Pondrosa

A Horton Clockwise this morning, sprouting various thoughts, for which the collective noun of ponderosa seemed appropriate. Actually the name of a tree which is widespread in the US if not elsewhere. Furthermore, while checking up on the ponderosa pine I found that Australia, Canada, US and various states in the US operate registers of big trees. A splendid idea, but Google did not come up with a British equivalent. We can't go round inspecting our big trees on Sundays (which would be a welcome change from stately homes) and ticking them off on our spreadsheets, rather in the way of bird spotters. Maybe it would make the most sense to do it on a British Isles basis, including here the whole of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Scilly Isles, but excluding the Channel Islands which belong to France for such purposes. The US model is to be found at http://www.americanforests.org/our-programs/bigtree/.

First ponderous thoughts concerned cyclists. During the walk I was overtaken by two cyclists riding on the footpath, one a young adult female and one a child male. The former used a bell and overtook me wide while the latter did not use a bell and overtook me close, almost clipping my ear. I was too slow to remonstrate either with him or his accompanying father, although to be fair the father was a little way off.

Second ponderous thoughts concerned rubbish. A middle aged white man leading a dog carrying a fullish but light looking black dustbin bag was walking along the back of the houses which back onto the stream running along this particular part of Longmead Road. After a while he appears to dump the bag between a back fence and a bush and carries on, all innocent, far too far away for me to challenge him, even if had been minded to try. But what on earth was he doing? Why go to the bother to carefully bag up your rubbish and then deposit it in the wrong place? The tip, after all, was probably no further for him to walk with the thing. Why not put the rubbish in a wheelie bin, plenty big enough for most people? The least bad solution that I can think of is that it was garden waste, emptied out in a sensible enough place with the bag being consigned, unseen, to a pocket. Otherwise, what a plonker.

Third ponderous thoughts concerned the DT, which continues to bang on about the national scandal of older people having to sell their houses to pay their own bills at their care homes. This being the same paper which bangs on at other times about the national scandal of people having to pay maybe half their income in tax to the government, when it is well known that governments will just go on the spree with it, assuming they don't just save themselves the bother and pour it down the drain. Where on earth do they think the money to pay all these care home bills is going to come from? Especially if we stop employing Romanians and start paying care workers a living wage.

Which puts the people at the DT, all of whom probably have enough education that they ought to know better, in the same ball park as the rubbish plonker of the second thoughts.

PS: there is the Irish solution to this problem, noticed here before. But that is probably far too simple for us Brits. Can't put my finger on it just presently, but it may pop up in due course, in which case a reference will be supplied.