Reflections From England

Water, Water Everywhere......

I've just spent 10 days in England visiting my mother for her 95^th birthday and, of course, had to arrive in the middle of the wetest April for over a century. England must be the only country in Europe that can have a drought and floods simultaneously. I suppose that is unlikely to change until more leaky pipes are repaired. It's becoming clearer to me that infrastructure cannot be successfully privatised. This is something the UK has got wrong and the rest of Europe right. It's hard enough to get a government to focus on infrastructure, given 5-year tenures; private industry will always see more profit in short-term fixes.

I read an article while in England noting that some places have three water systems: added to the usual drinking water and foul sewer systems is a dirty water system, essentially a rain run-off system. Cleaned of sediment and debris, it provides a supply suitable for most purposes other than drinking and reduces the risk of floods at the same time. Given the amount of concrete now covering much of England, there must be numerous opportunities to put this in place. It's definitely needed and will be more so in future; but whether it makes economic sense for privatised water companies is another matter.

There seems to have been a mood swing generally in Europe away from focusing primarily on reducing deficits and towards a focus on growth. The big financial authorities seem to concur. Unless some measure can impel the banks to open their purses the obvious action is a touch of Keynesian government injection. But in what, if infrastructure is privatised?

The Countryside

Needless to say, the English countryside looked only mournful in the rain, which was a pity as I think it looks at its best in the spring. I was a bit late for daffodils and narcissi but caught some bluebells on my perambulations.  One thing that struck me was that the roadsides were covered in yellow, as here. But in England the yellow was gorse in bloom, not coronilla and broom. On reflection I'm surprised that gorse does not grow here. It's made for a harsher climate and should thrive in the garrigue undergrowth, yet I've never seen any.

Back here, it's poppies, euphorbia and purple salvias along all the roadsides; and the asparagus and strawberry season is in full flood, not just in shops but in small-holdings all around the village.

My Mother

My mother had a fall, not a serious one, but one that entailed a short spell in hospital and which has weakened her further; she now weighs just 4.5 stone (33 kgms). That, and her increasing loss of short-term memory, have made me wonder how long she can continue in her own home. It hurts me to see her exhausted making the small slow movements necessary even in a little well-designed maisonette. Although I now go over for a week every couple of months, I feel guilty about not spending more time with her, the more so in that she is so delighted and grateful when she sees me. Yet she remains cheerful much of the time, taking pleasure in the birds that flock to her feeding tables and the stocks and freesias I bought for her sitting room.

The rain did stop for enough hours for me to plant flowers in the pots on her patio and to re-arrange the pots to allow for a garden chair. I bought two, one for the front and one for the back, in the hope that some warm sunny spells will arrive to allow her to sit outside.

Website

My son, Carl, came on the Saturday and we started to get to grips with WordPress. Carl installed the incipient site on his server in the “cloud” and we had time to upload some of the text I had prepared. The software is powerful and it's clearly going to take me some time to become familiar with it. Also, the multi-language facility is more complicated than I had anticipated. I'm going to have to consider the design of the site carefully if potential third and possibly fourth languages are to be added easily, without having to change the structure of the site.

Fortunately Carl is very adept and friend Steve provided some useful comments on my original text, so I'm confident that more progress will be made soon. In the meantime I can send the improved text to Claudine to get it translated into French.