Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance

Seldom have I had a day so annoying and so productive together. The most exasperating parts I won't discuss here; suffice it to say I lost my temper and ended up screaming down the phone. This changed nothing.

In other news, my mother hurt her head, stumbling as she crossed the road. There are these little metal squares in the road, she explained, and she hit her head on them, leaving her with a wide gash in her head. Because she will not go to the doctor and she will not have any kind of shot at all, her solution was to bathe the wound in hydrogen peroxide. When she has applied it to grazes on my hand it stung like fck, so I shudder to think how painful it must have been on her head, and Christ alone knows what would have happened if she got it in her eyes. That's all the treatment she's going to look for or apply. She's sure she hasn't been concussed, so as far as she's concerned there's only tetanus to fear. She's also worried about squatters breaking in, which means that I am worried about her security, and have told her to get the flat sorted, that I will pay for the whole thing if she just gets it done. She says she will do something but she won't. She'll dedicate herself to being terrified of it for a few months until she finds something else to indulge her fondness for catastrophe, and as ever the real potential for harm will be ignored.

Perversely,I a lot got done yesterday. It was constructive, just awful. I have never wanted a tattoo so much and saw it in my head, a bee headed for the sun which was at once itself and a sunflower.

Last two nights the sky has been so overcast it seems I get to see one star at a time. First it was Arcturus, Protector of the Defenceless being its old Arabic name and also Protector of the Bear, last thing you'd think she'd need - except the bear is Callisto, unfortunate side squeeze (another one!) of Zeus, shape-changed by jealous Hera. Zeus steps in before the boy Arcas hunts down the bear and inadvertantly commits matricide. The god of the sky places them both there as constellations, safe and glorious forever. I always feel like I'm seeing a good friend when I spot Arcturus. Though I understand Hera's wrath, there's also the story's warning to keep a grip and not do something heinous just cos one is angry.

Maybe the whole country could do with remembering this.

I have detested Nigel Farage forever. He's a mendacious venal con-artist, always has been. So it makes me angry when he goes across to the States and says something which...is true. Bad men make themselves more credible when they mix a few truths in the unending stream of their rubbish. I find myself irritated with - who? Us? - for having allowed things to reach this point.

AFAIK Farage cited two examples. Lucy Connolly was imprisoned for a tweet now impossible to discover, but from I can find, she said this:

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care... If that makes me racist, so be it.”

As I understand it, she has the right to say appalling things, but she doesn't get to incite violence; prohibitions against this kind of activity have been a part of UK law for a long time. So, first part = unpleasant but not illegal viewpoint, second = seems like distinct incitement to arson/violence. She sticks 'for all I care' at the end of it, almost like a disclaimer, but the first thing she does is push the suggestion out there. She pleaded guilty so it's not as though she didn't know. Lucy's unpleasantness is not the issue and nor are her ideas. The problem is her encouragement of thousands of people to attempt murder.

Graham Lineham's tweet went thus: "If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

What then happened was that he was greeted by five armed policemen and arrested for the tweet.

The SC has clarified beyond doubt that transwomen are breaking the law if they enter into a female only space. Graham gets to decide the terms he uses to describe that act. But to suggest that a woman should use violence on seeing a transwoman in an inappropriate place is imbecilic; the reason so many women don't want any kind of adult human male near them in a place of vulnerability is safety. They don't want to be near testicles at all, never mind touching them or getting into a physical fight with a much stronger person. Graham was being stupid and offensive. But was this incitement, or, as he suggests, a bad joke? He's suing and he does have a point; this is the Metropolitan Police Force, if they're working for Stonewall, Stonewall can pay them. But is there a difference between this matter and that of Lucy Connolly?

As an aside, five armed policeman? We can't get five armed policemen to attend a robbery!

Farage cites these as examples of a system that fails... but does it always or usually fail? These are extreme examples, though there is underlying weakness that needs to be addressed, as well as nuance to be parsed. He's milking it. But he'd find that harder if there was absolutely nothing there.

Last night's star out of the gloom was Altair also called Niulang the cowherd whose love affair with Vega/Zhinu the weaver girl is at the heart of so many stories. Separated by the Milky Way, on the seventh day of every seventh lunar month, magpies form a bridge so that the lovers can be together for a day.

Sometimes, got to get away from all this dead light flattening everything. Time to pause, look up, steer by the stars.

The trees are changing fast, and I am getting up later each day only to see the sun doing the same. Strange this season, intense with pleasure and sorrow. But today is the last day of this summer of heavy gold. Tomorrow Autumn rolls in, time to freshen the mind and find cool breezes, to get to work and breathe.