly interviewed in a segment of Ferrari’s show called Ask Boris while he was the mayor of London between 2008 and 2016 where he would routinely make headlines with flippant comments.
When challenged on tough subjects, he would mumble and roll the chair out of shot, the presenter said, which led to it being fixed in place.”
I am still working at de-cluttering. I have a collection of sets of eyeshadows in a range of delightful shades. There was a time when I would paint my eyes every day. This does not happen nowadays. I rarely even use mascara as my eyes water at times (my optician suggests that this is a natural consequence of old age and decrepitude) and ai end up with panda eyes. I discovered that our local Tesco has a facility for collecting old make-up so I will bundle mine up and take it along next time I go there.
I am also whittling out books that neither Phil nor I are ever likely to read again, as well as those that we have two copies of because (1) Phil has bought a “nice hard-back” version of one we already had in paperback, (2) I found it in a bookshop, read the blurb, thought it looked interesting and bought it, only to discover, half a chapter in, that I had read it before and that there was an older copy on the shelf already. Then there are the various history-related tomes that our son used for research as a student and which he refuses to take away on then grounds that he has no room for them. Really we have no room for them either but one of the purposes of parents is to be a dumping ground for stuff you don’t want in your own home,
Granddaughter Number Two is well on the way to having a book storage problem. She really cannot go into a bookshop without loading herself up with yet another stack of books. Everything about books pleases her: an attractive cover design, coloured or, better still, patterned page edges, the smell of new books, the different smell of old books (up to a certain point - damp is not acceptable!) and the joy of opening up a new book and starting to read. But she’s running out of space. If/when she leaves home to find a place of her own, she will have to dedicate one whole room to library proposes.
I though we had a lot of books but Umberto Eco is said to have owned 50,000 books; he had this to say about home libraries:
"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.
"There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.
"If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!
"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."
There you go! But I bet Umberto Eco did not have as many chess books as we do.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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