pumpkinstrokemarrow

On April 28th I noticed a book about bad things done by the British in Kenya in the course of the Mau Mau rebellion, prompted originally by  piece in the Guardian. This same piece prompted a former district officer in Kenya to write in to explain that Monbiot & Elkins (the author of the exposée) had got it all wrong and what actually happened was that the Brits toiled manfully & decently to contain a civil war which had broken out among the Kikuyu.

Which I do not believe is a fair representation of what happened, despite the Elkins book continuing to irritate. It has the same dull and dreary tone that I have come across in other lefty diatribes about the awful deeds of governments past and present. The heaping up of dubious oral testimony from blacks about events which took place over half a century ago. Very little oral testimony from the whites, dubious or otherwise. The book reads more like an article in the newspaper which has got far too long than history.

I share a snippet about libraries. It seems that in some camps the regime was so brutal that the prisoners were reduced to passing messages to each other by putting them inside innocuous looking books in the prison library. I was rather struck by the brutality of a regime which ran to prison libraries and my degree of belief in the parallel drawn between the Nazi concentration camps, Stalin's gulag and the Brits was somewhat diminished. But despite all this, I think Elkins gets nearer the truth than the Guardian correspondent.

And to be fair to her, she does allow that the rebels did some bad things too. Like killing any of their own who did not sign up to the rebellion.

But could a better job of it been done? Has a better job been done?

The way in which we can get worked up over the fate of selected animals is an odd and enduring - but not endearing - feature of the English scene, a thought prompted by extensive coverage in yesterday's Guardian of the great badger scandal, that is to say that our security service is gearing up to slaughter millions and millions innocent baby badgers, deemed - or doomed - to be a threat to the state of the nation.

One strand of this is the way this particular sort of animal cause seems to draw in all kinds of people fully up for gung-ho activity (of a sort which reminds me both of the wide games we used to play in the Boy Scouts and the paint ball games played by those a little older, all of which can be played at night, in the woods), activity which can easily lurch from oh so very worthy fun into the dangerous and illegal.

Greenpeace people and the anti-GM people get up to the same kind of tricks. Perhaps it all scratches at an anarchic urge, a reaction to our so-ordered and (so the sociologists tell us) so-empty lives. Cuddling a smelly baby badger and getting one over a would be badger culler puts meaning back into my life. Or is it more like one of those cults we used to wring our hands about, the sorts of outfits which sweep up all sorts of vulnerable misfits? I am also reminded of the people who were jury acquitted of destroying a field of maize with fire, despite there being no doubt that they had done this very expensive deed, on purpose and with malice aforethought, at farmer and taxpayer expense.

Leaving aside sentiment about the fate of some badgers - the numbers of which I presume to be piffling in comparison to the number of pigs slaughtered in the name of sausages and pies - I am not very clear on the merits of the business. I understand that there are an awful lot of badgers about these days, although I am neither sure why this should be nor privy to what damage they might do, to crops for instance - apart from carrying TB, TB which does damage dairy herds. Badgers are quite large animals and must need a fair amount of grub to keep going. Do they graze off fields of turnips otherwise intended to feed the pigs to make the sausages and pies? But whether the rather large sounding costs of culling the badgers is justified by the results in bovine health in much less clear - although if I was one of the many struggling small dairy farmers, I dare say I would go for any initiative paid for out of central funds which might help.

At least in my young days we used to demonstrate about something which was both wrong and important, even if the manner of the demonstration was at times silly. I still firmly believe that the world would have been a better place had the US desisted from interfering in the affairs of Vietnam - and a lot more people would have been able to live out their lives in relative peace & quiet than was in fact the case. It was also a lot more damage than, as it happened, we had managed in Kenya just a few years previously, but damage about which I knew nothing until much more recently. I don't remember there being any demonstrations about it, although one or two eminences, for example Barbara Castle, did have an honourable go.

These being the woodland strawberries which are growing east of the northeastern leg of the new daffodil bed. First picking earlier in the week, resulting in about three heaped tablespoons of produce.

Small, flavourful and not particularly sweetful. But at least they had not been raised under polythene or air-freighted from Kenya. Most eco.

A bit later, to Esher to check out their culinary delights. First stop, decided not to go back to the fancy but rather expensive Chinese restaurant there (http://www.goodearthgroup.co.uk/). Second stop, the rather large and cold Christ Church which was built in the mid 19th century, the neighbouring St. George having become a touch crowded. Presumably much too large for current needs. Maybe they should take a leaf out of the Catholic book, flog the church & the land it is on and devote the proceeds to good works. Like promoting the word of the Lord in darkest Africa, in the everlasting hope that the flame will be kept alive there, against the day when it putters out here. Third stop, the Piccolo, so new that it has yet to put in a proper appearance at http://www.caffepiccolo.co.uk/, which I am assuming is the same outfit. Quite busy for a Tuesday lunchtime, mainly people of our own age and station. Pleasant meal, but we made the mistake of buying the wine by the glass, rather than just getting a bottle. And the veal escalope, said to be cooked the Paduan way, or some such, was very interesting, perhaps better described as a sandwich. The thing was an irregular oval shape, perhaps six square inches in area and just over a quarter of an inch thick. 2mm of some sort of battery/breadcrumby covering, 2mm of meat then a further 2mm of covering. Quite eatable but not terribly meaty; perhaps designed for a candidate veggie.

We decided that the waitress was a fake Italian from Poland on the grounds that she thought that Harvey's Bristol Cream was a viable substitute for Vino Santo. Us now being very knowledgeable about this last.

Not sure who he was, but it is certainly very cold in Epsom today. Even a bit of sleet and snow a few minutes ago. The coldest run - with a very cold and vaguely North Easterly wind - to Cheam that I remember. Took the last two hot cross buns from the baker as a reward and a black pudding with the Paschal Lamb from the butcher. Half the black pudding, lard fried, went down well for a late breakfast, served with the finest Cheam pseudo-French round loaf and the finest Brita water. Have to ponder on how best to cook the lamb. Not something that we are particularly good at. Never seem to be able to strike the right balance between overcooked and undercooked.

Now completed my dip into the Odyssey. It seems that the marriage rules of the ancient Greeks were a bit lax. One chap had six sons and six daughters and paired them off, keeping the whole lot in the parental palace. Another married the daughter of his brother. And in a seldom published sequel to the Odyssey, it seems that the son of Circe by Odysseus went to Ithaca and murdered his father in the course of a raid on his sheep or goats or something. He then married his father's lawful wedded wife Penelope. Meanwhile, Circe married Penelope's son by Odysseus. Otherwise their morals seemed to be about the same as those of the Beowulf lot a couple of thousand years later in Northern Europe. OK to rape and pillage. Steal cows and goats (this last, it seems, being the main point). OK piracy. But it is also proper to show proper hospitality and generosity to a guest. I guess the trick was to get to the guest list from the visitors' book while you were still alive. I seem to recall that near-modern Bedouin worked along the same sort of lines - with the addition that once someone was a guest, he was OK for three days. I forget what happened after that. Maybe they gave you a fifteen minutes start before setting the armoured camels out after you.

Interesting dream about breaking into a ship recently. Some sort of large warship, moored up somewhere, and I seemed to be with someone although the someone never showed. So don't know who it was. The rear superstructure of the ship was a sort of wooden hump, covered in some kind of thick gray material. The hump might have been prompted by the chipboard-plus dormered roof being put on the block of shops and flats being put up next to TB. Break a person sized hole through the hump, exposing some rather naff stud work. Find oneself in the sort of room that would serve as a bed-sit in a university hall of residence. Amongst other furnishings were some spears, of the same type that we have acquired, by indirect means, from Kenya. The same distinctive, flattened portion of shaft. Move from the room into some sort of machine room or control room. Are shown something being fired up. There is a large viewing window onto the something. Escape back through the bed-sit and wake up very concerned - but not sweaty - about what the captain is going to say when he finds that the inspection team broke in through the roof. Vague thoughts about how it was a spot check so breaking in was OK.

And a dreamlet about being overtaken on the little roundabout at the junction of Hook Road and Waterloo road, while turning left into Waterloo road from the Epsom side. The point of interest being that the thing doing the overtaking was a large Snap-on (http://www.snapon.com/) van towing a trailer of the same size, in the same red and white Snap-on livery. Never seen such a thing in real life. Perhaps prompted by anxiety about whether I was going to manage to fit my new brake blocks all by myself - the current bicycle being more complicated in that respect than the one on which I last changed any brake blocks.

The third first involved jigsaw 8, a 500 piece Falcon Venture Deluxe, which turns out to a lot less deluxe than the sort without the Venture, back in fact to the standard of jigsaw 3 (see April 7th). The first being the fact that it is the first jigsaw I have bought from a charity shop to have a piece missing, the corresponding hole being visible in the middle of the illustration, with the piece from some other jigsaw next to it. Presumably this other jigsaw has my piece. Luckily the missingness did not cause much additional confusion, quite enough having been caused by the coarse texture of the painting from which the jigsaw was taken, it taking me some time to get the measure of the thing.

Having done the edge, for some reason I thought that the fence would be a good place to start. Gave that up after a while and moved onto the train, it being obvious enough after the event that this was the place to start. Then the rails, then where the hills & trees meet the sky, then the two boys and only then the fence. After that it was a relatively routine matter of filling in the gaps.

The second first was my first drive of the car. Which all went well enough once I had worked out how to wear the seat belt with both some comfort and some safety.

The first first was my first two visits to public houses for the purposes of drinking, rather than eating. With the 'Half Way House' at Earlsfield being awarded a red star on two counts. First, having bought a bottle of their best vino, I asked for some still water. I was asked whether tap water would do, upon which I was presented with a large bottle of the stuff and a couple of glasses, without charge. Which I thought decent of them; they could easily have sold me a chargeable bottle. Wine OK too. Second count was the presence of a decent disabled toilet. It has been quite a pleasant surprise how many places sport such things these days. The second public house was TB, into which I had popped to remind them of my existence. No hard feelings there and the warm Newcastle Brown was on the bar before I reached it - just in time to stop them opening it and to explain that I had become a wino since my last visit. Not quite ready to sit in such a place with a glass of orangeade - although there are people who do.

The bad news is that I have an error to report. On December 12th last, and probably on a couple of other occasions too, I was smug about the English record of colonial non-violence, at least when compared with the brutality of the French in Indo-China and Algeria. A couple of days ago, Mr. Monbiot reminded me, in a piece in the Guardian, prompted by I know not what (maybe it was one of those articles one keeps by for a day when one has nothing to say), about Kenya. Where our end-of-empire record was pretty dreadful, so by way of penance I have got myself a copy of the full story by one Caroline Elkins from Harvard. The tone is a bit irritating, a regular bash the brits fest. But I suppose it is as irritating to them when we do the same thing in reverse. And, given the story and the way we have drawn a veil over it, with the veil drawing apparently including much destruction of records, deserved.

I also notice another piece in the Guardian, about the plight of the 4,000 or so women languishing in our jails. Perhaps another filler for a rainy day, in any event notable for its vacuity and ending with a plea for an approach which identified the importance of preventive and support services. No problem about identifying the importance of something. But what are we to do about it?