A sting in the tail

I have just finished reading 'The Empty Chair' by Jeffrey Deaver. It is not in the 'Vanished man' class but not bad. It features a character referred to as the insect boy, who is at one with the small creatures of his environment. He uses references from insect based research books to theorise that if human life were to become extinct, the earth would survive quite happily without them, loose all the insects, however, the we would all be doomed.

With this in mind, I have been alarmed to read of the problems currently facing the world bee population. Bees matter. They make honey which I thoroughly enjoy, and the fertilise many of our garden flowers and fruits, but the bumblebee population is falling dramatically.

Some of the decline is due to insecticide usage in agriculture, but more worrying is that they are now under attack by parasites. Government assistance in isolating and eradicating the diseases which affect them has been cut to £1m, a reduction of 20%, just at the time it is most needed. researchers have been laid off and inspectors sacked.

There are 270,000 hives in Britain. Last Winter one in five colonies perished. Half of Italy's 50 billion honey bees died last year, and Colony Collapse Disorder has wiped out 2 million colonies across America and billions of bees worldwide.

We need bees, just as the insect boy said we do, and he is not alone. Einstein was said to have calculated that if bees disappear off the surface of the globe, mankind would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more life. I think the government need to reverse their funding policy soonest.

Blimey, Dumbledore a gay, what's all that about then?

One of the joys of beach holidays for me is the ability to catch up with a bit of reading. That's not to say I don't normally read, but the two week stretch does give ample time to blast through the bookshelf backlog.

I started this time with the final Harry Potter book. I had been trying very hard to avoid knowing the ending, and think I did pretty well save for some wretched Welsh Blodwyn blurting something out at a party. It was still a shock though when Lord Voltmort piloted a new Dreamliner straight into the midst of Hogwarts. It was like something out of Emmerdale, and without Dumbledore around to save them, the whole school got decimated. No chance of a Frank Sinatra comeback there then Harry boy!!

I am only jesting of course. I would no more give away the ending to this marvellous tale as I would the Mouse Trap. 'Tunnels' is billed as the next big kids book, but having read it, I can't see it being the cult that the Potter books have been, but we shall see.

Three days it took to read Potter, I then proceed to polish off 'Bring me the Head of Sergio Garcia', a book about a good amateur golfer trying his hand on the pro tour, albeit the third tier tour. Tom Cox was the author, and he did a reasonable enough job. It was interesting though to see how he struggled to break 80 on the tour when he had regularly broken 70 in his amateur events. There is no accounting for pressure. I enjoy a good golf book, reading 'Preferred Lies' by Andrew Greig, last year. Andrew revisited his roots in Scotland after a serious brain injury had almost killed him, and he played golf as a means to blend the various parts of his early life together. It did not have any pace to it as a book, but I guess it did the job for him.

Both these books fell short of my favourite 'Final Rounds', the story of a man, James Dobson, and his father touring England and Scotland together playing the courses his father , Brax, played when he was a GI stationed over here. He was in ill health and it was a now or never trip for them both. It was a very moving and interesting book and just pushes 'A Good Walk Spoiled' into second place.

'Merde Happens' was the third book I managed to finish, the story of an Englishman, French woman and an American driving around the USA in a mini. It is Stephen Clarkes third book and probably had enough in it to get me to read one of his others.

I returned home with 'Sleeping Doll' by Jeffery Deaver, 'Relentless' by Simon Kernick, 'Buried' By Mark Bellingham and 'The Afghan' by Frederick Forsyth, still to read I should have started one of them, but no, I picked up 'Homo Britannicus' by Chris Stringer, the history of Human Life in Britain.

Good looking book, well put together it may be, but its a bit like reading an encyclopedia for recreation.I can't handle the history of voles (Mimomys savini and Arvicola terrestris cantiana) in tracking mans movements across the country or learning about the only record of Britains extinct frog (Pliobatrachus). It does mention Kents Cavern in Torquay though, a trip which we as a family did when we lived in Devon. I am intent on finishing it though, but might skip the history of axe heads and a few other bits to get to the exciting parts of the book. That's assuming there are any of course.