To St. Malo Ferry Terminal Port Police...

We arrived early, some fifteen minutes or so before our expected visitor was due to disembark. Preoccupied, excited in anticipation. Not on the look out for entertainment,I couldn't help but notice a tired looking young couple fumbling with each others buttons. Both parties being oblivious of anything but each other without consideration of the effect their display may have on the sensibilities of others. We were in a public place. The witnessed action was not what I regarded as discrete .
I made a comment , "I hope they don't start breeding." Within earshot of the couple, at which the young woman volunteered to ask me how I dared to say such a thing. Given that the subject matter of our mutual interest had been diverted to something more acceptable in a public forum I was happy to discuss how I, anyone in fact ought to be able to dare to speak without inhibition. The couple lost interest in the conversation ? their behaviour modified , perhaps their spirits somewhat dampened. I was content to pace around a while longer,unaware of the consequences my brief encounter may have had. My choice of words may have been more acceptable if I had suggested they got a room.
Without warning I found myself surrounded by five police persons one woman and four men. The sergeant of the group seemed a little agitated. He asked for I.D. I complied as politely as one may , in looking for my passport I exposed a flute which I habitually carry in my inside pocket. The sergeant asked me what it was. I told him , little satisfied he told me to take it out "Slowly". I took out the instrument explaining once more that it was a flute and proceeded to play a short bar of music , a mere three second burst of not unpleasant sound. The sergeant seemed incensed that I should play. I wasn't aware that there was any reason to be agressive or too serious.
The policeman engaged with Anne-Sophie making an issue of the fact that I am English. Intimating that I could be sent back to Britain. Anne-Sophie an articulate woman informed the sergeant that I was her husband and a permanent resident of France. That I was acting within my constitutional rights. Taking issue with the sergeant assuming wrongly that I had commited any offence at all. whether I was native to France or a foreign national I was acting within my rights. No right at all for the police sergeant , a man of some North African lineage,if I am not mistakened to suggest , imply at least that I would be sent back to the place from whence I came. In retrospect I hope the irony doesn't escape him. A hollow threat with no right in law to implement. The sergeant made a big play of not wanting to be delayed from going home to his family, as though my action was causing him the inconvenience. We asked all the police present what was the nature of the complaint and who if anyone had made it.
None of the officers knew what complaint had been and were unable even if they wanted to identify. Prepared to deport me against my rights as a citizen and against interntional law without legitimate cause to a country which for several years has not been my home, without charge and without trial??? The sergeant was making himself and his colleagues look foolish. The sergeant complained to Anne-Sophie that I had played my flute,(the three second burst) and that HE was a policeman. He did need to be told twice after request what the object was.
All but sergeant appeared to want a swift end to a minor but growing embarrasment. He then asked who was I waiting for, I told him, "My son."
Sergeant of port police then asked me if he was English. Not seeing the point , I volunteered that he is. "Good then we can send him back instead".
One wonders what problems the sergeant hoped to solve by his provocative posturing. I indicated to the policeman That for all his officious , none productive and ill conceived bluster it was I who was being tolerant. His colleagues were nearer by their manner to having views more closely in accord with mine. A point worthy of note is that in my passport there is no address. The only verification was Anne-Sophies verbal confirmation that I was telling the truth. She was not asked for identification. How could they know that she wasn't lying. There was no objective investigation of any complaint, neither civil nor criminal. The younger policemen behaved well enough, standing "at ease" in a state of readiness but still sociably responsive and rightfully non partisan. My passport was taken away by the policewoman to be photocopied and presumably for security checks to be made. The sergeant then made the "offer", that we should be taken into a backroom. and for formal charges to be drawn up. Still no indication of what if any offence had given cause for complaint. We declined the"offer" to be interviewed in private, prefering to have all procedure publicly transparent. We had up to this point been co-operative and civil. I did comment on the Sergeants grossly uneconomic use of resources was not justified by effective result. Five police personnel deployed without cause. overmanning to say the least , but a distraction from observing any real potential security risk. The sergeant was insistant that matters should be taken further (What matters?) blessed we were that the plain clothes policeman had the initiative to calm the sergeant and insisted that due proceedures had been followed ,no legitimate reason to escalate the incident. The police sergeant lends the lie that he wanted to get home early to his family. A spot security check in the full public view of the open lounge was acceptable, further action unwarranted , had we been coerced further, to the backroom, the police action would be considered an unlawful detention.
The police sergeant appeared to be motivated by personal prejudice alone. He presents the the port with an unacceptable risk. His attitudes were observed to be overtly xenophobic. the sergeant was attempting to incite acts against the Public Order, by insiduously implied threats citing immediate deportation and / or my visitor may be harassed, beyond the lawful authourity of his office. Given the passive circumstance the presence of five police officers may be considered a bullying threat. Grateful I am for my own objective self control. Grateful too for the presence of Madame Godden to bear witness. An international ferry terminal is hardly the best placement for a person of the sergeant's irrational xenophobic disposition. There are over 50 thousand families resident in northern France with legitimate interests on both sides of the channel, European citizens. Why should ones nationality be considered grounds for suspicion or targeted persecution. Would the sergeant consider it to be just if on the grounds of his own cultural origin to be subject to the same unmandated treatment. If the boot were on the other foot,sergeant, how comfortably would you stand?
A review is in order, an audit if you will, of the aproprietness of,and the effectiveness of police security procedures. Views implicitly expressed by the sergeant need to be addressed as an issue of some international concern. Not in the public interest to ignore. The integrity of the other officers is put at risk, the hard won good will enjoyed by the Police force is compromised.
Whilst hoping that a response would be civilly volunteered by the police sergeant, publicly or privately however as he may, I have no wish to go further with formal complaint. My open communication is by way of feedback, that some practical intelligence be gleaned that would in some way justify the otherwise extreme waste of public resources. I.Wazir.

Pioneers...

Silver birch seedlings , they will be trees when they grow up.

Pear blossom and aubrieta

Browned off with the corporate "Green"...To Oliver Tickell

Academic waffle, arguments and key board chatterbox distraction. I keep bumping into articles and references to Mr. Tickell's active interest in climate change. Just something he has learned to do the clever speak about. "Must be his dad's influence rubbing off", thinks I.It don't sit well with me Ollie.
At the risk of mounding heaps more trouble on my already over full plate.It struck me that the F.A.R.C. have done more for the ecology of the planet than all the corporate sponsored think tanks and propaganda agents within the Oxford ring road. Why so? 60% of Colombia has been asset stripped and denuded of trees.Slave driven plantations and mineral prospecting have over a few centuries reduced the land to near desert, kept productive with chemicals. The baddies in the real life movie want to strip the rest of the available forest land , that 40% is within the control of the F.A.R.C.
We were there fact finding on the ground. Assuredly not a holiday.Not indulging in the white powder made us very popular in the poor quarter.We were engaged in making kitchen gardens. During our stay we were offered land at a low price by a displaced man, who although he still owned the land was afraid to return to continue farming his small holding. He had bought the land with a view to making a quick cash return by cutting down his major trees by clear felling and slash and burn. The trees would have been sold for timber.The F.A.R.C. sectretariat visited him, to advise at first on the inappropriateness of his methods, not in the best long term interests of his small holding, his region, the country or the planet. The messenger explained about the forest being the lungs of the world and whatever else was good reasoning for him to desist. "It is my land, I own it, they can't, stop me ". He continued to abuse the privilege of his custodianship. A second visit from the secretariat followed the warning delivered, that if he caused them to visit him a third time they would shoot him. pragmatic man ,Eduardo left the region, he still owns the land. The F.A.R.C.were not opposing his right of ownership or any sustainable development. He would have sold the cleared land later to cattle men or biofuel exploiters. The erosion has to stop somewhere, they nipped it in the bud. A small example of real world activism.
I am not condoning armed struggle as the first course of action to gain equitable political change. In extremis as per our inviolable right Oliver someone has to stand on their hind legs and oppose the tyranny of unrestrained capitalist exploitation. No one got hurt and the trees were left standing. Eduardo couldn't sell the land as he could find no one able to cultivate and maintain by sustainable methods. Anyone wishing to buy the land for asset stripping would be deterred by the threat of violence or death.
The rest us of may be grateful in our more reflective moments to breath a small oxygenated sigh of relief for the principled stand the handful of outlawed ideologues are prepared to make.
Years ago you were commissioned to go to Peru at a time of a major cholera epidemic,to compile data that would encourage "eco-tourism". Who could avail themselves of that but the rich. With the proceeds of your working holiday you were able to buy your computer, the beginning of the end of your real time "green" credentials. Friend or FoE Oxford place men block all grassroots progress.
Time for a change, "Yes you can". You were better placed to have been opposing the colossal waste of resources that have been poured into the J.E.T. project in Culham. Perhaps you would not have been so popular with your privileged high table peers. You might however have displaced the coalman's son in Henley.At the very least you may have won one Ecology Party seat in the local council election.
Please don't talk patronising neo colonial bollocks in your proposed solutions to the world crisis Oliver. Don't speak of "Rich countries" owing a debt, speak of rich families.
I have just discovered your April fool joke to the world on the Youtube. Much piss and wind with little of inspiring substance. A disgraceful presentation. On your behalf given that I knew you over years I felt ashamed and embarrassed. Not a little angry Oliver.
You really think we should shove desperate working people back in the redundant car factories making wind turbines ??? You obviously have no idea of the sacrifice that good people have to endure to bear that drudgery week in year out.Bringing up family paying mortgage, you advocate a new age of industrialized slavery . Don't speak of a labour force as a resource to be exploited. And buy your book, visit your web site.
You haven't done enough real work yet to pay for the house you occupy. The glitch ridden lip waggling does not promote confidence in yoyur cause. Even sadder is the fact that as it is a cause commonly shared it proves to be a real obstacle on this side of the academic divide.
Yes we have known about the problem for years. Come and talk about the doing something practical. The several times I have invited you, you have hidden behind the excuse of having a family now. Plenty of time for self promotion. The book Oliver was out of date as a means to an end before you licked the data off the screen.
I challenge you Oliver to get your lazy lip service down here and start again or face being pilloried well into your retirement years.Your children will not thank you for being used as your defensive shield.
Look what you made me write. If I didn't care I wouldn't dare. Your dad sponsored your easy life beginning. You capitalised, ended up owning two houses designed to accommodate working class families. A nice little earner hey what.
And how is your good friend David Chapman, You spoke of the sad demise of the mother of his child and the sad effect disfunctional parenting may have had, you kept his name well out of the picture. The common background you shared perhaps encouraged the oversight. I moved out of Oxford because I couldn't get social housing Oliver it was all being bought up by entrepreneurs and property speculators. You had two, I lived in a mobile home. Easy to point the finger in every direction but yours. Address the emissions that are coming from your own pants. Hells bells man when I knew you, you were ten years younger than me now you look ten years older. Tell me with your mouth, in person ,what are you doing right?
I ask you Oliver, what kind of iconic example is that. Industrial Green soap (blue with a streak of yellow or yellow with a streak of blue) is nothing to do with ecology It is ruining your skin and doesn't make you look any cleaner ,nearer in your promotion to attempting to justify your royalty share of your father's investments. The real life progress is not academic. I may not retire ever as long as I have the strength to breath. There is too much work needs doing. We need greater inspiration in working class homes than garbled incoherent megaphone theatre. Wake up bhai you are letting your own side down. I'll get back to you.

That Teresa May...

And God help you all if she does... Human Rights for all not just her gombeen team.

Where iz this going???

I would rather look first at where was it before man got his hands on it. The wall is no higher than the substrate of our field. By rights it isn't even to ground level yet. Natural erosion and the action of mans agriculture has caused what was once topsoil, to slide down hill. The yard at the north side of the field was further degraded scraped down to the rock. That is the site for the wall in the picture. I tried to envisage how the land was before the village was built. My naive Idea that to be heading towards a state of grace the loss of the ecological infrastructure would need to be compensated for, hence my phrase reverse spillage. Our site is the bottom end of a ridge of schist, the thin end of the wedge. There is not a lot of mineral left. the active layer is now in the process of being improved. We will be at it years from now no doubt. On our arrival five years ago the seasonal deluge of rain caused the surface water to leave the land too fast with little time to penetrate to the aquifer below ground. The construction of the building in the yard serves two main purposes. It will provide a resistant porous barrier that will slow down the out flow of rain water to the ditches and streams.. Within the "block" of the stone barrier will be space a degree of modest traditional comfort and utility, workshop space play space. At present we dwell in a modernised building that has been rationalised to the point where the economics of maintaining it is not sustainable; We bought it, it is our problem. We did it with our eyes open. The building is "sick". I was shocked to discover that it was "upgraded" from once being a stable then a store room for potatoes, to a government approved standard. Happen that is an issue needing to be addressed at some future date. To overcome the negative effect the building has on our health , our economy and our overall comfort, we are creating a route away from a solely cash dependent life style. "The future was way back then, if it exists at all ," sez I. Beyond the watchtowers gaze and the dominant influence of vested commercial interest. It may be regarded as a grandiose plan, we don't think so, to regard our work here as a key to our own liberation and salvation.
Salvation from what? How about bills? It's a start. We are designing our future lives around the idea that we will have less capital expenditure less waste and a greater degree of creative freedom , a foreseeable end to the burden of modern wage slavery.
As the land the base of our terrestrial support, improves,towards a stable permanent culture, so too will our prosperity increase. Granted our little cottage has all "mod cons". It is a modern confidence trick for sure. It presents us with the dilemna of never being in control of our finances. We use the water from a system that seems to encourage waste. The Heating when we arrived was solely electric, nuclear powered air burners, drying the throat distributing dust by convection , the heaters all have fans. They don't heat the stone of the old house,as soon as we turned the heat down the air immediately chilled. Space heaters don't heat buildings. We don't have control of the weather so we are likely to be unable to predict in our household budgetting just how much money we would need when the electricity bill comes in. The cost per unit increases beyond the ability to pay without the sacrifice of other essential needs.The price rises are unpredictable, but we are contractually bound to pay. Our wood stove obviates the need for electric heating bills.The french government sponsors 50% of the stove price encouraging the use of renewable resources.
The floors in the cottage were once wood . A good insulator, comfortable to the naked foot they are now concrete. After a working lifetime suffering the damage caused by being forced to stand on concrete floors in industrial units as well as the city streets, one needs the comfort of at least neutral ambient temperature . We don't demand underfloor central heating, not the modern concept at any rate.
We cut the wood for the stove in advance of our needs, more than a two year reserve. We grow the wood , manage it for our future utility. As time goes by we will plant more. The floor timbers for the yard space are recycled posts from an old barn.. We are determined to consolidate our domestic resources and economic utilities, bring everything that is our life support back in,to our home domain. The little money we earn is put towards tools and materials that would empower us further. We don't want to go abroad nor anywhere else for our holidays. I want to be at home. I want to work at home. Live at home without the constraint of our familial energy being exploited for undue capital gain by entrepreneurs.
In this modernised building the shower room and the w.c. closet have a ventilation fan, so too the kitchen. It is permanently on. We have no choice, minimum or maximum. Moving air is important for health but we put ourselves in unecessary hardship working away from home to pay the energy bill.
We have been led by the nose for centuries in the wrong direction. The working man aspires to gain the perceived luxury of the historic master's unearned choice. Privilege borne of slavery."Disposable" incomes seduced to be squandered on the decadent facade of riches.
Our biggest outgoing at present is water. Not at all to our liking.We are gardeners, if we are to spend good money on water it would be justifiable to keep our potager alive.
The water that goes through the toilet and kitchen is pumped through a waste system(an electric pump), the solids settle and a contractor then must be paid to remove it. The overflow is channeled into the ditch nearby.. It is inevitable that we will establish a dry compost toilet in the field. Most of our working time is spent in the garden. We use no products that would be harmful to soil or once degraded and recycled would be harmful to our health. The solid waste then becomes a profitable utility, food for our crops. At present it is a continual source of expenditure. Until we can make a well in the field we will be dependent on water from the tap. Sad to say it isn't practical in our location to collect the water for use in the garden. We are separated from the field by a public road, the amount of work needed to carry saved waste water to the top of the garden is prohibitive in both time and human effort. Our aim is to stop wasting it so we will use the water clean.
Our contruction still looks like an interesting pile of rubble in most of the photo images. Rest assured progress is ongoing.
This years schedule should see the building of an interior wall to the circular enclosure. Lime mortar matrix holding millstone grit and schist rock from one angle, the outside of a soil retaining wall. Soil levels growing with each season. From another perspective the wall is the exterior of roundhouse . A working bothie.
The work in hand has been slow in getting moving. The heavy stuff always is. Once materials are brought to the gate all is then moved into position manually. For the garden to regenerate we must keep the tractor out. So we do.
The holding tank for the waste solids is contained in the ground above our construction. It is vulnerable, prone to being broken if the ground ,at present a poor piece of "lawn",is subjected to heavy weight or impact. Wasted space barely worth looking at. In the fullness of time I hope we may build a wooden platform that will fly over the space . I had to move rock to the top of the hill for want of a more convenient place to avoid the weight of rock from destroying the tank. I now have to bring a lot of it back to complete the round retaining wall. Our manorial pile is destined to be upwardly mobile. Progress is going somewhere,it is not to be wasted in the excesses of the commercial pleasure domes. If I have to sing dance party and fall on my back it is more economical to do it at home. We don't do a lot of falling down as it happens. No need to stupify to forget the drudge of weekly wage slavery.
At present there is a path around the building work to make wheel barrow accessible. Once the walls are complete I foresee the space (to the left in the picture ) being filled with soil, levelled to the height of the oak posts .and the purple stone slab beside the young walnut tree. True ground level. It's uphill all the way, no time off for good behaviour. Not something I can feel good about rushing at. I'll plod on.
The basic ground work is near done, It'll get easier.
Yep, progress is going somewhere. Home is where it starts and finishes. If all folk can do is gawp at the screen I will try and give them something worth gawping at. Watch this space.

Thanks to Toby,...

Ooblee Dooblee and Blessed Merry Be part one and two are back. You'll have to rummage around to find them amongst my other rubbish . You'll find it if you've a will. Liking it is optional.