Playing the game

Had a little run in with a lefty the other day and something occurred to me. They were couching their arguments to make me look like a bad person just because of the skin I’m in, and afterwards I heard the term “Anglophobe” in a discussion of Orwell’s ‘Notes on Nationalism’, which perfectly described my opponents arguments.

They were behaving and speaking in a manner that was openly racist against people of my skin colour. So by their own twisted logic they were being exactly what they claimed I was, simply because of my age and racial characteristics, which as any fule kno are simply successful adaptations to colder climes. If those from other climes stick around in northern Europe for a few thousand years their descendants will all become paler because that’s how natural selection goes.

The find of Cheddar man points in this direction. The DNA says he had darker skin than current North European and a lot of people in the area share similar genetic alleles, well, that proves evolution works on fairly small timescales, comparatively speaking. This also fits in with my observation that a few old county families reputed to have “A lick of the tar brush” (some distant non-European ancestry) as it was once known, look almost exactly the same as all the other inhabitants of rural Britain. This is probably more common that most acknowledge. My own DNA ancestry contains a mix of Celt, Pict, North and Southern European and even a few outliers that are common across Persia. So my ancestors didn’t hang around the old place watching the inbreeding stack up, they got out there and mingled. Yet to look at me you would think I was solid North European through and through.

But to listen to my verbal assailant, you would think I was some kind of white supremacist monster. Which is not true. In real life I’m as amiable a chap as any other, willing to take as I find and deal accordingly. Yes, I can use rough language, but that’s my shop floor upbringing, there’s no harm in it. My grudges are rarely nursed unless the opposition is so hostile I must never trust them again. But the sheer Anglophobia exhibited by my assailant was a little hard to stomach because they were actively trying to push my buttons, make me angry with their constant Anglophobic assertions. In the end I shut up, gave them a hard look, which they ignored (A bad move) then asked “Is that all?” in a rather tart tone of voice before turning away from their racist tirade and got on with the rest of my day.

The thing is, my verbal assailant was just recycling ‘intellectual’ talking points, which are Anglophobic arguments Orwell would have been familiar with. There are some very well ‘educated’ people who cling to these assertions and are even English by birth. I don’t get it. Why hate your homeland so much? I don’t. It’s not perfect, but it’s where I’m from. As was the person who was giving me grief over my accent. Which I found rather ironic. They were probably ‘Whiter’ than I am. And I ask myself, is this naked hate against those who are of British / English heritage some kind of transposed anger against distant / oppressive parenting? By hating the English / British these Anglophobes are actually railing against their parents? Their Mum and Dad fucked them up so they just have to spread the shit around? Because feelz? As a by-blow I’ve noticed that people advancing this kind of argument have to break down all resistance before they even advance one single cogent thought. Which makes turning their own tactics against them all the more delicious. Anglophobia is naked racism and I like to remind people of this now and again. A kind of trolling of trolls.

Frankly, as I get older I tend to have less and less patience with this kind of person and will cut them off as soon as possible with all the irony and sarcasm at my disposal. Sometimes the word “Really? That’s rather Anglophobic isn’t it?” Delivered in a sharp or world weary tone is enough to chop them off at the knees. Or to use the more modern vernacular “Seriously?” It’s often no use arguing point by point, there’s rarely anything coherent in their arguments. It’s just puppy like emotion spilling all over the place which should thus be treated with the rolled up newspaper of contempt and an hour or two of being pointedly ignored.

So yes, I too can play the victimhood game, although I’d rather not because I’m not a victim. I’m just me.

A battle for Britain

I’ve finally bought a motorcycle. A big beautiful blue beast of a bike that is steady as a rock and handles beautifully. Heavy brute at rest, but once you’re moving it’s a complete delight. So I dug into my financial reserves last week and signed on the dotted line. While on the test ride I remembered reading a 1980’s advertising slogan about how motorcycling was the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Jesus this thing is a complete Spitfire! Fast, manoeuvrable and with a gorgeous rorty engine note when I open the throttle. I love it. On each sunny day throughout the summer, I intend to be out on the road annoying Greenies by increasing my carbon footprint whenever possible. Vroom! Although I will make one concession by watering our blooming deck garden before I leave the house. I shall be going out for a little while, I may be some time.

Excuse this posts titles hyperbole, but I can’t help feeling we are witnessing a battle, not merely for the soul of a nation, but also of an entire culture. A culture which has been economically empowering and successful across the world. A culture which has raised more people out of poverty and misery over the last fifty years than any other before it. A culture based on the simple concept of peaceful self-ownership. The focussed effort of the individual, not the clumsily directed efforts of a bumbling and clumsy state. This is the idea modern Britain was founded on. And it’s a great idea. Which is why the Americans took it on and refined it and so many people from all over the world want in. Even if they’re going to end up exploited if they don’t watch out. But that is part of the price you pay as a migrant. It’s why so many highly qualified people from overseas end up cleaning floors and working as taxi drivers to survive while they wait for their qualifications to be recognised.

As an expat, I must confess to being deeply torn. On a personal level, yes, I’ve left the old country and don’t miss it’s physical restrictions, the narrow crowded roads and suchlike, but that doesn’t mean I no longer care about the mess the political classes have created and still promulgate in the land of my birth. Which is why a new Battle of Britain is raging quietly across that sceptred isle. Until the EU elections when the voting public delivered a “Do the job you said you’d do” message via the BREXIT party. Yet despite the leave faction being seriously outgunned by the money available to the remainers, they’re still winning (Just). In spite of a propaganda ministry (BBC) bias that would have even Joseph Goebbels saying “Hang on you fellows, zat’s a bit extreme issn’t it?” Even dragging the front runner in the Tory party leadership contest into court for “Lying to the public” WTF! Boris Johnson is a politician FFS! If we put all the politicians who ‘lied’ in the dock for telling porkies it would be a very empty Houses of Parliament and House of Lords indeed.

This is nothing more or less than Adlertag, full fledged hostilities against anyone who would want to take the UK out of the EU. May the appeaser has failed and is all but gone, but there are still too many dithering, desperate politicians who are afraid of losing their seats and only making matters worse. All the talk of second referendums or cancelling article 50 is nothing more than cowardice. Because I think certain remainer MP’s are being threatened by their money men and the rest see the trough they have had their trotters in for far too long about to run dry.

This is a time when courage is called for against the forces of bureaucratic darkness. We know who the bad guys are. The empire builders and petty Napoleons of the EU Commission. The legions of lazy bureaucrats and coterie of pet academics who don’t want to see the money taps of taxpayer funded moolah turned off. The majority of Britain knows this, the Italians know it, the Hungarians, Austrians and Poles know it, as do a growing chorus of previously-ignored voices across mainland Europe. The peasants are finally revolting.

As for myself, I will be in London on the 31st October, raising a glass to my one-time fellow countrymen and women, looking forward to the D-Day when the EU as it is currently structured begins a rapid decline into the footnotes of History.

In the muddle of a jingle

Happy weekend everyone! It’s almost the end of May. Well it will be this June and not before time. On the domestic front our deck garden is starting to look a little crowded, in a colourful sort of way. My six Lemon plants are now living outside full time enjoying the fresh air, the Pansies are still going strong and I’ve recently picked my first radishes. Very nice they were too. Any fresher and we’d have had to put chastity belts on the Beetroot. Serves me right for planting French radishes.

Old gardening jokes aside, I’ve been watching the UK political scene and actually looking forward to the EU election results. Privately I think the powers that be in Europe have finally woken up and actually read the writing on the wall. Even if belatedly. People the world over are seeing the globalist threat for what it is, a naked attempt to strip them of even the most basic of civil liberties, like the right of ownership and freedom of expression then install a top down doctrine which has never worked.

I’ve seen this ugly political mechanism in operation and it is never anything but corrosive and destructive. Got to fall in line comrade, can’t get a job if you don’t pay your union subs. Strike when you’re told, can’t negotiate for yourself you know. What are you? Some kind of maverick? Sorry mate, shop steward can’t help you if you don’t do him a favour first. Been there, done that. The closed shops (Union only workers) of the late 1970’s were no fun to work in. I hated them because they dragged everyone down to the lowest common denominator and always gave unwarranted power to the equivalent of the playground sneak.

The good news is that the political pendulum is beginning the long swing back to some form of sanity and proper democratic representation. The bad news is that we’re not there yet and a lot can go wrong. When people once more have the courage and right to express what is merely an opinion without being harassed out of their jobs by activists or even arrested by the Police, then we should call this a win. But not until then. And even then with a weather eye out for the evil to rise again. The lesson here to the mainstream politicians is that sometimes you just have to do the job you were given to do. Never mind if your so-called clever mates don’t want you to do it. The job is the job. Deliver or be brought down.

Of course the remainers won’t be happy, but I have the feeling they never are anyway, so, a no score draw there I feel. However, once the path to BREXIT is more certain, business can plan and invest accordingly, the pound will regain its value and I look forward to seeing another tearstained departure on this side of the Atlantic as Trudeau too is shuffled off toward a richly deserved political obscurity, except as a footnote as Canada’s worst ever Prime Minister.

The gift of laughter

Downtown today, I managed to find a copy of the Sunday Times, which sparked off one of those conversations between Mrs s and I. About a particular kind of laughter.

Now Mrs S and I laugh with each other all the time. She takes the rise out of me unmercifully, which I allow. We find this makes for a healthy relationship. We have the gift of laughter. This not only feels right, but buoys us both up when dealing with the many cerebrally challenged we come across in our day to day lives. Our shared laughter has become an essential mutual inoculation against the many petty evils of this world. We are even able to laugh at ourselves. Which make the “Aw-shee-it!” moments which occasionally punctuate our lives more bearable.

By laugh I mean what Lyall Watson, in his book ‘Supernature‘, once described as ‘the soul laugh’. Not the appalling “That is so funn-ee” beloved of retarded High school sophomores or the tittering near-sneer of dinner party faux-intellectual dweebs. That is feigned laughter. Made by people who don’t know how to let the humour get deep into their inner being. Made by people who go to comedy clubs and really shouldn’t because they ruin it for everyone else. The people I refer to are often found berating the stage act for breaching some strange moral code or challenging the audience members belief systems. In the clubs I often get irritated by these arrogant little shits and often think that people who don’t really get humour could do with a very large brick over the head to try and knock some sense into them. These are the people who I have nothing but contempt and increasingly rarely, pity for. The walking damned. Those who are forever unable to get it. Those who exclude themselves and because they cannot understand humour, forever try to exclude everyone else and prevent them telling jokes that are even remotely funny.

A soul laugh is by contrast a bucket of ice water over the head, a fresh mountain stream, a cloudburst of emotional catharsis. This kind of laugh washes the spirit clean and destroys all those poisonous little shibboleths the perpetually offended would clutter our lives with. It defuses tense situations and the daftest thing can trigger an attack. And it is predominantly male. A sign of relaxation, of being at ease with your inner core. It cannot be faked and when properly shared, soul laughter bonds and unites. Offence evaporates. One of life’s great sadnesses is that so few females really understand its necessity. I count myself blessed because my wife is one of those who actually does.

The thing is, to the weak, fearful and immature, soul laughter is frightening and therefore to be suppressed at all costs. There is nothing more dangerous in the eyes of a would-be oppressor than a full blown soul laugh. Because the soul laugh is literally spit in their eyes. It’s the only sane response when those wielding power think they have broken all resistance. It can be found even on the final scaffold when death is inevitable, because well, what the hell, what have you got to lose? A soul laugh is also a great defiant middle finger to those who perpetuate lies because it says; “I’m not taking you seriously – motherfucker.”

Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and Hitler weren’t big fans of humour, especially when it was directed at them. Which is why Russians used to be so habitually gloomy and Germans only had a very shaky grasp of what was actually funny. All their best comedians ended up in concentration camps or Gulags. Or worse, shot and consigned to mass graves.
My favourite Russian joke goes;
Prisoner: “I don’t understand, the judge gave me twenty years. I’m innocent of any crime!”
Gulag Guard: “Twenty years comrade? You must have done something.”
Prisoner: “I don’t know. All I did was call Stalin an idiot.”
Gulag Guard: “Ah, there you go comrade. Revealing state secrets.”

What we need is more jokes directed at the hate speech laws themselves. To demonstrate how unpopular these things are to left-leaning politicians, who really only want popularity, because that is the path to power, and power is all they really crave. A really good joke would be to wipe out the Tories, the Limp Dems and Labour in the forthcoming EU elections and bury the Canadian Liberal party. Then if they don’t learn the lessons, hand out a really sound electoral kicking at every possible opportunity, directing a humiliating barrage of soul laughter at the totalitarian bar stewards. Just to drive the point home good and hard.

There will be arrests, but this could become the benchmark to every aspiring stand-up comedians career, getting nicked for hurting some humourless buggers feelings. Look at Count Dankula. He went from unknown Communist comedian to overnight celebrity and MEP candidate. Yes, I thought the whole Nazi Pug thing was a great gag, if a bit tasteless. As for Sargon’s sidelong jibe at the awful scarecrow like figure of Labour MP Jess Phillips. Well I wouldn’t want to either. I know it’s not wise to look at the mantelpiece whilst stoking the fire in certain cases, but a blindfold and last cigarette might be more useful at that particular juncture. Double-euw. If given the option I’d rather hump Worzel Gummidge.

Treason May on the other hand increasingly looks like a piece of badly stuffed Victorian taxidermy. I’ve also noticed that Justine Turdeau could pass for a very close relative of a certain Mr Schickelgruber if he were to grow a toothbrush moustache. As for Hildebeast Clinton, yeaah. Shades of a reanimated Eva Braun there. Occasionally Cortex resembles one of puppeteer Jim Hansens worst nightmares as might be animated by Director Tim Burton. She’s certainly got the intellect for it. Only just though.

Notwithstanding, it could be argued that the soul laugh is nature’s greatest gift to humanity because of it’s role in both breaking down aggression and bringing down the tyrannical. It could also be argued that such laughter damages people who are basically not really grown up enough to live in the real world. Then there is the moot point that a bloody good laugh is worth having at the downfall of the unrighteous, unfaithful and divisive. Go on, have a guess at who I’m talking about. There are two right answers. One for the UK, one for Canada. They can pass all the anti-free speech laws they want, but the soul laugh will always find a way to it’s intended target.

Having second thoughts

We are currently booked and paid for to visit London, UK in Autumn 2019. Nothing much, we’re going to spend a little quality time with ‘North’ (Younger stepdaughter) in the great metrollops and go do some sightseeing. Only the current Police crackdown, where they are doing the whole facial recognition fascist thing has me thinking twice. Arresting otherwise law abiding people for getting annoyed at being scanned without permission? That and they’re confiscating spoons for heavens sakes. I’ve just seen a triumphant tweet from London Police of a ‘deadly weapons cache’ that looks like the contents of my cutlery drawer before I had a clear out last year. I swear this picture of a ‘weapons cache’ had a butter knife and a spoon in it, FFS! All right, there was a fencing foil in amongst the edged kitchen tools on display, but that had a fencing button on the tip and might have put someone’s eye out if they were very, very unlucky / clumsy. I bet most of those other bits of metal weren’t all that sharp, rather like the arresting officers.

Jesus H Freaking Christ on a Velocipede! I used to be part of the UK law enforcement ‘community’ as a lowly bylaw enforcement officer, but right at present any trust of the UK Police on my part has been eroded to the point of nothingness. You can even be arrested for telling jokes for heavens sake! Or questioned for holding the ‘wrong’ opinions. After that some bozo in black will probably make an excuse to rummage through your kitchen drawers and try to make a case for terrorism. “All right chummy. Yore nicked! Slice your own bread do you? Right! You’re under arrest for conspiracy to make sandwiches.” Dear God alive. Does anyone understand how retarded that sort of behaviour makes them look? God knows what they’d make of my Sabatier and Sushi knife collection. Probably accuse me of a massive conspiracy to cook a casserole.

Honestly at this juncture I’m actually becoming more afraid of the UK Police than any criminal I might happen across and am inclined to avoid any uniformed presence like the plague, refusing to engage with them and crossing the streets where possible to avoid said uniformed presence.

This is why the current crop of party politicians have to go. They’re the ones behind the moral panics driving this idiocy. All of them. Tory. Labour. Lib Dem. Green. None of them have a clue. This is getting worse than the 60’s and 70’s and this extreme behaviour by the UK Police is liable to make things far, far worse than they already are.

I am seriously thinking about cancellation. Stuff ’em. I’m halfway inclined to spend my tourist dollars elsewhere.

On the plus side, my deck garden is looking well. The largest Lemon plant just crept over the twenty four inch marker. My Capsicum seedlings have been planted out and we should shortly have Sunflowers, Canna Lillies, Lupins and Delphiniums. A Blue rose has also been added to the collection. Once the rain stops I’ll be outside reading Montaigne’s essay on the delights of solitude.

Floccinaucinihilipilification

My wife has a pet name for that part of me which that she calls an ‘unreconstructed male’. She calls that part of me ‘Mongo’, my inner Neanderthal. Which is something I do play up to, especially when I think she is trying to be obtuse. Or I am. Or I get bored. I joke that this is my primitive self, my primordial being, all muscle and little brain. Which I think is a little unfair on Homo Neanderthalensis, but there is so much floccinaucinihilipilification in the world these days.

So many people on the extreme political left estimate that others are worth little or nothing because they aren’t part of their subset or in-group. A mode of thought I consider very immature. Very high school clique. Not a Leftist? Don’t much care for Socialism? Have even a moderate opinion on any topic? Like freedom of speech? Then, according to them you’re a primitive moron.

Personally, I see no problem with being described as Neanderthal. I think they’ve had a bad press. Let’s put it this way; if your species of human can survive near-global glaciation with only subsistence technology, but have some beautifully intricate flint toolwork and sophisticated burial customs, then you can badmouth Neanderthals. Yes, yes, I know Neanderthals are officially extinct, well not unless you think my wife’s description of me is valid. They were also supposed to have died out beginning around forty and thirty seven thousand years ago when a series of massive volcanic eruptions blanketed Europe during an extreme cold event and probably ruined their best hunting grounds. Some authors say they were simply out competed by mass immigration. Whatever the truth of the matter is, many modern Northern Europeans still have between 2-3% of Neanderthal DNA from interbreeding. In certain Himalayan populations, that amount has been found to be as high as 6%. Not bad for an ‘extinct’ species, eh?

Of course, all these cosseted urban pundits describing average male behaviour as ‘primitive’ may be correct, for a partial value of ‘correct’, but what they really forget all those ‘primitive’ male traits that they deem ‘worthless’ are developed from highly successful survival strategies. Self reliance, independence, loyalty to the family unit etc. None of which are worthless. I would argue that the value of such primitive traits is greater than all the so-called ‘brilliant’ top-down solutions these pundits would like to see us adopt, despite a litany of failed applications. For myself, I am happy to retain my primitive aspect, if only for a giggle. As for ‘moron’, well, I leave my one remaining reader to judge that for themselves.

For a little parting humour, I would like to leave you with one of my favourite parts of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.

Enjoy.

Done and done

That’s it. I have the papers for my postal vote and will be casting ballots against both my old constituencies Tory incumbent and the Labour / Limp Dem / Green ‘opposition’ in future, in favour of either the BREXIT or UKIP candidate.

The UK will still be an EU member on 23-26 May 2019 and not ratified the Withdrawal Agreement by 22 May 2019, so those are my voting intentions. Stick that in your polls and smoke it. Although not in a non-smoking area, which is most of the UK.

The mainstream UK political class have screwed over a large democratic vote, I’m talking Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens, so they all now richly deserve hammering after hammering at the ballot box. Not just the local elections but at every election. Remove the mandate, the access to power and privilege that the old guard of politicians (From all sides of Parliament) have so flagrantly abused by the only peaceful means possible. Time for the party to end. Call it a mandatectomy is you will.

Throw the bums out, as our colonial cousins would say.

Say it ain’t so

A song has been going through my head for the last day or so. A powerful tune written in the mid 70’s by Murray head. One which I have taken diabolical liberties with and altered salient lines which I hope retain the power and majesty of the original, but which I have adapted for an obvious purpose.

Say it ain’t so, Joe please
Say it ain’t so
That’s not what we want to hear Joe and we’ve got a right to know

Say it ain’t so, Joe please
Say it ain’t so
We’re sure they’re telling us lies Joe please tell us it ain’t so

They tell us that our heroes have played their best cards
And don’t know how to go on
We’re clinging to solemn promises we were made
But the honest days are gone

The country and democracy have fallen apart
The money has gotten scared
One mans words could hold the country together
But the truth is no-one cared

Say it ain’t so, Joe please
Say it ain’t so
We pinned our hopes on you Joe and they’re ruining our show

(Ooo Baby)
Don’t you think we’re gonna get burned
(Ooo Baby)
BREXIT’s gonna to get turned
We’re gonna get burned
We’re gonna get learned
We’re going to get turned
We’re going to get burned
We’re going to get burned
Ooo learn
Turn
Burned
Ooo burned
Yea…..

Say it ain’t so, Joe please
Say it ain’t so
That’s not what we want to hear Joe please tell us it ain’t so
Say it ain’t so, Joe please
Say it ain’t so
We’re sure they’re telling us lies Joe and we’ve got a right to know

They tell us that our heroes have played their best cards
And don’t know how to go on
We’re clinging to solemn promises we were made
But the honest days are gone

The country and democracy have fallen apart
The money has gotten scared
One mans words could hold the country together
But the truth is no-one cared

Say it ain’t so, Joe please
Say it ain’t so
That’s not what we want to hear Joe and we’ve got a right to know

Say it ain’t so, Joe please
Say it ain’t so
They keep on telling us lies Joe please tell us it ain’t so

Say
Say it ain’t so
Say it ain’t so
Cause we’ve got a right to know

We are, I feel, past the point of no return. Unless one side or the other backs down. Or the political left (Including half the current UK parliamentary Tory party) learn to behave like grown ups and do what they solemnly promised.

I wish this weren’t so. But it is. I leave you with the 1977 version of this poignant little number as sung by Roger Daltrey.

Apologies to Murray, but it’s such a great song.

What is man?

Now that the weather is getting warmer, I’m finding there is less to do workwise and more spare time to read. The good news being that the company I work for like what I do enough to keep me on and enlarge my role, while giving me a pay rise. Which is nice. Paying attention to detail does pay off. But then I’ve always had a certain faculty with numbers, which is part of how I earn a crust. Ensuring A gets B in good time without too much trouble to C and not bothering D with the fine detail. Which people appreciate.

At this juncture I’m feeling a tad philosophical. Let me enlarge, my current reading matter is the Essays of Michel De Montaigne, a sixteenth century philosopher and humanist. There are quite a lot of them, but they contain delightful little musings on the nature of pedagogy and also of cannibal societies, amongst many other things. A curiously fluid style, very modern and readable. If transplanted to today’s society, I think he would do just fine, after a short pause for acclimatisation of course. What he would make of Social Media I have no idea.

Statue of Michel De Montaigne, Paris

This statue, which I recall from my last visit to Paris, is an image of what shines through his writing. That of a true gentleman who pays very close attention to what is going on around him and treats said matters with the amusement (And occasional mockery) they so richly deserve.

There is much I find admirable in his writing. Very down to earth. Fond of quoting Cicero, Juvenal and Propertius to make his point, but in a way that is gently mocking of pomposity. Very humane. His use of their quotations is not used as a bludgeon to any readers sensibilities, but rather utilises the delicacy of a fine surgeons scalpel, subtly dissecting and separating rather than amputating ideas. Seeing humans for the fallible creatures we are, prone to self delusion and irrationality. Looking at differing cultures and finding the admirable rather than the negative.

Some of his work echoes in Shakespeare from Hamlet (Act 2 Scene 2);

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!

Which appeared to be common ideas during the late 1580’s. Indeed Shakespeare may well have have come into contact with people who had actually read Montaigne and sparked these thoughts off in him. There is even a branch of scholarship that claims old Bill from Stratford culled some of his best speeches direct from translations of Montaigne’s work. I’m not surprised. Shakespeare seems to have collated some of his best work from other sources, filed off the serial numbers and claimed it as his own. No need for conspiracy theories about a grammar school boy from an obscure midlands market town not being capable of writing as he did, all Shakespeare needed was a translated volume of Montaigne’s work, a little dramatic flair and hey presto!. Job’s a good ‘un. No rich noblemen from Oxford needed. Half Shakespeare’s work was already done for him.

Now all the above does not get me where I wanted to go. I ask the question, “What is man?” mainly because I often hear some very ill-informed and perhaps callous people say that ‘mankind is a cancer’. Which is not true. Indeed such statements tend to come from that part of humanity who have held a tiny mirror up to existence and then short sightedly tried to chop off all the bits that won’t fit. I leave the task of identifying these poisonous philosophies to my last remaining reader. Personally I think that when these people say; mankind is a cancer, they mean everyone else but them. Which is rather selfish and nihilistic, but that too is part of the human condition.

Coming from a very rural area and having grown up in houses with largish gardens, I tend to take a contrary view of what humanity is. As a gardener I firmly believe that Humanity is the steward of the Earth, vital for it’s good management. Paying attention and making the most of what we have whilst being aware that this small blue marble spinning in the infinity of the Universe could do quite adequately without us. Even if the end result looked rather scruffy and was prone to being re-sculpted by every single natural disaster that came it’s way. Which we could ameliorate the effects of by not building on active volcano’s, managing flood plains and just taking a little care with our leavings before ending up as the next layer of fossils. Oh and looking out for any pesky bits of space rock that might prove an inconvenience. Despite my often voiced misgivings, I actually quite like humanity. People are by turns entertaining and infuriating, fascinating in their ordinary lives and when not completely up themselves a source of constant amusement.

We are the one known animal to have developed tool using intelligence to the point where we actively manage our own environment and able to take the first faltering steps off this little ball of rock. Which is a task we might do better if we stopped clinging to some very inaccurate ideas and did a little due diligence. Managing, not protecting. Farming, not asset stripping. Creating more from less. Doing a bit of joined up thinking. Letting people get on with their lives. Yes, yes, I know, but it’s a fantasy I like to entertain from time to time. There still burns a minuscule guttering candle in the darkness of my heart. The last contents of Pandora’s box. A dusty little shrivelled husk of hope. It’s the writing of people like Montaigne that keeps that very singular part of me alive.