Too much news has made me feel miserable today at the downright ugliness of some bits of human nature. Specifically, the horrible situation in Calais: people fleeing war and poverty and repression in their own countries risk so much to come to Europe for a better life where they can be themselves.

They might have survived crossing the Mediterranean on one of those rickety boats, having borrowed or saved to give all their cash to unscrupulous people traffickers. Or they might have dodged all sorts of hostilities in warzones to cross land borders and then, finally, they have to play chicken with Eurotunnel Shuttle trains and some die or are maimed. Those who do arrive here face huge amounts of hostility from people who can have no idea of what these people have endured. None whatsoever.

So often I have stood on the Eurostar platform at Paris Gare du Nord and wondered how desperate someone must be to climb down and cling to the underside of a train for up to three hours in the middle of winter. How often have I been moved to tears looking out from the Eurostar’s windows as the train trundles through Calais at the high barbed fences and thinking about the people who don’t find it as easy as me to cross borders. Indeed my OH went to Paris for the day yesterday and MsDD returned on the same train as him last evening. By accident of birth they have no trouble crossing over into the UK

My father was an economic migrant to this country. Indians were British Subjects and invited here to run the National Health Service or London Transport. We could not manage our lives without the immigrants who pick our vegetables or clean our offices or labour on construction sites like mine.

It is a huge thing to leave your home and family and friends and venture out into the unknown. Just imagine for a moment what that must mean for people who want to work, want to get themselves and education. I hope we will remember that they are people just trying to get on with their lives, just like you and me. They are innocent victims of other people’s dreadfulness and then scumbags like Nigel Farage go on the radio and talk with derision about “the Human Rights brigade…preventing governments from doing their job.” I’d like to see him planted in a place where he had no human rights and see what he’d bleat then.

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And then there’s that disgusting piece of filth who goes round murdering majestic wildlife for fun, baiting them out of national parks and conservation areas so he can shoot them “legally.” . I simply can’t comprehend what sort of a person would take pleasure in doing that. I’m always a bit suspicious of people who say they don’t like animals but his attitude is despicable. And it’s brought me down.

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So to cheer me up, please indulge these photos of the latest progress in our kitchen build. The cheery captions are a bit of a forced juxtapostion tonight I’m afraid. Stuff does floor you sometimes.

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