Meeting Demand

"Due to the National Co-op Suppy Chain, we are experiencing supplier shortages"

A hastily printed paper notice, stuck on the (empty) shelves in the local Co-op supermarket. A masterpiece of mangled English. An object lesson in how to say something without saying anything. Sufficiently confusing to deflect pointed questions. "We apologise for any inconvenience". It's not so much the inconvenience - the other supermarket, after all, is only metres away, and has no shortage of suppliers (sic) - it's the involuntary shiver of what my grandma called 'a goose walking over your grave'. Echoes of Covid, memories of fuel rationing, whispers from every dystopian movie I have ever seen. This is how it begins...

Perhaps we shouldn't be watching the TV Scandi-noir about the Danish government deciding to evacuate the country when the cost of sea defences becomes so high that the national economy can't support it. Or that stupid American thriller about the US trying to annexe Canada and mount an armed invasion of Greenland. Hollywood plots just get more ludicrous by the day; someone else should have a go

The bees love Cotoneaster so much that they barely wait for the flowers to open. I wonder why it is so attractive. This is the first day I have seen them on it - another marker of the year progressing. The bee is nice, especially the veins in the wings, but its the greens and the tightly clenched pink that attract me to the picture. The still-closed buds promise more to come. No supply problems