Your Urals Do Not Match

10/16/2005

Fair autumn weather cheers us up this week, cloudy, dry and about 12 degrees, ideal for outside work and maintenance. Those of you who are in the happy band of regular readers of my scribblings will note that I have locked the comments section to block those annoying oicks who have found it funny to fill it with rubbish. My efforts have been so effective that I cannot get into the bloody thing myself and I spent the allotted 32 minutes trying to unfangle my IT problems with some Johnnie in Mumbai. I could not understand a word he said, however, it has something to do with the Urals apparently. Globalism seems to be a wonderful thing; my box of bits is designed in the US, assembled in China, sorted in India and its problems have something to do with Ivan. I can easily remember the happy days when the village Blacksmith sorted horses, garden gates as well as motors, and any local plumber worth his salt would fix lead work and roofs as well as drains. If you cannot find a local man for the job, its not worth doing. Speaking of local things, Argyll and Bute Council have at last started to make some progress towards their recycling obligations under a load of European directives cobbled together by hundreds of commissioners and a forest of Phds. A large blue wheelie bin has been delivered, well abandoned half a mile away. No more will we causally toss all our rubbish into the green wheelies, now paper and cardboard will go into the blue one, but for some reason the system will be jiggered if one envelope goes in with the paper, why? At the Tower of Glen Trollaigh, we already make an effort, composting everything degradable, avoiding plastic bags and over packaging and, of course making the all-important fortnightly run to the bottle bank. I think that all the efforts from Brussels to Oban on rubbish and recycling are to be applauded, however it remains the case that the vast majority could not give a toss and assume their waste is someone else’s problem as they gaily tip their rubbish as they go. What’s to be done? I must close by thanking Old Sea Dog for his obvious concern over my health, fear not old salt I am very much in the pink, my GP surgery get a cash incentive for keeping the old folk of the parish alive, assuming of course that everything falls neatly into office hours and outwith local or bank holidays. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.