"Worse is coming,"

The great urban influenza hoax..The sign outside the Hackney community health centre warned of physical symptoms relating to influenza.  Adults working in London caring for their family would naturally take notice. 
Headache,  nausea, dizzyness, weakness , breathing difficulties, shivvering,fever, dairrhea, confusion.  I am paraphrasing the message on the sign admittedly.  An adult experiencing  any or all of these signs of ill health would naturally wish to prevent their children from enduring the same. The artful marketing promotion by a  vaccine manufacturer would encourage the hard pressed clientele to have their children vaccinated. Now check out for yourself the symptoms of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Include for your imaginative delight further symptoms of permanent brain damage and death.One needs to address the main potential cause of the symptoms.  Air quality.
 There is no escaping the toxic atmosphere of London.  It's a gas trap, an atmospheric sump. The daytime traffic may contribute some of the contaminants , that is well known, as the day cools a suffocating blanket of heavy gases descends on the city. the clever money exits to the suburbs and beyond to where the air is cleaner and the grass is greener. Leaving the low pay grades and their families to stew in the exhaust zone.
Meanwhile the city turns on the gas taps. We crank up the heat in our hermetically sealed homes. Happy in the warmth, perhaps oblivious of our vulnerability to long term health damage. 
The incoming air is not revitalising during the night. A greater proportion of toxic heavy gases ladened with areosol sufficants and particles of fine dust. Nigh on every domestic residence in the city is pumping out the exhaust from their central heating. Sink and sewer gases , formaldehyde flavours the air from the many shop refurbishments using mdf and particle boards. The out pouring from poorly regulated commercial kitchens belch smoke from their burnt offerings into the streetside airways.
So many psychotic reactions to the heavy atmospheric pollution.
A captive wageslave population is driven adrenalised by economic anxieties to endure the risk.
Oxygen is the food of consciousness; not until we breath oxygenated air with our lungs do we expand our awareness in the relative environment beyond the womb.  As we grow the more is needed.The greater the physical exertion the more the need for brain and heart to avail themselves of the life giving gas. 
Maybe my take on this subject is all wrong. Vaccines, I understand are administered before an illness has incubated in the host, as a preventative measure. 
Vaccines do not cure nor do they prevent the damage caused by atmospheric  contamination.
Gullible caring working parents may be too dumbed down by the pressure on their own biology to do the headwork in avoidance of the uncomfortable symptoms.  Our brains deprived of oxygen may not, operate efficiently enough to maintain healthy natural recovery. Ones corporeal intelligence is not enhanced by asphyxiation.  
We dream in our urban crush of sweet country air ,holidays perhaps. We be best warned,  the rural atmosphere is no respecter of town and country planning borders.  Seasonal air borne contamination from pesticides, herbicides and fungicides mix in
 the cooling air with the overspray of hydrocarbons ,corrosive solvents, from the surrounding air ports add further to congestion of our life supporting oxygen supply.
Efluenza  is the noxious devil that lurks amid the confusion of health authority signals. It is not a virus that can be cured by medication. One wonders just how much of the N.H.S. funding is dependent on the ambiguous marketing of government approved pharmecuticals. Little evidence that diagnoses may be scientifically objective, in our cash starved public services. Placebo symptom relief, chemically managed stress anxiety. and vaccines for the children, so well meaning,"just in case" you never know.  Teaching hospital faculties, blinded by the profitable prestigious partnerships with Big Pharma do not adequately lobby for elimination of the overriding cause of sickness in the city. Immune systems fail by the background overload of environmental pressure.  Greater opportunity for lucrative funding of care in the community programs. The streets fill up with crazies , prescribed tolerated conditions managed by depot injections. Conform or what? There are worse things than death. All who dip their bread and say nothing are as doomed as the unfortunate minority who try to speak, perhaps too much for common comfort. They having to endure secure ward detention sensibilities reduced by enforced agressive medications until the detainee has modified anomalous behaviour. 
The clean air Act of the late Robert Maxwell's day was for the relief of Britain's smog polluted air. Thousands died every winter. Be warned, worse is coming.  Sickness is a growth industry.
Health has become the secondary consideration to profit. What could be the quantum cure for most of what ails the dominant majority of working people . "Green field pioneering ", sez I "as far as possible from the urban crush".   Abandon the city and the urban life, relearn your basic survival skills "en famille". It'd be tough at first. Wouldn't we help each other?  The long term viability of the health and well being is dependent on the sacrifice of convenience to self indulgent consumerism in the informed adult population. 
Abandon the city.
 I read the sign, I couldn't breath well enough to play my flute, I wasn't going there for that. My spine is sticking out of my back it wont go into neutral, I needed a physiotherapist. Several weeks wait for an appointment , I'll just have to bear it  some more.
The weeks of waiting did for me. I was visiting a Hackney flat close by, swamped by nightly gas attack. The overall melange of atomised sputum exhaust pipe waste gases mixing with the cosmetic odours of body sprays and air freshners. A real canary killer. Sure, I had all of the major symptoms displayed on the information banner outside the clinic, over weeks. Most common ailments last but three days.  It wasn't Flu. I hope someone get's this.  Unplug your minds guys. Get your families to safety. Cultivating a dependency on the N.H.S. to cure all our ill's could prove fatal. And if you are hunched over a keyboard nigh on holding your breath reading this, it may be your last chance to take good advice and "Get some good air".
I am back in the Breton countryside now. I doubt I will return. I have no axe to grind with staff in the clinic. Happy caring bunch no doubt I witnessed cake wielding birthday cheers for some fortunate well loved colleague. I managed to contribute my flutin Happy Birthday greeting.
The air in London is corrosive,Weighing up the risk to my health, I got out. Within a day the green phlegm that had beset my lungs with major congestion was once more clear. I will get my nback fixed sometime in the meanwhile, I am glad to be breathing. I.Wazir










 

Pretty cold out...

I'll leave it in.

Doggerman returns to the fabled realm...

       

    G.S.M. update...

Ali takes guard duty seriously.

Little boxus takes shelter from the chilling wind.

Towards a happy kitchen.

No snow damage

It's just the ticket.

Prep for Big Lump Stew a la Mode...

I.Wazir

Peace at last.

In from the cold.

They have got you to themselves now Toby...

How bad can that be?... Some just stand and stare in bewildered amusement, others try to silently ignore in denial of a witnessed injustice.

First passenger to arrive in plenty of time to embark upon the Eurostar . Proud owner of the new bio metric passport.  Did I really have a choice if I wished to travel at all. If ever I return to U.K. it will likely be as a pedestrian, on foot across a frozen English Channel.  That would save me from further potential persecution , public humiliation and targeted abuse. It was a real trouble to get the ticket home, the point of my journeying was  overshadowed ,my benign personal mission wholly obstructed , sabotaged in effect. One wonders why.

Having stood at the front of the queue for nigh on half an hour before all other potential passengers and many of the morning staff, as you may have witnessed. The line was ushered through the control gates. I was Immediately singled out  by a French steward, that I may not enter. The other people waived ahead of me. ...

The message loud and clear from the obstructing functionary. "Only people with tickets are allowed to travel on the Eurostar train." I was stunned and somewhat hurt. Producing my ticket from my coat. with audible objection caused a small distractive circus of drama. Not to my best liking, I asked the usher how she may have divined that the other people in the line must by her undoubted proffered  rationale all were in possession of a ticket, observing that most kept their tickets and passports securely out of sight, until entering the barriers. My right of passage appeared to have been reinstated, without an explaination as to why I should have been singled out. Waive along with a kurt  "sorry",one wonders how sneaky and dishonest one must look to the corporate all seeing eye that a low grade functionary should appear to  act with such irrational and unnatural prejudice.Whatever is your take on the incident is beyond me to know. Memorably on topic , you mentioned you would be a bit short this week. It would account for the shortfall in your curiosity as to what was happening to your father. Normally your six feet ten inches height would afford a grandstand overview.

Beyond the threshold of the ticket barrier, I was on my own. There is more to the story, front and back of this snippet. I will copy and paste this on my blog as a precursor to expanding the narrative. I wont be returning to U.K. now son. If there is any good we might do together it will have to be accommodated in the Izdom of Iz. You can keep up with this here yarn in further postings on my blog.

Some images from the smiling side of the ordeal. What happened on breaching the dragon's lair ?  Wait and see. See you son. Love, your grumbling giffer, Reinold.

C'est cool, non?

Don't get too excited, this is a photo of last winter season.I thought it might help to prepare minds for what's to come. Solstice has just passed, all hail the Short Arsed Day. I am planning for an early Spring planting. The doom laden science  warns of great changes.  " 'Bout time we noticed."  sez I.

Don't be too distracted by Christmas. Blowing the seasons accumulated resources in an almighty binge could leave you out in the cold spartan pit of austere hardship for the months ahead.

Our little patch of mud is shaping up well.The soil is holding both heat and moisture. Enlivened by compost and manure as well as the leaf litter now autumn has blown it's course.  Crushed shell to sweeten the more acidic ground. Kale, cabbage, swiss chard and leeks are thriving. We've celery and celeriac. Frissee endive and mache for salad.  Rutabaga navet parsnips and black radish should keep the wolf from the door at a pinch. Next years garlic is doing well. I sowed 50 cloves all bar 3 or 4 are showing four inches of green. My broad beans are showing their first leaves. We have used all our big onions, I will plant a bigger patch next spring.  There are plenty of schallots.  Fruit trees and bushes all budding up. We are looking forward to bumper harvests.   If you are short of Brussel sprout this Christmas day you are welcome to share a plate at our table.  They are good.

 We have enough firewood in store for the winter. Some in Emile's barn, some stacked in the yard that needs some whacks with the merlin before it gets to the stove.I rate the look of the garden as fairly scruffy at present, several chores as yet left unfinished. Twigs to shred. Beds to mulch, a bit of weeding. The edge of circular raised beds need redefining where they are not supported with stones. It'll get tidy in the next couple of weeks. Doing the work is most of the fun.  Months cultivating food that only lasts a few minutes on a plate. Best we don't regard living the life as a regretable chore.

 No photos of my doings this time.  Here's a splash of colour from Anne-Sophie's industry. 

Wool traded for vegetables in Kilrush, Co. Claire , dyed and shaped into a fine  hat. Anne-So does a lot of that.


                                                

www.lefilharmonic.blogspot.com

You can look see for yourself just click the link below the image.  I wont be posting any music for a while. There will be more. There is a mountain of digital recording to sort through to select out the best, a small batch at a time.  Best wishes to all and whether you like it or not, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. I. WAZIR

It's happening in Redon;;;

Sign of the times.

Hello again,There more to come but there's much else to do besides stabbing a keyboard...

Should see us through the week

Sign of the times, plant and seed exchange. 

Next, a fire place and a wooden deck. Thanks to Toby for his help.