pumpkinstrokemarrow

Just woken to another odd dream, most of which I cannot trace. So I have, on retirement, retired to live in the house that I was brought up in. Oddly, I still have two young children, neither like my actual children and one has morphed from male to female. The main content of the dream is the left hand side of the quite large back garden (maybe 60 feet wide by 100 feet deep). The previous incumbent is clearly a DIY engineer and has installed water, gas and electricity down the garden. Half way down the left hand boundary there is a large white plastic pipe coming out of the ground, maybe nine inches in diameter and carrying all three services, together with various dials, wheels and levers. All looks a bit Heath Robinson. Further down there is a white bath full of hot water, marinading some small contraptions or other. Then there is another gas fired boiler at the bottom of the garden. A machine for making plastic mouldings. Injection mouldings? And a table covered in samples of said moulding. Pipes everywhere. All kinds of junk everywhere. I start clearing the junk up, helped by my two children. Next door neighbour, whom I do not recognise, either in the dream or now, making pleasant noises. Come across a very odd shaped cherry tree, grown to considerable size. Much larger and with a much larger trunk than the ones in our road in Epsom. It is a proper tree rather than a graft and so while the tree is an odd shape, there is not the ugly union of stock and graft. Cordon fruit trees in much better shape than when I last saw them, but no fruit. Top fruit bushes all gone.

During the day previous had been pondering about 'The Wire', having been lent a box containing series I by sprog 2. Gritty police soap, not unlike our own soaps once one has adjusted to the different milieu. Three ponders. First, some of the scenes feature adult white male policemen being very coarse, in a smutty and adolescent way. Now this may be how some policement carry on, but I am not sure that I want to know about it in spades. I don't want to spend my quality winding down time in the evening hearing this kind of stuff. I don't want gritty, I want fluff. This, by the by, on top of a terrific amount of f-words and swearing generally. Far worse than any milieu that I am personally familiar with. Second, there are quite a lot of what I call cameos. Little scenes - maybe a few seconds, maybe as much as a minute or so, inserted more or less clumsily into the flow because someone thought they were cute or clever. Quite possibly triggered by something observed from real life. But the insertion was very clumsy and whatever cleverness or cuteness there might have been obscured by my irritation with the clumsiness. Third, a lot of the charectarisation is fairly simple minded. And very diversity conscious. But, for all this, there are good bits. Very taken, for example, with the time servers. Working out how best to get out on an enhanced pension while doing more or less nothing at all in the way of work. How many Brit. police soaps feature time servers of this sort? OK to knock civil servants or senior policemen on the box, but we are generally easy on the police heroes on the front line.

Talking of diversity, the Guardian tells me that it is told by serious lawyers, that piglet flu will generate lots of opportunities for our legal eagles. So if, for example, I were a gay who contracted piglet flu, I would, in all probability, be able to sue my employer for not having put a gay-friendly flu-containment policy into force in my workplace. Wilful, if not criminal, negligence. Puntive damages indicated. Perm on variety of diversity and this adds up to a lot of opportunities. Time we, collectively that is, started bearing down on these lawyers. Maybe time some of the fat cats did a spell of proper crim. work. Defending unpleasant no-hopers who have done crummy things for crummy wages.