A Dogs Dinner

 

My Dad was no cook. On those occasions when my Mum was away he would make our dinner – starters of Campbells Cream of Mushroom Soup, main course of beans on toast and a Milky Bar for dessert. Looking back, tasks in our house were divided along very sexist lines, which would be frowned on today. Waiting for Mum to come home was like counting big sleeps to Christmas.

During ‘The Troubles’ Dad bought a boxer pup he called Tuzo. It was lost on us that Tuzo was the name of the British Army General in charge of security in Northern Ireland at the time. Tuzo also hated that Mum was away. When our wasted soup found its way into Tuzo’s bowl he too lost his appetite. We were blamed for showing him a bad example. When he was big enough he got treated to ‘Juicy Meaty Chunks’ and for a while he gobbled up all he could see. But even animals appreciate a balanced diet and before long his Juicy Meaty Chunks got left too.

In the 70s my siblings started committing matrimony and before long it was my turn. I relished my new diet of Juicy Meaty Chunks but soon enough I struggled to clean my bowl and it got taken away. I went hungry. I blame Tuzo for showing me a bad example.

Now in 2025 the world is still largely ignorant of the importance of nutrition and we’re bombarded with an array of challenging issues that defy resolution – from Washington to the Ukraine, from Gaza to Yemen etc. The diet is certainly varied but as a species we’re struggling to clean our bowl.  It’s as though our choices are now too varied. We’re treated to wars, poisoned food, water and air, famine, pharma, transgender mutations, uncontrolled immigration, net-zero nonsense with their useless windmills and solar panels and all budgetary controls out the window.

Running this circus we have a range of superheroes and elites (villains), who play musical chairs to distract us from their agenda of destruction. Pied Piper figures have us marching to unholy drums, believing that they can master the art of the deal or bomb the baddies into submission. It’s ‘Ordo Ab Chao’ and we’re not supposed to notice. For years we’ve been building our own cage as we usher in a Technocratic future dominated by AI. Perhaps we can create a computer clever enough to solve our problems? That implies that God’s design wasn’t good enough, which is bollocks of course.

So what’s to be done? A good first step would be to find stillness. When you want out of a hole you don’t dig it any deeper.  Constant frenetic activity is the way of the world but it’s a huge distraction from the present moment. Let’s do the sensible thing and pause while we weigh up the merits of Campbells Mushroom Soup Vs Juicy Meaty Chunks. Perhaps Dad wasn’t such a bad cook after all.