Pebbles and nature

Why did coming home with a bag of horse shit make me feel so happy?

There are little buds on the crab apple outside my window. They must have been very cold in the last few days.

It's snowing.

Do not be offended because I am slow to go out.
There is a beautiful full moon over London tonight.
I drink some tea and eat some mooncakes,
Brought from Hong Kong to enjoy the Autumn sky.

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2008/9/Emotional-Hippies-Crying-Over-Dead-Trees-565864.html

Many people like beaches. Some would like to live on them or be reminded of beaches where they live. Not making your house out of sand, is however, one of the few bits of sound architectural advice that the bible contains. But many of us have the next best thing. We live in pebbledashed houses.

Pebbledash is basically render with small stones (pea shingle or stone chippings) added to give a gritty vertical shingle beach effect to external walls. Does this amount to blasphemy or is it simply sad and naff? Having lived for some time in a house with pebbledashed walls, should I go to confession? Can I be redeemed? Will I ever feel the warm sands of freedom between my carefree toes? Will I forever after feel the sea breeze passing through my carefree locks and forget the petty jealousies us suburbanites are supposed to harbour towards our stone-clad fellow men?

Or am I ever condemned to be one of the "little people" - those who, according to Steve Morgan, quoted in the New Statesman in 2001, "while not poor, live on modest incomes in modest pebble-dash houses, hold modest ambitions for themselves and their children, run modest cars and hold modest views to the effect that the country is being overrun by foreigners scrounging on social security and that gay men flaunt themselves rather too much these days. These people, or so the theory goes, resent the swish, promiscuous lifestyles of the metropolitan glitterati; equally, they resent the feckless, idle poor who benefit from state handouts."

I know its a bit tangental, but the tiny flakes of pebbledashing which came off the exterior of my house as he refixed the telephone cables a few minutes ago made me think that I could possibly squeeze in a small accolade here about Jim. Jim is a BT engineer who came this morning to fix a problem with our external line. A charming man, nothing could get him to stop from his pole and ladder climbing. He wouldn't even have a cup of tea. He was here and the whole job done within four hours 15 minutes of our first reporting the fault.

Has anyone else noticed how rocky the government is looking at the moment? We have Northern Rock, David Miliband pretending he is without sin but did not to throw the first stone at his boss, and now John Prescott is rocking the boat:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/prescott-backs-pm-ndash-by-comparing-him-to-the-captain-of-the-titanic-885187.html