Poor Australia. They are having it tough. The bushfires near Perth, in Western Australia, early in January were ferocious and caused enormous damage to property and wildlife.
The year before, in south east-Australia, an area the size of South Korea was burned to cinders and 33 people died.
Then last week, rural communities in New South Wales again suffered. This time, the worst plague in decades – of mice. Yuck.
A farmer said: “The ground is just moving with thousands of mice running around.” Supermarkets secure food in containers and three patients in a hospital were bitten. Farmers made hay bales for the winter and lost them to the rodents. It’s claimed just one pair of mice can produce on average up to 500 offspring in a single season. That’s just awful. Poor people.
That reminds me. Our islands’ council is again discussing proposals to mothball Bernera School on my home island of Great Bernera after the summer holidays. Too few brats, you see.
There are something like 10 pupils and three of them will leave in a few months, with no sign of any other wee ankle-biters coming along to replace them. If only some humans could reproduce a bit more than they do. No pressure, couples on Bernera. You need to think about that. Why not have an early night and think about it?
Back in Australia, that was last week’s news – and the mice haven’t gone away. Now there’s floods. Continual downpours causing the worst floods in 50 years. Thousands, again in New South Wales, have been forced to evacuate as homes were damaged or swept away. People in parts of Sydney’s north-west were ordered to leave their houses in the middle of the night as fast-moving waters caused destruction and chaos.
Despite the devastation, nature sometimes works wonderfully. The floods swept the mice away. Those Aussies don’t deserve constant rotten luck. It’s the gross, ugly, awful unfairness of it.
Like politicians investigating whether a president did wrong, ignoring the brief and instead voting along party lines. Horrible. Like having the conduct of a first minister being cleared by a proper legal investigation and that being immediately followed by a we-know-better decision based on personal ambitions and political feuds which are just as unfair.
That committee of MSPs made some sound, factual findings but they also let down Scotland by putting the focus on one person.
I am no nationalist fan boy, but this is a ghastly system. It has no place even in a “pretendy wee parliament”, as someone once famously remarked. Another Holyrood inquiry is urgently needed. It should investigate why it is still riddled with an it’s-important-to-vote-like-sheep mindset, instead of a focus on justice and fairness.
At the weekend I was focused on a painful long-standing condition deep in the inner me that flared up and I had to flee my home for the comfort and safety of an A&E department. It took me the best part of an hour to get through on the phone to NHS24 to whimper about how poorly I was. I was in total, body-bending agony but I’m not complaining. Others were in need too.
The doc said I must have a shot of powerful painkiller pethidine. I had seen that cringey video where Dolly Parton, her with the big voice who sang Jolene, turns up for her shot in a jumper with cut-outs in the shoulders for easy needle access, and sings: “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccee-eene, I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccee-eene, ’cause once you’re dead then that’s a bit too late.” Bit brutal, Doll?
So that’s why I turned up in a pair of my R. Stornoway jeans. They’re the really old ones full of holes, including where the back pockets once were. Not required, as I still got the jab in my upper arm. “Ouch, you…” Good job, doc. Never felt a thing, I said, fighting back torrents of tears.
That jab, and the other tablets I had must have made me very brave. The doc wrote me a note about what foods to avoid, what not to drink, what tablets to take and when. I looked at the note and I then told him that someone had recently put graffiti over several walls in the centre of Stornoway. He said: “Why are you telling me?” I said: “I couldn’t understand it either. Was it you?”
