Recently I had cause to revisit Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Immediately I asked myself, why on earth don’t I revisit Lewis Carrol more often? What fun. So pertinent!
Here’s an excerpt from the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that just about sums up today’s shenanigans, be they double-speak from politicians, not-so-subtle messages from the Sussexes, or weasel words in planning applications:
“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
Probably a bit crass to blog about food right after I’ve blogged about hungry children, but I’ve had one of those weeks when everything else has gone wrong so why not my sensitivity and PR nous?
But before the food, the week.
Still feeling a bit crabby for firing off a, er, crabby email when I shouldn’t have done (another story), I was faced early Thursday morning with receipt of an (unrelated) email that made me think that if I didn’t resign from this particular organisation tout de suite (I should really say sofort as I’m learning German at the mo, not French) I’d be party to being negligent and reckless. Let me give you a hint: if a safety organisation said Do This, would you Do That instead, because it was much much cheaper? Course you wouldn’t, but this lot did and I wasn’t consulted first, so off went the resignation e-mail before I’d had my second strong coffee.
Had another letter published in the Bucks Herald this week:
Want to feed children? Local is the best way
I support our local MPs, Greg Smith and Rob Butler, for voting against the proposed food vouchers during the school holidays.
Earlier this year, provision of such vouchers was far from universally
successful, being slow to deliver, expensive to administer, and target
recipients were missed more often than an English soccer penalty. As a more
viable alternative, in many communities local foodbanks instantaneously
materialised, and established foodbanks stepped up a notch. The result was that
more kids were fed more quickly locally than nationally.
We sat down this morning in Mum’s sitting room to watch on TV the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
Just as it started she asked, “Where are my uncles?”
I went into the dining room and opened the display cabinet where a picture of her four uncles, who had served in WWI, had pride of place. I removed the photo and took it over to her, where she held it on her lap throughout the programme, occasionally stroking it.
It was the constant fogging up of my glasses while wearing a mask, and not vanity, honest, that prompted me to visit my optician to switch to contact lenses.
I’d ruled them out over the years because I’d still need to wear reading glasses, and/or sun glasses, they’re planet-unfriendly – all that plastic(?) – and who wants to poke your fingers in your eyeballs when you’re hungover?
Maybe if one or more of my loved ones had succumbed to Covid-19 or were suffering with it in intensive care, I too would want a national lockdown. But they’re not, so I can think coolly, rationally and unemotionally, albeit after two strong coffees.
According to the Daily Mail (yeah, I know), the PM was told that if he didn’t lockdown us all then he would be forcing “doctors to choose between saving Covid sufferers and those with other illnesses.”
So Boris has made the decision himself to favour Covid patients.
Excuse me, but I would rather doctors take such decisions on a case-by-case basis, not politicians in a panicked pronouncement.