Mother And Son

Chris and Chris, the horse owners, come when we're not looking and more often than not we don't know they've been until we've seen the results.

A few days back they let the horses into the lower field and the first thing the horses did was demolish the elaborately woven fence I'd erected to bar them from a nook between our property and the neighbours' which they'd been using as a gang hideout. Ah well. The neighbours' fence is pretty strong at that point and they're not going to get through it. My fence was fun to make- but it's gone now. If this was a video you'd see me shrugging...

And yesterday (I suppose it was yesterday) C & C snuck in again and gifted us with two new additions to the herd. I think they're mother and son. The little one is remarkably friendly and wants to be fussed. The ma is pure donkey but I think her child is a mule...

Seven Months In...

My sister's ex-husband's second wife has come down with Covid. She's the first person I "know" who has contracted the virus. I put "know" in inverted commas because I've only met her a few times and if I've had conversations with her I've no recollection of what was said. She's Chinese and works in a care home somewhere in Devon. She and my ex-bro have a three storey house and are isolating on different floors...

I take not of what the MSM is saying about CV19 and I take note of the alternative media too. I don't post about what I read- though it interests me greatly- because none of the stories (and I include the ones being put out by "The Science") are copper-bottomed. For every voice that says "A" there's a voice that says "B". I incline to certain theories but I don't believe in any of them. Above all, I refuse to be afraid.

Our life here on the farm has been a little more circumscribed this year- but we were already isolated.

The Safest Course Is To Accept Everything At Face Value

"If you seek to understand your motherland, you're already on the road to becoming a criminal" Ai Wei Wei.

This is clearly true if you're Chinese. But also true, if less obviously, if you're a citizen of one of the so-called democracies- where annoying the powerful can bring deniable penalties on a sliding scale from being banned on Twitter to having your car come off the road.

No nation- by which I mean the powerful people in that nation- is particularly tolerant of criticism. The Johnson government is only the latest in a long line British executives to want to hobble and intimidate the already innocuous BBC.

Meanwhile what is being done to Julian Assange carries a chilling message for us all. I have never understood how the USA has managed to persuade itself- and its client states- that Assange- who is Australian- should be subject to its laws.

Exposing the nefarious doings of a foreign power (which the USA is to Assange): how can that be a crime?

But apparently it is- which means it's not only dangerous to seek to understand your own motherland- seeking to understand other people's motherlands can be dangerous too.

Ai Wei Wei, having been persecuted at home, moved to Germany, but feeling that Germany was becoming too chummy with China, has since moved again. He now lives in Cambridge. Not Cambridge, Massachussets, but Cambridge, Cambridgeshire...