Change

My head quarters have moved.

Slavery

We, I mean I, often talk about being slaves. We are, as well. We are slaves to the world we live in. If I could choose a life in much the same way as I choose a product, this would not be it. I would be free, of course. It always comes down to that word - "if."

Is my life so awful? No. My life is much like yours. I worry too much, perhaps, but on the whole I have a life that many would take now if push came to shove. I am a slave to the phone company and the electricity company and so on, but I am lucky.

There are an estimated 29 million slaves in the world who don't worry too much about the phone company and the electricity company and so on.


I don't know where this is going to take me. One thing is clear: certain problems on this planet are insoluble.

Slavery is not one of them.

(The picture above is not much older than you are)

Cracking

As a very young child I looked on a world that would in later life haunt me with its beauty and simplicity.

I have very early memories of kitchens and front-rooms and pantries, single-glazing, fireplaces, coal scuttles, orchards, fields, and enameled bathtubs. I even now remember my grandmother’s mangle in terms that others might well reserve for first loves.

I remember a white-painted wooden conservatory. I remember wasps and flies fizzing to death in its sun-scorched window sills, next to the old saucers, now bereft of cups, holding terracotta-colored plastic pots of tomato plants.

It was, as my grandmother would have said, “ever likely” that I would fail to find a true ambition. Growing up with memories like that, only an idiot would have wanted to move on.

Consciousness then began to take hold, and I suffered the inevitable metamorphosis we all must. I outgrew my skin, before cracking out into the freezing reality of life.

The thaw would take time.

Crisis

"Nothing is so bad that it can't get worse."

- Portuguese saying