This green and pleasant land.

I took Teosdee and Jack down to Heathrow yesterday. We took the coach at Midnight on Sunday and she flew at 9am Monday.I then took the tube to London Euston where I caught the train back to Liverpool. Before I took the train I had a quick walk around the block in Euston. London is so different from up here, I feel at home in London, not so many white people.It feels like a city, an international city. Nobody cares that I have a ponytail, or strange black glasses.I feel at home. It was cloudy and cold, only later did I realize that the cloud was the smoke from the big fire at the oil depot. I saw the fire as the train headed north out of Watford.The sky was actually blue, so the huge cloud of smoke rising from the ground was very easy to see.They say this is the biggest fire in Europe since the second world war. I love taking the inter city train , it gives me a good chance to see England. As I thought about the environmental impact of the fire on the surrounding countryside, I began to look at the British countryside more closely. Yes, it is a green and pleasant land, but that's it really. It is not breathtaking, it is not wild, it is not beautiful.The English countryside(actually it's not fair to include Wales and Scotland in this) has been managed for so many hundreds of years that there is very little of it that is natural.How is it that you can travel the whole length of the country without seeing a wild animal? Fields are neatly separated into nice rectangles, surrounded by fences or hedges interspersed with lines of trees.Rivers have been cut to suit man's needs.Canals cut across the country. The farms are the worst, utterly destroying the land. That doesn't seem fair, to criticize the farmers does it?
Farms in the UK and throughout Europe have been so heavily subsidized for so long that farmers are millionaires.Fresh produce is not cheap in this country, it is bloody expensive.Vegetables are cheaper in Hong Kong, which cannot grow enough vegetables to feed it's people! Food can be grown cheaply elsewhere.We don't need to keep on helping British and French farmers, let them go the way of the coal miners-extinct. If the farms go bust, then maybe we can let the land grow wild, let it return to it's natural state,introduce some wild animals.Screw the farmers.
The cities are not much better.Once outside London, there is no hope.Every town and city is ugly, full of the same dark brown terraced houses with the same gardens- a long rectangle with a lawn and some flowers around the edge, separated by a six foot fence.The monotony is astounding, London is not much better. Somebody wanted to build a 36 floor hotel here in Liverpool, this year but planning was turned down because it was felt that it wouldn't look in place with the present buildings. The present buildings look like they are going to fall down.They have just stopped the planned new tram lines from being built here, because of money. It is time that we accepted that our towns, cities and countryside is/are ugly and boring.
Frosty this morning. Joseph told me that Jesus made the road.That put the funniest image of our lord laying tarmac, sipping mugs of tea, and wolf whistling at the local totty "blessed art thou amongst women, darlin". I will go and see Joseph's nativity this afternoon. Still not smoking.