Post hoc ergo propter hoc

All of these coincidences look worryingly like cause and effect. But of course human beings are designed to look for patterns in everything and that's just one more reason why we are stupid. 

I have spent more or less the whole of the morning and yesterday morning trying to obtain  a copy of my tax returns. without success. I am utterly tired of wasting my time. The main reason why there are so many corrupt people here is simply because bureaucracy makes honesty impractical.

ONLY BEAUTIFULNESSSS HERE THOUGH

A collage of photos Taken in the Porch. Pretty pretty. Green Fingers; must buy some soap

A lot has happened. But nothing has occurred it's time to do something rash. I'm an expert at RASH.
Any road up; I did some serious walking a few weeks ago,  in the north of Spain  bear country, not to be confused with bare or beer country. Tuesday and Wednesday I went parachuting and the rest of the time has been spent doing stuff on the house, translating and vegetating.


The beautiful mountain where I went a month ago has thoroughly burnt. Hundreds of kilometres of virgin countryside completely destroyed.

BURNING MOUNTAIN

And, of course, Jacky has started school. He does tend to cry as a matter of course. According to the teacher this only lasts two minutes.

Today's Poem

All the Members of My Tribe Are Liars

BY JOHN FULLER

Think of a self-effacing missionary   

Tending the vices of a problem tribe.

He knows the quickest cure for beri-beri   

And how to take a bribe.

And so the mind will never say it’s beaten   

By primitive disturbance of the liver;   

Its logic will prevent its being eaten,   

Get it across the river.

But faced with this assured inconsequence   

That damns the very method that is used,   

It leaves the heart unproselytised and hence   

Admits that it’s confused.

I know I’m acting, but I still must act.

I melt to foolishness, and want it ended.   

Why it continues is this simple fact:   

I’d hate to end it.

For now the jungle moods assert their terms   

And there’s no way to check them if they lie:

The mind attempts to solve the thing, but squirms   

And knows exactly why.

The world is everything that is the case.   

You cannot see it if you are inside it.

That’s why the tortoise always wins the race:   

the very terms decide it.

I cannot help it if I am contented

With being discontented that I falter:   

That’s why psychology was first invented   

So that we needn’t alter.

It is a strange position to be in.

It would be different if I didn’t know   

Why the unlikely animal should win,   

Which cannibal should row.

You’d think there’d be a way of cutting out   

Those self-destructive layers of introspection.   

To reach the truth at last without a doubt   

Of making the connection.

That’s why the missionary, on his guard,   

Is wondering why the cannibal’s so merry,   

And why it is so very very hard

To be a missionary.