The countdown begins. Not countdown like the TV game where you choose consonants and vowels or a sting of numbers, although it's a good game to play as it makes your brain work. The countdown as in NASA, get ready for the New Year countdown.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and finally 1.
Sigh, I am not sure whether I should be happy or worried. only 10 days to go.
I have decided to give thinking about it a rest. Not because I am going to do anything about it, but rather because I need to get on with my writing.
If I am going to stand a chance of ever being noticed as a brilliant author with a fantastic imagination and wit, then I need to get honing my skills.
What a profoundly expressive word - honing, like honey-ing - or covering in honey to make something sweet enough to eat.
Which brings me on to the subject of Bees, and not that terrible B movie that make my children cringe, but rather the fact that so many seem to be losing their sense of direction resulting in Colony Collapse Disorder, Vanishing of the Bees.
We focus on manipulating our crops, (although we've been doing that for centuries, just not quite at the DNA/molecular level), spraying everything with insecticide, and even leave old, foreign honey jars outside that contain bacteria that indigenous bees cannot tolerate.
So let's stop for a moment.
Why do we need these pesky black and orange things that really should not be able to fly, but they do because they believe they can (and they have helicopter wings).
We need our bees for so much that we take for granted in our world: the food we put on the table, fruit, vegetables, even meat needs plants, the plants and flowers that we admire, the clothes we wear, what would happen to the cotton plants? Honey has so many wonderful properties too, it is not just for pouring on toast. I even remember when I was younger my father making me a hot toddy of whisky, lemon juice, honey and hot water - to sooth my raspingly sore throat and help me sleep. A cup of honey, cider vinegar and warm water settles the stomach, and seal a wound with boiling hot honey.
Bees help give life and colour to everything around us.
Einstein is purported to have said that humans would have four years left if all the bees on earth disappeared. A sobering thought at Christmas.
So at this season of goodwill and giving, rather than frittering your cash away on trinkets and plastic that will eventually find their way to a landfill, invest in the future of our earth, our children and our bees. Buy someone a beehive, adopt a bee hive, you can adopt a bee hive through the British Bee Keepers Association, build a bee hive in your back garden, and if you can't do that, then donate to the research and initiatives to save our bees, just like we did last Summer in the UK as unfortunately, I have no space for a bee hive where I live.
Now there's a real reason or a few million to get buzzy about Christmas.
BAH BUZZ HUMBUG
There's tons on how to "bee" resourceful:
British Bee Keepers Association
Ten things to do to help bees
Why we need bees
Why we need to stop pesticides to keep our bees
There's lots on bees in the Guardian
What bees do for us: Natural News
A step by step guide to keeping bees: Bee Keeping 101
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