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Time – and feathers – set to fly in 2012
Ok then, that’s one week down, 51 to go, and it looks like 2012 is going to be a difficult year and a long haul.
I am permanently alarmed at the rate at which life goes whizzing by. I feel a little cheated as all the so-called experts told me the pace of life slows down when you retire – no such luck for me, if anything it has speeded up. So this means The Pilgrim now needs to fit in as much activity each and every day in order to just keep up with the rest. Watch this space.
For one sector of the world the start of this year brought something of a mixed blessing when the wretched fowls commonly known as battery hens saw their avian rights revised. Now they must be treated to a better quality of life in respect of their accommodation and general conditions – and in my humble opinion this legislation is long overdue.
I for one never believed all that guff about cramming the chooks into small spaces being good for them and to their liking – all I ever saw was hordes of bedraggled hens who spent their brief lives either laying eggs or pecking each other’s feathers out.
So what is mixed about that? Well, not to put too fine a point on the subject, although the press were invited to view some lucky cluckers being handed over to new owners and a life of domestic bliss, I fear that was for the lucky few, the remainder facing a form of redundancy in which the term chicken nuggets plays a major part. Oh well, some you win, others you don’t, I suppose, but I feel a lot better about the situation on egg day when I see the Oakwood Mill fowls peacefully scratching around in their field.
Down in the deep south of Englandshire, Milord Coe continues his campaign to create a little excitement at the now-imminent Olympic Games. The days are counting down on various public clocks in a way similar to those used by the makers of End of the World movies.
That’s a point, why does the large mysterious case containing the doomsday-sized atom bomb in these films always have to have a prominent digital clock counting down the time? If your life expectancy has been reduced to seconds by the forces of evil, I feel it is a crime to waste what little is left watching a dumb clock. I’d much rather it was kept a secret and a surprise, even if it was the last one I would ever get.
I have rather got into the absurdities of life just lately – there’s so much of it around. It all leaves me with a strong suspicion that most of the UK will be weary of the Olympic hype well before the big day.
The other big event, maybe the biggest, will be the diamond anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne. Even the strongest advocate of a republican United Kingdom must acknowledge that Her Maj has done a good job over the last 60 years, often in difficult circumstances. I was four years old when she got the job and dimly recall watching bits of the Coronation on a wondrous device called a television set. At that time everyone said television was a waste of money, it would never catch on and radio would always be the top domestic entertainment.
I remind opponents of the Borders railway of this tendency for the improbable to achieve success against the odds.
We had better get this new year cranked up as soon as we can – there’s a lot to do. For example, we have the local authority elections in May which will suit our purposes very well as they will be over in good time for the Common Riding. C’mon folks, I know we will just get the same old faces back there at Newtown, but just for once can’t we see a big turnout to give the candidates some encouragement. After all is said and done, and things go according to the norm, they will all spend the first part of the year seeking to disadvantage their rivals with verbal displays of mud slinging that in some ways resembles the feather pecking of our earlier-mentioned battery hens.
There will be similar exchanges in newspaper letters columns as the battle to engage the electorate takes us to polling day and blessed relief. Sadly, I remain confident there would be little mileage in hacking their phones, emails or tweets. We could all more or less predict the result of the election right now, the only requirement being the candidates should be breathing on election day.
And for me? Well, I plan to take more holidays this year, that’s for sure. In between times, I hope my general health and the climate allows time to work my gardens and allotment plot.
Maybe I’ll find time to do a little more on that book which has festered in my computer for so long, or get on with the big Selkirk Hill project which is currently in the winter doldrums. It’s all out there waiting to be started, and that is the point of it all – how does one get going after a winter lay-off?
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Weather for Selkirk
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 10 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: East
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