Police Commissioners

Tuesday 13th November, very murky day, damp and tepid weather.

Police Commissioners for Sussex, polling day looms & the Green Party is not impressed. We think we had voting cards, we think maybe we threw them away. Been vacillating over this & wondering if it was ever worth spoiling a ballot, then suddenly decided to review the candidates. Vote for one of this shower? A lovely Tory lady with a background in the leisure industry? My god. How on earth to choose one, when I just don't want any party political messing with Sussex police, and nor do I want a clueless nutcase, or the charming prospect of a combination of those attributes. Look at that salary! Spend the money on something else, for god's sake! Now I finally understand the bizarre state of mind of those US citizens* who honestly, genuinely could not decide whether to vote for Obama or Romney...until they realised, right at the line, that d*mn it, it's no good, just can't let that Mad Hatter Mormon loose in the Oval Office, I'm going to have to cast my vote for the hollow man, the miserable disappointment who's kept Gitmo open (or, alternatively, I suppose, for that foreigner with the sticky-out ears who's probably a closet Islamist). Least worst of two.

Only in this case, I think we just won't vote.

Reading The Garden of Evening Mists Tan Twan Eng. Really good. Set in The Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, on the Peninsula indeed. Wonderfully evocative, deceptively gentle, but don't be fooled, it's about the Communist Emergency and the legacy of the Japanese Occupation; it won't stay gentle as you move through the story... One aspect of the story went right by me, and it wasn't the Japanese gardening techniques, which I loved to read about; but still highly recommended.

Watching Still nothing, but looking forward (for old times' sake) to the third "Sarah Lund". The first "The Killing" was much more than the sum of its parts, or the sum of its woolly jumpers. The second was just silly. Absurd contortions. But still, catch it while it lasts. Tough women in leading roles are apparently going to disappear from... well, generally on their way out, I suppose. Just that this Danish bloke has come out and said it.

Very excited about the cinematic release of The Muppets Christmas Carol, except The Dukes is apparently only showing it once "for kiddies and guardians only". What are they thinking? Hoping Cineworld will take a more rational view & then our Christmas outing is sorted.

The keynote photo is Clementina Brown's Weeping Ash, of course. And now we wait, and hope, and plan for a rearguard action. But may I say, I'm annoyed at the way The Woodland Trust has emerged as some kind of Ash Dieback spokes-organisation for this disaster. Sickening, after what they did. It's obvious, from the findings of the survey, that outside of East Anglia the spread of the disease had been by human intervention, and as we now know, the Horticultural Trade had been aware of this deadly pathogen, and done nothing. Buying or planting young ash trees, without confirming that they had been reared or grown in the UK, has been criminally negligent, since at least 2009. The Woodland Trust are guilty, that's bad enough for me, and I'm not impressed by the "it was going to happen anyway" argument. "Yeah, well, it was fragile, asking to be broken..." Never gets anyone out of trouble in my house.

*NB I don't know if they really existed. Polling in the run up to an election is a funny thing.