I’ve just read an article suggesting that meat-eating should be made illegal and a new crime of ecocide be put on the UN books.

Now, I’m not against that. The rearing of meat, especially in intensive conditions, no doubt does impact greatly on the environment. Not only on climate change, either.

These intensive farms are purely for economic reasons. The owners can argue all they like about how they aren’t impacting the welfare of the animals, but I saw, last night, a programme that mentioned the rising cost of pork in China. It showed a clip of pigs in what was described, in the case of veal, as crates. The animals would be able to lie and stand, but not turn around. Each crate housed only 1 animal.

Quite apart from the cruelty of this, surely in such intensive conditions, disease must be much easier to transmit. This will mean an increase in the use of antibiotics to alleviate this

In preparation for the re-release of Vengeance of a Slave by Next Chapter (Date as yet unknown) I have unpublished it on Amazon. I will let you know as soon as I have a release date for the new version, with a brand new cover that I agreed on the other day.

As I said in my previous post about Time on Vimar, the planet where The Wolves of Vimar series takes place, I have always been curious about how and why our times on Earth are as they are. In the same way I puzzled about why days begin in the middle of the night, I also wondered about the years.

We begin our year on the day we call January 1. Why this particular day? There seems to be no reason I can see. It’s not the winter solstice, or any other obvious astronomical event. Early people would have used nature and the movement of the sun and moon to work out their seasons. It is believed that Stonehenge was a mighty astronomical clock since it lines up with many astronomical events. (I may do a post on it sometime, It’s quite fascinating.)

To me it would seem much more natural to begin the year at one of the equinoxes. They are, after all, a time when the daylight and darkness are equal and the balance between them begins to change.

When I began to plan the year on my imaginary planet, Vimar, before I populated it with the people whom you can read about in the books, I planned how they would decide to organize their years. (I had to do it without them as I’d not created them yet. I apologise if they disagree!) So here is what I did with it.

From early times, it was known that the planet Vimar took almost exactly three hundred and sixty days to travel around its sun, the people divided this into twelve months of thirty days each. This number, and the three hundred and sixty days in the year meant that the number six took on a significance, and so they further divided each month into five ‘weeks’ of six days each. This was called a ‘sixday’.
The months are unrelated to moon phases as the planet has two moons, Lyndor and Ullin, each with a different cycle, but the study of the moon phases has become important as they are believed to indicate something of the future, both for individuals and the world as a whole.
The year is deemed to begin at the Vernal Equinox when life begins to spring anew, and each of the twelve months is named after one of the gods of Vimar. The first month of Grilldar is called after the god Grillon, god of nature.

The months are as follows:

Season                       Remit of God                       Ruling God

Spring

Grilldar                                                    Nature                                                       Grillon
Kassidar                                                      All                                                            Kassilla
Zoldar                                                  Knowledge                                                        Zol

Summer

Candar                                              Weather and Sea                                           Candello
Sylissdar                                           Life and Healing                                              Sylissa
Allendrindar                               Persuasion and deceit                                     Allandrina

Autumn

Pardar                                                Agriculture                                                   Parador
Rothdar                                    Mining and metalworking                                     Roth
Bardar                                                     War                                                             Barnat

Winter

Bramadar                                 Marriage and the family                                      Bramara
Majordar                                                  Magic                                                          Majora
Khaldar                                  Death and the underworld                                      Khalhera

I would love to hear your comments on both how we on Earth have organized our years and about what you think of the World of Vimar’s organization. Please add your comments to the comments box.