Slavery and circuses ...

Autumnal abundance continues with wood blewits and honey fungus to eat, elderberries to process into winter warmer with ginger, cinnamon and the dentist's demon, sugar ...

Necessary arrangements made for train to Plymouth and boat to Santander on Tuesday, with Ingles from Ferrol current choice, though that decision can wait until Thursday morning ... tardy research shows five stages, which can easily become four and another three across to Fisterra is still short enough ... never mind, the new rucksack wants a test along with seal socks ... yet to be worn and of interest since trusty scarpas have never kept the feet dry in very wet conditions ... speaking of which, today's weather forecast is wet and an early and long walk turns out not as bad as imagined, forecasts tending towards hyperbole, and cape plus overtrousers cope well ... wellies are chosen over scarpas and keep the feet very dry, though impractical for longer walks of course ...

Reader feedback questions regular reference to work and careers as contemporary slavery ... prompting re-examination of this stark characterisation of the nature of a significant portion of the lives of many of the humans in late stage capitalist countries .... well, writers may sometimes exaggerate for effect, like some weather forecasters, and there is some truth in the idea that working for a wage in order to survive, when needs and wants are conflated by hypnotic marketing techniques in a mad attempt to maintain the fiction that a finite planet can sustain infinite growth, a fiction crucial to the very survival of capitalism in its current form, is indeed sophisticated slavery, preferable in some ways, though it is worth noting that the employer managed to convert his or her labourer from a capital asset worth feeding and sheltering (depending on the price at the slave market) to a hired hand who needs to find his or her sustenance ... within this paradigm many are lucky to find their living aligned with their purpose or at least satisfying and maybe well enough paid to live comfortably even in retirement ... many others not so much ... at another level, for good or bad and probably both, our work provides a very strong element for the construction of a separate self ... which has serious consequences when that is the key part of the edifice and retirement arrives with consequent catastrophic loss of purpose ... possibly one reason for politicians and business leaders with over-developed egos carrying on in their roles ...

Meanwhile, back at the circus, the script unfolds with the bad clown heading towards the door, whether the exit from an overweening EU or just the exit from 10 Downing Street remains to be seen. Probably not an accident that Halloween has been chosen as the fateful day. The escape from the story to Santander and the resumption of pilgrim persona may also not be accidental. 

Bread and circuses have long been recognised as the twin diet for slaves and while food banks thrive in the fifth richest country in the world by GDP, the circus stays on the road to distract us from more fundamental questions ... which require a serious step up in consciousness to even be asked.

For those completely fed up with the EU drama, a regular soap opera, The Royal Family, steps in with opportunities to have strong opinions, though how that particular institution continues in the 21st Century is a mystery ... some say you really couldn't make it up but clearly that's what's going on ... the question is, who, how and why ...