Has anyone ever noticed the following?
People who talk about ‘disinformation’ or ‘misinformation’ (and other such neologisms) are usually the greatest liars of all?
The difference between ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘verified fact’ is currently running at about six months.
Laid three new concrete hive bases today ready for their new stands. I’m told fifteen inches is about the right height to keep rats and mice out. So I built three stands of that height to place the hives on and oriented them south and east, like the books say you should.
There’s been a lot of ‘project slippage’ caused by unforeseen events. Supply availability, people not doing what you wanted in good time. Getting bees is proving a sticking point and I’m told that the next Nuc availability will be in a month.
As for the banks, the oft repeated words “We are experiencing extremely high call volumes.” have already reduced Mrs S to floods of tears twice this week and thus got me thoroughly discombobulated.
The money is all there, we just can’t get at it without the landline that the builders trashed. So until we’ve sorted out the phone access next week, I can only pay the trades guys half. Which should be an incentive for them to get us up and running, asap.
However, I’ve stripped out the last of the window glass intact, meaning I have plenty of glass panels for various projects like cucumber frames and citrus growing. Ever since I germinated my first lemon seeds I’ve had this notion to grow my own citrus fruit and store it as frozen organic fruit juice. Might even barter a little. We’re a registered farm business now, so why not? I’ve a location in mind and know how to build some hot water solar panels to retain some residual heat during the depths of winter to keep the frosts at bay. Some cheap half inch black plastic tube under double glazed glass over a black back panel is easy to make. An insulated hot water storage tank (or several) might be a good idea too. All do-able on a budget. Primitive but useful.
As for the outside world, the more I step away from the news, every time I have a brief peruse of the mainstream, the more I’m inclined to think; “Surely any damned fool could see that would happen.” It often reduces me to a near permanent state of “WTF!”
Which begs the question; am I ‘any damned fool’? Because I can see the harm done? By the very people we entrust with the public good? Real life measurable harm like (takes deep breath) Overt sexualising grooming of pre-pubescent children in schools by policy, interrupted education by lockdown, children (and adults) psychologically damaged by obsessive mask wearing and social isolation. People driven to madness by the incessant news media diet of fear. And people hate what they fear, so they are driven to hate. Because they are taught to hate by the very people squawking about ‘misinformation’. To name but a few. Yet who are the mis-informers? No pressure. Answer in your own time.
Not to mention the damage to the fabric of society. Despite increased institutionalised enforcement, under the surface we are observably more divided than ever before. There is more racism, more hatred, more intolerance. And it bubbles up from the poisoned wellspring of mandated ‘diversity’ and enforced ‘fairness’. The “You must think exactly this way – OR ELSE!” corporate mindset. Or else you will go on a list. A publicly visible list of the ideologically impure and unemployable ‘haters’. Available to hiring managers, credit agencies and local authorities to name but three. These lists should not exist in a truly civilised society, but they do. I cite the confirmed existence of the Non-Crime Hate Incident list in the UK, where people not convicted of any crime are put in an effective digital pillory.
Fortunately this matters little to me personally. Out here in the rural west of Ireland people are more down to earth, more in tune with the real world and the turn of the seasons. Social media is seen as the province of teenagers. And very few children have cell phones. Neighbours talk over their garden walls, do favours for each other, show unbidden kindness.
In my mind it is a fundamental truth that authoritarianisms suppression and censorship divides us all, while free, open and honest speech allows people to discuss, examine and challenge, not only the beliefs of others but also their own, in a roundabout way promoting ‘social cohesion’ more effectively than any other method. But then any damned fool should be able to see that, and if that is the case then I am happy to be so described.
Fun. Elon Musk has bought 9% of Twitter as everyone knows. Twitter tried to block his attempt to buy them outright by offering him a Directorship, with the proviso that his holding would be capped around 14%. Elon rightly refused as his stated objective is to take Twitter private and reform it to be a free speech platform with clearly defined boundaries. Now he has made a hostile takeover bid of $54.20 per share. Ten points above current market value.
A lot of big financials, and the odd Saudi prince have become nervous as Twitter is their key to the communications kingdom. By controlling what is seen as ‘the public square’ they think they control acceptable public opinion. At least the greater share of it. So the share price is wobbling around the $45 mark (Down from $70 last year) as attempts are made to prevent Musk getting hold of it.
So. What is Musk going to do next? I have no idea.
However…… Anyone remember this scene from the movie ‘A Good Year’?
Honestly, I’m all agog. This could be epic.
Update: Viva Frei explains the outcomes below should Musk dump his 9% share of Twitter. Twitter stock will tank. Shareholders lose massively. Directors sued to bankruptcy by angry investors. Musk can do all this with a single sell order.
Anyone who thinks this doesn’t matter isn’t paying attention. The financial ramifications are enormous. This is a stone in a puddle situation. The ripples will get everywhere.
Mrs S and I are thinking of cashing out of our tech and property stocks, but where to go? That is the question. Finance and energy look like the only reasonable sectors. Maybe not even those.
In my workshop yesterday after a day planting Heather, Willow, Wildflowers and Clover in the top meadow. Jaysus but it was cold. The wind didn’t bother going around me, it just moseyed on through like I wasn’t in the way. And it was a damp, bitter wind. The kind that strips the warmth from your bones worse than twenty below. However, the planting got done and I clambered back into the car and slithered back to the house.
Ah yes, the house. Not so much a house as a husk at the moment. No power, no life. A mere gummy shell of a building. Now I find the builders in their enthusiasm, have trashed my Internet connection, leaving me with a stripped fibre connection hanging forlornly over freshly poured concrete. I specifically told them not to play with the connectors, but something got lost in translation and they ripped the box off the wire. Words have been had.
It’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a little blackmail, but I was careful to instruct them to protect it, and Mrs S has been on the phone to them because I was likely to throw a major wobbler at them. And when I wobble, the object of my ire knows that they have been wobbled at. However, apologies have been made, along with offers of restitution, but it’s still extra money that I will end up paying to get reconnected. Never mind the downtime and delay of getting a Technician to come and do the honours. Our Electrician does a lot of stuff, but I don’t think he’s got the kit for RJ45 Cat 6 cabling or making off the ends of Fibre optics.
What I am going to do is treat this misfortune as an opportunity to get my router relocated properly to a more central location in the house so that the Wi-fi signal can reach everywhere within the building at a reasonable signal strength. Then I’ll connect up a wireless bridge to the sheds so I can enjoy high speed Interwebs without having to traipse across the yard every time I need to check my email.
Might even be fast enough for watching instructional videos and Zoom calls without too much buffering. How cool would that be? I have a spare laptop and MIMO router, so maybe I can configure that with my range extender to give me a reasonable bandwidth out there without too much effort. See if I can remember enough from my old Cisco router training. Although modern software interfaces are a lot less user fiendish than back in ’05 when I passed my course. As for full bandwidth Interwebs out in the garden? I like it. I can do a lot with that.
So maybe it is a blessing in disguise that the builders trashed my Interwebbery. It also means that they owe me a big favour. Now that to me is a harder currency than any other.
No, not the constant nagging of Microsoft to ‘upgrade’ to Windows 11, but the glass things covering holes in walls that you can see through. Specifically how to get them out intact. My builders, despite entreaties to keep the old units intact, have managed to smash all but one of the four they have taken out so far. Not by malice, but simple lack of technique.
So on Saturday I took a time out with specialist saw blade and chisel to extract the double glazed glass from the frame, which was surprisingly easy. Put a 10mm cut over one of the bevelled seams, then put a chisel in the gap to lever the bevelled section off the frame all around the glass before gently easing the heavy double glazed section out of the frame.
Took me all of half an hour to figure out and ten minutes per glazed unit to do. I’ll finish the rest by Tuesday. Will probably have to adapt the technique to take the upper storey units from the frames from the inside while the builders are smashing up the ground floor prior to the first concrete pour later next week.
So a conversation will be had with my builders on Monday to let me remove all the rest of the glazing before they have at the frames with jackhammers, as they are wont to do. This means I will have the glazed units for an improvement on two of my sheds and some for cold frames or perhaps even a greenhouse. More light in, protecting delicate flowers and veg from late frost, what’s not to like?
The first of the raised beds is also in situ, built from two leftover pallets treated with fence post preserver. I have a couple of tonnes of woodchip mulch with a promise of more to come for free. The plan is to half fill the raised beds with old logs and mulch before any soil goes in. I believe the Germans have a word for it; Hugelkultur.
By contrast, during my off site time, I got into a YouTube comments spat over anti-Semitism. Having known a few Jews and Zionists in my time, I’ve always wondered about why certain people hate them so much. Is it because Jews control the financial sector? No, because for every Jewish owned company there’s ten owned by non-Jews. But Jewish descended people do seem to be prominent in law, medicine, media and entertainment, especially in the USA, and I, with my limited intellect, have worked out why this is.
Family. It’s that simple. Jewish people have a strong familial tradition where children are trained, not just dumped in front of a TV for their forebrains to fester. In Jewish society, the tendency is to involve their children in a process, where they learn skills, be that in trade, the arts or finance. In the more ultra-orthodox Hassidic communities I’m told a boy is expected to become a grown man at fourteen, recite passages from the Torah (I think) and taught how to be. Be that lawyer, tradesman or merchant. Which I think is quite admirable. It’s a recipe for success in life.
Yet why are the Jews hated so much? From my perspective, I think this is down to the personal inadequacies of those peddling the hate. Those peddling anti-Semitic hate, be they Communist or Fascist (Two sides of the same vile totalitarian coin), hate because they feel themselves to be inferior, or that the continued success of a persecuted class despite centuries of murder and repression, is some sort of slight or adverse reflection upon those peddling anti-Jewish hatred. Which, virus-like, mutates and is passed on. My parents were both sufferers while I have largely remained immune.
Those peddling the hate know their statist, top down cultures are structurally inferior to the more tribal, family oriented bottom up approach. So when in or seeking power, their instinct is to point at the successful and use the rather flaccid argument that the hatemongers disciples are poor and downtrodden because those eeevil outsiders are hoovering up all of the resources, when the reality is that the familial structure of training children to be grown ups and passing on wealth works. And the Jews and Zionists prove it works. Not for them the perversion of teaching six year olds about outlier sexuality. Now there’s a Darwin Award in the making.
Well that’s just my view, reached independently by simple observation without doctrine or dogma. All while I was working out how to fix another issue and save money. Which I have. Which was nice.
By such little increments do we move forward.
First thing I was out in the yard last week dumping stuff in one of my two compost makers. Minding my own business, lost in my own thoughts when something bounced across the yard and halted less than four feet away. “Bill!” Mrs S saw it first. The creature bounded away after giving me a startled look. Well it would, wouldn’t it?
“Well I’m damned.” I remarked as a white bobtail disappeared around the corner of the storage shed. “He was a big one.” For a moment I thought it was a hare, but hares aren’t that big, are they? Having completed my double take. I looked it up. The shape of the eyes, length of ears and gait all said ‘Irish Hare’. And they are, at least in our locale, almost double the size of your average bunny wabbit.
Did think at first that it was a rather large rabbit, but having checked all the game trails that criss-cross my fields, there was no sign of a warren. So that rather nailed it. Rabbits, at least in my experience, don’t tend to stray far from their bolt holes. Hares? No idea, but I know of at least two. One that haunts our fields and another that bounded past the place we have decamped to while the builders are having at the internal demolition.
Speaking of our builders, the little scamps. This is what they’ve been up to. See short video below.
So we’re bunking elsewhere for a while. The money supply is just sufficient, but there’s still a lot of DIY to be done. Mainly in the paint and decoration side of things, but we’ve chosen our colour scheme, ordered the fittings and sorted out what we want on the floors. Mrs S has been most painstaking in this regard. Well the house is her part of the ship just like the fields and planting are mine. We have no intention of being caught in the artificial poverty trap of ‘Green-ness’.
Wonder what I should do about the Hares, if anything, because there’s a powerful lot of meat on one of them. What’s that famous line? “First, catch your hare.” allegedly from De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae. Attributed to Medieval Jurist Henry of Bratton.
To celebrate the removal of a large tree in the yard and successful demolition of a problematic wall ready for the builders next week, I took a short trip out to get some beer and pizza.
The place was full of high school kids and families coming for a Friday night treat. I just kicked back and waited for my order to be processed. To be in this mini-flood of humanity after all the artificial isolation of the last two years was a curiously pleasant experience. Everyone was polite and there was no drama.
Normally I’m not someone who likes crowds all that much. I get defensive and grouchy really quickly if I’m bumping elbows for two long, but after two long years of pointless and damaging lockdowns and mandates, for some reason I just felt really comfortable.
It helps of course that I now have my own house and land to sit out on a sunny evening, glass of beer in hand after a feed of double pepperoni. Enjoying the smell of freshly turned Earth and evening birdsong.
Being in a crowd is fine, but it is also oh so nice just to sit out and watch the bees and birds forage.
Turning off the news is bloody good idea. Those big corporate media people are only telling you what they are thinking, and what they think you should be thinking, According to their world view. Which is often derived from a surprisingly small bubble.
Funny how the guy who has openly confessed to hacking the GiveSendGo site and giving out the Freedom Convoy donors personal details to the Government and media is not under arrest for what is, according to Canadian and US legislation, a crime which would get anyone else jail time and a ban from having an Interweb connection forever and ever amen. As would happen to anyone else but a paid criminal informant. Which is what he freely brags about being.
Also funny how giving money to send gung-ho idiots over to give the Russkis a bit of target practice is okay. But not to put food in the mouths of those peacefully advocating for their civil rights, or put gas in their tanks and help pay the bills.
We’re being conned. By our own Governments. By a freely co-operating corporate media. Conned into thinking that Government can give you everything. The trouble with that idea is that in order to make it work, the Government and their cronies will take everything from everyone, and they’ll leave you on starvation money if you complain.
Then there’s the whole ‘woke’ and green movements, which in the eyes of the Russki’s and Chinese, makes the West look weak and frankly more than a bit weird. Degenerate. Self obsessed. Hey, but they play along despite their own baked-in societal problems, while the Western world devolves away from the rule of law into political oligarchies where your rights are subject to whether you hold the right opinion or not.
Sod it. All a man can do is build his own little haven as a buttress against the worst of the world. I cleared twenty plus yards of overgrown Ivy, Holly and Rhododendron hedge yesterday with another seven done already today. I’ve put weed killer on the stumps to try and finish them off as recommended here. Mrs S has been hacking at the Azaleas. We’re getting there slowly.
All this work has to be done before the hives go in because nectar Bees harvest from Rhododendron flowers can turn into ‘Mad Honey‘, low doses of which can cause euphoria and lightheadedness, while high doses cause hallucinations and, in extremely rare cases, death. And no-one needs that. Especially if part of your medium term business plan is to brew and distil Mead.
Yes, okay, I know the risk is low unless the bees are exclusively gorging on Rhododendron nectar, but I’d rather not run the risk. The last thing I want is poisoned customers. Even if there is a claimed aphrodisiac effect.
While ordinary Honey is often reputed to put lead in one’s metaphorical pencil, ‘Mad Honey’ has also sometimes been used to ensure that one always has someone to write to. Be it a full essay, short sonnet or just a quick scribble. If you catch my meaning.
This ordinary Canadian guy speaks his mind and recounts some personal anecdotes of how the perennial drumbeat of fear porn has turned so many against their own families.
I repeat; the threat is low, the vaccinations pose as much risk as not. Masks and lockdowns are no better than placebos at stopping SARS/COV-2, and are probably far worse for your mental health.
Far too many have been driven barking mad. Maybe a real war will bring them to their senses.
Now I’m off out to get digging a fallout shelter like Colin Furze. Byee…..
Talking to my broker yesterday. He seems to have drunk deep on the propaganda pushed out by the bought and paid for press of Canada and their Alice through the looking glass version of what the Truckers convoy is all about.
So what is it these revolting Truckers want? Do they want ‘insurrection’? Do they want to topple Trudeau? Well, why don’t we find out instead of making wild guesses? See the truckers own statement read out in the video below. Kudos to Dr Peterson.
All they want is an end to the restrictions and mandates, then they will gladly go home and get on with the business of living and helping rebuild Canada’s economy.
Typical Canadian language. A little too wet for my taste. Needs to be less conciliatory, or at least a little snappier. Anyhoo. We’ll see how long this stays up before it breaches someone’s warped idea of ‘community guidelines’. Link to Bitchute alternative here.
Personally I think the Trudeau Feds will raise Cain and seek to punish the Truck convoy members, even long after this is all over. The feds have already said they will freeze bank accounts and invalidate licences and insurance, which is a stupid move. Because that’s literally shooting the whole Canadian economy in the foot. This peasants rebellion will not go unpunished if the Trudeau Liberal government remains in power.
On a happier note I’m thinking Trudeau and cohorts will suffer the equivalent political fate of Richard II. Eventually deposed and figuratively left to starve to death (Or forced to retire, permanently). If there is any justice in this world.
Update: Regarding the ‘200 guns’ and ‘violent agitators’ narrative at the Coutts blockade. What is the actual truth? Did the RCMP actually search vehicles and find the firearms shown to the press? The convoy organisers say no searches and no discoveries.
A protest that ends in hugs and handshakes? Is that the act of ‘violent insurrectionists’? Like I say, this whole business has a through the looking glass air.
Came in from playing with my new toy, a slash hook, which is basically a rather vicious looking half-sickle on the end of a four foot haft, handy for clearing briars, brush and perhaps supporting one of those those peasants rebellions should one happen to be passing, to find Mrs S watching a video about Harry Windsor, one time HRH, rattling on about how good meditation is, and why everyone should be doing it, now.
It wasn’t what the one time prince was saying, but what I actually saw shocked me. It was the look in his eyes. I have rarely seen anyone not on the streets look so down and haunted. He obviously didn’t believe what he was saying and looked so lost, and very, very tired. Trust me, I once spent a couple of years training to be an actor and I know what a bad performance looks like, seen enough of those in the mirror.
His performance in the video was, well, lifeless. None of the spark that was so readily apparent in his younger self, just a hopeless yearning to be anywhere else doing something else. His was the face of a man so out of his depth he’d already drowned and been consigned to Davy Jones locker with the rest of the damned.
What happened? Well to cut things short; Prince Action Man married Princess Barbie and is now deeply unhappy being Prince (in name only now he’s lost the HRH) Ken.
He’ll learn when Princess Meggy Sparkle dumps him and walks off with the kids, as she will. Because she’s not a real Princess at all, she’s a fake Hollywood Media Princess who thought marrying a Prince would make her a real Princess, but reality and fantasy don’t work like that. Princesses need a lifetime of training in the right environment. So she will do the only thing she knows how to. And that will break Harry because he loves his children. More than he is broken already. One cannot help but feel sorry for the guy.
As an expat Anglo-Canadian I’ve been taking an interest in the current Canadian Revolution led by the Truckers over the various mandates. Haven’t been watching any of the mainstream content, but trying to find first hand livestreams and perspectives to get to the core of what is going on.
How would I characterise the truckers blockade of Ottawa? Noisy but good natured. No ‘Nazis’ or ‘alt-right’ or ‘anti-vaxxers’, just ordinary Canadians of all ethnic and religious persuasions, no ‘white supremacy’ here, who have had quite enough and would like it to stop please.
Viva Frei’s livestreams are interesting if his content can be contrasted with the ‘reports’ from the mainstream. Protesters are being prevented from getting hotel rooms by the Government buying up all the rooms. No doubt with taxpayer dollar. Expedia cancelling hotel bookings in Ottawa. Facebook and GoFundMe have tried to cut support and funding. The Corporatists who own the politicians are panicking.
No graffiti, violence, vandalism, no ‘defacing’ of memorials or statues pulled from their plinths, piles of garbage or broken windows, unlike every far left ‘protest’, ever. No ‘mercenaries’ (Where the hell did that come from?). Just Canadian Truckers having a street party blockade in the icy cold of a Canadian midwinter. A bit noisy, but in the truckers own words, “The Honking stops at eight o’clock.” Not because anyone asked them to, but because the truckers understand that everyone has to sleep.
Yes, the stream is patchy, there are a few blank spots, but the content is telling. If you want to skip the long dull bits, go to 1:14 to 1:18 and 1:52 – 1:54 to see the protest signs outside Parliament. Interviewing lawyers providing charity legal support to the protesters at about the 2hr marker. Memes at 2:44. This is history in the making, video as a social document. And it’s only one of many.
There is an old trope that “The revolution will not be televised.” Which is true, it won’t be appearing on mainstream TV. It will be available on a video streaming platform near you. If YouTube falls over, then on Bitchute, Rumble or Odysee. The truth is out there. All you have to do is look.
My personal perspective is that I am making notes on these organisations who are being used as proxies against the pro-freedom protests with an intention to boycott. Not that I ever use them anyway, but I will make an effort not to use them in future and will remind any contacts of my decision and my reasons why.
Our civil rights have been trashed for no good reason. The great honking is part of trying to get them back.
Here are the truckers in their own words;
In this short YouTube segment of Jacob Brownowski‘s ‘Ascent of man‘ about the horrors of Auschwitz today I found the answer to many of our current dilemma’s and failures of humanity, from ‘woke’ to COVID.
The key quote is between 1:50 and 2:10 “When people believe they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of Gods.”
Authoritarianism is the source of our ills. The ‘do as I tell you’ mob. The compliant and small minded who can’t bear that others are able to make better choices.
Now I need a day at the beach to mull this one over.
Happy new year.
Sitting in a very nice coffee bar in Limerick the other day, waiting for Mrs S to get prodded and poked by a specialist medic, I looked up at a screen to see a Sky news report of Bojo the clown promising a hundred million quid of taxpayer dosh to ‘Break the drugs gangs’. Also ten-year drug strategy including rehabilitation for 300,000 drug users who are responsible for half of all acquisitive crimes. Proposals also include taking away the passports or driving licences of ‘middle-class’ drug users. Right, so that’s almost the entire UK Parliament needing chauffeurs and country houses then.
Yeah right. Like that’s going to work. Not. Never has in the past, why should it now. That’s three hundred million spondoolicks the UK taxpayer isn’t going to see again to no good purpose.
Also, who is to say that the powers given to the UK police to ‘break the drugs gangs’ will not be used upon those who object to the continuation of the COVID-19 vaccine medical trial? Using the false charge of ‘hate speech’. Or are further abused to confine us peons in order to placate the false gods of man made climate change?
While enjoying my coffee and wondering why the politicians are hunkering in their bunkers over the relatively harmless “OHMYGAWD!” variant, I was struck by the following thought; we need more freedom of speech, because without it, how do we divine someone’s true intent and know when to protect ourselves if they are hostile? Or react with humour if they are a good person who simply wants to share a laugh?
Because if this pandemic has proven one thing, it’s how abso-freaking-lutely useless modern governments are at actually protecting the people who vote them in. No matter how many restrictions they put on the rest of us, while laughing up their sleeves at us peasants.
On the subject of restrictions, we’d been shopping in LocalTown during last week, quietly taking the mick out of all the people who insist on wearing masks outdoors. We’d just entered the lift in a multi-storey car park when a lady pushing a shopping trolley loaded with Christmas goodies followed us in. We had not expected her to do so, so had already doffed the silly surgical masks the shops insist upon as a condition of entry. “Oh thank God.” She smiled, pulling her own mask down to take a welcome breath. “People who don’t believe in masks. Useless bloody things. I keep telling people, but no-one believes me.”
We agreed, shared pleasantries and she got off on the next floor, noting how relieved she had appeared to have encountered people who shared her contempt of mask culture. Which was a refreshing experience in these days of the random scold. Because this mass psychosis over a rapidly attenuating virus has brought all the holier-than-thou crowd out of the woodwork hasn’t it? Don’t these petty tyrants just love telling random strangers off or giving them the evil eye for non-conformity?
Which makes it such a nice experience when you meet someone else who hasn’t drunk the kool-aid.
Happy weekend everyone.
Some people say that life is just a bowl of toenails, or cherries, or even that it is a constant battle. This morning I got talking to Colum, our soon to be ex-landlord about property and rights regarding our recent scare over the appurtenant land rights on the new place.
Like any moderately successful farmer here in the wilder west, Colum is a careful man. I like him. He picks an objective and gently works his way towards it. “Patience and time.” was how he described his approach to property. His wife is, as we are, modestly successful as an investor. That is her part of his families ship. His small eggs are in many baskets, and that I truly respect. He might have an accent thicker than custard, and he’s not a fast talker, but he gets there in the end if you just let him talk.
We got to talking about the fallout over 2008 and all the properties the banks got lumbered with because people couldn’t pay off their debts. How drainage and sewerage on these properties were often on neighbouring properties under different ownerships, governed by what might be called ‘Gentleman’s agreements’. And how the deeds and titles were often a real buggers muddle of ‘rights’ ancient and not so ancient.
Which is probably why there were quite a few Irish properties up for sale at rock bottom prices as late as early 2020. Not so much now. However, if you are willing to take one on, there are still a lot of ruined houses with no roofs and hardly any walls, but these often come booby trapped in layers of informal agreements, easements and codicils enough to drive your solicitor (And possibly you) to drink and ruin.
While we were talking about property related matters, I got to thinking that some sources claim life is a battle. Yet, went my train of thought, as it gently chuffed through the sidings of our conversation, a ‘battle’ has a clearly defined beginning and end. Life is not a battle at all because the only clearly defined endpoints are birth and death, and there are often long periods when there’s nothing to fret about too much.
Before COVID, there was only the bugaboo of man made climate change, or the Russians, or next door neighbours cat, or the local council, or the idiot driver in front, or a thousand other of life’s daily little skirmishes and frustrations with opposing forces. And these little struggles collectively make up our existence. It’s a collation of events, not an event in itself. So the battle analogy falls over.
One of the other observations Colum made, based upon his experience of property negotiations in the wilder west of Ireland (And probably in the UK as well) is that there is “A little Hitler on every corner.” Always some mean spirited little sod who will try to spoil everything simply because they can’t have it. Human nature, eh?
Having given the matter a certain amount of thought, if you were to ask me, I’d say that taking everything into consideration, life is war.
The Bill Sticker Alternative 