The unfolding events in Mumbai (called me old fashioned, but I'm afraid I still have to translate that back to Bombay, in the same way, Beijing sticks in my head as Peking...however Rhodesia has made the transition to Zimbabwe) are truly shocking, and today I've been following it on the live text feed on Sky News, whilst generally avoiding work. In amongst the regular updates on bombs, fires, hostage taking, death and destruction has been the effect on the cricket...will England stay, if so where will the next test take place and so on. Now I do appreciate that cricket is almost a religion in India, but equally I think that whether the cricket goes ahead or not probably shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as how many people have been slaughtered. Perhaps I'm wrong.
On a different level altogether (and I appreciate I might be accused of some hypocrisy here), the route I cycle in to the office is a lovely main road through Epping Forest. The local council has taken it upon themselves to clear the path between the road and the forest of fallen leaves...and you can imagine that at this time of year there are a fair number of them. And the way they do it is to sweep up the leaves into big plastic bags, which are left at the roadside for collection at a later date. The logic of this defies me completely...surely, you'd simply sweep the leaves into the forest (there's no physical barrier to stop this) to nourish the grounsd, and do all those things that would happen in the normal cycle of plant life. I keep meaning to take a picture as I ride past, but keep forgetting...so sorry about that.
