Three worries

The first worry concerned our kitchen table, which we almost invariably use for breakfast and other lesser meals, almost always laid with my sitting with my back to the cooker and with BH sitting with her back to the back door, behind the camera. Waking up this morning, I had a very clear image of coming down to the kitchen to find that the table was in the right position, but laid cross wise rather than lengthwise. This caused mild anxiety, anxiety which rapidly seems to have chased this image away.

I then moved onto the Lands' End catalogue, laid out to display some shirt purchase options. I was slightly concerned about the white/pale/blonde Caucasian look of the thing, but on closer inspection found that there were probably more images of people of colour - albeit on the pale end of the spectrum and rather more females than males - than their numbers in the population here in the UK would warrant. So no real cause for concern there.

Lastly, I turned over the question of Blackrock, an investment company which the Guardian alleges owns a large slice of the world's coal mining industry. The boss of Blackrock recently saw fit to tell the world that his job, his fiduciary duty even, was to make money for his shareholders and that looking after the environment, or anything else of that sort, was not his concern. I suppose like a tax lawyer, he would argue, if pressed, that anything within the letter of the law was OK. While I am not sure at all that he is setting a good example. Do we really want our able young people to think that operating within the letter of the law is good enough? This worry remains.

PS: not quite sure why the apostrophe is where it is in Lands' End, but that is where it is on its website - while as far as the place in Cornwall is concerned, it should be one character to the left. Would they claim that they have the correct placement of the apostrophe on a word which ends with an 's'?