Personal Blogs

Fig.q. It might have been a bad year for badger's but that's not the point.

BBC Radio 4's Bad Year for Gardener's

Thick with cold and in the car unwillingly I wondered why a badger is when you learn most. I'd just turned the radio on so hadn't the context. In a few moments I had it.

It is true, that you learn from disaster, from economic downturn, from making ends meat ... from a death in the family, from making mistakes. Indeed, in many things you learn a good deal in a bad year.

I had a bad year in 1985. The love of my life and I were parting company. I was young. I let it fester. This has been a bad year - my mum year. I'll think of 2012 therefore as the year of the Badger. At least this will put a smile on my face.

Do we really learn from our mistakes?

It rather suggests that our personalities are like plasticine rather than alabaster - that we can and do with ease adjust to the circumstances.