Rainy Day's 5,000 cups of rice
Did you know that the UN has declared 2004 the International Year of Rice? Every day some three billion people around the world chow down on this amazing grain. Marvellous as rice is, though, enough of it doesn't get to those who need it. More than 300 million children are chronically hungry and can only dream of the luxury of a cup of rice a day. Moved by their plight, Rainy Day has just donated €100 to the World Food Programme, which fed 72 million people in 82 countries last year. Our donation will allow the organization to purchase 5,000 cups of rice. That's just a grain of sand, of rice, in this ocean of misery, but it's better than doing nothing.
As many of the fortunate among us prepare to sit down to generous family feasts, it's worth pausing for a moment to think about what we can do to help create a world in which everyone has access to the nourishment they need for a healthy life. The advent of the International Year of Rice offers us an opportunity to thing about the options and our choices.
Diarist of the day: Evelyn Waugh, 23 December 1946"The presence of my children affects me with deep weariness and depression. I do not see them until luncheon, as I have my breakfast alone in the library, and they are in fact well trained to avoid my part of the house; but I am aware of them from the moment I wake. Luncheon is very painful. Teresa has a mincing habit of speech and a pert, humourless style of wit; Bron is clumsy and dishevelled, sly, without intellectual, aesthetic or spiritual interest. Margaret is pretty and below the age of reason. In the nursery whooping cough rages I believe. At tea I meet the three elder children again and they usurp the drawing room until it is time to dress for dinner. I used to take some pleasure in inventing legends for them, about Basil Bennett, Dr Bedlam and the Sebag-Montefiores. But now they think it ingenious to squeal: 'It isn't true.' I taught them the game of draughts for which they show no aptitude."
