Spookopolis

Can you guess what it’s going to be about then? Yes, it will be about scare city!

Having just been drenched yet again whilst out and about on two wheels, and with my garden looking more in need of a marina than a patio, I was surprised to see the Environment Agency fretting that our rivers may run dry. Given how waterlogged the semi-arid environs of South Cambs are, it struck me as a rather distant worry (I suspect the sun swelling to consume the earth or the heat death of the universe should be more pressing concerns). Still, trying to make the best of a bad job, I am willing to offer my current abundance of the wet stuff (collected in both vessels and the local topographical minima of the grounds of Fish Towers) to the EA to refill a river or two at a very reasonable rate.

I am, in many ways, a creature of habit and there are certain dietary staples (well, they’re staples to me – if to no-one else) that I attempt to buy every week. However, these staples do have a tendency to disappear from the shelves of Waitrose – and, indeed, from those of other (inferior, probably serviette selling) supermarkets. Organic cottage cheese has not been sighted for many months. Organic, wholemeal spaghetti is but an infrequent visitor to our shores – I presume it is driven here by adverse weather conditions on its regular migration routes (well, it doesn’t grow on trees, whatever you may have seen on Panorama). The most recent disappearance has been of toasted flaked almonds (an essential part of my daily breakfast), and then of all flaked almonds – and this was not just a Waitrose-based phenomenon but one that occurred Cambridge-wide. Almonds were still readily available, as was the ground version, so I am led to posit that the UK (world?) has but a single almond-flaking machine. Could there be a business opportunity in this? Could I set myself up as an almond-flaker and break this monopoly? Or should I offer to establish an almond-flaking regulator, OFFLAKE?

However, my most serious recent scarcity has been one of time. This shortage has led to a serious decline in the generation of nonsense to post to this blog. I wish I knew where the time went. Perhaps its leaking out into all those hidden dimensions the folk of CERN are poking into? I have to seriously wonder (can, or indeed, should I be breaking infinitives for emphasis?) how normal folk, those with full-time jobs, make it through the week at all. Am I just hopelessly inefficient, frittering away the hours? If so, I really ought to stop as deep-fried time must be terribly bad for me – though may be excellent training for my next trip to Alex Salmond’s kingdom. Or am I just trying to do too much? In this latter case, things will shortly be getting even worse as I shall be taking on a whole new activity in February (of which more in a later post). We must all pray that my temporal oversight improves and that the blogging does not continue to suffer! Either that, or I shall have to find a way to make the stuff – I’ve always been a big fan of seconds (at the meal table at least), but I’m not sure if this is sufficient background to go into manufacturing. At least, the leap second has been spared for another three years – it may not be much, but that second could be vital to me!