Hypertension? You Bet!

All in all, I’d rather be in Rome. I’m still on holiday, working harder than if I’d been at work. I’m in the middle of developing facial skincare– cream, lotion, you name it; I’m making it and testing it. Plus, I’m redesigning the packaging, testing out switching products from plastic to glass (although our plastic bottles are already 100% recyclable), designing artwork for the new products etc etc. So you can see why I hate the living guts of Extinction Rebellion. Trying to traverse Central London is an absolute nightmare especially when you factor in torrential rain. What is with the rain, anyway? If God is looking for a handy target for lightning bolts, I can recommend a Tower-of-Babel lookalike in Brussels…..Not quite sure what XR’s end game is – there is surely no one left alive whose ecological awareness needs improving. We all know what the problem is; what are their solutions? As for the people going on about their children’s futures… you have children!!??? Do you know what a burden that puts on the planet according to the overpopulation fascists? That’s it, euthanasia all around.

Of course what the overpopulation crowd never seem to address is who is going to look after this population of aged people, who will be working to cover their pensions and where are the healthcare professionals coming from when the average age of the country is 60 and everyone is living to 90 in this new utopia? Where are the new ideas and innovation going to come from with no young people?

It’s the same idiotic argument being touted against private schools– kneejerk class envy response from all of us… Abolish Them! OK, and the extra 400,000 pupils who will be dumped into state schools, how do we cater for that? Errr… And the income generated from foreigners sending their children to UK private schools; how do we cover that shortfall? Errr… The aim should be to make all schools in the UK as good as the private ones, not to overburden or propagate the current rubbish system. Never mind postcode lottery and living 200 yards from the good state schools, we’ll have to move into the gym to get a place, assuming that all gyms haven’t been converted to extra classrooms for all these new pupils. You want to make state schools better? Simple. Make it a condition of service that everyone who works in the government or has a spouse who does, all members of the royal family, all members of the armed forces, the church, health service employees etc are prohibited from sending their child to a private school either here or abroad. Watch the schools get better sharpish. While we’re about it, ban them from using private healthcare as well and if they work for the council or are MPs, they must go to work on public transport wearing badges. Then get some popcorn.

So having worn myself out thoroughly, I decided to try my hand at preserving peaches which I’ve been planning all summer. The fact that this is the fourth lot of peaches I’ve bought, having had to eat all the previous ones because I couldn’t be bother should have tipped me off. What a palaver! This confirms my belief that all tasks should be left to experts. I’ll keep on making creams, the Man from Del Monte can keep on canning peaches. First try peeling the evil little suckers, even after practically parboling them and thus burning your fingers as you peel them. As for neatly halved peaches, apparently the wretched stones are attached with superglue. I gave that up immediately after the first peach and when for a ‘torn apart by wolves’ technique. Not as pretty but your BP stays below ‘medical emergency’. Then sterilise the 4000 parts of a kilner jar in the nearest nuclear reactor lest you bottle up the bubonic plague by mistake. I used every bit of crockery and utensil in the house while making this pesky jar; I have cooked Christmas dinner in less time and with fewer pans. And I can cook- an amateur would have blown themselves up or stabbed themselves in the hand by the end. I highly recommend going to M&S at Christmas and buying your peaches in brandy there like a civilised human being (or rum as in my case. I was too cheap to use brandy. The prices! Outrageous) From the blasted recipes you’d think this was the Middle Ages : sterilise this, boil that, use a lid -lifter (don’t ask!) Meanwhile human beings have been preserving stuff without using a microwave, bain-marie, oven, 40 litres of boiling water etc etc since time began. Of course, the average mortality age was 50 years younger. Still who’s counting 🙂 Mind you, having worked myself into a frenzy, drinking the 500mls of leftover rum made things much better. The peaches still look like they’d been mauled by wolves but you stop caring. Have a fab week. Hic! Haec! Hoc!