First day off

As I blogged last week, I’m taking this week off. It’s very nice.

The weekend, as you can read below, was packed with gigs and visiting neighbours and friends.

Yesterday I did some little things, but mainly just enjoyed having a Monday off. I went to Carluccio’s for breakfast, I watched a weird movie, I sorted through some paperwork and post we hadn’t gotten around to, and I replaced the rear windscreen wiper on the car. I went downtown for a while and did some window shopping, but also checked out some of the small stereo solutions at the Apple store (to be able to use my iPod in our new living room), and had coffee and cake at the really nice café in Foyle’s bookstore. I also went through Time Out magazine and planned some of the things I want to do over the next few days.

One of those things was catching the replay of a Channel 4 documentary called The Lie of the Land on More4 last night. It was quite interesting. Filmmaker Molly Dineen addresses recent legislation redirecting subsidies for farmers that means some animals just aren’t worth keeping on British farms, and more and more of our food is being imported.

She follows a few country folk around and shows unflinching footage of animals being slaughtered. Since foot-and-mouth, animals can’t just be buried on farms, they have to be disposed of. One cheap way to do this is to sell the dead or unwanted animals to the local hunt, to feed the hounds. This is a sound idea, and when they have to put down a horse that’s old and sick, it’s only fitting that it’s killed quickly and humanely and then used as feed. But when otherwise fine calves are killed and hauled away – for the price of £2 and a bag of fudge – simply because they won’t be good milkers, it seems like a terrible waste. And the farm folk know this: they were brought up not to waste animals like this. But it’s an industry driven by economics now.

It was a good film that showed a huge gulf still remains between country and city life in the UK.