This is a bit odd. Occasionally I get a weird sort of spiky icon in my blue corner in the space where I get joyful speech-marks, plus symbols and stars telling me that I have comments, followers and ‘likes’ respectively. But the spiky thing doesn’t happen often, because it indicates a spike in the number of readers. And it’s a bit odd, really. Normally the stats hover at a low but steady rate resembling a small and slightly uneven wall. But today they have zoomed up to 900! I have no idea why some people in the States and Russia and Canada and loads of other places have suddenly started reading me. I only hope it isn’t the prelude to some kind of scam…
Anyway, what prompted this post was something quite trivial in itself but which relates to yesterday’s thoughts. And it was this. Those readers of mine (who at this rate will soon number thousands) who don’t live in Leicester will not be aware of the Victoria Park tree saga. The council have seen fit to cut down a number of healthy trees in order to extend both a car-park and some tennis courts, and many people are up in arms about this. They have at the same time planted some new trees but these will take time to grow. So, into this furore blundered a cheerful, innocent bloke who posted a comment on Facebook about how nice the new trees were looking. Nothing about the old trees; no comment to the effect that they ought to have been chopped down – just a thought about how pleasant it was on a sunny day to see the new seedlings. Well: from the furore which followed you’d have thought he’d expressed support for ISIS, at the very least. Sarcastic comments abounded about how they might be nice in twenty years, about how lovely the new car park will look in the sun and lamenting the loss of habitat for the birds and squirrels, abounded until finally someone took pity on the guy and commented: ‘a simple post on how nice the new trees are looking? Rookie mistake! Grab your tin hat and hide under the table till it all blows over.’
And there’s the rub. Facebook is like one of those people to whom you can never say anything to without it going wrong. You know, the kind of person who, when you say ‘Good morning!’ snarl ‘What’s good about it?’ Or else you have this kind of conversation described in ‘A Fish Called Wanda’:
Archie: You make me feel free.
Wanda: Free?
Archie: Wanda, do you have any idea what it’s like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing, of saying to someone “Are you married?” and hearing “My wife left me this morning,” or saying, uh, “Do you have children?” and being told they all burned to death on Wednesday. You see, Wanda, we’ll all terrified of embarrassment. That’s why we’re so… dead. Most of my friends are dead, you know, we have these piles of corpses to dinner.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 
Maybe take a closer look at your stats in your Dashboard, there it may be revealed that a particular post is attracting attention… sometimes one can accidentally mention something here that draws them in… from beyond the confines of one’s shire.
As for trees, it’s a shame to see them chopped away… replacing them with little seedlings provides little in the way of justice. Maybe builders of car-parks and tennis courts should plant the new trees first and only cut the old ones down and proceed with the car-park/tennis court construction once the new ones are of a comparable height and density. Alternatively, tennisists could cycle to their courts, and partake in a new form of tennis where the presence of trees in their obstructing manner provide added entertainment.