Near two years of bricks

Since the start of the plague, walks around Ewell and rides around Jubilee Way have been supplemented by carrying bricks up and down the back garden, usually in the afternoon, before Scrabble. An activity last reported at reference 1, at which time I had been pleased with the new features of pivot tables - pivot tables being part of the Microsoft Excel offering.

Thought this morning to pull out another graphic, which gives rise to the question of whether last spring's hump is to be repeated this year? Given that we are not long into February, to early to say, or at least, too early for me to say - although it looks unlikely that it will be as big a hump.

But I can say that a total of 6,584 bricks were moved between and including 26th March, 2020 and 7th February, 2022; that is to say getting on for two years worth. A new millennium, civilian version of the digging holes and filling them up again said to be a feature of conscripted life back in the 1950's. A time when it was said that the piles of coal outside the guard rooms - where the guards were entitled to be warm - were whitewashed to deter theft by the squaddies who were freezing in their barrack huts. All of which was said to be character building. Putting some backbone and spirit into deprived youths from sink estates who might otherwise drift into a life of crime. Or these days, drugs.

On which I offer a fact for the day and a thought for the day. The fact being that they were already using cannabis in north America ten thousand years ago. One presumes that the inhabitants of of the near east were also already at it. This from the book at reference 2, already noticed at reference 3. The thought being a worry about what all the drug dealers are going to do for a living when we finally get around to legalising recreational drugs. Will they home in on some other form of crime? Go back to house-breaking? Perhaps there are some lessons to be learned from all those ex-colonies who had more or less undisciplined liberation armies to disband on independence. 

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/more-bricks.html.

Reference 2: The Dawn of Everything: A new history of humanity – David Wengrow, David Graeber – 2021.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/searching-for-truth.html.