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INTERESTING, Saturday night. As I was working on producing the Sunday newspaper, there broke the story about the 16-year-old girl with mental health problems being held in a police cell because no NHS bed was available for her.

Devon and Cornwall Police’s Assistant Chief Constable, Paul Netherton, broke the story on Twitter by criticising the situation as unacceptable. His sentiment, rightly, met with universal approval – even among certain Brothers and Sisters of this place I have encountered since, some of whom more usually take a less compassionate view of those in need of help.

Now I know nothing about this poor girl’s circumstances or what brought her to the attention of the constabulary in the first place. But what if it had been announced that she was Romanian? Or a teenage mum? Or on some sort of benefit?

Would universal agreement – that it is a damning indictment of our selfish, greedy uncaring society that we can build £15billion roads or bomb Iraq but do not have sufficient capacity to care for people with mental health needs – be replaced by UKIP caterwauling? Would the sympathy immediately evaporate? Of course it would, even though a Romanian single mother on benefit lives and breathes just as we do.

I had a conversation the other night about people with large families, and we all agreed that it was insanity to have a large family in this day and age. This point was then expanded to suggest that no state support should be offered to those stupid enough to have loads of children. At which point, I disagreed: who would be hurt by such a decision? The children. Is any of it their fault? Did they ask to be born? Do they deserve to go hungry? These questions the right, of course, can never answer. Doing good isn’t conditional. Help can’t be half-offered.

The memory of Christmas

FOR reasons that are too dull to explain, I found myself alone in the Eden Project’s tropical rainforest biome in the fairy-lit dusk of Friday night. As you would expect, I am immune to ho-ho-ho-ness and consider most of the Christmas festivities with which we are inflicted a sickening riot of hypocrisy. But Eden has housed the memory of Christmas in the biome, and dotted round about are really rather touching symbols of Christmasses past. I thought it a charming idea, and we had a magical half-hour. I didn’t really want to leave that enchanted little land.

We go back to the Eden Project, Brother Fiddle and I, on Thursday for the launch of Cornish band Love Street’s new album, Both Sides of the Door. We are promised no less than a 25-piece brass band to accompany the single Susanna and are greatly looking forward to it. If you can, get yourself there for 7.30. Bung £10 to the Cornwall Air Ambulance, and you get a fabulous setting, some very fine music and possibly even a hello from Fiddle and I.

The memory of Badgers

BROTHER Badger paid a state visit to my place of work on Saturday, having forecast acceptable weather. It was a delight to see him.

The memory of brambles

THAT’S IT for tonight. I have been helping a Gardening Brother to clear an abandoned garden today, and I still have several thousand bramble thorns to pluck from my stinging flesh. Be careful out there.