Meanderings

A surprise this week, the new Prime Minister is still in office!

Not only that, but few have made serious claims about his mental health.  I suspect this will not continue.  Naturally, his cabinet are lying bare-faced to the world, but that is what we have become used to.  Not much else will change in the near future.

The leaves are falling fast from the trees, the fields and pavements are overflowing.  Only the driver of the town cleansing truck, the one used to run along pavements clearing them away will be happy, all that overtime from 7 am tomorrow!  The colours are good, but it is always sad to see the branches revealed once again, and the occasional birds nest high up on many.  

The clocks also go back one hour on Sunday, thus giving one more hour to ponder breakfast.  Unless you have a cat, a dog or a child of course.  I may take the opportunity to rise early and stumble down to church.  Though rain is once again returning the minute I leave the door.

I am ploughing through three books at the moment, one has 700 pages of small font, and lots of big words.  It is not easy to keep track.  The other two are easier but football fills the air and reading is slow.

How did people live before books?

Writing only arrived around 3500 years BC in southern Iraq, a place called Sumar.  Not much later it arrived in China and South America also.  Was this because of rising populations?  Trade opening up? Before that there were no books, but I suppose story tellers filled the gap.  An evenings entertainment listening to the history or folk tales of the locale.  Hero's and giants, and some right old rubbish also.  A little bit like the UK's free press I think. 

How could we live without books today?