I'm on my high horse...

I ought to warn you, you are entering a serious post from me.  

If you don't want to know the score look away now!

In fact I'm feeling so incensed, I'm scuttling off to the left-hand margin.

Let me tell you a story...  Back in the day I told a stonking great fib in the playground.  'I've got my own horse!'  Regular readers of my blog will know I flit from one mad-cap scheme to another.  Back then was no different, in fact it may even have been the dawn of my life long problem.  At the age of ten I fell 'deeply' in love with horses.  I think the word deeply is deeply flawed.  Bear with me, all will be revealed.

One Saturday morning, bright and early I took myself off to the nearest riding school in Bexley.  This was going to be my first experience of horse riding: a gentle trot around a ring on a leading rein was how I thought they'd break me in.  No chance: for reasons best known to themselves I was taken on an out ride.  Yes along roads, lanes and across fields.

My chubby bot went down as the horse's back came up... bump, bump, bump.  Not sure I like this, flitted idly across my mind.  From out of the large backside in front of me issued the command 

'I think we'll canter!'  

Off we shot, with me hanging on for grim death, my bum was hitting the poor old horse's back like hail on a tarmacked road.  

I fell off.  Reigning in with just a riderless horse on the end of her tape, the backside said

'Jump back on' in imperious tones.

With stiff legs and never having been shown how to, I did try, oh how I did try.  Trouble was, there was no one to give me a bunk up.  The girth strap had loosened and as I endeavoured to hoist myself aboard the saddle slipped.  My embarrassment knew no bounds.

That in a nutshell, is how my new found love withered and died in just the space of two hours, one cold and crisp Saturday morning.

Back in the playground I owned up, 'I lied, sorry!'

From that day to this I admit I have no great love of the equine kind however...

I'm sure you've guessed where this is going!  I do feel very strongly about the con in convenience food.  

Where did it all go so horribly wrong?

It isn't horses, cattle, pigs, hens, dogs, cats... it is us... human beings... you know... 

the ones with greater intelligence?  One word - Greed.

In the eighties I lived a self-sufficient life up on the NW coast of Scotland.  Living a totally self reliant life is hard, bloody hard, invigorating, fulfilling but tough for all that.

Friends would come up on holiday and see me raising pet lambs given to me by the crofters who didn't have time to raise them.

'How can you bear to kill your pets and eat them?'  was a question often posed.

'Very easily when I know they've lived a happy life on the hill, grazing the heather and

being selective about what they eat.  Then a short trip half a mile down to the croft where they are dispatched with dignity and speed!  Can you say the same about where your meat has come from?'

'Well... No!  When I buy joints and meat ready prepared I don't then have to associate it with the animal!'

Don't get me wrong I can see where they're coming from.  The problem I have is, who are they conning... themselves by turning a blind eye?

Turning a blind eye, insisting on cheap food, has opened the way to unscrupulous folk to shaft us.

I've always been an oddity, CND secretary of my local branch, into whole food, free-range, organic, vegetarianism for seven years.  I'm anti sweeteners, margarine, you name it, if its not as nature intended, I as a matter of course don't like it.  Don't ask me why, cos I've no idea that's just me.

Man never ceases to amaze me, where did we get the idea we know best?

Two little sad stories.

I was married to a dairy farmer.  One evening as a 'special treat' we got the milking done early and took ourselves off for a night out.  A meeting paid for by a feed stuff company,

a presentation, drinks and buffet.

Presentation over.
  

'Any questions?'
Up shot my arm, like I knew the way to Amarillo?

'Can you tell me why some of the feed stuff has hens carcasses, feathers and shit in it?

To my knowledge cows are herbivores!  Am I wrong?'

The audience started to shuffle, with thoughts only on the beer and pork pies.

Needless to say my question went unanswered.  

The other occasion was when I got to know some folk that kept hens.  Having long ago left the Highlands I always had a yen for a newly laid egg.

'Are your hens free range?'

Falling back in horror the indignant little lady said

'Oh no!  I could never eat an egg that free range hens had laid!'

'Why?'

'Well, they eat disgusting things like worms and slugs!'

I turned away with the thought,  Don't go there Linda, perhaps it's you that has skewered thinking?  Humans know better than hens?  Yes in maths and physics and many things I grant you, but diet and nutrition, I don't think so!

By now you probably have a shrewd idea where this is going?

We've all been conned into buying cheap. Suddenly we don't want to know the provenance of our food, just as long as it's cheap.  Along the way we've inadvertently shafted our fellow man.  If we'd all stuck to buying good wholesome food produced here, (less food miles) from local butchers and shops, then British farmers and producers wouldn't have been going out of business at speed.  The ever greedy big boys in the guise of supermarkets, large manufacturing companies, con us into thinking they're giving us what we want.  Now lets be clear, they're giving themselves what they want.  Bigger profits, larger pat on the back bonuses, smug share holders: all laughing their way to the bank.  

All I ask is vote with your purse, learn the joy of cooking and making delicious meals out of very little.  And please don't say I haven't got the time, you've managed to find the time to be conned into buying crap.  Think of the growing bones of the next generation, yes, your children, grandchildren and for God's sake stop and think before it's too late.