Comfort Food

I returned to the village of my birth, and enjoyed fish, chips, scraps and mushy peas with lashings of vinegar from the shop that used to be the butcher's. The old fish and chip shop is now the chaotic Chinese takeaway.

It was truly a day of Indian summer, strolling by the shallow beck under an almost cloudless sky that had only the slight crispness of late October, and the sniff of winter not far behind. Round the corner from the pub and village green it was sad to see the ongoing destruction of the ancient ridge and furrow fields by the massive housing development - a battle that went on for more than ten years, but sadly lost. These fields were a vast, unofficial playground for us as kids, and to see yet another green area going under brick and tarmac is like a scaffolding pole through the heart.

Our young lad asked me to take him to the play area, walking past the sprawling wreck of a house where we grew up, with its enormous garden, and mature trees to climb into the expanding sky. The local team were warming-up for a football match on the carefully mown playing field nearby, where studs must never tread upon the sacred cricket square protected by thin wire.

I smiled, remembering how I'd thrown some of the sports club's new turf rectangles on their roof as a wayward youngster. Our Mischief Night (the day before Bonfire Night - November 5th) was pretty tame, but a certain level of disregard for the powers that be is a healthy tradition that should always continue - best in the style of Gandhi's non-violent resistance.

I bet even the Dalai Lama got into a few minor scrapes as a lad.

My Computer

My computer, which is just about the only link I have to the outer world, took 248 seconds to start up - it has taken up to 295 seconds. Imagine what you can do in the spare 47 seconds ! For a man it only takes two pumps and a pop......

This is the frustration for those sad folk unable to afford a new PC after several years of declining performance. A fridge or TV can function at the same level for many years, but computers must have a deliberately installed chip that ensures their speedy decline and the necessity to beg, borrow or steal some cash to secure a shiny new one with the acceleration of a Formula 1 racing car.

Of course, I have some free speed-up software installed.......to tell me how slow the machine still is.

The world beyond my window is a cloudless blue - we are promised a temperature of one degree Celsius tonight in this rural area of northern England. So far we haven't switched on any heating; it only seems a short time ago that we had the so-called Indian summer.

A retired neighbour has just climbed in his green wheelie bin, which is perhaps a subtle comment on how he feels about the role of old people in broken Britain, or an urgent need to compress rubbish with only a fortnightly collection.