Before

I told you (6 Oct 2022) the wall was bulging! The final fall came to pass while we were in Scotland. The rebuild began today. Hopefully there will be an "After" before too long, but I'm a self-taught amateur and it's slow work, physically and mentally taxing, often involving a fair bit of back-tracking, requiring a calm and unhurried frame of mind

It's our border with our neighbour, of course. Yesterday we visited some art installations designed to provoke thought about international borders. The subject could hardly be more topical: Ukraine, the English hysteria about refugees, Taiwan, the "border down the Irish Sea", north India. It's a big subject - way to much for a Blip - but one thing that is clear is that borders affect different people, and different nationalities, differently. For some they are (or are perceived as) "protection", for others they are a means of exclusion and disadvantage. Inevitably, it seems, they generate conflict

NASA has announced that it considers itself in a space-race with China, who they believe are seeking to appropriate the moon's resources for themselves. Have no doubt that, sooner or later, we will have borders on the moon

A much younger friend writes today to let us know that their partner is seriously ill - losing weight calamitously and unable to eat properly. Navigating depleted health care adds another layer of anguish to the ordeal. I rage on their behalf. Of course, the current compound crisis has many causes, some of them building for more than a decade. It's hard to believe, though, that borders is not one of them