Day 214 - Neuro-Synchronicity

jiminy?

Oddly, it was only this morning that Jiminy Cricket hopped and skipped his way through my mind, and then this evening whilst walking Jazz down the lane we met this little fellow.

I was on a management and leadership course (I know, right?), and following a discussion on Values, we were asked to spend a few minutes thinking about our own personal values.  The idea was that in order to lead, you need to know yourself, be firm and considered in your values, and understand how they correlate (or not) with the values of the organisation within which you're leading.

Really, it's not as dull as it sounds! 

Ok, maybe it is - but I found it interesting...and as I pondered my values, I considered how the concept of following my conscience is a fundamental value of my life, (and the idea of which brought with it Jiminy Cricket, tripping along my neurological pathways...).   

Everyone else was talking about values in brief, abstract phrases, such as honesty, caring, and respect.

Some seemed nonsensical to me, such as loyalty (you may value it, but it's not a value - it's a characteristic, isn't it?).

Or the even odder timekeeping (the basis for which seemed to be "I hate it when people are late, it makes me so angry"...which I translates to me as "I hate it when people don't understand that I'm considerably more important than their own insignificant agenda's and life challenges!").

But my values were all more concrete and specific, and I suppose more philosophical:

- Always let your conscience be your guide...

- Treat others as you would be treated...

- Everyone has the right to be who they are (although not necessarily to impose themselves on anyone else)...

- People are more important than money...and more broadly,

- Living beings are more important than inanimate objects...

So anyway, apparently I'm still pondering these notions...I'm not sure the above is a complete set, but I'm comfortable that what's there are all solid aspirations/values of mine.

Consequently, when we heard the familiar chirrup of crickets down the lane this evening, it seemed opportunistically pertinent, like a little reminder of my earlier musings...and made for some obvious blog fodder, of course!

This is a Roesel's Bush-cricket, quite common across Europe...but still, not something you see every day, and a nice addition to my species collection (insect department)!

On the course this morning, the Trainer commented that she got the impression that I'm more reflective than most...which seemed a polite way of putting it - and I suppose it's true.

I can live with that...

:-)

Day 197 - Seven Words

as exciting as it looks

I found myself in church today, at a christening, for the first time in a few years...

I honestly can't remember the last time I was in a service of any kind - I try to block it out!

I've realised that being in church, or more specifically, being in a church service, pushes a whole bunch of buttons for me...it's not a pleasant experience. Consequently, I've learned to try to simply disengage with the whole thing, to try not to listen, turn my mind to other things. 

I was mostly, but not completely successful...

For instance, at one point the priest said "Of course, there's evil in the world, we know that...", and then went on to talk about protecting the child from this evil.

I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to say, "Now hold on a minute, back up there...evil exists - we know this?!"...

I wanted to demand evidence of this strange substance, or at least a conversation about how reasonable it was to treat this as given...although I knew that all I would get would be examples of humans doing unsavoury things that aren't in accord with the Churches position, and no real debate at all...

Anyway, it was my first time in a Catholic church, and I will confess(!) to a mild curiosity as to whether it would be more passionate and intense than my experience of other Christian churches...but alas, I found the building and the space within to be as dry and flat as all the rest...

Given the doctrine of the Christian Church, I find their houses of worship to be oddly soulless places.

To distract myself, I spent a few moments counting the number of pictures of Christ on the cross, or carrying the cross, or on his knees being beaten by Roman soldiers...the irony of celebrating new life whilst surrounded by over a dozen images of torture and execution was not lost on me.

Which got me thinking...what if Jesus had been hung, drawn and quartered?  What if he'd been electrocuted?  What if he'd been guillotined?!   This would raise some interesting scenario's...

Most obviously, what symbolism would have been used in places of worship?

A hangman's noose, or an electric chair?  A statue of Christ's head on a stake?  Would scale models of Madame la Guillotine be placed reverently around the room, complete with neat little baskets to catch the detached head?

And I wonder how god would have got round the problem of how to resurrect Jesus, had he been dismembered, or burned, or had a broken neck?

I have these images of some kind of nightmarish, Frankensteinian zombie staggering out of the cave and scaring the bejesus (do you see what I did there?) out of the locals...

Somehow it doesn't fit the narrative, does it? 

Anyway, the day was not entirely lost...at the gathering afterwards, we spent 15 joyful minutes giggling like children, whilst writing "rude" words with the actual kids fridge magnets:

fun with words

There are seven words in this image...a bonus fun-point for anyone who spots them all.

I'd wanted to do George Carlin's famous Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, but unfortunately (or more likely fortunately, now I think about it) there weren't enough letters...

B-)

PS All the words in the photo can be safely used on TV...you're welcome!

Day 187 - YMMV

rooney misses

Might as well post about the same thing everyone else is concerned with this evening.

We're off to the Lake District in the morning, and have masses to do this evening, but of course we're just watching the football. 

It's half time now, England are 1-0 down, and the pundits are starting to sound a little panicked.

I'm so glad that I don't really care!  

I'm really not that into football - I never watch it at all except for the World Cup and occasionally bits of the European Cup...do they even still have that?  I've no idea!

So I'm not really into football...in fact I'm not really into sports, as I've mentioned before, for various ethical and moral reasons which I'm not about to go into now.

I don't have any great patriotism, and I try to resist all nationalistic conditioning.  I'd rather consider myself a Citizen of the World than align myself with any particular administrative state.   Nationalism and patriotism do far more harm than good, so I have very mixed feelings about events like the World Cup.  

I don't feel patriotic and I don't wish to.  I find it odd the way people talk of the England team as "us"...to me, it's a bunch of people I've never heard of playing a game I'm not that familiar with against a bunch of other people I've never heard of...how do you make the leap to you somehow being a part of it?  

Proud of the team?  You didn't do it, it's not for you to be proud about. 

Proud to be English?  Well you have no right to claim pride for something you didn't do...do you?   It's just something that happened to you...you just happened to be born in a particular geographic location, or to a mother who happened to be born in a particular place.

As the late, great George Carlin questioned, are you as proud of your genetic disposition to colonic cancer?  


The second half has just started, so we'll see if it's the usual disappointmentfest...I'll hold fire before posting just to log the result, for future reference. 

But at this point, England need to be a bit less shit.  If they could think about maybe scoring more and conceding less, that would probably help...doesn't seem likely though.

All my life I've been watching this same scene play out over and over again.

I can remember the 1974 World Cup, although to be honest all I can remember is Johan Cruyff getting a penalty in the first minute of the final against West Germany, before going on to lose. 

But since then it's been the same thing over and over, and England never really look that good...

It's halfway through the second half now, and progressing as expected...that is, going nowhere fast.  England have all the possession, but don't look remotely close to scoring. 

Here's an interesting lesson on perspective...as mentioned above, I only really watch the World Cup.  So I've only ever seen Wayne Rooney play in the World Cup...my word, he's useless, isn't he?  

£250,000 per week he gets paid, someone said...really?!  No way!!  I've never seen him play well, so as far as I'm concerned, he's a total waste of space.

That said, he just scored, although I could have scored that one, and I'm shit too.

Oh well, there you go, situation normal, England going home.  They're saying England still have a chance, mathematically, but it's not going to happen, is it?

So now we have one country full of unhappy people, and another full of happy people.   I just looked up how many people there are in Uruguay, to see whether we've made the world happier or unhappier this evening. 

There's 53,000,000 people in England.  Guess how many there are in Uruguay...go on, guess...
.
.
.
.
.
.
There are less than three and a half million people in Uruguay...I wrote that in words rather than numbers so you couldn't cheat so easily...I'll give you the numbers now...

3,300,000!!  Tiny country!  

But bigger then England, in footballing terms, apparently. 

Anyway it seems we've got a net result of around 50,000,000 unhappier people than there were before.  Well, I guess not everyone is unhappy, many people, like me, don't really care. 

Let's say there are 20,000,000 more unhappy people on the planet than there were before. 

What was that about sport being beneficial for society...really?

Are you sure?

I don't think it's as clear cut as we're conditioned to think it is...

Your mileage (of course) may vary...

Day 174 - Freedy Neet

big tree

I actually had a photo related to the D-Day Anniversary that's all over everything today (for reasons that aren't clear to me...).

But I couldn't bring myself to post it, knowing full well that I'd struggle to avoid a lengthy diatribe on the senselessness of war, and how hypocritical we are when we claim to be civilised, whilst maintaining large stocks of troops and weapons, used primarily on those our government (or their corporate paymasters) disagree with, whilst also serving as a handy means of diverting large amounts of public money into private coffers...

You see, I'm off down that road already!

Changing the subject...this beautiful big tree looked resplendent in the evening sunshine, tall and majestic.  Even though I didn't have our decent camera, I took a snapshot on my phone, to complement the growing range of trees I've featured.  

I think this one is a Scots Pine, but that's only because Anna said it was...so if I'm wrong, it's her fault, mmkay?

Finally, in an effort to keep today's post short and sweet (I'm tired and I really want to get my freedy neet on), here's a photo of our starters from when we went out for a meal in an Italian restaurant early this evening.

what's in the bowl?

I know Kim was interested in previous food pictures, and I figure she and Roob might enjoy trying to work out what we had...or get frustrated, maybe - doesn't look that obvious to me!

Still, you know, food, or whatever...yay!

:-)

Day 172 - What's In the Box?!

remote for scale

The amount of packaging used these days is crazy...

I received this parcel in the post today, and it's immediately reminiscent of the huge box from a few weeks ago (click and scroll down).   I know what's in there, and I know it's nowhere near the size of this box...not even close.

Sure enough, the box was very light, and upon opening proved to be mostly full of air;

lightbox

Can this really be a great way of doing this?   In this instance, it's a recycled cardboard box, made from the body of an ancestor box, so that's something.

But what about stuff from Amazon?  It comes in huge boxes, using large amounts of card that goes immediately to recycling...or at least, you kinda hope it does...

Then the taxpayer (that would be you, note) pays to have it collected, sorted, and reconstituted by whatever energy consuming process they use, to turn it back into cheap, light cardboard...which is then presumably sold back to large companies like Amazon for reuse.

At first glance, this might seem like a neutral, sustainable process...but it really isn't. 

From an environmental perspective, there's a lot of energy expended in each recycle of the box...from the fuel used by the refuse truck, to the food eaten by the refuse operatives...from the electricity, water and other resources used in the process of sorting the cardboard from the other recycling, pulping it and reconstituting it, to the energy used in transporting it back to the distributor for reuse.  None of that energy consumption is sustainable - it's only the cardboard itself that is restored...

But even that isn't sustainable - not every cardboard box makes it back to recycling...some will end up in landfill, or being burnt.  And I'd be amazed if there weren't losses in the recycling process itself, too.

So whilst the headline may shout

"ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY RECYCLED CARDBOARD",

it's really only relatively friendlier than not recycling the cardboard. 

Overall, it's a desperately wasteful process.

And from a financial perspective...well, Amazon et al can have simple processes that are easy and quick in terms of labour costs (which the corporation pays), through being wasteful of cardboard...which they can get reconstituted at your (the taxpayers) expense. 

This is known as externalisation, where a commercial entity pushes costs away onto other parties, thereby increasing its own profit margins...

• Dump your harmful waste in the river, and the Water Company customer (again, you!) will bear the cost of cleaning it up for reuse.
• Create vehicles that pollute the atmosphere, knowing the society (that is, you) will bear the cost of the damage caused to the health of any or all life in the ecological system.
• Overuse cardboard, knowing that council tax payers (that would be you) will recycle it for you. 

This is a natural thing for a corporation to do, given the way corporations are designed and run, and the rules (laws) of the environment within which they exist (society)...this is an inevitable effect of an overly capitalist system...

At some point, we have to start being a bit more sensible about the way we go about things...we seriously need a revolution of some kind - turn the world on its head! 

Anyway, to save Roob from the desperate stress of not knowing what's in the box, here it is:

feel the power

Probably wasn't worth the wait, was it?  Although to be fair, it's a proprietary power adapter, difficult (and expensive) to replace, and without which I have a useless piece of musical gear...

So it has been worth the wait to me...I just externalised a bit of the waiting onto you, dear reader...

You're welcome!

;-)

Day 170 - Playtime

buildering bridges

I've been thinking about the importance of playing, to us as adult humans.

I was going to use the word "mature", which made me think "immature"...but I don't think play is immature behaviour, despite what society often tells us.

Stop acting like a child, we're told, or act your age, if we do things for no other reason than just because... 

Of course, it's fine to play if it's competitive (in which case it's not really playing at all)...one can play football, or golf, or even darts - as long as there are losers, there can be winners...

(Side note - I struggle with the morality of sports sometimes...I fear they do subtle damage to society, by teaching the lesson that in order for you to succeed, someone else must fail.  This seems distinctly unhealthy to me, psychologically...it feels as though it might be a small thing that sits at the heart of our collective consciousness, leading to us valuing personal success above mutual support...the default game is win-lose. 

What's wrong with win-win?!)

In the adult world, play doesn't seem very...playful.   We play hard and we play dirty...we play the game, and if we play our cards right, we can play to win.

(Musically speaking, you can play it by ear, you can play it again, and you can play that funky music 'til you die...but that's a different meaning of the word play!)

Playfulness is one aspect of climbing that I find deeply gratifying...

Yesterday, Anna, Jezz and I spent a brilliant hour at the end of our climbing session, just playing, inventing simple physical challenges for each other:

Can you do this problem in only three moves?

Can you get to the top using only one hold between the start and the finish?

Can you jump up and catch that hold way up there, from these holds way down here?  

All silly, childish challenges, risking injury to no real benefit...except brilliant fun!

This evening as I was in the garden looking for subjects, Anna came out and playfully began to climb the house...exactly the kind of thing your parents tell you not to do when you're a kid...

I was pleased to find that my instinctive response was not "get down!", but rather, "climb higher, let me take photo's!"

If play is childish, then I'm glad I haven't quite shaken off my immaturity just yet!

:-)

In other news, we have an(other) intriguing new mystery!

On the decking in our garden, we have some trees and shrubs that stand on the corner in pots.  We planted them for our old boy Bluez after he passed.

At the weekend, we came down one morning to find that the bark mulch in the top of a couple of them had been pulled out and spread across the decking...Anna diligently picked all the bits up and replaced them...

Today, they're spread over the decking again!

bark bestrewn

Who (or what) is responsible for this?!   After I've finished this blog, I'm going to try to remember to put the trailcam (which Anna conveniently retrieved today) out there, see what we can see...

Finally, here are some flowers for my mum.

happy tuesday, mum...

This is the clematis that is blooming outside our kitchen at the moment...the flowers very much remind me of some of mum's artwork, and I thought she'd appreciate their vibrant colours...

:-)

Day 131 - Curious Creatures

like a crowd of people...

Sheep are curious creatures. 

I'd gone over to see Frankie, to take him some carrots, but found these sheep there instead. As I walked slowly towards the gate, they all started to move away.  When I got to the gate, they all stopped...then started hesitantly back towards me.

The two heavily pregnant sheep in the middle of the photo were alternating the lead.  The one on the left would take a slow couple of steps forward and then stop.  The one on the right, now half a metre behind, would then tentatively take a few steps, then stop...and so, en flock, they crept towards me.

I was hoping that they'd come all the way to me, if I just stood there and let them...but then the one on the front right of this group looked away to her left, then after a moment, turned that way.  The one on her right immediately followed, and within a couple of seconds they were all skipping away across the field. 

Curious creatures...

I suppose you have flock/herd/shoal species (which are always prey) at one end of the spectrum, and lone hunter species (always predators) at the other.   Man is somewhere in the middle, I guess...we have some herding instincts, and some hunting instincts.  

Politicians and marketing people know how to tap into the herding instinct, fully understanding the power of peer pressure...hence the term sheeple, meaning the unthinking masses, people behaving like sheep. 

Perhaps most of us unwittingly choose one or other of these mindsets...or perhaps our pre-existing mindset determines whether or not we will be drawn along with the crowd.  The current can be powerful, with a strong undertow...sometimes you have to pull really hard to get clear of the torrent of mainstream propaganda, and social and cultural conditioning - if that's the course you wish to pursue. 

I'm not sure which road is better - maybe whichever path we choose is by definition the right road for us.

Personally, I do feel strongly the urge not to conform, not to go along with social convention. 

This makes me relatively unsuccessful - by conventional measures.  However, if you measure instead on some kind of subjective criteria such as, oh I don't know, how happy I am, or how happy my home is, or how much I enjoy life?

Well I think I'm doing reasonably well for myself thanks.  ;-)

All that said, I'm a little concerned about Frankie. 

When Jazz and I went down to the bottom of the field, he was standing up on the bank.  He soon started to make his way over, but seemed very uncomfortable on his feet, as he slowly hobbled towards me.

do you remember me?

He seemed interested in carrots, and appeared to be clear eyed...but shifted his weight a lot, often holding one hoof or another off the ground. 

I think Frankie has laminitis, which can be a very serious condition in horses.  Tellingly, it can be brought on by eating lots of fresh new grass...

At the weekend, I will try to find out who owns him and whether he's seen a vet. 

I'll keep you posted...

:-/

Day 127 - Day of the Living Dead

egg-cessive

Easter...what's that about then?!

I grew up in a church going, Christian family.  At least, my mum was devout, and the rest of us went along, for one reason or another, at one time or another.

Personally, I felt neither the presence of God, nor the need to feel the presence of God...(I've felt otherwise since, but not in a way related to Christianity, or any other religion). 

The point is, whilst I remember an incident of brutal, public torture and execution, and then a later resurrection (nowadays known as zombification, I believe), I don't recall anything about eggs, chocolate, rabbits, or gifts.

Full disclosure - I haven't read the whole Bible, (or virtually any of it, to be honest).

But I'd be willing to put cold hard cashola that were I to, I still wouldn't come across the bit about the Easter Bunny handing out chocolate eggs...and how did rabbits and eggs get mixed up together anyway?!  

Sounds like some Frankensteinian nightmare to me! 

The photo shows our little haul of chocolate and other goodies.  This is just for the two of us!  Clearly the themes of eggs, rabbits and chocolates (not to mention diabetes) run right through them.  

I haven't noticed any crosses, or other references to pain or execution.  But then there's no mention of last suppers, nor of sin, death or rebirth either. 

So we're going short on the resurrection thing, but we're going long on the cute bunnies and yummy chocolate side of the story, are we?? mm-kay. 

Try as I might, I can't quite work out what the message is supposed to be here.  There might be something vague about new life and the hope it brings...or am I just imagining that because, you know, eggs! 

Whilst the chocolate is indeed yummy, and I very much appreciate those who chose to include me in their Easter in this way, it does make me wonder what we, as a society, are trying to teach our children...it seems to me we're simply teaching them to be good little consumers.   

So now Christmas is no longer about Jesus, but instead, it's all about a fat, jolly, wealthy white man in a red suit, judging whether children have conformed acceptably, and are therefore worthy of a gift...

Easter is no longer about Jesus, but about a giant Easter Bunny that hands out chocolate eggs for no obvious reason...

Of course we all know there isn't really an Easter Bunny, nor a Santa Claus - and that we have to actually buy all of these chocolate eggs and Xmas presents ourselves...so why do we go along with it?

A significant number of those reading this may well concur with the sentiment I'm expressing here...yet still, we go along with it.

Those marketing boys have got us just where they want us...

Right, I mustn't get carried away...and besides I've got to get on - all these chocolate eggs aren't going to eat themselves!

;-)

Day 122 - Brock On

badger pride

Well, we didn't manage a repeat performance of the Fantastic Mr Fox, but we did get a bit of badgery action.

We are a little concerned that there only seem to be 2 badgers up there...and also aware that there have been many local badger deaths on the road lately.  At this time of year (or over the last couple of months), last years young males are turned out of their home sett, and set off across the countryside in search of females and new territory.  

Unfortunately, this takes them across roads, and being young enough to have pretty much no road sense whatsoever, many lose their lives.  The dead badger by the roadside is becoming ubiquitous, sadly. 

Anyway we got a couple of nice clips, but it would be good to get a bit closer to the action!

We've now reset the camera to take photo's (rather than video), and moved it onto a path that they clearly use...we might get some good face-on pics - especially as we think that badger, fox and deer all use this path.

Here's a clip of a bit of industrious hole digging.




He seems enthusiastic enough, at least...and yes, I'm sure - he is excavating, not whatever it was you thought he was doing!

And here's the other short clip of a slightly podgy badger, bimbling on by...



It saddens me to think that we have a government in power who believes that wholesale slaughter of a significant species is a reasonable solution to our failure to manage our domestic livestock sensibly.   

Even putting aside for a moment the sound scientific arguments opposing a cull of these creatures in order to (try to) control TB amongst cattle, surely wholesale slaughter of any species is morally suspect (other than in the direst of circumstance)?  Not to mention rash and irrational - we risk unbalancing the very ecosystems we rely on, with virtually no understanding of the consequences of our actions. 

And yet the government tries to forge ahead with its selfish, destructive plans...it's only badgers, isn't it?

Grrrrrrrrr

I could go on...all sorts of possible tangents present themselves from here...but I'll resist...

You're welcome...

:-/

Day 106 - In Search of Balance

steady cam, unsteady lamb

Much like the proverbial buses, you wait weeks to see a new born lamb, with no sign of one, when all of a sudden, dozens turn up all at once!  Over the last few days lambs have started to appear, and now they are arriving by the sheep-load. 

According to this handy table, the ram must have been pretty busy through the early days of last November...although the rate they're dropping today, surely it must have been more than one ram?!  If not, then he's a mighty impressive beast!   Whilst we were down the lane this afternoon for 20 minutes or so, there were several new lambs born in the field. 

This one was still lying down, probably less than an hour old.    As I leaned on an old gate, trying to stay steady enough to get a sharp photo across the field, he struggled up onto his feet for the first time!  He only managed to stay standing for a few seconds, but I caught this lovely photo, as his mum grazed alongside him.   She clearly feels the need to both replenish her energy reserves, and fuel the milk supply that will sustain him for the next few weeks.

Domestic sheep are something of a "fake" species, in the sense that they've been bred to man's purpose for so long that they barely resemble any original, wild stock.  Much like dogs, their natural environment is the one man creates and dictates for them.

But still, in the same way that dogs have retained a few wolf characteristics, modern sheep reflect their genetic ancestry as a successful prey species.  Here you can see how incredibly well developed this baby sheep's legs are...they look as though they're weeks or months ahead of the rest of the lamb's body.

In herding prey species like sheep, horses and the like, the ability to stand up very soon after birth is an important survival trait.  Critically, it enables the new born to keep up with the naturally roaming herd, and so find safety in numbers...the sooner he can run, the higher the odds that he will escape predation....and if he can escape predation for long enough to reach maturity, he will have the chance to pass his genes on to the next generation of early walkers.

And so the wheel of life turns, seemingly endlessly...

So far it's been endless, in any case...let's hope human selfishness and greed don't suck too much life out of the planet...

We are the ongoing output of a 3.5 billion year experiment to see what happens to a simple spark of life, given enough time, and an environment abundant in a range of chemicals, climates and environs within which it can flourish.

As the bleeding edge of this experiment, Homo sapiens has become a very destructive force.  As technology has allowed us to expand, we too often expand prematurely, and without due thought or consideration of our impact on the environment we're expanding into. 

Yet still, we don't stop to think...we just keep relentlessly pushing onwards in short-termist pursuit of wealth, until all major natural global systems are critically out of balance.

As they are now.

Nature eventually finds a way to correct such imbalances - it's simply a matter of physics...

Let's hope we can avoid ending the experiment prematurely...for the sake of all the other species...and here, today, especially for these little dudes:

get up, stand up

Let's find a way to restore balance ourselves, before Gaia, on behalf of Mother Nature, restores it for us.

Day 88 - Blast From the Future

es pontas

We're clearing out our office at work, in preparation for a move.   It's only temporary, whilst our dingy old office is refurbished, but it's a good chance to clear out a lot of dross.

Consequently, I've spent much of the day clearing out my drawers, sorting through masses of old paperwork, and quite brutally throwing most of it away.  

De-cluttering is certainly cathartic!

We have a large plastic skip in situ, to dump all the stuff we don't want in, and typically, this has been a great source of interest all day. 

Ultimately, it's just a big bin, but you'd be amazed at how many people stop as they pass, then start poking through it.

They invariably pretend that they're concerned about waste, or suggest how money could be made from it...but mostly I think, they're just being nosey. 

I think we humans have some sort of instinctive scavenger urge.  It leads us to scour our environment looking for things of practical (or monetary) value.   Of course, in our modern society where every last thing has to be "owned" by someone, we've learned to inhibit this urge, and we mostly just leave stuff alone, on the basis that it probably "belongs" to someone else.

Honestly, this possession obsession that we have, it'll be the death of us!

What does it even mean, to "own" something?   Fundamentally, it's simply a right to deny others...it's my car, you can't drive it (even though I'm not using it at the moment).   It's my house, you can't come in (even though there's plenty of room).  It's my food, get your hands off it (even though I'm not hungry and you are).

You can see how this would be a positive survival trait, and thus would become strongly dominant in our species...the urge to gather just a bit more food than we need. 

But in a society of surplus, abundance and excess, this selfish instinct can be harmful...especially when advertisers and marketers know exactly how to push this particular psychological button, and so condition us from birth to consume, to acquire, to covet...

It's the Capitalist Way!

They say that ownership is 9/10 of the law, but I'm not sure that most people understand what this means - that the law is there to defend those who possess...to keep the rich and their riches in close proximity...to protect the haves from the have-nots.   

It's all about denial of access...and it's difficult to reasonably justify any other position than that this is a supremely selfish system, that amongst other things, serves to ensure that the weak and poor remain exactly that. 

Ownership is also an oddly illogical concept...take land ownership, for example...

So there's a small plot of land that's been there for millions of years, on a planet that's been in existence for billions of years, in a universe billions more years older than that.   What's more, this piece of land will be there for millions and possibly billions more years after you've gone.  

Yet somehow you, with your insignificant, blink of an eye, split-second of trivial life, somehow claim dominion over this land, and declare yourself Lord and King thereof? 

It's much like a mosquito, that lives for a week, claiming ownership of you, as you're his primary food source...it sort of makes a little sense from the mozzie's perspective, but from a wider view (e.g. that of the human), it's simply absurd. 

So why is our level of thinking more akin to the mozzie, unable to see the broader perspective?!

The scary thing is, we're eminently exploitable in this area - we're no longer citizens, but consumers, encouraged to over-indulge at every turn.   I'm sure you don't need me to point out how harmful the long term effects of this are, both to ourselves, to society, and to the planet...

But I digress...

This scavenger urge, when confronted with a rubbish receptacle of any kind, seems to come to the fore.   Freed from the idea of "theft" - because it's now "rubbish" - we find the urge irresistible, hence all the poking about in the skip. 

So there I was, poking about in the skip with Chris, when we found this large hardback book called Mallorca 360.   It seems to be some sort of Tourism catalogue, one great advert for Mallorca.

Despite this, I picked it up and opened the cover, only to be confronted with the image above.

I instantly recognised it (as you do) as a rock off the South East coast of Mallorca, known as Es Pontas.

A fantastic American climber named Chris Sharma put up an amazing, super hard route (9a+, for those to whom that means something), which climbs upside down inside this beautiful arch of rock.

)


The route (and of course, the rock) was made famous in a climbing movie called King Lines, and consequently ended up on my bucket list! (check out line 34...)

Not that I plan to climb it, of course...but my little bro' has a place in Mallorca, and for my 50th he offered to take me there for a long weekend sometime this year.  I agreed (natch!), on condition that we had a mission - to get a photo of me on this route!

We'll need to hire a boat, and get out there...

I'll need to get off the boat and onto the rock, and try to do a few moves before I fall off.

Jools will need to drop me off on the rock, back away and then get some snaps...before I fall off!

That's going to be quite a challenge, even without making any attempt to do the climb itself.

Just to give you some context on the grade...you remember that last week I was trying to climb 6a?

Each number grade is subdivided by 6, from Na to Nc+.   So this climb, at 9a+, is 19 grades harder than I can climb!!   The highest grade that's been successfully climbed (and still only by 2 climbers) is 9b+...so 9a+ is world class, by any measure. 

I, on the other hand, am nothing like world class - I'm not even the best climber in my house...In fact, I'm probably fourth, behind Loz, Maisie, and Anna...

I reckon I have the measure of Jazz though, poor, lame old thing that he is!

But still, I may be able to get a picture on Es Pontas that makes me look like I could be a half decent climber!

B-)