Doomed

I like to grow things. There's something amazing about watching a little piece of nature blossoming under your care.

I like to, but I don't manage to. I kill things.

At the moment I'm killing one Venus Flytrap, watching as the life ebbs slowly from it's yellowing leaves and it's toothy heads wrinkle and die one by one. Another seems to be happily hanging on, which is surely a miracle of biblical proportions. I'm still waiting for my home grown flytraps to germinate - I think I may be waiting a while. Everyday I look for the little points of green poking up their heads, but alas. Come on little seeds, how hard can it be?

On the slightly less exotic side, my baby sweet peas are growing up admirably, apart from the few that are cramped in a tiny propagator with nowhere to go because I ran out of pots and sowed them too soon for them to go outside. They will surely die before long, murderer. Murderer. Say it twice and it loses all meaning.

Of course, I'm going away tomorrow for over a week so all varieties of doomed plants will be relying for water on the funky gel stuff I bought for them, which may or may not work, who knows. I bet Venus won't like it though. I'm fully expecting to come back to a plant graveyard.

Ficus, ficus will survive.

gardening|horticulture|plants|nature

More cake

Has everybody in the world got cake yet? No? I don't know what I think sitting here is going to do about it.

But seriously, the other day someone asked me if I knew that they were going to be raising my taxes to feed Africa, and he said it in such a manner he may as well have asked if I knew they were going to be spending my money on building a giant, diamond studded statue commemorating the invention of cheese. Quite frankly, I can't think of a better place for my money than to help the world's most vulnerable people.

poverty|Africa|charity|taxation

Cake

It's the weekend, and that's a good thing. The week becomes the weekend and work fades into sleep and dreams. What will I dream of? Last night it was cake, lots of cake. Maybe tonight it will be a better world, happiness, and love and kindness flowing indiscriminately between people. Or, it could just be more cake.

And then it will be Monday, weekend dreams will be forgotten, and I'll walk to work in the semi-dark, a cold breeze stinging my morning eyes. The cake will be a distant memory, though I'll still hope to find it again in some distant dream. Everybody will get cake one day.

love|compassion|cake

Wearing a white band

I'm finding it hard to write this, mainly because the notion that it is wrong for some people to be suffering in abject poverty while others worry about where their next Rolls Royce is coming from is so blindingly obvious that there are just too many ways to say it. Someone somewhere is starving while I worry about my small but very real craving for hot buttered toast. I sit in my warm room with my shiny computer, while others have no electricity, or education, or shoes. Someone, somewhere, is spending more money on jewellery than others will have in a life time. Some countries have money while others struggle in debt.

What I can do about this, I don't know. What world governments can do about it - a lot. This summer's G8 summit is an opportunity for the world's wealthiest countries to make decisions that will make a difference. Show your support for the Global call to action against poverty campaign by wearing a white band, and let everbody know that this is something we care about.

poverty|politics|G8|debt

Tomorrow's poverty

I want to blog about making poverty history, but I want to do so eloquently, emotively and in a heartfelt, solemn manner. Unfortunately, I have to be up at 6 am to get to a work jolly that may or may not be jolly, and I'm not sure I even know what 6 am looks like these days. So, my warm bed calls. For now you can look at my handsome white band and I'll wax lyrical about making the world a better place tomorrow. Or sometime soon.

Time to be quick

We're quick to do everything these days. Quick to eat our dripping junk food, quick to speed from one place to another in our various hunks of metal, quick to judge others... all quick. And hasn't the word lost all meaning now? Quick, quick quick quick, quick quick. Quick.

The reason I'm thinking about speed is that I just finished a stressful online experience that involved being very quick indeed. As if booking flights with two different airlines wasn't stressful enough, one of them happily informed me that I had seven minutes to complete my details. Seven minutes to fill in my name (that's a tough one...), address, tepholone (no typo, just sounds better), and, most importantly, payment details. All the while, of course, worrying that I might have got my days mixed up and really I should be boarding a plane this time three weeks from Monday minus two days but only on a public holiday... Seven minutes. And then there's the moment when I realise the site won't take my debit card, so I have to run away to the other side of the room to fetch my credit card, which has been badly hidden out of my immediate reach for money saving purposes. Seven minutes just tick tick ticking away...

But I can be calm now, because I made it. Flights are booked, email confirmations are received, and serenity has returned to my befuddled brain. Yes, in four weeks time, I will be boarding a giant hunk of metal so that I can be several hundred miles away in the quickest time possible. The words of Vin Garbutt are now running through my mind over and over. In our haste, we're laying waste, a beautiful place... For a few seconds there I thought that place was my mind, but it seems to be recovered... for now.

society|haste|internet|stress