Old Blog up and running again!!!

Dear Blog-fans. When Blogspot was bought out by Google I couldn't access it anymore. Now I'm having problems adding a photo.

Trial test here

I would love to have my old Blog back to pontificate all my thoughts and passions and poetry and poison to things I think need poisoning portraits, personalities, people, points,

Don't mention the Philippines

Hey Can I blog again like the old days????? OK Picasa web I forgot!!!!!

history

Being a granddad

I never thought about being a granddad. I never aspired to be one. One day Hester phoned me. I was in the piggery. I stepped outside to get a better signal. And was somewhat surprised when she asked me if I were alone. Could anyone hear or guess our conversation. I had no idea what she was about to say. When she dropped the bomb-shell that she was pregnant.........I was suddenly ridiculously so excited....and nervous as hell ......just fingers crossed and hoping that the pregnancy would go to term, as they say, and we would have a brand new family member. I can't explain the joy. Was it the selfish gene. Even thinking back I can't come up with a reason for my happiness for me as much as for Hester and Chris.So I became a granddad on the day that Chris phoned me with the magical news.
If you are or once were a teacher (other situations obviously apply) you know the feeling of being boring, being out-of-touch, not wanted, not liked, etc etc ......... but to be with a grandchild.....who calls you "granddad" and asks you to do a puzzle, or do ring-a-ring-a-roses, or play pretend under the sofa or............................................

Garden

If Hester invites me out, so magnificently, to enjoy her lifestyle and to be with her and my wonderful grand-daughters.....I have to go.....I won't say.... hey...but ....my garden needs me....who will pot up my seedlings.....who will weed between the veg rows and flower beds.... and mow the grass...and feed the chickens.......and and and

Singapore Haze

Two pictures of Singapore. Top one from my bedroom window in Hester's apt two weeks ago. Bottom picture taken 9 hours ago. Smoke from nearby Sumatran forest fires are the cause. When I was there I pointed out to Hester just how close Sumatra was. She was somewhat surprised and checked her i-pack. Now that's where the wind is blowing from. I've recently read three books by and about Alfred Russel Wallace, a British botanist and entomologist and evolutionist who traveled extensively throughout the Malayan Archipelago in the middle of the 19th century. He saw at first hand the way the Dutch and the British were encouraging the natives to grow crops which might be valuable to Europeans. Encouraged indeed to cultivate new areas which were considered to be pretty useless and unproductive forest. Crops like potatoes,sugar, coffee and tobacco. There's a huge area of Singapore around Bestier Road which was once huge sugar plantations. Bestier married Paul Robespeare's daughter and did very well for himself. So this has been going on for some hundreds of years. Huge areas of Borneo's rain-forest have been destroyed; except that there they are managing to exploit the trees for garden furniture.......rather than just burning them....like in Sumatra.....to get them out of the way as it were. Palm oil it seems might be the driving crop in Sumatra, though the administration is denying this. But it's slash and burn tactics to clear forestation that's behind the smokescreen. The Indonesians are not burning their crops!!! It's not fires started accidentally.
The locals want to cultivate. They want cars and TV's and package holidays.They want fridges full of cold beers like the rest of us; and the Orang-Utans and birds of paradise will just have to be sacrificed along with the polar bears ...........OK no polar bears here.......Oh but there is!!!! In Singapore Zoo......I'll blog about him soon. I haven't quite made up my mind how to address his and our predicament yet, but I'm working on it.