Losing The Battle!

Hello,
Much as it pains me to admit it I'm getting humped in this war. Today's attack involves the theft of a plant with red flowers (I don't know it's proper name). I presume the individual (s) responsible for this intend to continue until there is nothing left.

All was well when I checked on the plants at about 11:30 last night. The next time I checked them 10:30 am today the plant was gone. It's the thought of them sitting in their manky student flat giggling at old Bo Selecta videos, overusing the word like in like the wrong place and plotting against me that really gets my goat. Oh how I'd love to burst through their door and torture them all to death. At the very least I'd settle for catching them in the act. Then I'd slaughter them all without mercy. Harsh but fair.

There is something rather puritanical about their evident objection to beauty and apparent desire to see ugliness restored. A glance through the rubbish they dumped yesterday only serves to underline this impression. Layer upon layer of cardboard ready meal sleeves. In other words food to be eaten and prepared without any pleasure or creativity. Functional mush to fill a hole. Maybe it's nature with it's unpredictable sights, smells and textures that alarms them. Their diet certainly seems peculiarly free of any vegetable matter.

Still I'm being positive -through gritted teeth and will now spend the next few days deciding what to plant in the space left behind. I'm thinking of something bright, flamboyant and ostentatious like a passion flower, though the idea of something nasty with barbed thorns looks increasingly attractive.

Cheerio

War Is Declared!

Hello,
I or rather my garden has been the victim of crime. I hopped downstairs this morning to find a large bin bag dumped on the path which was bad enough. It was only as I got closer I noticed a bag of broadsheet newspapers deliberately and maliciously dumped on a selection of helpless seedlings. Broadsheet newspapers- if even the educated classes have descended into barbarism what hope is left? Sadly that wasn't the worst of it the evil swine had also ripped out a beautiful fuchsia in full bloom and thrown it onto the street. Not content with that they stamped a small section of seedlings to green mush.

Given the make up of the neighbourhood and the presence of broadsheets I suspect students. This is good news in a way because they tend to move on after a term or two but bad news that we're saddled with such scum in our midst even for a short time. Is it any wonder the proper locals get so hacked off with the yuppiefication of this area? All it's done is attract a load of anti-social little mummies boys who would make a priest pro-abortion.

My first impulse was to rip the bags open and look for anything with an address on it so that I could return the favour on the culprits face but an altogether calmer supporter of the garden intervened and talked me out of that one. Still it's vexing me I want to know who did this so that I can make their life here a wretched misery. Unfortunately they'd covered their tracks and no address could be found so I can't even unleash Mr Plod on them.

I really don't get the mentality behind such behaviour in any case if they hate plants so much, if they cannot share in the simple pleasure of not living in a shitehole why don't they bugger off back to whichever godforsaken suburb they crawled from?

War against an unseen enemy isn't easy but they'll back down before I do. So far the death toll stands at 3 nasturtiums, 2 sunflowers, 1 polyanthus, 6 cornflowers, countless seedlings which could not be identified, the flowers from the fuchsia and my good mood.

Still I've buried the dead, tidied up and will now carry on as if nothing has happened but just wait till I catch the bastards in the act.

Cheerio

My great uncle Patrick was killed in WW2 and is named on this memorial (scroll down for the WW2 memorial) . Being born in the seventies obviously I never met him but family bias aside I cannot help but think he was a terrible loss by any standards. Having won various scholarships he was admitted to Glasgow University -something his fathers wages as a farm worker could never have supported, my equally intelligent grandmother had to leave school at thirteen because she was 'needed in the house' and by the time war broke out was working in London 'in service' . I'm told that he was given the opportunity to postpone conscription to finish his studies but declined which says a great deal about his bravery and principles given the enemy we were fighting.

I have no doubt that the above is fairly commonplace but even if we only sent total fools out to war their sacrifices shouldn't be forgotten and that goes for soldiers in any conflict however wicked the reasons for sending them there.

Elsewhere the first minister remembers in Colombo I get dumber by the minute in Auschwitz, David Duff recounts a humorous tale and Rose Gentle is vindicated.

Goodnight