Sorry, I have been neglecting my readers. If it helps, I have also been neglecting myself and all sorts of things I should have been doing. Two days ago I deleted 31 emails. and left another six to be looked at later. I have just done 33 more and this evening I will no doubt get a few more. How many do you get?

Over the years I’ve whittled things down so I don’t get many, and I will be looking at them critically in the next few weeks to cut more out. Same goes for my postal deliveries – there are things that need to be stopped, and now that we are moving this seems like a good time to do it.

I’ve intermittently sent money to disasters and such, and bought via mail order, and some people just never seem to give up. I don’t mind helping people who are in trouble, in the short term, but it isn’t my responsibility to finance refugee camps in the long term. If governments can afford the bombs to create refugees they should be made to finance the care of the refugees they create. I have supported two charities for children for the last 20 or 25 years. I pay by direct debit and I pay whether I am in work or out of it. It’s not a great deal, but it has seemed quite a lot at times when business has been bad. Once I went to the shop and was paid a reliable wage, I was able to manage it quite comfortably. Even things I am interested in often go unread. I’m interested in nature but, to be frank, I’m less enthralled by details of the AGM or the latest request for extra money.

Fortunately spam filters have got better over the years, because things seemed to be a lot worse when you look back. I had a bad patch a few years ago when I went on a South African genealogy site. I had months of spam emails and pop-ups, presumably because my filters had to educate themselves about South African spam sites. The email box on the farm used to have frequent requests for help from the widows of African politicians. I presume, as with all things, there is a science behind spam and it is probably big business.

This isn’t the worst of the job. I have emails in my inbox which date back to 2011. I’m currently going through them at the rate of a couple of hundred a day to get rid of them. They relate to junior rugby and various similar things and most were kept as an archive in case I needed to refer back. Of course, you rarely do, and at the end of the season you can’t be bothered. Suddenly you have a few thousand surplus emails and you lose the will to do anything about them . . .

The sifting process is a mixed blessing. Some good times to remember, some low points to forget and a lot of things and people I have forgotten, or never thought about, in the last 13 years.

Modern life, eh?

The pictures are baked salmon with broccoli and asparagus. And mangetout peas and red peppers, soy sauce and sesame seed oil. Healthy oily fish with veg and a lack of carbs. It’s sort of a recipe from the internet. The salmon, broccoli and asparagus were bought specially but the rest was adjusted based on what was already in the fridge. It worked and it was easy, so I will probably do it again next week, or something similar.

By my standards, I find this quite impressive. It would, of course, be better with chips , or when battered into a chunky soup, but sometimes you have to make concessions to elegance.