A film for my birthday.

7°C, sun became rain later. Heavy.
From now, get used to the idea that I’m forty-eight years old.

I’m 48 too.

Film: Amour. Not everybody’s choice of film on a thoroughly middle-aged birthday, a film about old age and death. It is rightly much written about in the press, since it won big prizes at Cannes. Ties are plenty of links to read up on so I won’t add much here.
I found myself thinking while the film was on, an easy thing to do in such a measured film were a major theme was time. I thought about the rather slow section mid-film and whether it was deliberately slow because the character’s lives were slow while trapped in their situation.
Spoiler alert:

Crime minister.

6°C, no wind.
No I didn’t vote yesterday either. I stayed away from the polling booth along with 88.4% of the electorate. One polling station ( in Devon I believe) didn’t receive a single vote. In that time, questions floated in my mind; what is crime commissioner? What do they do? And are we really supposed to make our decision based on the leaflet dropped through the door? There was nothing in it but party political nonsense. Why does the job have to be a political one?

One leaflet promised “more visible policing”- not the old “bobbies on the beat” cliché again is it? We know from previous experience that it looks great but makes little difference to crime prevention (it’s brilliant for crime re-location though). All I want these days from politicians is evidence based policy, giving sway to vested interests and pressure groups gives unsatisfactory results.

A very mysterious event.

Related articles

• We don’t want to elect Police and Crime Commissioners. We just want the people we already elect to do their jobs – Telegraph Blogs (oyiabrown.com)

Leaves.

9°C, still & foggy start.
Drove in today. Fog has descended.
Drove home in clear air but my view was obscured by a boot full of leaves. Our caretaker let me take 6 big bags of swept leaves, mainly from London Plane (?) trees. There are loads of those in the borough- they cope with pollution well.

Leaf mold.

10°C, dry, SW.
Got my energy back, so rode home quickly and raked 8 bags of cherry tree leaves. Making leaf mold is such a good way to use up all those clothes bags that come through the door each week. I get 2 or 3 each week, and there is no way of knowing which ones come from fake charity collectors. So rather than add to the re-cycling bin, they make a good way to store the piles of leaves. The bags even have ready-made breather holes.

Grumpy

10°C, dry.
Oh dear, that was a grumpy post yesterday. Today feeling better, recovering from a strange virus, Let’s blame that then.
I fear that grumbling can become habit.
Interesting prog on TV last night, old drivers are a little safer than 20 somethings. They are just as annoying too, but it seems that view are often aware of their growing limitations such as judging speed of other drivers. So what they do is to compensate with caution. Perhaps little understanding is required. As for boy racers who react to tricky situations by stamping on the throttle…

Is it all over?

6°C, clear and starry (including Venus)
Is this trial over yet? Woke up to hear that US voding is complete. There were only two cannidates, they got the same number of votes but somehow Wilhard lost by a wide margin. The map is coloured by each state. Red for the right-wing and blue for the even-more-right-wing, or is that left wing in their currency? The news features centre around a small number do canndidates, and a large number of voders.
Their president, in practice has limited power, so at least when they elect a half-wit nazi (Bush), or an insane war mongerer (Reagan) they can’t do as much harm as they’d like. I don’t argue with Americans’ right to vote, nor that the outcome has an effect on us non-Americans, but that it would have been better to limit election news stories to once a month until this week. It doesn’t seen to matter who they get, whoever wins will still exert economic power (protectionism), world power (mainly by bombing people), environmental (by polluting us all) and general bullying.
British TV has bored and annoyed us with this story since Easter, and will drag it out some more I fear.
Morning news will remain un-watchable for some time.

Silver woods

9°C, clear.
Restful: took a restful day. Body said I had to, so dutifully…
Took Rosie to a wood new to us. On a low hilltop near a tall TV transmitter. Initially there is a coniferous wood. But further in Silver birches formed a metallic wall, like bound barbed wire. The trees were all about the same age though the ground is mature, deep, soft and black. This has all the signs of managed woodland. The bedrock is bunta pebble bed, so the quite deep puddles should drain better than these do. Credit to the thick humus for that. I’d like to get know this wood more, something that can takes.

later I watched Kill Bill 1 which is a rather silly film.