The Stress of Moving House

I have now moved & yes there may have been the usual worries & some minor irksome situations but we seem to have not had the the nightmare scenarios that some people that we know have had. Are we lucky or just too chilled out? We have not argued, bitched or sniped, yes the djembe that I bought Richrd which was one of the first or if not the first got broken after Richard put his thumb through it, but things get broken & it can either be fixed or replaced. I had mislaid my binoculars & got despondant over them until Rich looked in a box that I could have sworn I hadn't packed them in, but obviuosly had. The cats are probably the ones who were most stressed by the move though as they hid when the removals people came & didn't emerge from behind the sofas in the new place for about 24 hours. Most of the stuff is now moved & the cats are now exploring. All the boxes are unpacked & now all we have to do is get the last couple of things from the previous house & give it a good clean. Not bad for a week's  work & the new place is feeling homely already, though we do need to get used to the quirks of the house. Like the alarm that goes off for no apparent reason on a thankfully rare occurence & the fact that there are power surges & the washing machine needs to be moved so the pipe will fit better & not leak & getting the boiler which is thankfully still under warrantee sorted as it drips. But thankfully nothing too major has happened. There has been some stress as my eczema has made an appearance on my forehead, but generally quite happy with the move as it is closer to family & some of my friends, although I do miss some of my old neighbours already.

Clearing Out the Rubbish

This not a metaphor, it is not until you are moving house do you realise how much rubbish you accrue, having a good sort out just proves this. We have 2 Christmas trees we discovered when clearing out the loft & it appears we have been using the scrattier looking one. I also cleared out the medicine cupboard to find that half of the remedies were out of date. We have had 3 charity shop runs with various items & then when it comes to packing up the stuff you do want it fills way more boxes than you expect. I have been brutal with the cull of random items that we don't need but still we have loads. Why do we accrue so much? I'm drowning in a sea of boxes. I'm keeping this post short due to needing to get cracking with packing & tidying. Take care & I shall post from the new house.

Be Kind to All Life, Become Vegan?

This is not an attack on veganism or vegetarianism just a question which I have wanted to ask for a while & would like to know an answer to. A friend on facebook recently put a post up about the blatant disregard for life within the poultry rearing industry, isn't it time you went vegan? Which also lead me to remember a sign on a vegan march in Birmingham which had a sign saying 'Be Kind To All Life Become Vegan'. Now I'm not arguing that farming practises in this day & age are all fine & dandy & the animals don't suffer at all, in fact the opposite rings true, I think all people should rely a little less on eating animals & then perhaps then with a change in that habit we would be more able to keep animals in a more humane way. My argument falls like this, a blatant disregard to all life surely should encompass that of plants, just because they can't talk does not mean they can't communicate, they have pheromones for that & they do respond to each other, acacia trees let other trees know that there are giraffes nearby so they can produce a chemical that will make their leaves unpalatable for the giraffe if it decides that the acacia that it is feeding on has gone too bitter so will try to wonder to another to continue feasting on. Plants suffer, if you pick a bean, courgette, chilli or tomato off a plant, it will grow another, not because it wants to, but needs to to survive, essentially harvesting fruit is committing abortion in the plant world. Blanching vegetables, is starving them of light, which helps provide some of its food therefore malnourishing the plant, just so chicory, rhubarb, dandelions etc don't taste quite so bitter. Then there is the cut & come again salad crops which suffer from a regular disembowelling by removing their leaves. So is this being kind to all life? Or is this if it doesn't make a sound, it doesn't count as it must be a lesser being?