The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1164 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“D’you enjoy helping me change the baby?” I asked Trish, who as I’ve mentioned before is more Mister than Dr Spock.

“I do when it’s just you and me, Mummy.”

“And the baby?”

“Well, yes of course, can’t change her if she’s not there, can we?”

I couldn’t fault her logic. “I suppose not. Are you coming to collect the others?”

“I could do,” she said diffidently.

“Don’t put yourself out, will you?”

“Oh all right,” she sighed, “I’ll come with you.”

We got to the car and realised the shopping was still in the boot, including a now molten tub of ice cream of a well known make. I grabbed the bags and ran back to the house, asked Stella to shove it in the fridge and then I dashed back to the car.

“I suppose you’re going to blame that on me?” Trish said as she got into the car.

“Of course.” I wasn’t but she can find that out the hard way. We chatted as we drove to the convent and I was pleased that the girls were waiting for us when we arrived, it meant minimal exposure for Trish. They all made a fuss of each other and hugged.

“You’re face is okay then?” asked Billie.

“Yeah, Mummy blue lighted it.”

“Did it hurt?” asked Mima.

“Like mad, ’specially when I did it,” Trish replied.

“Did you go to the hospital?” Livvie asked.

“Yes, but Mummy fixed it.”

“C’mon, girls, we need to get home.”

“Yeah, Mummy forgot to take the shopping out of the car, like the ice cream was all runny.”

“Eeeuuuch,” squealed three little voices in the closest thing to harmony I’d heard for a long time.

“Enough! In the car, please,” I asserted myself and to my surprise they complied–probably because they wanted to see the runny ice cream.

When we got home, Stella had shoved everything in the refrigerator except the Haagen Dazs, which she poured down the loo. She’d washed out the tub in case I wanted to use it for something else. I shrugged, all the children were too big even if we used the blender first–nah, it still wouldn’t work.

“I could just eat some ice cream, too,” sighed Trish.

“There isn’t any besides, you ate the last of the previous lot lunchtime,” I reminded her, tomato cheesecake with mushroom and chocolate mint chip, or something equally revolting. I let them choose the variety, gone are the days when it was plain vanilla, raspberry ripple or Cornish. Now you can choose from cat litter to enraged potato or maybe that was wild cashew–can’t remember. The bigger supermarkets like Tesco and Asda and even some Sainsburys now stay open twenty four hours during the week, mainly so you can actually see the full range of revolting ice cream: chocolate sewage with sea salt–oh, that might be the crisps. I let the kids choose, I don’t have the time to waste deciding which variety of cholesterol I want clogging my arteries.

We’ve had hedgehog flavoured crisps, so it’s only a matter of time before we have dormouse or weasel, I wonder if the Americans have skunk flavoured ‘potato chips’? I half expect to see, Road kill, flavoured, with the full taste of bashed badger, bent bunny and flattened fox–no artificial preservatives or colourings added except for the macerated maggots–no extra charge for the increased protein level–all fried in recycled engine oil to help save the planet. Okay so my imagination ran away with that one.

Essentially, I suppose we’re all so spoilt in the West, that we can demand almost anything that is saleable and expect to get it. I wonder what will happen when China and India really get their acts together and dominate global markets and also start selling to their own internal markets.

I listened to someone talking about a new MG car, which is nothing like the roadsters we in the UK expect from such a marque. However, it’s aimed at the Chinese market, where the new emerging middle classes want cars and the chap on the radio suggested they’d sell half a million a year there. Apparently the reason the Chinese bought MG-Rover, was to enable them to sell to their home market. To have started up a brand would have taken a generation and cost billions, so they bought an ailing British company for peanuts and its exotic name will catch on very quickly in China.

How the world changes. It’s going to change even more, and we might have to get used to the idea that as the Asian economies boom over the next ten or twenty years, the West will become the poorer nations. I suppose we’ve had our turn, but I’m mostly concerned how these developing countries will power their new cars and the consequences for the environment–not just the fuel to run them, but also the power to manufacture them–loads more pollution, and will they care if their biggest markets are home ones, about flooding through a rise in sea levels unless it stops them selling goods?

The world went mad years ago when advertising developed using psychological theories of the Freudians, and turned us from citizens into consumers. From then on, it’s got more and more stupid creating a financial model which is ultimately built on sand or fantasy. It has to one day come crashing down and the price of everything will presumably fall with it. It’s unsustainable, the earth isn’t capable of producing all the raw materials we need for everyone to have a four bedroom detached house with double garage and enough parking for the family’s four or five motors. I mean one point three billion in China alone would use up an enormous amount, plus all the fuel to run the cars and heat the houses. By the time that happened most of Africa and Southern Europe would be desert or under water and half the species of mammals and birds we have now, would be extinct–although rats would thrive–they always do.