2. Let them eat veg

When vegetarians Sunday lunch with mates
In pubs, why should it be their portions lack
The mass their meaty friends have on their plates?
Should veggies get some of their money back?
This is not just that veggies don't eat meat,
That half a bird, a slab of cow or boar
Will make most carnivorous folk replete
Whilst roast tofu will leave one wanting more.
It's the injustice that carnivores get
More carrot, spud, sprout, broccoli, broad bean
Than veggies*, as if veggie raison d'être
Is to be starved and consequently lean.
To moderation veggies were not born,
So give them more not less veg with their Quorn.

*Noted after a survey of a number of vegetarians on their Sunday pub lunch experience.

1. Paving's crazy

Resist the urge to pave across your lawn

If concrete choice you have.  For have you heard

A third of Blighty’s gardens have now gawn,

One hundred parks the size of Hyde interred¹

Beneath the ‘limestone’ slabs of B and Q,

The driveway blocks that Mazda, Jeep or Ford

Might stand beside your home and spoil your view

Of others’ parking bays that once were sward?

And if the tarmac is already hard,

The slabs stuck down, the brick blocks bound,

Then shift the wheels from where you’ve had them carred,

And take your pick! Restore the earthy ground.

Make green your crescent, surface flooding² curb,

Call hedgehog³, sparrow, thrush⁴ back to your ‘burb!

¹ http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/spaced_out-bates_leibling-jul12.pdf

²https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/7728/pavingfrontgardens.pdf

³ http://www.gardenersworld.com/blogs/wildlife/hedgehogs-in-the-garden/3210.html

⁴ http://www.sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife/page00064.htm

Forewordish

It’s all been said has all been said before:

To say there’s nothing new is somewhat old.

Out there two hundred million blogs or more¹

Repeat the stuff we’ve otherwise been told

On how to make things fair or conflict end,

On who to play up front or who to dump,

On what makes planets spin or spoons unbend,

On when to bide your time and when to jump.

Each day each one of us is struck once more

With what might make the world a better place:

Solutions (count them – there are thirty four),

Eternal truths which we might all embrace.

So nothing’s broadcast here that’s not the norm

Except this nought’s expressed in sonnet form.

¹ In November 2013, WPVirtuoso blogging magazine indicated (with some neat graphics) that there were over 152,000,000 blogs (http://www.wpvirtuoso.com/how-many-blogs-are-on-the-internet/).