Getting organised with family tasks. Environmental stuff. Warlike stuff.

 Granddaughter Number One has sent her housemate/best friend to collect their washing. As she went off with the bags, I popped out to retrieve our blue (paper and cardboard recycling) dustbin. The dustbin-men are clearly on a tight time schedule. Not only do they not take bins from your garden (if they’re not outside your garden gate they are ignored) but once they have emptied them they just dump the bins haphazardly and sometimes quite dangerously all over the pavement. “Oh dear,” said the housemate/best friend, “we keep forgetting to put our bins out. We’ve had to do two runs to the tip with our rubbish”.

I can’t say I am surprised but I am resisting the temptation to tell them how to get organised.

Now all I have to do is complete my daughter’s stitching and darning and I will have completed the family-related tasks I accumulated over the weekend.

Yesterday was brilliantly blue and sunny. Today we are back to grey. That’s the way it goes. There are studies which show that the trees and the ground are not absorbing carbon as well as they used to. 

Take Finland for example: 

“For decades, the country’s forests and peatlands had reliably removed more carbon from the atmosphere than they released. But from about 2010, the amount the land absorbed started to decline, slowly at first, then rapidly. By 2018, Finland’s land sink – the phrase scientists use to describe something that absorbs more carbon than it releases – had vanished.”

We need to find new and better ways to save the planet. Instead we appear still to be blowing up quite a lot of it. And those of us not actually blowing things up are helping provide the means to do the blowing up. 

Lebanon is being bombarded. Refugee camps in Israel are being attacked, tents set on fire - as if living in a tent was not enough of a hardship. And there are still unidentified dead beneath destroyed building. 

This morning I read this very relevant poem by the Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Han Kang:

“After you died I could not hold a funeral,

And so my life became a funeral.”

After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral,

So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.

These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.

These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.

― Han Kang, Human Acts

And here is a recent bit of Michael Rosen’s King and his Tutor:

'Have you seen these?' said the King to this tutor.

'You look worried, sir,' said the tutor, 'what are they?'

'They're reports, tutor,' said the King, 'reports of what people are saying about us.'

'Go on,' said the tutor, 'and do try not to look so worried about it.'

'These reports,' said the King, 'say that people are "not happy" with what we're doing.'

'And?' said the tutor.

'This one here,' said the King, 'says that they're "a bit unhappy". A bit unhappy! It's unbearable that people are saying things like that.'

'I think you need to take stock of the situation, sir,' said the tutor, 'it's just words.'

'But what words, eh!' said the King. '"Not happy" and "a bit unhappy". I'm shuddering thinking about it.'

'Sir,' said the tutor, 'relax. There is no need for this kind of anxiety. I put it to you again, what are any of these critics actually going to do? Answer me that.'

'Nothing, I suppose,' said the King.

'And there you have it,' said the tutor. 'It's just "da-dee-da-dee-da-dee-da...a little bit unhappy". It makes about as much difference to what we do, as a fly being cross that he forgot to have a piss.'

'I haven't looked at it like that,' said the King, 'you see, I was stung by the criticism.'

'Exactly,' said the tutor.

'But hang on,' said the King, 'why are they doing it? Why are they so critical of us?'

'The main reason,' said the tutor, 'is to keep their friends happy. Whatever they say about US, is really a code for what they want the people in their countries to think about THEM.'

'And the other reason?' said the King.

'People hate us not for what we do, but for who we are,' said the tutor. 

'You mean that we could do anything and they would still hate us?' said the King. 

'Yes,' said the tutor.

'We could invent a new way for the whole world to have clean water, and they would still hate us?' said the King.

'Yep,' said the tutor.

'Oh well,' said the King, 'now you've put it like that, we might as well just carry on doing what we're doing.'

'Exactly,' said the tutor, 'you've got it.'

'Thanks, tutor,' said the King.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!