No sex please, we’re idiots

I see those fun loving extremists of the People for the Extermination and Termination of Animals are at it again. No sex for meat eating males is what they’re proposing. Give up the steaks or the biological female persons who align themselves with the anti-human cause of extreme nutventalism will forever cross their legs. Although as one who has been a card carrying environmentalist for most of his days, even I can see the blatant flaws in such thinking.

Living close to nature as I do, I can easily see the big ticking biological pink elephant in the room for those bio-female persons who choose the “Do as I say or no rumpy pumpy for you” course. Fine, say I. Let your biological line dry up with your ovaries, because that is what will happen. No sex = no children = no grandchildren = and eventually no one to pay for your bloated public sector pension (Or my pittance either).

Bees know that the hive is more important than the individual. The Queen must be carefully tended, because from her all life comes. Just so with human females, because through the distaff comes the march of the generations. Yet that very important job does not mean that she should micromanage her spouses behaviour like in dictating his diet, because as Rudyard Kipling elegantly put it:

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern — shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

I know, I’m married, and you know what? Despite the occasional disagreement, I would not have it any other way. Besides, if she demands something I can’t or won’t provide, we’ve come to the point where she will take a well reasoned “No” as an answer from me.

Recovery mode

Recovering from a moderate dose of the flu this week. Not COVID, just a bog standard dose of the lurgi which has left me with a morning cough and heavy sense of lethargy. Bloody thing. It’s been hanging around like the last guest at a party who doesn’t know when it’s long past time to go home.

That’s not really important because the meadows are cut, the grass crop is in and I’m out seeding just before dusk. The idea is to create a wildflower meadow with a particular native species called Yellow Rattle, a parasitic plant that cuts down the grass content of a given meadow by binding to the roots of various types of grass, allowing easier germination of other types of native species of meadow plant. Well, that’s what I’m told anyway.

One issue with grassland over here, because of Ireland’s geology, the soil tends toward wet and poor nutrient, which means rushes. Rushes (Juncus Effusus L), are little use for man nor beast and a pain in the bum to get rid of from pastureland. Experiments have been done, trying to turn them into some sort of biofuel, but so far nothing commercial. So I’m trying a parasitic planting to reduce the rushes in our meadows and thus improve the pasture and forage.

We’re doing our land management in partnership with an NGO which promotes the creation and maintenance of native plant species for pollinators and native bee species. My neighbours are all watching with interest, as their land has a similar set of problems.

We could be setting a trend here, if it works. Especially with the new ‘Green’ agenda being forced on us small farmers from above. The politicians can’t force you to stop using artificial fertilisers if you don’t use them anyway, but just you watch the townies start screaming as yields drop and food prices soar. ‘Sustainable’ my left buttock.

Speaking of bees. Last hive inspection before Winter is done, and I may have to wait until Spring before I split my colonies into heavily insulated ‘Nuc’s’. However, instead of feeding, I’ve elected to leave a ‘Super’ on top of the brood box on each hive so that my bees have plenty of winter food already. This means I have a reduced crop, but it still leaves me with a healthy surplus for gifts, mead brewing and personal use this year. So, win-win for both me and the bees.

As for me, I’ll feel a whole lot better in a week or so when I’ve shrugged off this damn flu. Because there’s a whole heap of things to be done before Winter comes, and people owe me favours, which I intend to do a little cashing in on.

The real granny killers

Mrs S has a dose of the dreaded lurgi, a SARS/COV-2 infection, courtesy I think of baby sister in law who came to visit even though she was coughing and spluttering. So, I’m busy keeping my other half cool, medicated and resting. Not that I’m that worried. Mrs S is a robust woman who will slough this latest illness off like she has everything else.

This may play ducks and drakes with her upcoming hospital appointments, but the restraints are off (leg & knee brace etc), and it’s only for physio anyway. Fresh air, good food and gentle exercise will pull her through with ease. It’s ironic really, because she’s had the booster shots and I have steadfastly refused to do so. So, it is what it is.

I see all the crazy green dreams of ‘Net Zero’ are starting to crumble, despite the insanity of places like Oxford and elsewhere hamstringing their local economies with pointless traffic restrictions. Newsflash kiddies. If people can’t get in to buy things, your city centres will rot from the inside out. Trade needs goods to move to be bought and sold. If the goods don’t move, the money gradually stops, and places become wasteland.

What ‘Net Zero’ also does is kill. Mainly old people on fixed incomes who can’t afford the skyrocketing bills caused by Net Zero policies and the pointless lockdowns. For the rabid greenies, well they don’t care that your elderly parent will freeze to death in the dark. Their empty headed fanaticism will result in thousands of deaths because, contrary to their beliefs, reality tells us that there is no empirically proven causal link between human emissions of Carbon Dioxide and weather The claimed correlation only exists in the output of bad theoretical models and the crazed ravings of rent seekers. I’ve looked at the source data and model output. There’s nothing there.

The rabid greenies, fraidy cat NIMBY’s and their insistence that wind and solar are more use than a chocolate teapot, will be directly responsible for people freezing to death. People like the loathsome Extinction rebellion and their protest splinter groups will be directly to blame for people starving in the dark. But what do you expect from the kind of ‘woke’ idiots who can’t even tell a man from a woman? Bozo’s.

You didn’t have to be a genius or a prophet to see this motorway pile up of an economic car crash coming. It’s so obvious that anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see it. Yet the cosseted urbanites of the rabid green faction, living off borrowed money the rest of us are going to have to repay, can’t.

Lifting the ban on fracking will help. The panics about seismicity are just that, empty panics. The ‘earthquakes’ associated with fracking are at worst magnitude two point five, which no one will notice because it’s below the range of human perception. These ‘quakes caused by settling as rock strata give up their oil and gas can only be detected by seismographs. Having experienced several over magnitude three I can tell you it’s like having a heavy truck roll by the house. A saucer might rattle, or a picture tilt, but that’s all. Mining subsidence from badly maintained mothballed mine tunnels can lead to far worse subsidence. A dryer than usual Summer or much wetter Winter can lead to far more ground shifting. Hardly grounds for killing the poor and elderly.

Now 1200+ scientists have signed a ‘world climate declaration‘ stating that there is ‘no climate emergency’. Unfortunately this body of scientific opinion will be ignored even after people start to die. Rather like the ‘Great Barrington Declaration‘ (With almost a million signatories) devised by well qualified immunologists and researchers is still being ignored by much of the political class, many of whom have blood on their hands over both climate and pandemic. Their policies are already killing more people than they ‘save’. Either from denial of treatment or putting a stranglehold on reasonably priced energy, or more directly from inappropriate use of badly tested ‘vaccines’ and ‘renewables’ not delivering in the depths of winter.

For me, I saw this coming a long time ago and have been taking steps to protect those I care for. Insulation. Affordable fuel. Alternate sources of food. The money we squirreled away for our frail dotage has been invested carefully, and as soon as Mrs S is back in action it’ll be full steam ahead.

The granny killers are not going to take us without a fight.

Violating community guidelines

Our guests leave today. In one case I am heaving a huge sigh of relief. Baby sister in law has proven herself a scorpion guest, my other sister in law not so much, but still almost as entitled. No wonder their husbands did not come with them.

There are guidelines to visiting. Unwritten rules about conducting yourself while a guest in another’s home. You get fed when the host or hostess says. Because their house is not a f*cking restaurant or a hotel. You behave with good grace, do not insult your hosts, or behave in an offensive manner. Sisters in law have broken all these rules in the last few days and they will not be invited back.

If it was just our daughters, this week would have been much more fun, but the unwritten guidelines of this specific community have been broken and the breakers will not be admitted to Chez Maison Sticker again while the host still draws breath. I’ve literally shed blood in this place (Although I have cleaned up after myself) and done my best to provide sustenance that all would find acceptable. Dietary preferences were accepted and catered for, but this was not good enough and I have been forced to waste the precious commodities of food and time.

The shrieking level also increased past acceptable limits. Tell me, why do some people have to shout so much in enclosed spaces? My dining room can accommodate ten at a push, but six last night sounded like a chicken house at feeding time. Twenty men having a heated discussion would not have made half the racket. But I bit my tongue, knowing that the womenfolk would shortly be gone.

Noting my silence, Mrs S chided me for my lack of ‘social skills’, to which I later retorted that I was not the one breaching the accepted rules of hospitality. I mean really, what does a chap have to do? Methinks when there’s a house full of females, not much apart from hide, which I chose not to do. Whose bloody house is it anyway? Answer; mine. Not theirs, mine. Anyone who doesn’t like it knows where the door is. And the road to the f*cking airport, too.

Even youngest has noticed, and vouchsafed to us while out on a drive yesterday; “Is there any way I can be emancipated from this family?” I know how she feels.

There is a saying, I believe one of Benjamin Franklyn’s “Fish and visitors stink after three days” Well the stinking for me started on Monday, when sisters in law tried to come the high hand in my bloody kitchen. They literally tried to order me about in my own home.

Well this is our home, our private space and I dislike being dictated to just because I am related to someone by marriage. As for anyone ‘reporting’ anyone at my table for ‘hate speech’ as is law in Scotland for example, I would throw them out immediately and never invite them again. Not even as someone else’s guest. Dinner table conversation is sacrosanct, and I will allow any topic of discussion providing people don’t start throwing food. That is not done. This isn’t a drunken officers mess. Ratarsed drunk is acceptable, bad behaviour like ratting to the ‘authorities’ is not.

Putting people in jail for an opinion likewise unless they are confessing to murder or suchlike. As for ‘misgendering’, those getting ‘offended’ are the ones who need locking up. In a padded cell for their safety and others, as the whole gender dysphoria thing is still listed as a mental illness. As is being a ‘Minor attracted person’. These are people who have no place in a tolerant civilised society.

On that general drift, I notice recently that some rather innocuous, mildly conservative ‘saves’ on my Pinterest (It’s the only Social Media I do) feed have been ‘removed’ for ‘violating community guidelines’. No idea why as the posts in question were about as offensive as Lemon Mousse. Just a collection of vintage pulp sci-fi covers, aircraft art, cars and motorcycles, a bit of politics and philosophy, nothing much. One even got reinstated after a manual ‘review’. Not that I care, I’ll save a few more like them and Pinterest can go stuff themselves. They can even delete my account, which I only share with Mrs S for interior design pictures, sod ’em all.

On a general note; anyone who demands my ‘respect’ will be firmly told; “My respect is earned, bone brain. Get lost.”

Now I’m off to the airport to send our guests winging whence they came. Afterwards I will probably sing loudly and happily all the way home. Something bawdy for preference. If anyone objects, I’ll tell them I’m just rehearsing. For what, I’m not telling.

God save the King

There. I’ve said it. The Queen is dead, long live the King. I may not like Charles’s stance on man made climate change, or his obeisance to the wokish side of politics, but I am sworn. And an oath is an oath. May God help me.

Queen Liz, Brenda, whatever you want to call her, is no more. No doubt with a sense of relief to be following her husband, but with concern for the future of the people for whom she was the figurehead.

How do I feel about this? For someone I could never know personally? Deeply saddened. Subdued and, in a dry-eyed way mournful. I’m not really a monarchist either. The whole wavy flag, my country right or wrong thing passed me by. Yet I understand the need for a head of state, and I’d far rather it was someone trained for the long haul, rather than some mere politician.

What I don’t want to listen to is the torrent of empty platitudes from mere politicians, because she, and she alone was my sovereign lady. I may not have cared for the actions of her politicians and servants, but since before I was born she was the lynchpin of the land of my birth and the greater commonwealth.

All I have to say is this. God speed Elizabeth. You served your people as well as you could from the gilded cage of your position.

For the next few days I will be wearing black as a mark of mourning and respect. I may not crack a smile for a while. Something subtly important has departed from my life, and from the lives of so many of my fellow expats.

Now what? I think it is time for new beginnings. A time for the end of fear. To rid ourselves of old dogmas like COVID and man made climate change. To abandon the woke minority to the obscurity they so richly deserve, and to tell the yanks to stuff their crappy foreign policy once in a while. To begin to live properly again.

Of such small things…

Goes the saying; “Of such small things is happiness constructed” and thus I have found a small slice of happiness in this vale of tears. My wife is happily chattering with her sisters, who flew from the other side of the world to be here. Both our kids are cooking Sunday supper, and I sit triumphant because I have finally won a small battle with our eccentric septic system.

There is a beer on my right hand with the promise of more, my other half got the most wonderful surprise when she was greeted by both her sisters and her children at the airport, believing that only two would arrive. My shrivelled black heart was lightened by the sight of her tears of joy. Even if she did give me grief about my navigation on the way home.

Upon our arrival at home I found that the drains were beginning to back up. We had this once before. One of the septic drains was built with too shallow a slope and a strategic U-trap had become partially blocked with builders waste, leaf compost and moss while no-one was living here, leading to low flows and human waste building up in the downstream drain. So we had to spend cash on getting a septic service in to suck out the worst of it.

Today I finally worked out where the problem lay and flushed it clean. All the stagnating waste has been hosed into the main tank and the offending blockages cleared. All it took was a little thought and a strategically deployed hosepipe. Job done.

Those drains have been the bane of our lives, downspouts leaking across the yard and becoming easily blocked in heavy rainfall. Now they run as they are supposed to. Fast and clear. It’s not a big thing, but it counts as a major tick in the box of our refurbishment, meaning we don’t have to spend money on a new septic system or tank cleaning. Hell, the money will no doubt go on soaring electrickery bills, but everything counts.

Now we have a full house. Albeit of all females with the notable exception of my good self and there is a properly working septic system. For the moment God is in his heaven and I have had two glorious peaceful hours watching a silly movie on TV. For once, Sunday has lived up to it’s promise.

I find myself no longer caring that the US has a senile old paedophile as figurehead. Or that a corrupt Russian regime has been fighting a war against an equally corrupt Ukraine and NATO. Or that energy prices are going to drive the world into a depression of unheard of proportions. But I console myself thus; the WEF’s plan to ‘reset’ the world will fail. The ultra-wealthy will fall because they will find that they need the rest of humanity whether they like it or not. The current Chinese regime will crumble because it is too corrupt to stand. No one will come out of the current crisis unscathed. Not even me.

But for the moment I do not care. Those I love are gracing my household with their presence, and no matter what the future holds, we will have had this moment together. We have these few days before the future arrives, and we will survive, because we are survivors. And for the moment I am happy.

Doesn’t happen often. We occasionally get these moments in the battles of our lives and I am learning to cherish them. They give us hope that the world doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.

Dear reader, may I hope that you too will have such moments.

Cheers.

Bill