It's time

Proper trauma therapy started. Ugh.

I had some after the attack, but with the exception of the excellent Victim Support it wasn't particularly far reaching. The attack just broke a lid on old nasty stuff I've normalised so hey. Bit horrendous though.

I am in danger of over-committing to projects and I just have to be realistic about what I can do.

1)The water restoration project. This is pretty much on my doorstep, the local nature reserve with burns and bog running through it; it's been a godsend during lockdown, has funding and brings together SEPA, West Lothian Council, Forth Fisheries Trust and the local community to improve the water course. I've filled in the survey, gone to the meeting, and honestly suspect the rest of my involvement will be mainly litter picking or helping fish shopping trolleys out of the water. That's fine with me.

2)The Old Dreadnought Hotel; a poor old Victorian building in the middle of town left to rot, its owners mysteriously disappeared. It may be too far gone to save, but if it can be done, someone is suggesting that it be turned into a refuge for women fleeing from domestic violence. I am up for this but have no idea what I can do. First we have to find these owners.

3) The local 'Save the Hills' project, which is in its infancy, and covers everything from biodiversity to access and culture. The writing and research bit seems to have been bagsied by someone else, though I dare say these things will be team efforts. The leader is asking me if I would like to run the 'culture' portfolio. Because the project is so young, this could mean a lot or a little, I have no clue. So I don't know.

4) It really does feel like time to join the Scottish Greens.

Right now my editing has turned into an exercise in over-thinking. The new rule must be never to edit more than one chapter at a time, and if it takes three days then so be it.

Antics at Number 10

Just because it entertains me;

So Lee Cain, BJ's Director of Comms gets the job of Head of Staff or maybe he didn't, then resigned or maybe was pushed. He's a mate of the RasPutinesque Dominic Cummings and worked on Vote Leave. He resigns/is thrown out and Dominic Cummings may leave too, because he is outraged, no wait, he always intended to leave in January, no wait! Then we hear that this is all because Carrie Symonds doesn't approve of the Cain appointment. Carrie, while active in the Conservative party, is most well known for getting knocked up by Boris Johnson to the tune of young Wilf whose arrival at the end of April suggests a tryst between his parents while BJ was still married to another woman - a woman undergoing cancer treatment at the time. As an aside, the major row between Carrie and BJ last year is said to revolve around BJ's latest interest, a 28 year old Russian violinist who apparently helps our PM with his fiddling when he visits Lebedev's palazzo in Italy. To British journalists, Boris Johnson's penis is like the albatross in The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner : shooting it down brings the most appalling bad luck, or at least a super-injunction. Ignoring the misogyny applied to Carrie (the Russian violinist will have to wait her turn) truth is, she doesn't have a place in government as far as I know. Her influence would not be enough to sunder BJ from the only person in Number 10 with any kind of plan.

The great sea-change here has little to do with Cain or Cummings. The difference is the election of Joseph Biden; anti-Brexit, pro GFA. BJ needs to get on the right side of him and for that sacrifices are needed. Top brexiter advisors may be enough. Then 'Honest Boz' Johnson can start trying to wheedle that deal. If he doesn't get it or some compromise with the EU, he's shot, and the Conservative party will redouble their efforts to find his replacement. Meanwhile, Cain and Cummings can start making sweet eyes at Gove with whom Cummings at least has worked before, in the hope that he will be swept into Number 10 once party elders have bribed BJ to retire.

It's like I, Claudius with better mushrooms.