Tuesday 3rd March

"God I can't keep my feathers straight in this wind."  The funeral horses up at St.Mary, Whitby.  They get boxed up so they don't have to climb the steep hill, in the olden days it was donkeys of course who took the dead to the church along the coffin way, 

Gosh we live in exciting times.  The supermarket delivery vans dash by on the road, the fear is setting in already, stay fortress like in your own homes and don't meet the public.  Well I shall have to go out today, if only to get Lucy's special food, Harrington's cooked meals. Then of course fresh vegetables and fruit, the supermarkets are already gearing themselves for the basic supplies to be on the shelves rather than the fancy stuff according to the Guardian this morning.

I have had a visit from my daughter, long awaited but the flooding in her home town has kept her away.  She is like a dose of sunshine through the house, none stop chatter as we cover every subject under the sun.

She works in Manchester as the manager of an animal charity shop, loves her job but has trouble with the trains.  All the new trains up North do not have enough drivers to drive them.  Yes I know, why the hell could they not have trained them at the same time as the trains were rolling off the assembly lines.  This is England. She tells of people rushing from one side of the station to the other as trains are changed, as scarce drivers lope across from one train to another   and you have to loop round on different trains to get to your destination.

We discussed the homelessness that you find on the streets of Manchester which she sees every morning.  There is nothing much more the ordinary people can do she says it is up to the government to build more accommodation, plenty of kitchen places going round feeding the homeless, people giving money, clothes such as scarves and gloves, and the medics tending to those who have collapsed because of 'spice' the drug in fashion. The hostels are scary places for some, drunken fighting, drug abuse and it is better to sleep out on the pavement.  Patel we will never have an ideal society, so accept the basic humanity of all those people in the country who help others, not forgetting the Sikhs and Muslims whose philosophy/religion of helping others is also out there feeding those that live on the streets.

Yesterday, a clip of news showed a very large carrot field with all the carrots ruined by the flooding, the farmer dug one up, snapped it in two and it was all squelchy inside.  Several hundred thousands pounds worth of carrots rotten, the question is? Is monoculture the wisest thing in the midst of climate chaos?  To think the humble carrot has become a victim ;)

There is a little story to be told of these happier photos.  Note my daughter is wearing scruffy jeans, for which she paid £90 in their scruffyiness of slits and marks.  Paul horrified at this, but a couple of years later walked round in his worn jeans saying that they were an expensive purchase and 'designer' jeans.