After all, I live on this delightful, if somewhat damp, little island and think daily about the circumstances that have led me to enjoy getting up every day to keep a house and garden in check.
Somehow the whole post-boom post-Celtic-Tiger misery has passed me by. I don't think that getting angry about economics (that gloomy subject) or working myself into a frenzy about fiscal matters will advance the cause of humanity.
However, since I'm reading "Bloodland" by Alan Glynn, a certain amount of energy is spent each day wondering how to put things to rights again. The book is meant as a cautionary tale of how the World's economy is now tightly knitted into a system from which none of us can escape. Innocence about trade is a thing of the past. Africa continues to supply vast amounts of important metals that everybody uses daily. Coltan is much in the news and Mr Glynn, a clever innovator when it comes to coining new words, has invented a rare metal that is linked to the Greek word for death... thanatos.
I have to admit that gardeners tend to think much more about life. This month will be spent moving a veritable mountain of leaves to a slow decaying compost area. Don't believe that you cannot compost leaves, btw. Interspersed with layers of soil and softer kitchen refuse everything becomes useful mulch material in a matter of months.
So far, nobody seems to garden in Mr Glynn's fictional universe. Perhaps that is one of the many reasons that I find it so engagingly strange?
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