Sun and Sun

Natural disaster. Earthquake, tsunami. Here the warm autumn is beginning to develop a sharper edge as the wind picks up. The sun still slanting over the road in that hesitant end-of-sunny days manner. The Chinese take-away over the road is quiet. Our neighbour's daughter has returned to Australia. My Australian cousin rings in the evening, tells me my elderly Australian second-cousin is frailer than she was, but that her 87 year old husband, a Steinerian, has written a book about soil that could save the world. And my father is out of hospital. He wants no operations. Fair enough at 92.

As for me, I work, answering letters, sending books, reading people's PhD drafts, meeting people, writing blurbs. I see The Sun has decided to back the Tories. I shall not vote Tory but will register my hopeless Labour vote when the time comes. Hopeless because I cannot really stand the sound of Gordon Brown any more, that I have saved the world and had nothing to do with putting it in danger guff. Dead man walking and talking.

It is not personalities, not even precisely where the party stands now or in the next five years on this or that policy that keeps me voting as I do. It's very simple and I'm keeping it that way. Who needs more support? The weak or the strong? End of story.

To Ursula Fanthorpe's memorial service on Saturday. Long drive coming.