The expiry date of nice weather politics …

Wednesday 1 March 2017. It’s silent on the lonely hill, quieter still than normal in the early hours. There is a cup of coffee and a piece of homemade cake on the kitchen table and the dog wants out every five minutes to return and shut the door by itself, because she learned that there is a reward for doing so. The laptop is unfolded, the worldly news rolls over the screen. It just seems the start of a day in the week, as all the other days do, early, dark and with the least possible sound to be able to hear the voice in my head. The groceries from the supermarket of my brain are cheap, and most have only a few days left before the expiry date has passed. Other than on other Wednesdays there is no hurry, the job outdoors is cancelled and even though the workshop calls for new projects creativity itself seems, hopefully temporary, to hide behind concentration crippling concoctions. The world get’s a little less beautiful every day and, no, that is not a metaphorical expression for the threatening situation in which populist hate preachers have brought us. The beauty of the Earth is being supplanted by "money saving" solutions, the mess that comes with surviving and therefor traces of nature destruction are broadening themselves. There's no walk in the rural heart of this beautiful country, which presents itself as an ideal holiday destination, that passes without an encounter with some illegal dumping spot. Sometimes hidden deep at the end of a forest path, but even on a quiet spot along the road you will find the results of wrong government decisions. Until a few years ago, the sawdust maker drove regularly to the local dump for “not defining waste”, sorted all the wood, useful or not, and brought it to the workshop for recycling or make it into appropriate proportions for the wood-burning stove. Senor Triciclo, given that name by me because of his old Piaggio tricycle, loaded up all the paper and cardboard every day and the "scrapyard man" took care of the elimination of all metals. The insulation from demolished refrigerators, the plastic "damaged car" parts, tires and the cable casings left behind by copper thieves, that you find in the Woods nowadays, were among the items that survived and had to be removed by the "municipality". You can of course, quasi environmentally aware, ban plastic bags from supermarkets but if you, at the same time, close local "bulky waste" dumps with a 4-meter-high wall, one has to wonder how "tourist" friendly that policy actually is. At the end of our village is a beautiful beach, on a spit of land in the river, and after posting a public picnic area with barbecue, fixing up all water sources and asphalting of the last bit off track, now toilets and showers will be build and maybe, just maybe, the scattered road, from and through the village, will be of refurbished to prevent damage to the cars of visitors. What is going, on a few metres from that route, in nature, does not appear to be a priority. It's not just unfortunate for the sawdust maker, who just poured a fifth Cup of coffee, and Senor Triciclo that the landfill is closed. It's too bad for the image of the crowded campsites, B&B's and hotels around, whose guests, over and over again, are confronted with remnants of a non working bulky waste policy, during their hiking in the beautiful vicinity. It is clear that most of the dumped rubbish comes from commercial activities and a decent police officer should be able to figure out which fridge demolisher or car repair company is illegally dumping the remains of their work. While a drizzle lays a foggy layer over the valley, the four-legged friend is ready for her daily walk, the frustrations, about both the future of the world as the personal problems, intertwine like a bunched up ball in my brain. It's an other "workbench" Wednesday than the weeks before, an ideal day for illegally eliminating dirt, the mounted police is only galloping buy, on the hunt for criminal activity on sunny days....