January - probably the strangest month of the year

For me at least, January seems to be a very strange month. It goes by so quickly on the one hand, while, on the other, it simply drags on and on and on. January seems to have more weeks in it than the usual four and a bit. It's nearly the end of January and yet so much seems to have happened since the start of the year. I keep asking where the time went, but there are still six more days to go.

A very strange month. Maybe it exemplifies Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. As the quote attributed him goes...

                     “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. 

                       Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”.

And that is January for you...one moment it's rushing past you, and the next moment, it's positively dragging its feet.

Here's a picture of Janus, after whom the month was named. He was, to quote Wikipedia, "the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames and endings."

And this is supposed to be an improvement? Part 2

I bought some fish yesterday. It's actually bits of fish pressed together and then cut into 100 g blocks. What I do is defrost one of the four blocks in the pack, then pull the bits apart, dunk them in a beaten egg and dip them into fine polenta (gluten-free) and then fry them. Serve with vegetables.

I reckon I've been buying them for at least a decade and in all that time, they've come in a simple cardboard box. This week, I bought two packs (because they were on special offer) and was disgusted to find, when I opened the box, that they were now packed in plastic. And not just one plastic bag. No, they were put into two plastic bags containing two blocks of frozen fish. Why??? In an age when people are trying to cut down on the use of plastic, this company has suddenly had the stupid idea of putting their product into plastic. 

Given the state of the sea, into which a dumper truck of plastic is thrown every minute of the day and night (according to one book on economics I am reading), the last thing we need in this world is more plastic. Madness.

Not the brand I buy, but the same product.

"Call me Eeyore!"

Some of you may recognise that as a misquotation of the opening words of Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which starts with the words, "Call me Ishmael." (Ishmael is the narrator of the book.)

And if you are a fan of Winnie the Pooh, you will remember that Eeyore is the gloomy and pessimistic donkey in the stories. 

Well, gloomy and pessimistic sums up how I have increasingly felt over this last year, which is why I've not posted anything here in two months. 

Never, at the start of a new year, have I felt so pessimistic and gloomy as I do this year: the mad man in Russia, rising prices for gas, electricity and food, recession staring most countries in the face, companies closing down as they can't afford the fuel and power prices any more...what is there to feel good about?

Speaking with many older people of my acquaintance - they seem to feel even more desperate than I am. Let's hope we are all wrong and that you can soon stop calling me Eeyore.