A Striking Society

There is a bus strike in Dublin at the moment.
It doesn't affect my life as, once breakfast is over I can work at the domestic
coalface until the cows come home.

"There is a lot of anger out there", however, as our media boffins are delighted
to report daily. The thought that I would have to spend an hour at a bus stop would,
I have to admit, make me very cross indeed. However, the new philosophy that has hit the island where everybody is encouraged to "share the pain" has left me puzzled.
Gardeners are often mildly discombobulated, being attacked from time to time by nettles, rose branches, over territorial insects and the odd unhappy dog bounding
out of the undergrowth. The thought that one might actually invite pain and wish
to share it seems very odd indeed.

We are not, after all, masochists, I hope...

Bookworm?

As far as I can remember, I spent much of my childhood with my face stuck in a book.
The hey-days of book learning are long past and the new pedagogy seems to include much sport and visual education. The question even arises from time to time as to whether or not reading is dead.

Probably more a case of not dead but sleeping?

There will always be people who read.
And from what I have seen the easy access that Google Books offers to fabulous works that can no longer be found in libraries probably means that more people than ever are reading, but on the Internet.

It's worth thinking about.

And just in passing this


बूक्वोर्म?

is what came up in the title bar when I started to type "Bookworm" today.

Hindi is fun.

In the Pink on an Irish Spring Day