Open letter to Jose Manuel Barroso - the man at the European Union helm

Dear Mr Barroso,

congratulations on your re-election as President of the EU Commission.

Maybe i cannot appreciate all the difficulties that you have to face in this position: conflicting interests and diverging views of diverse EU Member States, compounded by tough economic times and grave environmetal problems. But i do know that your experience and your position can do much to ensure a better future for my children.


Despite its many Directives aiming to protect the environment, the EU has kept going further away from sustainable development. Up to now it has mostly designed elaborate measures on how pollution must be managed, and how waste should be recycled or incinerated for energy recovery. But to stop climate change, depletion of resources, and contamination of our food supply, the EU needs to take preventive not remedial measures. Economic development must not be sought through increasing material consumption only.

I thank the EU for obliging Ogygia's government to treat the sewage before disposing of it into the sea. Please press all Mediterranean governments to purify sewage and to use the derived water for agriculture in parched lands suffering from climate change.

Don't feel under pressure to achieve complex or bombastic accomplishments. Aim for simple but meaningful objectives:
-- that all EU kids have at least a thirty minutes break at school every day (many Ogygia kids don't);
-- that at least half the EU buildings get solar panelling in the five year term you're in office;
-- that birds on their way to breed in Spring and Autumn are not shot at in any Member State - those birds belong to your and my children as well, and not only to the hunters.
-- that real help is given to African countries on condition they respect their citizens.

Finally, when preparing for global climate summit due in December i don't expect you to think of me, and i don't blame you. I only ask that you think of your children's well being, and so indirectly of all children.

May you have the courage to change the things that you can, may you be supported by your colleagoues and may you have a fulfilling experience as EU Commission President.

What do you want to tell Mr Barroso? What do you want him to try and achieve in the coming five years of office? Tell him by clicking on this link:
ec.­europa.­eu/­commission_barro­so/­president/­contact/­mail


To hear Mr Barroso's inaugural speech to EU Parliament, click on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8258899.stm

Tomorrow Vince, the home makeover guru, is coming to plaster and paint the boys' bedroom. It's feeling too easy - i'm going to be at work and so will Ulysseys. The boys haven't yet decided whether it's going to be Grotto blue or Buttercup yellow yet, so no paint is bought yet. The Bionicles still glare from Jeremy's shelves and Grisham and Bryson haven't yet been evicted from Julian's.

Which reminds me: Julian, the eldest has a maths lesson tomorrow morning so he won't be here either. That leaves Johanna the princess who plans to bead a pearly purple necklace, and Jeremy who at eleven cannot be expected to make good cement dough or hold Vince's ladder securely. My urge to panic can go to rest because there will however be my third arm and child minder Jane. She can be counted upon to provide Vince with a steady provision of tea and biscuits.

Maybe when i return home at two in the afternoon, Julian and Jeremy would have agreed on the colour, Vince would have peeled off tired paint, plastered and painted anew, and Jane would have cleaned all the dust and paint droplets off the tiles. Dream on nymph!

Will keep you posted on how the renovations go. . . .

The photo shows the bouganvillae which clambers opposite the boys' cracked and peeling bedroom wall. Probably the better side of the view at the moment.

Remembering childhood summers in my autumn years

In childhood summers, my sister nymphs and I would walk down a hill of figs, lemons and prickly pears to reach a pebbly cove carved in cheddary stone. There we'd swim and dive - first head first then bum first, until we can no longer resist the call of crusty bread smeared with tomatoes and dripping with oil. By then the sun would have reached its zenith and we'd lie down on the pebbly ochre sand trying to blot out the sky's endless blue and the cicada's endless buzz. A sister or a fly, or maybe the pebbles reaching my ribs, would finally chase me out of my slumber and into the silvery blue water again. When the sun would start to slide behind the hill tops we'd put back on sandy sandals and climb the hill back home. . . .

Fast forward some thirty years to the summer of my autumn days. Because of the intense humid heat, I try going out only before ten in the morning or after five in the afternoon. If it can be delivered, i won't go get it. Despite being in the house, the sun still pursues me. In the morning, the sun's rays pierce the wooden shutters of the front rooms si I seek shelter at the back of the house - in the kitchen, dining room or garden, where the coolness of the night would be lingering.

Immediately after lunch it's time to barricade the back -- unfurl the bamboo curtains on the outside and draw the inside curtains. As the sun reaches its zenith it manages to infiltrate the back of the house - so I migrate to the front, to the sitting room or the bedroom. There i try to blot out sun and sweat while i watch Candice Olson creating a divine dining room design. When the sun starts to slide behind the hill tops i can dismantle the barricade - the olive sitting room shutters are opened, the dining room and kitchen bamboom curtains are rolled up. And i can finally drive down the hairpin hill road leading to the cheddary cove.

As another summer of my autumn years comes to an end i remember my childhood summers and wonder: whose season has changed the most - mine or the earth's?

Dear reader, what memories of childhood summers do you have? Feel free to describe them by leaving a comment on this blog.