Mars

 

The stunning image shown above was taken this week  by the NASA Perseverance space vehicle on the surface of Mars. It looks lovely up there on Mars doesn't it? Perhaps in the future, human beings will take their holidays there, enjoying the raw beauty of The Red Planet.

Now I am going to confess something that will probably reveal once and for all what an ignorant fellow I truly am. I do not really approve of space exploration. There I have said it. You have licence to deride me.

Billions of dollars, roubles, yen, pounds, euros and rupees have been spent on space exploration. The current Perseverance mission to Mars will cost American tax payers at least three billion dollars. Admittedly, there are often technological spin-offs and by-products resulting from space missions but these are invariably accidental, disconnected from the project's central aims.

Instead of space exploration, what I would like to see is those resources, that human ingenuity, that passion, that incredible funding being directed to more earthbound matters. These would include advancing the development of better electric batteries for motor vehicles, slowing rampant population growth, feeding the starving, bringing clean water supplies to the needy, tackling plastic pollution, combating  global warming and so on. I am not referring to pipe dreams spawned by science fiction and academic or military curiosity but about real world concerns  - things that matter right now.

I would rather have seen the three billion Perseverance dollars spent on assisting the poor people of Yemen caught in a truly awful military conflict that was not of their making. Children are dying in Yemen while a clever space vehicle trundles around a lifeless planet.

We are meant to be excited about space travel, moon landings and the like but I just think - what a terrible waste of money. Humans should have nobler priorities - all of them on our doorstep.

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The Baking Cupboard

 On Saturday it will be the six year anniversary of the day I got married 

Of all the dates I need to forget , this one is the one I always seem to remember.

The morning of March 6th 2015 was very much like the one we experienced today. It was springlike and warm and sunny. 

Like this morning I was alone in the cottage, drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

Unlike this morning, I had been up and down like a fiddler’s elbow receiving cards and gifts from villagers and friends.

I remember the table being filled with bottles of champagne and boxes with bows and flowers in vases.

Around 11am I spied Auntie Gladys walking carefully down the lane. 

She wore a red woollen coat and looked frail at 95

I met her at the garden wall and she held my hand in greeting

“ I have a wedding gift for you both” she said handing me a hand written card 

I started my usual  you shouldn’t have  type reply which she waved away with a hand

“ Buy yourself something you need but would never usually buy yourself “ she said her watery blue eyes twinkling and I was suddenly moved that this old stalwart of the Church and of traditional values had embraced her first gay marriage 

“ Thank you for being so kind , You’re support means a great deal” I told her and she laughed her usual laugh and pushed her hands into her coat pockets to find a hankie 

“ It’s the law ! “ she said simply and I watched her walk back up the lane, her head to one side as though she was thinking hard.

I felt moved and humble , as though my grandmother had just visited.

Auntie Glad’s card was traditional  and addressed to us both. Inside was several crisp ten pound notes which I rolled up and placed in the tea caddy on the mantle. 

I forgot the money until weeks later, when it was almost summer.

Back then I was planning for my beloved new kitchen and so fantasised about things I wanted to make it the best of all I had owned. Having my own baking cupboard was on my to do list.

And so, with the help of Auntie Glad’s money, I prepared for one.

I bought loaf tins and flan dishes and an old fashioned black bird with its mouth open to sit inside a steaming pie so that the pastry would not get soggy. 

I bought cake times and a flour shaker and storage tins full of grease roof paper, food colouring and vintage Christmas cake decorations alongside vintage wooden spoons and a mixing bowl with blue embossed sides like the one my mother used to have.

Any I hid all of the bits and bobs away until the IKEA workmen had put in the kitchen, only bringing them out from their hiding place to fill my baking cupboard . The one nearest to the lane window , where the light is best to roll pastry and to kneed dough.

Today after night shift I was in my baking cupboard yet again, retrieving the ingredients to make sourdough bread  and I needed the dough I remembered the day Auntie Gladys brought me a wedding present .......and continued to be a bit of a hero .

The baking Cupboard Today

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/2OgYcWm

❤️

 Help me

Be the change

I want to 

See in others 

Walking the walk

Instead

Of talking the talk

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