My mother was a bit of a hippy self-sufficiency nut in the early 1970s. I spent a happy holiday on a commune in Wales not fully taking in why the dreamers who lived there were so doomed to failure. I wonder what she would think of the Greek Hovel?
At one level I am sure she’d support the idea of eco-loos, ultimate plans to be self-supporting with solar energy and to grow or catch more and more of my own food. But would she be proud of me today as I head out to spray lethal chemicals on the land?
You see the frigana (little thorns that can turn into trees) is back. Last year I chopped it all down thinking of Bulletin Board Morons as my strimmer sliced through 2,000 square metres of the stuff. In February I burned whole areas down to the root. But just with BBMs it is back. You think a BBM moron has seen the light as he accepts that Worthington is not the new Hanson and then he pops up insisting that Daniel Stewart is the new Goldman Sachs.
And so across the land I have frigana again. Okay the plants now range from 2 inches (most of them – as above) to a foot whereas last year it was 8 inches to 4 foot and with giants coming in at 12 foot or more. But the bastards are all back. And so I have already started a 28 day programme to kill the lot with chemicals. This is my new backpack and already today I have sprayed a whole load onto the frigana. I shall do another session this afternoon and should have finished the whole property within 12 days. At which point I shall start again. This is war!
I cannot remember if my mother was so green that she did not use chemicals. I shall have to ask my father who arrives here next week. But if she did not, I beg her forgiveness but there really is no alternative.