We're Walking In The Bear

As I stood there by the road leading out of Dorchester, stamping my feet to keep warm, doing my best to peer around me through the nostril holes of the polar bear suit I was wearing, the thought hit me - what am I doing here?  How did life in all its infinite complexity combined with the myriad decisions, small and large, that I have taken transpire to place me here, now, on the morning of the nineteenth of January 2013?  And do I look as absurd as I feel?

Disgruntlement Against The Machine

Along with the vast majority of people in the UK and the rest of the “developed” world I have grown up with the idea that all homes just come with electricity and heat and water supplied. Like the air we breathe these are simply essentials that we take for granted, although unlike air we have to pay someone to ensure the supply keeps coming. What with the aggressive price hikes in recent years from all the major suppliers (and suspicions of inter-company price-fixing) more people than ever are finding it difficult to pay all their bills. But we don’t often concern ourselves too deeply with how these fundamentals of modern life actually find their way to our home, or where and how they originated. We just trust the suppliers to sort it all out for us because we have no other choice, or so we assume.

Got Us a Case of the Mid-January Community Blues

The cheery "Happy New Year!"s we wished upon each other just last week seem in retrospect, as the gloomy January rain-clouds sink upon us and plummeting temperatures are forecast, like rather hollow jokes. The atmosphere at Pilsdon is subdued. This week another guest had to leave having contravened the Golden Rule which naturally tended to dampen the group spirit. What with seven others including the baby currently away on holiday or on retreat, numbers are dipping into the low teens with some suppertimes only needing two tables laid up instead of the usual four. One bright spark who managed to remain undetected tried to liven things up this week by spiking our lunchtime pasta sauce with dried Scotch Bonnet chili peppers. It didn't work.

That Was The Year That Was

Blwyddwyn Newydd Dda! Or to use another well-known British language, Happy New Year! 2012 is now just a bundle of memories which over time will slip one by one into that dusty portion of the brain reserved for Forgotten Moments Never To Be Remembered, until all that remains of 2012 will be an image of Mo Farah's Mobot hand-sign. So I'll ask, while the last year might still feel pretty fresh, how was it for you? Yeah, you didn't realise that blogs could be two-way did you? Well why should I have to do all the heavy lifting? It's time for you to talk back! I'll leave a pause, the floor is yours....