High up along the cliffs in the white rocky places a small violet flower gently unfolds and a snake is uncoiling, or in this particular case a slow-worm. Slow-worms look like snakes but are actually lizards and I don't think they are as common in the UK as they used to be. I haven't seen one for about eight years and was just thinking about them on the day I encountered one again. The slow-worm above is a male I think and has come out to enjoy the pleasant sensation of warming the blood in the sun, and what a nice day for it. After such a long and cold winter most of us feel like warming ourselves in the sun and out we step, blinking into the unfamiliar daylight, shedding clothes and able to sit outdoors again without shivering. Such a simple pleasure and as yet untaxable.
Every month as I travel the internet reading news and attempting to keep up with current and maybe not so current affairs I collect images as I go, filing them away in a slightly anal way in folders with names for each month and year. Although this might seem a slightly boring activity, going back through them gives one an interesting overview or feel for a particular time or month. I must say looking over the photos that I picked up for March 2011 it looks to have been the worst month I have ever seen since I have been connected to the internet. Bloody revolutions, fake revolutions, no fly zones, chaos, confusion, death and of course the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns, and all in one month.
Looking at the video's that people recorded of the Japanese tsunami has been absolutely mind buggering. If video footage of such events didn't exist it would be impossible to believe such a thing could ever happen, or the terrifying speed in which it could take place.
Multiple nuclear meltdowns. What can anyone say about such a thing? Astonishingly Sir David King was on Radio Four this morning pimping for the nuclear industry and promoting the building of a new MOX plant in Cumbria in the UK. A report released today says that Britain should recycle used nuclear fuel to generate more power. He said, regarding events in Japan and the public perception of the dangers was that this was just "the somewhat irrational response to this" and in his words "The potential for exposing yourself to radiation if you take an air flight between London to New York is many, many times greater than the potential to suffer from radiation drinking tapwater in Tokyo or in fact walking around Fukushima"
If only I could afford to send him and some sort of radiation measuring equipment on a fact finding mission to Fukushima. I would be very interested to find out what the actual levels are. This is of course no laughing matter but it does seem to me to be verging on insanity that anyone at this particular time could be be pimping for the nuclear industry, but there we go.
