I like to think that I'm the sort of person who notices things. One thing that has struck me this year is that there is a huge increase in the number of men wearing shorts. Perhaps you have noticed it as well.
I wonder if this a further sign of global warming and I wonder if these men will be wearing shorts come the winter. So far the only body of men who seem to wear shorts in the winter are postmen.
There was a time in my life when I used to go to a lot of farmer meetings and at much the same time lots of farmers were adopting what they call New Zealand grazing systems.
You could always tell these farmers because they used to wear shorts all the year around. It was like a badge of honour with them.
I'm not anti-shorts. I used to wear shorts in the summer but I haven't so far this year. It's probably not worth it now, it'll soon be Christmas.
Somewhere I have a khaki shirt, khaki shorts and a pith helmet so I can do the white hunter if required, but there's not much call for them around here.
The Sky man
Yesterday we had a visit from a nice young man from Sky, he was also wearing shorts. He was here to update our Sky box.
He was perplexed at first, he couldn't work out why we were still getting a TV picture, something to do with a creeper rubbing through a wire. Don't you just love it when someone who thinks they are more technical than you, gets lost.
But shorts wasn't all he was wearing. He had on a climbing harness. At first I thought it was a bit over the top. As far as I knew he only had to go about 10 feet off the ground and that was up a ladder and here he was kitted out as if he were just about to climb Everest.
Surely he didn't need that sort of kit to reach a satellite dish. But I need to stop there, we all need to stop there. He was on his own and he had a lot of ladders on the roof of his van.
Health and safety
It just goes to show how other industries take health and safety more seriously than we do.
In farming we have a terrible record for safety, I'm quite sure that not taking it seriously is a factor.
I can remember years ago we were having a safety visit and the inspector was having a look around. An employee was finishing the scraping and he got off the tractor to open a gate and the tractor started to move and nearly hit the inspector.
I said it was because the driver hadn't applied the hand brake. He hadn't applied the hand brake because this particular tractor didn't have any brakes and the driver had been told to park across the slope anyway.
We didn't tell the inspector about the brakes, which was just as well because we all had a serious bollocking anyway.
It was quite funny after the inspector had gone, it wasn't funny while he was here.
And so the Sky man went away, but if he comes again and I know him better I'll ask him to clear the gutters out.
A new remote
He left a new remote control. I'd only just got comfortable with the last one. I don't need that sort of stress in my life while the rugby World Cup is on.
I wonder, as he drove to his next visit, if he realised what a big safety impression he had made.
I think it's a lot to do with money, things have been tight for years. When things are tight you develop a mindset that is to do with ‘making do'. Things like fixing the brakes on a scraper tractor.
In recent years I have taken an interest in politics. I got the result of two elections and a referendum wrong.
I don't like being wrong and so I thought I needed to know more about it all. Don't worry I'm moving on now, I found the recent Ashes cricket series much more interesting than politics.
I've met a lot of politicians over the years but if you take away their ego's there's not much left.
Anyway the bosses of supermarkets are appearing in front of a commons select committee and they are being accused of profiteering on food prices.
Profiteering
High food prices cause inflation, and inflation is the cause of all our woes and is as big a negative as global warming.
One of the supermarket bosses says that they only make 3% profit on food. 3% is quite reasonable and you can see all the MPs relaxing.
But hang on a minute; if you sell someone a litre of milk and you do it over 50 times a year don't you multipy that 3% profit by 50? Or is it me just being thick. (Don't answer that).
We have seen profiteering on fuel, it's a part of the natural agenda to do it wherever they can. 3% would not deliver the eye watering profits they announce every year.
