THE SITUATION IS SCARY, YET SHE COOKS AND PLAYS THE PIANO!

Well hello all!   Yes, it is the return of the oldie blogger, Margaret, the unvanquished.   My replacement knee is finally settling down.   I no longer need two crutches or even one to get around.   I have done all my exercises, and look forward to having two well-functioning knee bones.   This is all thanks to the marvellous surgeons and the nursing staff of Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.   Here the National Health Service is working magnificently, and Gerald and I are glad we moved to within a few miles of this great establishment.

That said, and having been constantly encouraged to start doing my occasional blogs again, I have been thinking of things to talk about.   Sadly I seem to have got hooked on a subject brought on by the “Start the Week” programme on BBC Radio 4.   This goes out on a Monday morning around 9 a.m. and I always try to listen to it.   This week it was a discussion about a book, “Ten Billion”, by Stephen Emmott.   The author, a pessimist about the situation of the planet, was talking to Danny Dorling who has also written a book on the subject, with a bit more optimism.    Also an Indian philosopher and Nobel Prize winning economist was taking part.   His name is Amartya Kumar Sen, and he believes that we must individually change our behaviour to save the planet from Global Catastrophe.   In particular he believes that the education of women would result in a fall in the fertility rate of poorer people.   Danny Dorling, on the other hand, thinks that we must think that things will be OK.   We must be positive.  He described himself as a “Possibilist”.  He contended that economists cannot cope with the idea of reducing consumption and the restriction of growth.   We must stop buying so much stuff, especially clothes.   These things take an enormous amount of water and energy to produce, and are for the most part unnecessary to our lives.   Danny Dorling maintains that the ‘baby peak’ has passed in 1990, and there have been a smaller number of babies born since then.  

But to confound the issue, we are all living longer and this is a big cause of increased population numbers.   According to Stephen Emmott the scale and the nature of the problem is simply not being communicated.   We must tell the politicians ‘WE WANT ACTION NOW!”  Another contributor to the discussion, Jill Rutter, a former director of strategy at DEFRA, agreed that governments must do more, but politicians prefer to think only in the short-term. 

Did you know that it takes 4 litres of water to produce one plastic bottle of water, and we throw away 9 billion plastic bottles in the UK in a year?   You could if you wanted to do a small thing take the same plastic bottle with you all day, and fill it up with water from a tap.  This is just a small fact on a long list.   Don’t talk about cars and mobile phones, computers and t-shirts, and our waste of resources.   And, don’t forget that the rest of the world, the underdeveloped countries want to be like Europe and the USA.

Anyway you can buy the book “Ten Billion” by Stephen Emmott for £6.99.   It’s frightening stuff.   Also there’s a big article about it in the Sunday Observer, on 30.06.13.

MY REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

1.      The garden is looking lovely.   We have fantastic peachy, orangey roses, and white roses and red roses.   Gerald has been working hard.   We also have a raised bed, and we are growing lovely fennel bulbs, leeks, onions, rhubarb, and loads of lettuce.   The tomatoes and strawberries are not ready yet.

2.      I have started practising the piano again and can make a fair rendition of ‘Let it Be’, ‘The Entertainer’, and ‘Fur Elise’!

3.      Going to Glasgow on Thursday for the graduation of Jessica, granddaughter who has     managed to get a First class honours degree in International Business Studies.   I am so proud of her.   She is a little worker, and deserves to succeed.   Also I will meet ancient college friends, and sister and brother-in-law for a dinner at George Square.

4.      Andy Murray is in the quarter final of the Wimbledon Tennis Championship.

5.      We are having filet de porc, Chasseur for dinner tonight.

6.      I bought a new hat and beach bag at highly reduced rate in TK.Maxx.   They are sort of orangey shades, no doubt will match my over-scorched skin when I return from a holiday in Tenerife.   Will be married to G. for 28 years then, if God spares us.

7.      I’ve lost 7 pounds in weight since my knee operation.

8.      The ironing is finished for the week.

9.      We’ve now got two water hoses in the garden which makes watering the garden much easier.   Listen to me using up the earth’s resources.   Well in Scotland we have too much rain, and therefore too much water.

10.  Last, but not least Linda, my doctor granddaughter now working in New Zealand is coming home to take up a job in Aberdeen hospital, a few hours drive away.   The call of  boyfriend, Gregor, and of course her very friendly and humorous family was too strong to keep the girl away from Bonnie Scotland!  Cheers!   Keep on keeping on!

  

BE GRATEFUL FOR SMALL MERCIES – GIN AND CURRIED BEEF

Watched the Graeme Norton show last night.   Very entertaining with Tom Cruise smiling handsomely.   He confessed that he was of Irish descent, and had actually been presented with a certificate when over there because of some good deed done by his great-great-grandfather as a landlord to his tenants.   There you go!   His co-star also on the show was Olga Kurylenko, a beautiful if skinny girl who also claimed to be part Irish.   She blamed the fact that her bust was not big enough to suit her on the fact that she did not eat enough cabbage as a child.   That is according to her mother.

A sad, sad story about the six children burned to death in a house fire started by their father.  His wife was an accomplice, along with another man.  This appears to have been a twisted attempt to blame his girlfriend for the fire, largely as she had left taking her  five children with her, and her contribution to the household income.   The horror of a man like Philpott who, it seems, attempted to be seen as a hero by the public when he supposed he could rescue the poor children.     It is a horrible story, all bound up with the fact that Philpott was claiming large sums of money from the government for the support of eleven children altogether.   Besides that, both his wife and the girlfriend, while she also lived in the house, were in work and handed their wages over to him.   He was a control freak, a ghastly, violent bully and thank God he has been put away in jail.   How can such parasites exists among us?   It makes one shudder.

The fact that George Osborne used the example of Philpott to support his cuts to welfare benefits for large families is ludicrous.   There is only a very small percentage of families with large numbers of children and the Philpott case is unique.   When Osborne appeared on TV with his “Mockney” accent (put on to try to sound like one of the people) attempting to justify the cuts in welfare to those in financial difficulties, he, with his millionaire background, made a sad situation even sadder.    Just like Ian Duncan Smith riposting to a poor market trader who had to live on £53.00 per week, oh sure, he could live on that much if he had to.   Once again we get empty rhetoric from a politician living in the lap of luxury.

Where will it all end?   When will we solve all these problems of the rich and the poor, the good-living and the downright villains?   I count my blessings.   Right now, I am being offered to join G. for a drink in the hotel down the road.   Poor Gerald, he doesn’t drink much but likes to treat me.   Also I have made a beef curry which awaits us for dinner tonight.   So that can’t be bad!   Tomorrow Laura and Gordon are coming to the house.    Gordon is making us a raised-bed in the garden for the growing of herbs and vegetables.   Hooray.   I can’t wait for that project to start.   The Martin family have gone to London, all the men in kilts for a wedding of a nephew to take place in a church of mainly black people.   The custom of the congregation is to sway and sing during the service.   The mind boggles of how the two sides will merge together.   Good luck to Kevin and his family, and to the bride and groom.

Say a prayer for me next Tuesday, all you believers, as I am to have a knee replacement in Raigmore Hospital on the good old National Health Service.   Speak to you soon, I hope!

MY DESERT ISLAND MEN TO SAVE THE WORLD - JOHN GRAY AND JAMES LOVELOCK

John Gray is a writer and philosopher whom I admire, having read his book “Straw Dogs”, and having been impressed by his great intellect, although I have to confess that I have forgotten most of the detail of the book.    It was certainly about religion and agnosticism.

Today I have just read in the “New Statesman” his report of an interview he has had with James Lovelock (at 93 years old an active and happy scientist.)    Gray has entitled his article “Man for all seasons.”   The sub-title is “James Lovelock is the maverick environmentalist who supports fracking and nuclear power.  Does the guru of Gaia believe the human race has a future?”

I can say that I have heard of Lovelock before, and the Gaia principle.  A short summary of it from Wikepedia is “the hypothesis is that living and non-living parts of the earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism.   It is named after the Greek Goddess, Gaia.   It postulates that the biosphere has regulatory effects on the earth’s environment that act to sustain life.”

I have to confess here that always it has been at the back of my mind, as I suppose is true of many others, that the biggest problem of our world is the onward and upward rise in population.   Both John Gray and James Lovelock agree that the population crisis will not be solved by the current mantra of thinkers on the subject, for example the Green Party.   Many have strong beliefs that we must try to establish sustainable development by using solar energy, windfarms, and organic farming and other methods to counteract the effects of global warming.   Lovelock favours nuclear power and fracking, i.e. abstracting oil from shale, to give us time to sort out something better.

This was a very well-written article, quick to read and so informative.   I will get off this serious subject now, but hope you will forgive me if I quote just one more bit from the said article.   “And yet by using the technologies most demonised by contemporary greens – genetically modified food, fracking and nuclear power, for instance – humankind could make possible a decent  standard of living until our numbers fall globally (as they are doing already in some parts of the world) and eventually stabilise at a lower level."

Gerald is very fond of sweet things, especially chocolate.   He talks longingly of Sachertorte , so wonderful and so delicious such as we had on a holiday once in Vienna at the Sacher café where the cake originated.   Well, I have now baked two Sachertorten, and they have both been delicious, both from different recipes.   Now in true scientist fashion he has presented me with three or four other versions of the recipe so that we can compare them.   I like baking new recipes – just as well.   But as you are surely thinking, we will be the fattest couple in Druim Park.

Seven Scottish grandchildren and four English grandchildren, and at last the whisper of a wedding.   Their ages range from sixteen to twenty-eight, and we have many who are in relationships, none so far has mentioned the fatal Wedding Word until this month.   Good Old Calum and Fiona.   Celebrating next year with you.   Gerald and I can’t wait !

We don’t have much snow in this old capital of the Highlands of Scotland, but it is hellish cold.   Yet we have had beautiful snowdrops, and now have some primroses flowering.   Buds are on many of the garden trees.     Can Spring be far behind?   

GALAXIES REVEALED, ANTI-POLITICS IN ITALY AND COMPUTERS WITH CONSCIOUSNESS.

Well, I thought that this was an interesting story reported in Sunday’s Observer.   “Britain has contributed £88 million towards the construction of the world’s largest telescope.   The huge observatory, to be built in the Chilean Andes will allow astronomers to capture images of the universe’s earliest moments”.    This great “eye in the sky” will cost $l billion which it seems is £900 million.   It will be known as E-ELT, European Extremely Large Telescope.   It sounds like something from Monty Python.   Built in the high Andes, it will avoid the atmospheric turbulence that affects observatories at lower altitudes.   According to Prof. Niranjan Thatte of Oxford University it will collect more light than all the other telescopes ever built put together.   The universe is believed to be permeated with mysterious dark matter, and users of this telescope will be able to study this – more Monty Python.

Also interesting to me in my ‘scientific phase’ I gleaned an article about consciousness from this week’s “New Statesman”.   I once studied Philosophy with the Open University, and it nearly drove me crazy trying to understand lots of it.    One of these concepts was “What is consciousness.”   Shades of Descartes’ famous statement, “I think, therefore I am”.   It seems that when we fall into a dreamless sleep, our consciousness disappears.   New transcranial  magnetic stimulation experiments in Madison, Wisconsin have shown that when people are awake, their reactions to stimulation are strikingly different to reactions when they are asleep.   Awake the response is complex and the stimulation causes interaction in the brain in an integrated network of constant feedback to the stimulation.   When the person is in deep sleep there is no feedback and it is as if the network has shut down.   Yet evidence from scanning brain activity of Buddhist monks during meditation suggests that they are able to raise both sides of the neural see-saw at the same time.  It seems that there are implications from all this for computers and a suggestion that computers could in the future be capable of consciousness.   Do I hear you say 'Monty Python' again?

I love going on holiday to Italy. We had a great time in Sorrento  (“Then say not good-bye, Come back again beloved.”)   We stayed at a great hotel, The Hotel de Ville.   Waiter service for meals and a really friendly, caring staff.   We went to Pompeii and took a bus tour up the Amalfi Coast.   However, I am so disappointed to see that the country is (like most of Europe, only worse) in financial and political trouble.   The Observer leader article considers that the success of the comedian Beppo Grillo in the latest election shows that 25% of the electorate were disgusted with political parties in general.   So they voted for a comic. The article suggests that if Britain is not careful, then, it could display the same nihilism, in trying to come to term with politics.  The rise of UKIP they take to be a sign of protest at the state of the economy, and the lack of growth in jobs especially for young people.   They finish by saying there is a responsibility on all of us citizens, “to step up to the plate.   Parties are partnerships too.   The time has come for the best to engage with the political system.”   I think they mean - help your local chosen party, and get out and vote.

It’s Mother’s Day apparently on Sunday.   Gerald and I have been asked out to lunch at a swanky hotel by daughter, Laura, son-in-law, Gordon and two grand-daughters, Shonagh and Emma.   I can’t wait.   Woman’s day was this week, so thanks to all women who do sterling work in the Media like Jo Coburn, in the papers like Polly Toynbee, and Tessa Jowell who worked so hard to get the Olympics off the ground. 

NEW YORK MARIJUANA, A POOR PRINCESS and a FAST DIET

What’s today been like for me in my ivory tower here in the frozen north.   Well, not so frozen after all.    Believe it or not I have been sitting outside on a garden chair in bright sunshine.   Admittedly, I was wearing two cardigans, but it was warm and bright enough in the lovely light of the sun to sit and start my latest small, home project.   That is to try to take-in or make smaller some of my eight pairs of trousers or pants as our American relations call them.   Yes, you see I am getting THINNER.   It is called dropping a dress size, in my case almost two dress sizes.   Whether I shall be successful with this only time will tell – I mean the sewing and the dieting.   So far it has worked quite well.   For five weeks now I have been trying a version of the FAST DIET, a version which includes a few small glasses of wine in the evening, and an attempt to do the half-fast idea nearly every day.   I have lost 10 pounds so far.   But I don’t want to brag too soon, as I know how easy it is to put the lost weight back on.

How’s this for hot news?   Today I read in the Guardian dated 20^th Feb, 15.38 --just now my clock says 15.58, so it’s hot off the press that Mayor Bloomberg of New York has made a small step towards s rational policy towards marijuana.   It seems that people found to be carrying marijuana will no longer have to spend a night in prison.   The article I read states that it is more black people and Hispanics who have suffered from stop and search policy of the New York Police, suggesting that by rights white people are every bit as guilty of smoking the weed.   Although Mayor Bloomberg has admitted publicly to having smoked this stuff, I have to confess that has not been part of my life experience.    Should I be glad or sorry or regretful?    Well, who knows?   You can’t have every virtue or every vice.   That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Great heat on the media, TV and  Radio and the newspapers about the Booker prize-winner, Hilary Mantel’s comments about Kate Middleton.   The papers have gone to town against the author in a big way.   Apparently she has accused the princess of being having a plastic smile and of being without personality.   However I believe the opinion of the columnist of the Guardian who thinks that the comments of Hilary Mantel have been hyped up by the press.   Apparently the speech was made at the British Museum for the London Review of Books.   Although it was a small part of a long speech, four paragraphs out of thirty, and had been made two weeks before the press honed in on it, they have lambasted the author who was in a way largely criticising the media for the way they used the princess as eye-candy for their papers.  

Going to the theatre tonight to see a team of male dancers perform.   I have no idea what to expect.   The programme was chosen by G. hoping to please our house guests – Ruth, Naomi and Nathan.   Hope it will be a successful outing.   Meanwhile, I have to go and make Spaghetti Bolognaise with some baked cherry tomatoes and left-over minced beef.    Also they can have each have a slice of my high calorie white chocolate and cream celebration cake.   Don’t you just wish you were here?   Don’t answer that!   Keep happy!!

DO ESKIMOES HAVE THE MOST FUN?

What a strange country we live in!   We are bombarded with news and opinions.   We can’t get enough of either of these.   The latest cause for discussion and disagreement between different strands of society in the United Kingdom is the meaning of marriage.   What marriage used to mean when I was a girl was it was the state that all normal young people aspired to and sure enough when I reached the grand old age of twenty-one, I got married.   You got married, and usually you tried not to produce any children for as long as possible (no contraception pill in those days).   Well sooner rather later you did have children, and that was what marriage was for, wasn’t it?   I even remember being taken by a playmate to be shown a little girl whose mother was not married.   She was I was told in hushed tones a “bastard”

Changed days!   Nobody wants to get married among the young people in their twenties that I am familiar with.   They don’t want children either.    This is for the same reason as it was for my generation.   They don’t want the wife to stop working and earning money.   They can’t afford it.   The whole set up of engagement and marriage, sixty or seventy years ago was to make sure that there was a father to provide for his family, because usually married women didn’t work.   It was society’s answer to an unavoidable situation.

Of course the churches were involved, and so was the law, and that was that.

But I remember seeing a TV progamme about the Eskimo Culture whereby in those harsh snowy conditions, and long distances to be travelled across the freezing country, when arriving at the igloo of a stranger, the traveller was offered immediate hospitality and shelter from the weather.   Also he was offered if he wished, the opportunity to spend the night with the wife of the owner.   I suppose life was so fragile in those circumstances that it didn’t matter who was the father of the child that his wife might produce (and it widens the gene pool. GW).

What I am leading up to, of course is the great discussion and voting going on in parliament about whether two people of the same sex should be allowed to be married.   It seems that this is what gay couples of both sexes wish to be allowed to do.   Many politicians, especially Tory MPs, do not approve.   Great columns are being written in newspapers, notably Polly Toynbe in The Guardian, on the subject.   Some people can’t see what the fuss is about when there are so many other pressing problems for the government and the populace.   I agree.  What about the economy?   The withdrawal of benefits from disabled people?   What about the proposed referendum for staying in or out of the European Union?  If gay people wish to be married, then good luck to them.   It is their business.

Moving on, I heard Al Gore, the American ex-Vice-president, who also ran for the presidency at one time, speaking on television.   He is finished with politics and fears that in the USA democracy is under strain .   This is due to the system of great corporations lobbying in the interests of their business.  The needs of the population the politicians are elected to represent are forgotten, due to greed and self-interest.  As usual it’s all about money.   Al Gore states that not once in the recent presidential election was either Obama or Romney, or any other candidate, asked a question about climate change and what could be done to slow the obvious changes for the worse that  were occurring in weather systems all over the world.   Gore has sold his small TV News Channel to Al Jazeera which, he claimed, had become a very responsible channel.    This up-and-coming company is said to be applying for a license to transmit news in America.   They might even challenge the mighty CNN Company.   What a funny world we live in!

Talking about environment matters, my magazine from Friends of the Earth, states some reasons to be cheerful.   They are:

1)      There is a growing chorus for a ban on pesticides sparked off by the desperate plight of bees which are dying in their millions.   Bees are vital for many of our food crops and people are petitioning the government to put this crisis at the top of the agenda.   Petitions have been signed and handed to David Cameron, while all over Britain thousands are getting involved by planting wild flowers and handing out information for the campaign.

2)      Technology is on our side.   The price of solar panels is plummeting.   Electric cars are selling more and more.   We hope that human ingenuity may solve some of our problems.

3)      The European Union has begun to realise that demanding land for the growing of biofuels is depriving farmers of land to grow food.   Also the British Antarctic Survey has been saved from oblivion, meaning that the early warning system on climate change has not been dismantled.

4)      Last year, the CBI says, green growth was responsible for a third of all UK economic growth showing that green business was good for the economy as well as the environment.

5)      Some thinking politicians of all parties, and some CEOs of large companies are on the side of the Green Party.  So we may take heart.

Gerald has been advising me about what to write in my blog today.   His choice: a) Trouble in parts of the National Health Service – patient neglect and inefficiency, big time in some  hospitals (one hospital in particular). b) The Royal Bank of Scotland being fined millions, and we, the taxpayers being the ones paying for it.   c) Hidden inflation in our economy due to smaller packaging in supermarkets but the same price being charged, and substitution with cheaper ingredients, for example horsemeat (cheaper than beef) found in Ready meals.

Ho! Ho!  As I said what a queer, funny, tricky old world we live in!   The only good thing, I suppose is that our communication and our media systems are so good that now we know all about our mixed-up planet instantaneously.   Is this good or bad?

A consolation:   Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups:  alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. (Alex Levine)

Second consolation:  Don’t worry about avoiding temptation.   As you grow older, it will  avoid you.(Winston Churchill)

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

HURRAH FOR ACTIVISTS!

What is happening today?   Today there is some warm almost spring sunshine in Inverness.   And so, for the benefit of our health, we two ancients went a-walking down by the very full and fast-flowing River Ness.   We walked for about half-a-mile, just enough for our old bones.   Now Gerald is making wholemeal bread, and yours truly decided to escape from the kitchen, and to write this blog.

What else is new?   Yesterday I read a great long blog by Laurie Penny which I found on the New Statesman Magazine website – www.newstatesman.com/blogs.   It was all about a book called ‘Vagina’ by Naomi Wolf.   She sleights the author for using her immediate social milieu - mostly upper middle-class New York smart women, discussing their experiences of love with men in the same class, that is with money to buy flowers etc., etc., whereas ordinary, usually poorer-off women, perhaps in Africa, but who are to be found all over the world, have a harder and more difficult experience.   According to Laurie Penny this book is letting women and the fight for women’s rights down.   It is titillating to men, and she cites an example of such writing in the highly successful erotic publication known to all as ‘50 Shades of Grey’.  Laurie Perry is a wonderful writer.   I see that this week in the same magazine her subject is the glass ceiling as she describes a meeting with the 82-year-old activist for women’s rights, and founder of the “wages for housework” campaign, Selma James.   I’d never heard of her.  She was born in Brooklyn and now lives in London.   She seems to be a remarkable woman who has always fought for the underdog.   There is such an active world going on out there, especially in London.   I never considered myself a feminist, but perhaps I was wrong not to take up the cause.   Too late now!   But I wish I could be paid for sixty years of housework!

Other things to bug me:   My daughter’s neighbour’s son has lost one of his university classmates in the “insurgent” attacks in Mali where the French are now fighting.   Six British boys lost their lives. Sad day for some poor parents.

David Cameron is sounding off about what Britain can get to its advantage from the European Union by renegotiating the terms of the treaty signed in Maastrich long ago.   How will it go?  He says he wants the country to stay in Europe (don’t all sane people?) but we must get a better deal, he says.   And who will lose out so we in Britain can gain new advantages?  This is the trouble with democracy.   You have to go with the flow or take up another hobby away from politics.   I have decided we must do as Jesus told us to do, in order to stop ourselves from going crazy – “Consider the lilies of the field.   They neither reap nor do they sow, yet have I provided for them.”   Except lilies don’t grow in Scotland.   At least not in the winter.

I will finish with a quotation from Robert Burns, our beloved Scottish Poet whose commemorative day it was on the 25^th, yesterday.

“Oh would what power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us!”!

Translated it means (the ‘giftie’ being God)   Oh, would God only give the gift to see ourselves as others see us.

How would people like David Cameron, George Osborne, or Alex Salmond like to see themselves as others see them or hear what people say about them?  I have to say I don’t think I could stand to have that gift given to me either. No way! 

I wish you sunshine such as we had today in Inverness – but just a good bit warmer, please God!   And Good Luck ANDY MURRAY, TOMORROW!!