Changes of Direction

It's been a few weeks since I last unleashed my stream of conscience to produce a blog. The main reason for the gap in postings has been due to the fact I took a short holiday to visit England's green and fertile shores. The picture above is of the lovely place where I stayed - but more on that later.

During my brief absence I seem to have, without any action at all, acquired an additional 30 followers. While I'm heartened by the numbers, I'm sure the increase wasn't because of my error ridden prose or my poor attempts at wit. There must be some other strange forces at work. The processes behind social media connections still remain a complete mystery to me.

While I was away I decided to make a temporary move away from doing blogs inspired by various works of art on Cottesloe Beach. My near future offerings will instead be a series of short stories about the fate of various objects that have been produced through the efforts of physical labour or via the magic of modern chemistry. I had initially been thinking about doing a book of short stories on the same subject, but then I thought..... why wade through the hassle of trying to find an audience. There is a ready made one on Steemit ( Yay!!!!).

It has calculated by some economist that there are approximately 10 billion products and services available in the modern economy. Many of these are produced by making use of products that have first been grown or mined somewhere in the world. That material is then shipped or flown to other parts of the world where it is elaborately transformed into something we humans need or want. Logistical services - shipping, rail, truck and air, then move the goods to many other parts of the world where they are further distributed through a network of retail outlets. Odd and mysterious things can sometimes happen to some of these goods, and this will be the subject of my future blogs.

As for the house in the picture... it was amazingly comfortable, very roomy and had a huge lawn and a large forest at the back where tiny deer were roaming. The house is only 20 miles from Central London, one of the largest urban conurbations anywhere on the planet. Quite extraordinary to think that such glorious primal woodlands ( the house was surrounded by them) can still exist in large quantity and in pristine condition, and yet be so close to vast tracts of tar and cement. I think its a tribute to human ingenuity and planning,,,, and such things do offer hope that despite all our best efforts to over run the planet, good old Mother Nature is still beavering away keeping things in good order and ready to take right over if ever we falter.