Skip to content

Oh No!

Thursday 27th February, a brilliant early spring day yesterday: woke up this morning to find the rain had returned on a stiff southerly breeze, heavy showers gusting white across our windows; clearing skies and calm air now. Oh no! Those delicious looking big fat grubs I found curled up in the peat-free seed and cutting compost bag, I callously transfered them to the feeder in the little elm, thinking what a treat!, but I was curious and looked them up. I have fed the starlings on the larvae of the beautiful rose chafer beetle, a harmless ornament to any garden, and need I tell you it is "getting scarce"? Better news, Peter found some more. I've transferred a few to our home-grown compost bin, as they are supposed (it says here) to migrate from your compost to ordinary soil to pupate. I hope they survive, and that Brighton proves as hospitable as Colchester (where they come from).


Oh no! My Fracking Update Reloaded


Probably you didn't read my open letter to Louise Goldsmith (and nor did she: that kind of letter, like an amnesty appeal to the Prime Minister of Bahrain, President of the USA or other influential person is expected to be counted, not read!) Even if you had, I bet you won't believe this. I looked at that Commons Library Standard Note again today, and there's been a silent amendment. After the bit I quoted:

DECC advises that there is no firm distinction between exploration for shale gas and exploration for other targets. Some companies who are drilling mainly for conventional oil and gas have decided to drill deeper than they otherwise might have, in order to see whether there is prospective shale in their licensed areas

quite possibly itself a post facto acknowledgement of newly outed slightly disingenuous activities (cf Rathlin), a caveat has now appeared, with a footnote attached, noting that these fracking exploratory drills do not, themselves, involve fracking. So that's all right then. No infringement of a very specific planning permission.

Dear me. I surely must be mistaken. And the moral is: if you don't trust the source, print it out.

Still, I have an acknowledgement now, my letter has been "passed on to the planning department"

More fracking news sources:



http://www.refracktion.com/



http://www.frackingdigest.co.uk/


& all this is folly to the world . . .

Really, is there anything more useless than pointing out that this goverment is making a complete mess of: shutting down hospitals, reforming disability benefits, housing the homeless in private rentals, maintaining flood defences, protecting the environment, authorising the fracking-up of the countryside (& so on)? Water off a duck's back. When all you are bent on is annihilation, why would you worry about the neatness of the job?

Reading

H.P Lovecraft, collected works. How deep the roots of those iconic stories are; fascinating to see the whole framework, the dreadful depths beneath our ordinary lives, in a story written when he was about nine. Mine is a free epub edition, and very minimally organised: I'm just wandering into trackless swamp, lost in labyrinthine undercrofts. Came across the rats in the walls late last night, and welcomed it like a sister. What, you here too? Have also returned to Proust, for I think the eighth time, which I find both soothing and energising. That musical evening, the thrill of Swann's final pas de deux with the "little phrase", already gone by; Madame Swann is at home right now, and between the pages, in the insanely luxurious recesses of her family life, I meet memories of my own times past.

Looking Forward To

A day out in London tomorrow, handing in a petition about the plight of workers for Amazon.com (Sigh, what a silly hobby I have, cf criticising the Tories), going to a new play reading in the evening, and I plan to visit Tate Britain between, because I haven't been for ages, and because they have a Sylvia Pankhurst exhibition. which I have almost missed.

Keynote picture is the rose chafers of course. Further garden news, three masses of spawn so far, two moved to the nursery pool, and one transferred to a bowl so I can watch to see if it's fertile. Three pair of frogs still frolicking, oh no, it's a population explosion, caused by me!