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Why can I not buy a local apple?

Call me silly, but I don't like to buy apples that have been flown half-way round the world. In my local Tesco I have a choice of apples from New Zealand or South Africa, which seems odd. How many people between those countries and here would have been thankful for those apples? Yet our economic system deems it 'logical' that we fly apples half-way round the world (never mind the pollution).

Meanwhile, as a friend pointed out to me yesterday, County Armagh (the 'Orchard County', 70 miles from here) still grows apples (where orchards have not been turned into housing estates, that is). However, If I want to buy one of them I have to buy from a farmer in a layby. Apart from Bramley apples (for cooking), supermarkets don't like them (wrong species of apple - not shiny or a regular enough shape or something silly like that). The other destination for these Northern Irish apples is apple tart (direct sale to bakers) or cider. I like cider, though as I don't see too much local produce on off-licence shelves, I presume local stuff goes for export. I can easily buy Swedish cider though.

It's not just apples. Thanks to a lousy summer, we will buy loads of grain to feed our animals, while local grain makes whiskey and beer that are exported. Those animals, fed on imported grain, will often be exported post-slaughter (to the source of the grain?) while the supermarkets here import from Brazil, Denmark or GB.

How can it be cheaper to raise a pig in Denmark, pack it in Denmark and send it over here, than to do the birth-to-death thing locally? As for Foot-and-Mouth infected Brazillian cattle being cheaper????? The mind boggles.

It's all great for airlines - Irish beef to Asia, Asian rice to Ireland, and so on, but the pollution it causes must be immense. I wonder how my Grandparents survived, on food usually grown within ten miles of home.

Bush warns of new Vietnam in Iraq

In a breathtaking moment of clear-thinking, President George W Bush has "warned a US withdrawal from Iraq could trigger the kind of upheaval seen in South East Asia after US forces quit Vietnam. 'The price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens'" (BBC News Online).

No doubt he is impressed by this deduction, only four years after most of the rest of the world got there. If he was leader of any other nation, the UN would have a room at the Hague reserved already.

Hopefully the next President will not be a corporate-owned simpleton.

Lots of unhappy people around :-(

I am in a good mood today - really. I'm optimistic and happy and the sun is faintly shining. So why are there so many unhappy people on the roads, blaring horns and cutting others up and getting very very stressed?

Is it because of all the tourists, who tootle along thinking it would be lovely to live here? It is - but please, we people who live here know all about the hills and trees and want to get home even if you don't, so please move along.

Is it because of the people breaking down? One of the main roundabouts entering town this morning whad two break-downs at it. Oops. Not a good place to break down if you want to be popular.

Is it because of the traffic wardens? Exposed by the BBC as ignoring double yellow lines so THEY can park, but ticketing everyone else. Boooooo!

I don't know, but I am about to take to the road so please, people, CHILL OUT!

Nephew 2 is a greedy lump (well, where my cake is concerned)

I've been trying to think of a way to make this hilariously funny and have failed. So, I'll tell the story as-it-happened and let you, dear reader, decide if was worth the telling.

Apologies also for the sloppy grammar. My old English teacher (as in, Teacher of English, unlike my other English teacher who taught Biology) always told me off and seemed to start marking me at -30% compared to everyone else for "Writing as if you are speaking." Yeah, whatever. I'm from Hicksville South Ulster, it's what you get. Imagine I *am* speaking, complete with culchie accent. If it helps, imagine we are sitting in a traditional pub with a peat fire burning and a couple of old men with collies drinking their 'Harp and half-un'. You can even imagine the old men being told off for lighting their pipes by the barman who really doesn't care about their pipes.

Anyway, on Sunday past, sitting in the parents-in-laws' (apologies to the apostrophe, probably misplaced) house were myself, wifey, and bro-in-law#2 plus their off-spring. Nephew 1 is the one who christened me Duck. Nephew 2 managed 'Dick' for a while, though as a name or a description I don't know. He's got my name right now. I mean, "He correctly pronounces my name nowadays".

Where were we? Oh yes, in the conservatory with the door open watching the children run round outside. Nephew 2 danders in. For the benefit of non-locals, a 'dander' is a sort of shuffle but with more purpose about it, like a very slow river that knows it has to get to the bottom of the hill. Anyway, Nephew 2 danders in and stops at the door, staring. His eyes, as big as saucers, fall on my plate. They fell *metaphorically* - of course they didn't literally fall, that would be stupid.

We said "Hello" and he said "Hallloooo" back, in the way toddlers do that makes women go "awwwww" but if I said it in the same way at thirty-one years I'd be taken as a learing pervert. Nephew 2 was in fact learing, but at the cake. My carrot cake. My very tasty carrot cake.

He spies a large crumb and eats it. Result - smile on face and chubby toddler waving arms going "oh-ooooh-ooh!" Hand goes towards the main body of the cake. Resigned to the cake's fate, I break off a bit, hoping this token will stave of the invader. "Oooooooohhhh-ooooh-ooooohhhhhhhhh!" He likes the cream. He wants more.

According to my wife, my eyes were as wide as saucers at this stage, only with an expression more akin to a pleading puppy, while I watched the cake disappear.

End of cake. Nephew toddles into the kitchen with more purpose than when he dandered. The cake was a lucky find, whereas now he has spied a packet of malted milk biscuits.

End of story. Yes, the grammar and tenses were all over the place and I couldn't be bothered fixing it up because I have lots to do, so get over it. Thank you.

How long does your iron last?

After six-and-a-half years of perfect service, my bachelor-days Rowenta iron has just died.  Long live the Philips iron we got as a wedding present, now two months out of its guarantee!

How long do your irons last?  Based on what other people say, six years is an OAP iron these days.... 

Forgotten family secrets

Families are weird.  They also have a habit of concealing so many things.  Take for example my late great-uncle Thomas, brother of my Grandfather, and shining example of manhood.  Excellent footballer, cricker, engineer... bachelor.  I've never really given much thought to him as he died when I was about five.  That was until this week and a phone call from long-lost family friends of my Grandfather who tracked me down to be living ten miles from them.

So, picture it, myself, Sally and John sitting in their kitchen, they are talking about long-dead relatives of mine.  Uncle George who never married but had lots of girlfriends and Thomas.... Sally mentioned him never marrying and that she couldn't remember who his girlfriends were.  John just glared at her with a 'don't talk about things like that' glare and pointed out that he never had girlfriends or was ever likely to be interested*nudge*.

It puts his long term 'close friendship' with a very respectable man in the town, drunken depression over his death and my Grandfather's refusal to have anything to do with him into a new light..... Blimey!

Computer says no...

...apologies to anyone waiting for the rest of our holiday or the promised Picasa album of Dubrovnik, etc.  My PC died, catastophically.  Bye bye bookmarks, installed applications, etc.

Thank heavens for the 250GB hard disk I got cheap in Maplin.

Oh Oh Oh! I also added a Gigabyte of RAM.  
Bye bye two minute delay to login to WinXP, hello two second pause.

Car insurance... I win!

Woman on the end of phone: "Hello, Acme Insurance"

Me: "Hello.  I have my motor insurance renewal.  Now, when it was my wife's turn she got your Best Possible Quote, that somebody beat.  You guys then had the Absolute Bottom Line Quote, that we could beat.  Then your We Really Can't Do Better Quote, Honestly, was beaten and you came up with the Oh Look We Can Beat That One Quote.  So I got fed up and moved her insurance.  I'm not bothering with that nonsense this time, you have one shot at it."

Her: "Please hold.... would you like fifty pounds off and if you switch you home insurance to us you can save a hundred pounds?" 

Me: "Yes, thank you for being so helpful."

To hell with Microsoft and the BBC iPlayer

Alas I cannot be in London or Manchester on 14th August to protest at the BBC's decision to jump into bed with M$.  It's really disappointing that the Beeb, with a history of supporting many platforms and of not being a Microsoft-only corporation seems to be heading that route with their decision to let you playback any TV of theirs, as long as you have a recently-made Microsoft PC running Microsoft software.  Shame on them.

This is the same corporation who used to work with Real Player to promote the non-MS product, once upon a time. More information is at: http://defectivebydesign.org/iPlayerProtest . I liked their video-competition winners, especially the first one, at http://freeculture.org/blog/2006/10/13/contestwinners/

If you think I am bleating, that's ok. You probably think the whole aspect of Digital Rights Management, where big companies tell you exactly what devices you can use to view/hear media is fine. You probably agree that it should be a crime to share a music file with your friend. Heck, you probably agree Microsoft should be able to save your data in such a way that if you decide you don't want to use Office 2007 on a Windows PC, you'll simply not be able to access YOUR data. You probably even agree that after two years they can simply ask for more money to renew your license or else stop your PC working. You probably even agree that Sony BMG were right to install software on PCs, via audio CDs, designed to spy on users. You are probably the sort of person who refuses to share a newspaper or a bag of sweets with other people, because they didn't pay for them. 

You'd probably have been happy in Communist Russia too.

 

We're the Big Boys

Around quarter of a mile from the house where I grew up there is a river. During the summer, we used to dam up part of it to give us enough depth to swim in. When we weren't doing that, we would be wading up it looking for small fish and generally doing what boys do.

The riverbed was not at all level. It was safe to wade into and wade out of but in the middle there were a few places where the bed appeared to have fallen away. Unless you were careful you would go from being up to your wait to being up to your neck, and possibly with a stuck foot!

We were safe enough because the older boys had told us where to be careful. There was none of this health and safety filling-forms nonsense. Kids were trusted to be careful and look out for each other. In the nearby park, the only serious accident happened when the council replaced the tarmac round the swings with rubber mats and we all thought there was no need to be sensible - crutches all round!

So, the river had a hundred years of big boys telling small boys to be careful and there had never been an accident. Hurrah!

At the beginning of the week, I was visiting friends and enjoying a BBQ lunch in their back garden. We could see kids playing in the river as we had once done. They had taken the safety-mats for the swings, as we had also done, to dam things up. We were glad they had figured this out as due to a population shift, no kids had played there for around ten years.

Paul and I discussed this and had a very uneasy feeling. The kids we could see now probably didn't know about the dangers because nobody had told them. There were no Big Boys left.

Half an hour later we heard the predicted screams. Tommy, whoever Tommy is, had got his foot stuck in a hole in the riverbed and was up to his neck. The rains had made it deeper then usual and his friends were panicking. This had happened once when I was little and the big boys sorted it out, without telling the adults. Why would we? It was our world, not theirs, and we were in charge. We looked after each other.

Where were the Big Boys now? Paul and I looked at each other - WE were the only Big Boys there and nobody had told the little ones. Our burgers abandoned, we ran with his wife to see hysterical youngsters trying to help their friend. We pulled off our shoes and waded in and within a minute or two had freed a very grateful Tommy.

After everyone had calmed down we explained to them where the holes in the river bed where and how we had freed Tommy's foot. There was no screaming about how you ought to be more careful (their mothers will do that!). We were the Big Boys, and we had to tell the kids - they'll be the Big Boys soon.

As I write this, I'm looking at a couple of photos Paul sent me last night. One shows the same kids and their mates playing in the river and enjoying freedom. They are learning how to build dams and have a few bits of MDF taken from someone's garage they are trying to build a bridge with. Here they will learn more about responsibility and teamwork than any amount of ultra-safe padded play or games consoles will ever give them. Their mothers are not involved and their apron strings have been left behind. Paul, the last of the Big Boys, has left his gate ajar, just in case someone has to come pounding at his door. After all, the Big Boys have to look out for the little ones?

As for the other photo? Paul told his father what happened and his father, likewise has a tale of being a Big Boy helping a wee boy. His father also had a photo, taken when Paul and I were eight or nine. Using a zoom lense, we were captured in our play in the river from what is now Paul's back fence. His father had been carefully keeping an eye on us, as Paul is now doing.

So, Health and Safety people, clear off with your mollycoddling and let the Big Boys learn to be responsible!

(Apologies, it's largely made up though inspired by watching kids play in the river near where we live now, though I did once play at a river, like them, where the Big Boys looked out for the wee ones).