There are downsides (too many for some of my not-yet-wired friends) to using computers but the biggest sickener of all is losing material beyond recovery.
This is exactly what I did two evenings ago. Having finished my article for OM – ahead of time – I was smugly getting ready to blast the item off to the Storey man as an email.
However, I had fatally prepared it as an HTML email document. I liked the formatting better than Word and thought I had been saving as I went along.

Then, for no reason, other than dreamy carelessness (post-article writing, I was admiring the view across the Bay on this unexpectedly glorious August bank-holiday weekend), I clicked the Delete button instead of the Send!
If I had realised immediately what I’d done, I could have simply pressed Undo Delete, but I stupidly went and did something else; in the ensuing panic I couldn’t remember exactly what.

The upshot was that the evening’s work was lost –completely, utterly and absolutely.
But that only became apparent after I had gone through an hour’s desperate scrabbling through Temp Files, Recycle Bins and similar awful places. Then I phoned an expert who talked me through the whole thing of Recovery etc but he just confirmed that I had almost expertly dumped the file.
I know it wasn’t War and Peace that was thus lost to the world but it still was not very nice - and I hated doing the rewrite.
There’s a lot to be said for pen and paper.

That was the summer that was.
The predominant country smell down our way this past, water-logged season, apart from the low-tide seaweedy scent, was of old-cut hay mouldering away on meadows turning green with new growth.
The view of Hungry Hill in early August was dominated by the largest hayfield on the Peninsula, its twelve rectangular acres ( 5 point something hectares, if you want to be European about it ) draped like a canvas from the main road up to the mountain scree-line, tells the story of this deeply sun-challenged year.
The much-turned swathes eventually converted into a very brown, almost black hay which, surely, could not be much better than a snowball in the mouths of the unfortunate farmer’s sheep and cattle during this coming winter.
Composting it would have been more beneficial – assuming he, or indeed most other farmers, knew what composting was anymore! To be fair to the conventional farmer however, there are few organic farmers who know how to compost either.
And the shame of it all – so visible to every passer-by; a proud farmer’s nightmare.
It was, I’d guess, (being myself a latter day atheist/humanist, I can only guess now what goes on in our chapels ) the hottest topic in the porch of Rossmacowen village church for a few consecutive Sundays.
Why he didn’t do round-bale silage like most others in the area, I don’t know. I’d forgive them their reams of enviro-indigestible black plastic just to see the precious stuff saved!
And why, in any case, can’t they get off their backsides and save the hay with a good neighbourly meitheal, a handful of hay-forks, and the tried and trusted methods of the grass-cock and the pike?
That’s what we did in my father’s time especially when rain threatened before the bailer arrived. I don’t remember any hay ever been completely lost. But we had mostly real neighbours then - who weren’t averse to sweating a little, even on a Sunday, to help a fellow in trouble and get the life-giving hay in.
In revolting contrast, today’s many alpha-male, machine-jockey begrudgers-cum-CAP leechers, posing in their latest 4 Wheel Drive Turbo Diesels, make sorry excuses for neighbours – and farmers too. So I was told by a REPS’ inspector.
Stop press! I just heard our man from Hungry Hill dumped all the hay in a quarry!

The View from Hungry Hill, on the other hand, is somewhat enhanced by the dramatic U-turn of the British Gov. on organic farming in July.
Revolutionary times!
I wore my Che Guevara tee shirt for weeks afterwards.
Can we all lie back now and just prod the Good Noel’s replacement, D’Other Noel, (Minister of State at the Dept. of Agriculture etc etc responsible for Horticulture etc, Organic etc – Noel Treacy TD - jakers! Have they no thought at all for us poor tyronic typists?) in the Irish Ag. Min to copy every organic move the re-birthed DEFRA now makes.
I reported it fully on my News page at the time so I won’t bore you with any more detail – see the Brit. Gov. Ag. Min site below.

In the March/April issue I promised that I would put up a page on planorganic.com for my thesis on the Irish Famine. With the aid of Craig, a bright young New Zealand backpacker, the years-old faulty floppies were hacked and the "provocative " thesis is now on site. To show off, the footnotes are now live links, painstakingly inserted by his girlfriend Leonie. The next step is to illustrate it.
I have some unique pictures that have not been published anywhere since the 1850s. So, when I get the hang of my new € 25 scanner – it doesn’t seem to like my generator juice – I not only will do that but also splash some design and photographs around the rest of the shop. None too soon some would say!

And the next step after that is to rewrite the thesis – and dig up the spuds - and build the shed - and entice more advertisers and …… have a life perhaps?

The UK Organic Action Plan can be viewed at www.defra.gov.uk/farm/organic/actionplan/index.htm  

Reports from the outstanding Otley College (Suffolk) Organic Conference, which I attended, can be seen on my News&Comment page, June Archive and at http://econode.otleycollege.ac.uk. Also at www.otleycollege.ac.uk – click on Food Skills centre.

There is a link on my Home Page for the Famine thesis or go direct to www.planorganic.com/famine_justice.htm

The Institute of Rural Health in Wales has just published a research paper on stress in farming communities. See www.rural-health.ac.uk

For light relief, read all about my brother’s eco-horseride from Andalucia to Adrigole (Beara). www.planorganic.com/steven.htm.