Of Mog and Smog
Mark Lewinski says a sad goodbye to Mog and gets in the last word about some recent Crier issues
IT WAS INDEED I who censored the Crier Profile of the Reverend Laurence Fisher, he of the church windows, multifarious hats, cricket - and nefarious personal interests, the consequences of which might still be felt by some living relatives of those involved. Hence the omission of some names given in the original Radio 4 broadcast. Words spoken on the airwaves to be lost to the winds is one thing - print has a permanence - of sorts.
Will historians be trawling these archives in centuries to come to discover how we lived? Possibly. History is no longer the preserve of kings and queens Šit is the lives of the folk at street or field level, that makes up some 98% of a country's real history. Mr Everitt tells me the Reverend Fisher was also a significant influence in the introduction of street lighting in this village - truly a man of...of parts, as the interviewer said. However - on other pages, last month's Crier inadvertently omitted the second half of my letter entitled "smokescreens".
Below is the unexpurgated second half, with a little coda from last month's letter at the start to warm things up. I have made a minor edit in the reference to Kevin, the cat from next door, as the result of a major change to my own family in the last day or so. I had included a mention of my own ancient mog as being too old to bother with chasing small furry things, having just turned twenty. Mog departed this world suddenly - and before the appointment I'd made with the vet to pop round, too. Mog now has its own special spot at the end of my garden. Tempted as I am to make further links to the subject matter discussed below, I suspect I won't be very popular with the rest of my family. I will just say thank you to my non-catowning neighbours for their forbearance over the years in matters of garden organic material.
...Those with large gardens should have no problem finding a far corner for composting.
Sharp intakes of breath. Horrors! It's unsightly! Untidy! And it's an extra job in the garden!
Indeed. Of course it takes a bit of extra effort compared to piling it up and setting fire to it. ...to start with. Once it's going, nothing to it. You chop & pile stuff in, it decomposes. Turn it once in a while. It's a lot less trouble than, say, feeding the cat. You can neglect it for months on end. So: be practical - screen it off. A bit of trellis fence will do. And be imaginative - grow a clematis or a honeysuckle round it. I know that's not difficult, because I can do it, and a lot of plants would sooner die than do what I want them to. And it's proper gardening. It will be the most fertile corner of your garden, after all. Do you know you're launching your gardenÕs incinerated nutrients into the atmosphere when you have a bonfire of greenstuff?
Basic school Biology -
- Your greenery = seed/plant + water + atmospheric gases + organic soil & minerals
- Burning it = ash + water + same gases + whatever toxic residue can be made airborne.
Get a shredder, Caroline, or borrow one. (I know there are some in this village). And if it's industrial volumes, hire one. Pile the logs up in a corner till they are dry enough to burn - in a woodburner, if Leylandii pine's to spitty for the fire. There are people here with woodburners. I see people lob bags of weeds and cuttings in the tip at Newmarket who then go off down to Homebase for a bag of compost, not realising they've just thrown part of their garden away then bought much the same stuff, matured, to replace it with.
Greenery helps clean the atmosphere. Burning it worsens global air pollution. Composting adds nothing nasty to the air, and creates healthy organic nutrients to return to the ground.
Do you realise too, that your far corners of logpiles and garden material are havens for the small wildlife that keep the birds, hedgehogs et al fed? What are the owls, and kestrels - we all want them to thrive - supposed to live on if our gardens are like green living rooms, tidy into the corners, ornaments - oh, and with a fireplace too! - with nowhere for voles, shrews, and mice? To say nothing of insect life. Woodpiles are ideal. Oh, and hedgehogs. I got dragged round Anglesey Abbey again last week. Woodland walk; hedgehog homes - piles of wood. Honest. I saw them. Keeps the cats occupied, too. Kevin, the ginger thing from next door, is never happier than when he's pursuing something small and furry round the lawn. If there's somewhere to hide, at least it has a sporting chance of being lunch some other day and of keeping the food chain going. The bottom line is, if it's green you don't need to burn it, and if you have a big garden, you have some responsibility not to.
Organically yours
PS and look what happened with Asthma, anyway. When I was a kid there was one person in the school with it. She didn't do PE because this mysterious ailment meant she didn't breathe like the rest of us. Now I'm used to finding there's usually more than one in each class, inhalers etc. Nobody can say why the huge increase, but bonfires aren't likely to be on the upside of the equation, are they?
PPS Just recalled an ancient joke: when Beethoven's coffin is opened, they find him crossing notes off a score. What are you doing, they ask. Decomposing, he replies...