Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Notes of Little Consequence.

I decided to end a self-imposed exile today. I decided to walk along Mill Lane in daylight, something I haven’t done since the summer of 2012. (Don’t worry about the reason, I just haven’t.) I walked along Mill Lane in daylight today – all of it.

I even went further and walked to the river, just to see what it was looking like after those months of winter rain. That's something I haven't done since the fatigue symptoms started in the autumn of 2011. As I looked over the bridge parapet to the fast moving waters, I got an uncomfortable sense of acrophobia. I think I must be shell shocked or something.

And opposite the end of Mill Lane is the old railway station that was decommissioned around fifty years ago, and is now a private dwelling. I noticed something that I never have before: the platform is still there, with a narrow strip of grass in front of it where the line used to run. It must have been a regular Buggleskelly in its day.


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I get a lot of visits to this blog from Ukraine, and very welcome they are. What I don’t understand, though, is this: With all that’s been going on over in that neck of the woods lately, why would anybody from there be interested in reading a nondescript blog written by an Englishman of No Consequence? You’d think they’d have bigger things on their mind, wouldn’t you?

I see the Russian bigwigs are saying that the protest movement was an ‘armed mutiny.’ In other words, the protesters are ‘criminals.’ Well, if my limited knowledge of world history is correct, the modern Russian state wasn’t exactly born in an atmosphere of peace and consensual politics, was it? It’s odd how the lineal descendants of a revolutionary movement are prone to calling other revolutionaries ‘criminals’ when it suits them. And if the news reports we get are accurate (not to mention the video footage of Russian protesters being whipped at Sochi) I have the impression that there are a few Russians who would like to start their own protest movement against their own bigwigs. I wonder whether Putin ever has nightmares about walking the same road as Morsi. (There are a few of us over here who have nice dreams about the whole Tory front bench standing in the same line.)

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