HERE IS THE NEWS

First of all I should like to tell you a story.
There was once a farmer who owned a hen house full of chickens. Every one of these chickens laid an egg every day which were collected by the farmers wife who sold them each week at the market as well as feeding her family with fresh eggs every day,a happy state of affairs.

One day the farmer saw and advertisement for another hen house and he resolved to purchase it at all hazard. One enquiring as to the price he discovered that in order to find the money to buy the new hen house he would have to sell a large number of his productive chickens and to make matters worse the seller was insisting that his hen house could not be sold without the chickens who lived in it. These were elderly birds and had not laid any eggs for some time. The farmer, who was all fired up to buy no matter what the consequences agreed the price, sold some of his own productive birds and returned home with the new hen house complete with useless chickens.

He felt very proud when he looked down the field at his two hen houses The following week there were no eggs for breakfast and on market day the farmers wife returned from her weekly trip with only half the usual egg money,. “What happened?” said the farmer, and of course his wife made no bones about telling him, called him a blithering idiot and the next day filed for divorce. There are those among you who will not need me to explain the moral of this cautionary little tale.

I actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep last night,however due to that damn fool of a farmer I was obliged to get up early. The buggy was supposed to have had its annual service this morning, the chap turned up on time, said he did not have the parts and told us he would return in two weeks time.....hmmmmm!

I have been following the phone taping allegations with interest and concern. What astonishes me most is the fact that people have expressed themselves surprised that a news paper editor should go to such lengths. The down right dirty methods employed by the press come as no surprised to me, I have been on the receiving end of their unscrupulous behaviour.

Many years ago I returned from a day out to discover that my home had been raised almost to the ground by fire, we had lost every thing including three beautiful and dearly loved cats. I was overcome with grief and so shocked that I could not speak for a couple of hours . My mother was a tower of strength and took us in that night. As we sat too stunned to think and grieving over the awful death of our beloved pets the telephone rang, My mother answered it and and came back saying nothing. During the next two or three hours the phone kept ringing every few minutes, they wanted to speak to me and would not stop calling until I spoke to them. I took the receiver from my mother and asked them what they wanted.

They asked the usual stupid questions such as how did I feel, was I upset about my cats, forced in to talking about these things I broke down and sobbed hysterically at which point my mother took the phone from me , gave them a piece of her mind and hung up, They called once more to tell me that if I would not talk to them they would print what they liked and that is exactly what they did. In the article they published they hinted strongly that we had burned our home down in order to claim the insurance, this was untrue and besides tragically we were not insured. This did not stop quite a lot of people from believing the article and our lives were made a misery for months. The paper did eventually print an apology, a few lines hidden away amongst the obituaries. The original article had covered a whole page complete with photographs.

The only place that the press could have obtained my mothers telephone number was from the police and the details of the events were better known to the reporter who called that to me.
This type of thing is disgusting, it is unfortnately nothing new.
I can not believe that any one is fooled by the closing of The News of The World, why should hundreds of people loes their jobs to save the skins of a few rotten apples at the top of the tree? It is not the news paper that is rotten but the people who own and run it.
AND NOW BACK TO THE HUM-DRUM

I decided to make individual chicken and bacon pies for dinner tonight each with a crisp puff pastry top and served with a sweet potato well buttered, it proved a good choice as the weather has turned Autumnal all at once. I also baked my special apple cake using some timely windfalls brought down by last nights strong wind. My sun flowers look sick and the garden is bedraggled but hey-ho what else is new.

I have managed to do lots of chores today including the ironing, I would rather have cleaned out a pig sty but at least the job is done for now. The bathroom is sparkling,also for now and I can at last get the laundry baskets lids to close, how long that will last is any bodies guess!