pumpkinstrokemarrow

The allotments having been abandoned, the two pumpkin seed germinators on an upstairs window sill are now turning into a moss garden. At least three varieties so far - a bright green sessile one, a bright green upright one and a dull green thready one, a bit like a very small cloud of very fine green glass wool. We will continue to test the theory that the pleasure to be extracted from a garden is only very loosely related to its size. In small gardens one can focus on the many small things. The pumpkin seeds must have known what was in the wind because none of them came up.

Much pondering over the past few days about knees. Does a health service have the right to withhold treatment of one's knees because one is overweight? First reaction is that I have paid lots of taxes for many years and I am now approaching the time when I might want some medical care. I've paid for it and I should have it. Not for some bunch of health busies to tell me how to lead my life or how to spend my health pot. That's not what they are being paid for. OK, they can advise me. They might point out in a tactful way that being very overweight increases the chance of something going wrong when I am on the table. But that should be the end of it. Second reaction, from the medical end of the family, why should I spend half a day patching up the knees of some undeserving oaf? Who might cause my colleagues and I much trauma by snuffing it on the table. Or who might sue me for ridiculous anounts of money because the result of our intervention was not quite what his lawyers argued it ought to have been. When we could be doing something much more worthwhile, like mending the knees of some skinny chap who can produce evidence of having read the Guardian for 500 years. Such triage has become a perfectly respectable activity in a battlefield hospital - although one might hope we were not quite in that position. And perfectly respectable in the micro-matter of deciding which teeth to save when. But it was not always so. In the Nelsonian navy, everyone was treated in order of delivery to the sickbay, without regard to rank or anything else. And one can see the sense of that too.

Another angle is that the medical industry, under the thumb of commerce, in particular the big pharmaceuticals, if very hot on life style causes of illness. That throws any blame there might be firmly back on the punter, and well clear of any unpleasant occupational or environment nonsense which Guardian readers (who, peversely, occupy both positions at the same time) might try and put at the door of commerce. It seems that 20 years ago there were pots of PhDs to be had on said occupational and environmental questions, but funds have mysteriously dried up.

And then is a streak in all of us which is keen on life style causes (or at least in all those of us who have the time to track the bewildering shifts and shakes in the fashions in these matters). They give us a splendid reason to run on why so and so is such a plonker. If only he had been wacking down his basking shark liver extract three times a day for the last 20 years like all good thinking people, he would never have had that thrombosis of the big toe. Running on about individuals is much more satisfying that running on about a company or a corporation. And under that streak is the Puritan streak. Anything that someone else enjoys - particularly something from one of the recreational substances' departments and which might divert her from the all important business of wealth creation - is a bad thing. And if I can dress this up in health clothes so much the better. I am not so obviously someone who does not know how to have a bit of fun so who wants to do his level best to make sure that no-one else does. All dressed up to oneself in much more worthy clothes, naturally.