Ephemera flap

Fraternise, but don’t befriend the butterflies.

My erstwhile companion, the territorial small heath,

Who let me photograph her outer-wings on dull days,

But never basked her marigold inner wings to camera,

No longer patrols her sandy, gorse border-lands.

The stegosaurus of death falls to the forces of 'truth'

I can understand why it is that, instead of changing the way we report Covid deaths to make the statistics more accurate, someone has chosen to simply deprecate the graphs we had all come to know and love. Even Wikipedia seems to have withdrawn these depressing daily barcharts.

Statistics are of limited value when the underlying method is hidden. In mainstream media, in which I include much official output, the 'necessary' simplification of complex subjects usually results in the obfuscation of the method. It is only now, when the obfuscations have come to skew the results that something closer to the truth has emerged.

I was gob-smacked, back in May, to hear that, in the UK published figures for Covid deaths, the reporting rules differed according to which country was reporting. Scottish deaths for example only included those who had tested positive for Covid and whose families had agreed for their deaths to be included in the statistics.

Now, on the long spiky tail of the stegosaurus, we learn that English statistics for Covid deaths include everyone who has ever tested positive, irrespective of their eventual cause of death.

If the meteorite theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs appears unlikely to you, let me offer a more plausible explanation. I believe the end of the dinosaurs was probably brought about by a simple update of the truth.

</rant>

Alliterative nonsense tea

The first sup of Darjeeling, taken as I entered the kitchen carrying my bowl, to swill the Crunchy Nut Cornflake semi-skimmed slurry from my teeth, gave me pause. Its earthy, bitter-sweet undertones stroked my tongue, like yesterday's bracken compost bouquet under mixed deciduous boughs,  as I strode the butterfly flecked boulevards. A foreign sun's shine-fed sinensis foliage infusion teleportation!