Pixiq

It helps to be a tolerant kind of guy, non-judgemental about human frailties when you have a bag full of your own…people in glass houses, they say, should not throw stones.

Trouble is there are too many folk who love to set themselves up to tell you what to do. It’s probably through huge personal insecurity on their part …so then WE have to feel sorry for THEM being a pain in OUR rear ends. AAGGH.  They can run your life so much better than you – having made such a patent success of their own…not.

A day or so ago, as I lay on the ground deep in a birchwood, I pondered this modern tendency towards cloying care from those who would be both their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. I thought back to those dim and distant days of my childhood books of fairy stories where tiny elfin folk were always sitting on or under a mushroom (hey, they knew all about hallucinogenics…). Usually, those fungi were bright red with white spots… the Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) containing the psychoactive substance muscimol. In Siberia, they once used it as an intoxicant and hallucinogen in religious ceremonies…so, OK for fairies, not really one for the kids... It is highly poisonous but rarely fatal, which is more than you can say for some of its relatives in the genus Amanita such as Death Cap (Amanita phalloides). Posters on the walls of our schoolrooms pointed out the dangers...

Deadly Nightshade was, at one stage (and might still for all I know) an essential ingredient along with “tail of newt, eye of frog, juice of snail and tongue of dog" (and don't go easy on the mandrake fries) in a witches take-away. What got me was the humourless insistence of this man (given his moment of fame) on the need to eradicate the plant on the basis of one incident, largely due to the ignorance of the picker.

Unkind people might say the genes of someone so "intellectually challenged" are best not passed on and that this was Darwinian selection at its best…But we live in a no-blame world where even the chronically obese can bleat (or belch) that it's not their fault, no one told them that 50lb of donuts per day and two gallons of Pepsi might make them a touch heavier than good health might dictate. So sue, sue sue…Hell, I know I carry a few too many pounds but it's because I love cooking good food, eating it and washing it down with a glass or three of wine: this is Italy! Whose fault ? Mine, all mine.

We go out around once week close to home where we live in Italy looking for new places to  go walking and taking ‘bread and butter’ photos – we find an amazing number of ancient sites (Etruscan and Roman) that are never visited, far away from roads and where nature has taken over. Italy has too much and cannot cope with what, anywhere else, would be prized. You can clamber up cliff paths, look over sheer drops and there are no notices saying it is dangerous: clearly it is …and you should know, stupid. 

Now, if there is one thing that is guaranteed to make me deliberately politically 'obtuse' it is a certain kind of person who loves to tut and shake their head... Italians (bless’em) take a much more relaxed approach: live, let live and park anywhere you want. I am not extolling that latter aspect but that ‘flexible approach’ tends to make for better, smoother interaction with one’s fellow human and engenders a lot less aggression.

On second thoughts, I realize I may have 'maligned' those who promote excessive control…after all, they are selflessly doing it for us. We poor, inferior mortals need their guidance…and maybe lawyers would go poor and hungry if we took responsibility for our own actions: a terrible, terrible thought.

So, I’d like to dedicate an image to those folk (wheresover they may be and whomsoever they are) generously imposing their narrowness on the rest of us… strictly on the basis that one picture is worth a thousand words.