People who live in large houses shouldn’t be thrown bones…

There is something strangely and immensely edifying in being implicated as a “moron” by a former adviser to arch war‑criminal and Thatcherite (I honestly don’t know which of these two traits is worse; or has caused most lasting human damage…) Anthony Charles Lynton “get a transplant” Blair – the man who tried to put both the hyphen and hatchet into socialism.

It must, I imagine, feel similar to being savaged by moist cotton-wool; or, perhaps, being on the receiving end of an Internet troll (a creature that only exists to be ridiculed pitied) – especially one who you know (simply from their existence) to be ignorant, irrelevant, and arrogant: i.e. not in possession of either the facts, or any sort of sympathy (let alone empathy) for those less fortunate (if you can describe someone as such who probably does not rank very high on the evolutionary scale, or have much nous).

Trolling of any sort, though (however sad its proponents) – like so many pathetic demands for attention – is, in reality, an offensive, although pointless, pastime: which ranks (both senses), in intention (if not effect), at exactly the same level of iniquity (as well, of course, of stupidity) as the disability hate crime I recently experienced (and which has been efficiently and thoughtfully dealt with, now, by the Police: who continue to offer their sterling support…). And it makes no difference who partakes in such infantile bullying: megalomaniac ex-PM, or the local pub bore. They should both be ignored equally.

It is, of course, their own counsel such poorly-endowed pillicocks should really be paying regard to… – although I am not convinced of the value of donating a heart to someone who appears not to currently have the use of one (or indeed any actual values…). And, although I am not religious, the caution to “Judge not, that ye be not judged” does seem quite apposite, here – knowing that many who taunt and attack, for example, supposedly “feckless, workshy scroungers”, will one day come to regret (if they are capable of such an emotion) their actions when they find themselves disabled and/or jobless: the leaky shoe now on their afflicted foot; and on the receiving end of spookily familiar physical and verbal vitriol. (How very sad.)

What this tirade is leading to (as you may have guessed – another helpful hint is in the above graphic) is a declaration that I shall be wielding my vote in Labour’s leadership contest – both with my fully-functioning heart and highly-intelligent head – in favour of Jeremy Corbyn: proudly, sincerely, and joyfully, wearing my red Labour: I prefer their early work T-shirt as I do so (perhaps over my purple Barney costume). Anything else would be “moronic”: a sop to the Tories and to “austerity lite” – i.e. contributing to negating the future of those not in the richest one percent: the sort of people who think nothing of paying $50,000 to take a life, for example.

Such pandering faithlessness would also, of course, prioritize the simplistic, solipsistic greed to win, to achieve power – at all costs? – over the genuine need to legislate based on belief, care, and duty. This avarice may be the short-termist modus operandi of present politics, present government (which is probably the paradigm that the excrementitious bugaboos who stalk the ’Net – and inhabit the right-wing media – so thoroughly delude themselves in emulating); but it is not my way; nor that of anyone who has both sense and sensibility (not to mention plain common decency…).

In other words, just because “you are 80 per cent cow” does not mean that you should be part of the unthinking herd jostling towards the same slaughterhouse of failed ideas (or an uninvited bull shitting in an intellectual china shop); nor should you fail to wake up to the fact that, as a species, it is “the social genome” – and not the selfish gene – that has made humans (so far, reasonably) successful.

We would be nothing without altruism and cooperation: and should therefore ignore the frequent narcissistic tales told by idiots – wherever they issue their crass, negative convictions – “full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”; and seek – and choose – our principals accordingly: with minds (and souls) fully and positively engaged.

A pain in the back(and)side…

The renal calculi reds…

My kidney stones

are shaped like Toblerones:

and thus get stucked

within my duct.

They may be spikey:

and – oh my crikey –

do the buggers hurt –

I really wish they were as soft

(especially as I have them oft)

as real Swiss chocolurt.

Renal colic

is no frolic.

Soon I’ll be an alcoholic.

Whilst I was gone…

meadow rue

the gold of cups

     has freely been replaced

by royal thistle purple

     whilst I was gone

a textured tapestry

     of swaying sorts

multicoloured limelight

     and no more one

hue

     now dominates the raw summer grass

and yet I move on slowly

     and sad-faced

the present image in its palette

     thwarts

my fast memory

     as onward I pass

Knowing how way leads on to way…

Most times, I just follow my (traditional, inherited, Yorkshire-profiled) nose – or a familiar perambulation – but sometimes, I find I need a target, a goal, to encourage me to keep on putting “one foot in front of another”: as part of the conjoined aims of experiencing somewhere (new and) beautiful; and coping, on a regular basis, with the severe, constant pain that attempts to rule my life; my every moment; my every movement….

As Karen Lee Richards writes, on the Health Central website:

Although study after study has shown that exercise helps reduce… pain, we’ve had little understanding of why until now. Scientists have long known that during prolonged strenuous workouts, our bodies release endorphins, a kind of natural opiate that reduces pain and enables us to continue exercising. But they haven’t known why (or even if) more moderate exercise would have a similar effect.

However, a recent report – whose purpose was “To examine the effect of aerobic exercise training on pain sensitivity” (albeit “in healthy individuals”) – I believe, now offers us some clues. As Gretchen Reynolds reports in The New York Times – quoting Matthew Jones, who led the study – “the findings intimate that ‘something occurring in the brain was probably responsible for the change’ in pain thresholds… [that] ‘the brain begins to accept that we are tougher than it had thought, and it allows us to continue longer although the pain itself has not lessened’.”

The study also could be meaningful for people struggling with chronic pain, Mr. Jones said… the experiment suggests that moderate amounts of exercise can change people’s perception of their pain and help them… “to be able to better perform activities of daily living.”

Or, as the monograph itself concludes, more formally:

This finding may have important clinical applications for exercise prescription in patients with persistent pain. For instance, patients with persistent pain may gain a pain relieving benefit of exercise by training with unaffected or pain free limbs. This would serve to improve their functional capacity and clinical outcomes, without the risk of exacerbating their symptoms. A transfer of endurance training to untrained limbs has previously been shown after exercise training.

As with much to do with chronic pain, therefore, coping with it requires some (not always permanent) reprogramming of the stubborn – but still plastic – pia mater that (I hope) lies between our ears. But, even without knowing all the technical stuff that may go on ‘up there’, it is easy to understand how the positive distraction of focusing on the world around you – especially if actively involved in navigating your way around it – can mediate, or even relegate (even if only temporarily), the negative, Dementor‑like sensations screaming around your body and soul; as well as producing protracted dividends.

Acknowledging the medical benefits, the “demonstrated link between increased physical activity, well-being and health” – as Hippocrates said: “Walking is man’s best medicine” – there are also psychological, aesthetic, rewards, of course. The swallows mobbing a stubbornly-stupid sparrowhawk – which, eventually, was driven away by their constant barrage, accompanied by excited, machine-gunned ‘splee‑plink’ and ‘flitt‑flitt’ alarm calls (although they actually appeared to be enjoying themselves…). A birdfight, rather than a dogfight.

Or the lonely lapwing, mournfully reiterating its ‘peewit’ soubriquet (“There is enough evil in the crying of wind”) by the side of a farm’s large pond (“I wander by the edge of this desolate lake”). The parent-and-child buzzards mewing in turn, soaring and circling over the wheat-fields of Baddesley Clinton; then heading, as close companions, true, towards Hay Wood. Always; all ways: the roads taken – and not taken….

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

– Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

So, why was I there, what “target”, what “goal”, had brought me to these places, these events; stretching my legs, stretching my limits? Well, I had donned my boots in the name of a good cause: the Ramblers’ Big Pathwatch.

Walkers understand better than anyone just how important it is to keep our paths well maintained, and they already do an amazing job of helping with this just by regularly using our paths. We are hoping as many people as possible will go one step further and play a crucial role in protecting our paths by getting involved….

– Benedict Southworth, chief executive, Ramblers

As the NFU reports: “The Local Authority rights of way teams are struggling to survey every route and so the Ramblers have started the project to undertake these surveys.” And, as I have already discovered, only a week in (and four blocks crawlingly completed – it’s pretty much like doing a giant crossword or sudoku, in slower-motion, with kilometre-sized squares…) – encountering a chronically-broken bridge; impassable and barely-recognizable footpaths cloaked by nettles and brambles; absent waymarkers; forbidding signs; big new houses blocking your way, your view… – Britain’s footpaths truly show signs of disappearing through “slow decay”. And something – this thing – needs to be done. Or where else shall we go…?

That is not to say that there are not many responsible farmers and landowners – the National Trust (whose plethora of properties make excellent launching points; and provide the perfect sustenance and shelter necessary for rest and recovery…) principal amongst them – whose almost religious, rigorous care of the rights of way across their land make rambling a truly rewarding (and hazard-free) experience: even for those limping of limb. And, being in the middle of England, even I – a bare‑faced Northerner: who likes my landscapes (‘like me chips’) rugged and dripping – have to admit that the scenery is something else. Being mainly flat (by my measure) – thank goodness – it is also a lot easier on my agéd bones.

So onwards will I plod, the National Grid as my guide: tracing the dotted, dashed, diamonded, green lines; re-tracing my steps; registering and recording both the lowlights and highlights of our local environs; gaining behoofs on the hoof – both self- and society-interested; a square deal, if you will: an equitable arrangement, where my health (both mental and physical), as well as that of the countryside (and our enjoyment of it), is enhanced immeasurably. Encouraged thusly, thus will I go on “putting one foot in front of another”.

Roses are red…

This book is different: it is a book about housing, but it does not advocate building many more homes. This book does not add more support to many of the usual solutions offered. It does not suggest that so-called affordable housing schemes are good, or that we necessarily need thousands of new ‘council homes’ to be built. It does suggest that the housing problem requires a more serious solution than merely building more homes. This conclusion has resulted partly from concerns about the near-future, not about the present. Solutions such as home-building, which look as if they might solve some of our present woes, may not be the panacea many imagine if we continue to allow a few to get richer and richer through exploitation of what the housing system has become. Building more may result in the wealthy owning even more houses, more families renting some of those homes, but more being empty at any one time and in greater future inequality, unless we address rising inequalities in how housing is shared out.
– Danny Dorling: All That is Solid: The Great Housing Disaster

This week's Herald – and its headline about the “number of homes [that] just keeps on rising” with each revision of Stratford-on-Avon District Council’s Core Strategy (about as strategic as this household’s weekly shopping list) – crystallized thoughts I have been having for some time; and is one of a continually-growing number of reasons why I now wonder if there is any point to Neighbourhood Plans (at least in their current form and lack of legal standing): especially when “The Government is very clear that it will not be possible to use [them] to stop development.” (They do not, therefore, as some appear to believe, “protect the village”.)

As long as we, as a community, as a district, as a country, continue to espouse the simplistic mantra that building more and more homes is the answer to life, the universe and everything, I cannot see any purpose in producing a “vision” for Tysoe that can then be crumpled and crushed in an instant by the Vogon triumvirate of government, property and finance. We may as well wield fly-swatters in the paths of oncoming bulldozers (or lie down in front of them wearing our dressing-gowns), as to mount a defence of the status quo (which is what I believe we are really trying to achieve – not many people are in a position to readily welcome change, in any form…) with a glossy, Panglossian compilation of complex protocols. Indeed, as I have written before: “I am concerned that this could just simply be yet another time- and money-consuming exercise: designed to keep us ‘plebs’ occupied, and therefore from being able to interfere in, or protest against, Tory diktats” – the latest in a long line of increasingly-bizarrely-named documents that, momentarily, repeatedly, give us the blurred illusions of localism, local power, local choice. When will we learn…?

And, from sage comments made (and quoted) previously on these pages, perhaps I am not the only one who thinks like this: “It doesn't even have to be the Neighbourhood Plan. It could simply be our plan. A plan for Tysoe.”

¶

I think I have (finally) reached Frost’s “Two roads diverged”; and, like him, will take “the one less traveled by”. I have spent far too much time critiquing our attempts at pulling a plan together (but not “together” with most residents of the village…); and making suggestions – long have “I stood And looked down… as far as I could” – many having fallen on fallow ground; a few, perhaps (if appearances count for anything) permeating the ears of our still-wet-behind-the-ears Parish Council.

Accordingly, I suppose, like the great poet, I should be “telling this with a sigh” – but I feel I have said all that there is to be said; and, now, it seems, about something with as many sharp bits as a ball-bearing. So: my main emotion is actually relief. And, as a result, unless there is a massive change in both process and direction, I no longer see any further sense in giving my opinions on it; and will focus my meagre resources and “lucid words” on things of importance to me. I will also, therefore, of course, be voting against it.

However, if you feel differently, then may I suggest that tonight’s PC meeting is definitely worth attending?!

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.
– Oscar Wilde