Wheels.

I'm sorry I haven't been around lately but I have been busy. Busy doing nothing and it has exhausted me. This flu virus cough thing has been a bleedin' nuisance. It comes and goes seemingly at will. Just when you think it has released you from it's virulent grasp, back it comes to knock you down again.. Poor old extremely handsome son George has been hit particularly hard by it. So much so that we did insist he went to the doctor. It's a virus, the doctor says and it could last up to six weeks! He must be in his fifth week now. He did get well enough to return to college for a few days though. George doesn't cope well with illness, like most very fit people I suppose, and I have never known him so grumpy. It was nice to see him back to his usual happy self, even if it was just for a few days. What is going on?

It isn't just feeling unwell that has brought me low. This long dragging on winter has made me tardy too. If it isn't dull and overcast outside, it is raining. If it isn't raining it is freezing. The cold weather has frozen my brain I do believe, and it is working at an even lower rate of knots than usual.

 This morning though, after a somewhat sleepless night, due to coughing. I had a lucid moment. I spoke sharply to myself, "Get out of bed you useless waste of space and get on with your life. Are you going to lie here all morning feeling sorry for yourself?"

"No I bleedin' well ain't." I answered. Yes living on my own I do tend to talk to myself sometimes. And yes when I do talk to myself I do tend to lapse into a cockney dialect. Except when I become Scottish that is. The trouble is having moved about such a lot when younger I can't make up my mind where I come from.

Anyway I did jump out of bed and I did honestly have every intention of getting on with my life. Indeed I did get on with things for a few minutes. But then the cold kicked in and my brain froze again, so I came back inside and lit the fire.

It was while I was sitting by the fire waiting for my brain to thaw out that I suddenly began to think about the wheel. What a wonderful invention I thought and began to list in my rapidly unfreezing brain, all the benefits it has brought to mankind. And then it occurred to me that what I was listing as being beneficial, were in fact, if looked at from another angle, not beneficial at all.

Take roads for instance. What a vast amount of beautiful countryside has been destroyed in order to build them. They are only necessary because some thoughtless prehistoric clown invented the wheel. And roads are only necessary to accommodate all the vehicles that need wheels. Cars, lorries, buses, millions of them, all travelling mile after mile of roads. Roads built from materials dug from vast quarries dug into yet more beautiful countryside. All because of the wheel.

Life without wheels would be great. So quiet and peaceful. There wouldn't be vast cities for a start, Maybe we would all still be living in mud huts. Nothing wrong with that. We wouldn't have to worry about journey times because we wouldn't want to go anywhere. Or if we did perhaps we could travel by river or sea, in boats. How nice and quiet that would be. Or on horseback that would be fine.

Trains? Don't get me started on trains. When was a train ever an effective means of getting anywhere on time? And all those wheels! The railway lines cut and divided the countryside too. Ruined it. Why? Because of wheels.

Wheels. Where would we be without them? Well not here that's for certain. Not sitting here at this computer spouting nonsense like this. Haha I hear you say, that would be a good thing. Yes and that's what I'm getting at. Wheels, who needs them?

Oh but tractors, I forgot about them. Hey wheels aren't all bad!

This has been a frozen brain production by John Bain. Hopefully he will be feeling better again soon.