Have you ever just let your mind wonder. Let it run it's course and notice the strange connections it makes without stopping as soon as one interesting thought springs to mind. I was told I should try this by a Buddhist friend of mine who claims it clears the mind and brings clarity. Well never one to look a gift Buddhist in the mouth, I gave it a go ..

I don't know if it's true for everyone, but in my youth, Sundays always had a special feel about them, a certain quality that set them apart from the rest of the week. Maybe it was the fact that you always struggled to find something to do. I can remember hating them as a child. The shops were closed, in fact most places were closed come to think of it. The television could be summarised as God - Politics - God - Tales of the Unexpected and the South Bank Show. But for all its limitations you knew where you were with Sunday.

I thought back and could picture a wintery Sunday mid afternoon. The sort of day when you didn't want to be outside in the driving rain. I could rely on the local tv station (HTV West) or farmer telly as it's known locally to supplt it's usual local content programmes in between adverts for 'Roundup' the cattle and sheep wormer. These always struck me as odd, - no weird adverts. Who in the name of little green apples was interested in cattle worming solutions on a Sunday afternoon? Or at any time come to mention it.

But then my mind tried to remember when I had last seen these types of trips into the world of animal husbandry. A thought barged in. Mark New (a friend from childhood) who had a particularly stubborn varruca on his finger. When it finally went we'd catch him staring at the place it had been as if he was trying to remember the face of a long lost friend. - That's how I started to feel about Roundup the cattle and sheep wormer. Where had it gone?

Then, without warning a torrent of memories about the programmes produced by farmer telly. Exploring the river Severn; Culture and the evolving scene in Bristol; The Kennet and Avon Canal; Strangely interesting characters from the depths of Somerset; local history and pieces on castles or ruins, coastlines or towns that made you want to explore them and find out more.

All of them - gone! including Roundup ...

Then one of those moments when the bleedin obvious hits you square between the eyes. HTV is no more either - taken over in a mass merger to form the national ITV1 Not just HTV that covered my part of the south west but other local commercial stations across the country. Now the local nature of Roundup the cattle and sheep wormer was perfectly clear. It would be gripping stuff to most of the local farmers but wouldn't butter any parsnips in London or Birmingham so now we've progressed to national programming it bites the dust.

Still at least all those awful local interest programmes have gone and are replaced with high quality mass appeal items such as X-Factor, I'm a celebrity get me out of here etc etc.  

Moral:

Buddhists know more than you think and sometime's they're scary
Bring back Roundup, the cattle and sheep wormer !