Yet another post

No comment....

... but a joyful yuletide to one and all. I think I shall go climb a snowy lump for sunrise tomorrow, and then bore you with even more photos.

Blog post of winter

It has been a while since I was last abducted by aliens. Almost a year in fact, and for those that are interested you can find the account of that somewhere in the archives. Well, they are back. It is not that I really believe in alien abductions, I think they are flights of fancy and not fantastical. However, there is an alien agency involved and that is one of alienation. We are alienated from ourselves and fight against that supposed prime directive to be sociable. Let's face it, we are not a very accomplished social species. We manage to co-operate only because we need to and wish to make our own individual lives more comfortable and do not wish to accept the responsibility of that same individuality.


We are the aliens on this planet and in the social environment that we have constructed to insulate ourselves from it. Perhaps, we are all too busy trying to phone home and are slavishly cocooned in a shadowy reality that we project upon "Mother Earth".


So, where does all this angst ridden rant come from? Could be the lack of sun this time of year, or the cold. More likely, it is a result of being alienated from society. So, being alienated from something which is itself an alien construct should be normal. Why doesn't everyone feel like that. Back to Plato's shadowy cave...


Utopia isn't about peace and love and good happiness stuff. Utopia is far more real and brutal. Any lasting, transcending utopia would be more like the savage "paradise" found in Huxley's Brave New World. We come together to protect ourselves from ourselves for better or for worse. It is time we slipped the traces and seriously started to evolve as sentient individuals - and that means all of us and not just a few alpha males riding on the backs of all us epsilons.

Kissing Santa...

The snow is gradually withdrawing to the cold realms from whence it came. Today saw a clear sky and a dazzling yellow orb that blessed the snow crystals. For a moment the follies of sentience make their peace with the Earth and all is as one. Black and white, light and dark - the light of snow and the dark of winter combine and one is grateful to be able to tread the still drying paint of the tableau that is winter...


Put some colour back in your life

Vive la mettisage!


After, sleep...

Talking of chugging...

The first snow of winter (well summer was that miserable snow could be seen from afar in June!) fell yesterday and with a North wind and sub-zero temperatures the festive season can't be too far away. Festive? Of course one has to do something. Needless to say all by previous talk of the violation of nature has turned upon me as I now have to get the Leviathan out of the garage in order to get to work.


I do not know why I should go to work. I would rather keep the LR in the garage and go for a bracing walk. I could stay at home but it is too cold, the wood is damp and fuel oil is nearly as expensive as diesel - any donations grateful accepted as I am not all that proud ;-) In fact, the state should pay people like me to stay at home and live in places where no-one else wants to live. But what is good about living here is that there are very few people like me, or you, or any one. So, back to Jezebel the mighty Leviathan...


Actually, she is a rust bucket in the throes of renovation - malhereusement, summer was so miserable that I only got the driver's side finished ;-( But Jezebel lives and breathes even if she is showing her twenty years by the seaside through rustage and not bronzage.



The future? Dunno, but it looks like winter's going to be fun...

Take care and stay warm out there. x

Happy schnerkling!

Chug chug chug....

I should be complaining that I haven't seen the sun for a couple of weeks. The mountains here abouts have been shrouded in a murky, damp and definitely not dusky goo that resembles mist but feels more like a cold bed after the remains of a torrid affair. Miserable in fact. Still, I'm not one to let a little SAD get in the way of a good moan. What is depressing about winter is not the cold and damp but tis the things that folk do to relieve the monotony of those long nights and short grey days. Firstly, there is "la chasse". At a time when most furry things can think of nothing better to do than curl up and stick their furry noses up their furry butts and sleep, they are pursued across hill and dale by a slathering pack of hounds and short fat gun weilding green men. Boars have the same ill fate except that they are pursued relentlessly by the aforementioned who this time have to wear fluo-orange over their camoflage so that they do not inadvertently, or otherwise, shoot each other. This is the sort of contradiction that highlights our (including youse and me) attitude to Nature.

Winter is also the time of year when hedgecutters have their rutting season and destroy what ol' Mother Nature has spent the past year or so in cultivating. Ironic that boars are viscously (this should be viciously but running through syrup gives in a more nightmarish quality!) pursued because they cause "so much destruction" to the poor farmers' crops and yet come November hordes of mechanical flails are out and about "cleaning" our hedgerows. Now, I am not that old - just miserable - but one only has to live in the country long enough to see how it is not only slowly being consumed but literally torn apart...

Perhaps, time will tell. Eventually, Nature will reclaim her own in spite of the monumental stupidity of the featherless biped. We, unfortunately, will not be around to witness this resurrection - we will be long gone having sat and watched whilst our fellow "stewards" of the land tear it apart, flatten it out and generally make a mess. An eyesore for us but a catastrophe for our lamblike offspring.

A barb of winter

It shouldn't really be called winter, but it certainly feels like it. But then winter is one of those seasons like all others these days. One day hot, one day cold. Global warming - nay! Tis global chaos. Anyone who had spent lonely hours playing simearth in the good old days when computer games required an imagination will know that all extremes demand a period of chaotic self-equilibrium. This is it.


And it is only Autumn and not Winter before any of you hasten to correct me. The morning mists are taking a little longer to clear these days, but when the sun does appear it does so with a magnetism that draws one outside to find those songlines which Chatwin was so fond of.



Last Sunday drew me out to the trails above St Julien des Chazes. The sky was African, the trees from New England, the landscape Alpine and all was French. Bar the instant soup which was disgusting.



... and for any one who likes trains, where else could you find a line so fine? A far better site than the M 25 - technology and Nature can co-exist. But only if you make the effort.


All this walking about gives one time for reflection. So the pilot of the Enola Gay has died at the age of 92 - proof either that there is no divine justice, or that one shouldn't really blame the messenger. I emerged from a generation tormented and teased by the threat of nuclear war - Threads, Protect and Survive, MAD - We mutated our neurosis and passed it on to our children under the guise of global catastrophe the natural way. It may still be our fault but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Well, only if one realises that there is no tunnel, only our blinkered vision - that of a cart horse with its head stuffed in a nosebag of consumerism... Oh errr, I feel a rant coming on, better have a lie down.

Briefing for a descent into Fat Cow Ravine

The last month has seen me frittering away my life at work and fending of various bureaucratic assaults and now it has got cold. Minus five last night. I know this because I am a particularly sad individual who has a weather station. Also, I was foolish enough to get up at seven this morning thinking I could get some work done. Nope! Back in bed by eight and 'kin cold to boot. Better hurry up and get the house finished before the snow comes...


Putting all that behind me and a bacon butty or two after twas time to go walkabout. I haven't been out for a while on a long stroll so thermos in hand I decided to enter into the Ravine de Grosse Vache. Yes it does exist and very jolly too. Descending from 900 metres to the Allier river is a rewarding experience at this time of year :


Actually, there was not a fat cow in sight; she'd obviously been sold off for a few beans which would explain the long climb out of the valley. A lovely place and a bit of an escape from EU subventions and power crazed peasants with mighty earth moving equipment. Fortunately, it is not all noise and bleedin' progress...


Above - a perfect example of post-industrial intermediate technology for when the oil runs out - The all new Phillips concrete trough and basin washing machine. All we need to do now is bring back bonded labour...