As a committed gardener and a bit of a smug horticulturalist, I’d love to discover a new plant. Imagine my delight and surprise to discover this new flower this evening. I think I’ll name it after DM – it’ll be the videa grande. I do hope you can see its obvious charms!

I’ve been to Waitrose tonight to do the food shopping (staples anyway, I do all my fresh stuff at the farm shop) before Christmas. I heard today on the radio, that food sales have risen this December 17% on the same period last year. The supermarkets are ‘having a ball’.

I must say, I find this statistic completely staggering and depressing – don’t people remember how much stuff they threw out last January? Don’t they remember they couldn’t start their New Year Resolution diet until February because of all of the goodies in the fridge? Don’t they remember groaning as they climbed on the scales on 27th December?

How can we consume MORE at Christmas than we did last year? What a gross, obscene waste. Rant Rant Rant. I know, I’m sorry but I really hate this conspicuous consumption that grasps at all of us and sends us into shopping frenzy.

The old adage ‘a little of what you fancy does you good’ seems to have gradually been corrupted to ‘stuff as much junk in your gob as you possibly can before being sick, then stuff in a bit more’. Oh and then make sure that every child in the land has so many presents they don’t know which way to turn and most of them will be sitting in the corner of the lounge gathering dust by the end of the first week in January. Finally, make sure that everyone in the street knows how much money you've lavished on Little Johnnie's fake Ferrari and what more could you possibly want? Yep – we Westerners really know how to live, don’t we?


Last year I was smiling in the face of a pillock and the year before my world was improing through the point of a small bottle.