Polly Goes to London Again

. . . and sees no more than perhaps 50 animals in the fields between Swindon and London, largely only one lovely mixed herd just to the east of Cholsey.

Apart from some crows in a stubble field, that is all the life I saw in, say, 80 miles of farmland. It is so sad that we are now looking out on agricultural deserts everywhere. There are all sorts of campaigns to try to help British farming. I myself have never been that much into any farming that isn't organic, but now it's getting so bad that I reckon we ought to help everyone. You can read all about this in Country Living magazine -- the magazine for countrified yummy mummies everywhere. I keep meaning to cancel my order for it as I don't think I can stand one more inch of Kath Kidson, but then they come up with a good page like this in the current issue:
http://www.countryliving.co.uk/index.php/v1/No_cows_=_no_countryside

There might be some good news soon though:
http://www.southdownscampaign.org.uk/main.htm. PLEASE sign the petition. It takes half a minute.

Anyway, I got to London and was making my way through the trendy East End and despairing again. I remember Spitalfields Market when it was real and decrepit and endlessly exciting. Now think 'Covent Garden', i.e., finished. Yuppified. Done for. Done up. Tourist trap. Raking in the millions for the council, and so on. To be avoided at all costs.

'Can't anyone leave anything alone?' I thought.

Add to this the piles of conspicuous waste rubbish, unsorted and ready for landfill that I saw on every corner, in the very part of London that is full of young people and who ought to be the most ecologically concerned. I then had a vision of what seemed to me the only way to live: as the Plains Indians used to -- very close to the grass; in their tepees; close to their babies, their food; using the tribe as their only unit of life and safety; leaving no footprint on the earth. I told this to a friend who reminded me that that's exactly how Mattie is living (see The Call of the Bittern?! (2)) and how nice is that! But oh there are so few doing it. Only the convoy types and the clever people who can actually live communally or get into alternative technology. But today I never got closer to giving up everything to do it myself.

But then, later, oh how easy it was to get some cash from the hole in the wall. Seconds it took. What fun it was to clamp my Oyster card onto the Tube barrier, to jump onto that fast train and speed past the lights of the Home Counties, eating the best sarnie in the world and reading my best book of the year. Hey, I wish someone would actually read this blog and ask me what that book might be.