The witches and warlocks were apparently out in force at Stonehenge this morning for the dawn of the Summer solstice, the longest day. I’m always a little confused at this time of year. It only feels like the start of Summer and yet already the evenings will be starting to draw in. Ok it’s a month or three before twilight and the working day’s end coincide but it’s still a little depressing. Not half as depressing though as really quite well paid railway workers causing mayhem because some highly paid, self-promoting tosser of a union leader wants to make his mark. “Every ‘worker’ wants a pay increase” says Mr Lynch. The implication being that only trade unionists actually do any work, whereas often the so-calIed ‘workers’ are the least productive of anyone in employment, let alone self-employment. I fear few people have any comprehension of what the next few months and years hold. We are on the verge of mega market crashes, massive inflation, (which a wage/price spiral will only exacerbate) industrial strife, untold misery for those of us who have to suffer the consequences of such action and perhaps most importantly of all, World War III. An extremely shrewd analyst whose teachings I follow, David Murrin, argues that we are already in World War III. He says that we are so heavily committed in Ukraine that, “what part of that isn’t war with Russia”? But his much more worrying assertion is that China is very close to launching a surprise attack on Taiwan while it’s puppet regime in North Korea invades the South and Japan had better look out too. The really worrying part is that we have an incompetent, bumbling narcissist PM running an incompetent government who are predominantly linear thinkers with no comprehension of what’s needed to forestall the impending catastrophe.
Looking out of my dining room window at Mrs T’s beautiful flower beds (I only cut the grass) it’s all too easy to think that everything in the garden is rosy. I think back to many a meal round the family dinner table when the ageing relatives would recall the early months of 1939 and the strange days of the Phoney War, when most right-thinking people realised that something nasty was about to happen but no one really comprehended what the next six years were to unveil. The trouble is, we’ve had it so good for so long that even with all the warning signals it’s easy to think that “it can’t happen to us”. Perhaps a delve into history would serve to change one’s mind. When was the last time in our long and often violent past that we went for nearly eighty years without a serious dust up? OK we’ve had lots of local insurgencies and counter-insurgency operations, but nothing on a widespread scale, no full-blown war. (The Americans had Vietnam of course, which we managed to stay out of). You can list The Falklands, The Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, ….but nothing that’s really required the Home Guard to reform. (Although I heard a fascinating lecture yesterday about the long-lasting impact of wars like Afghanistan on our economies. Caring for the long-term injured means a thirty year bill running into trillions of dollars. In fact it was so many noughts I didn’t have enough fingers to record it). Anyway, the point is, the West and democracy is facing an existential threat. If we don’t wake up to the dangers very, very soon it will be too late. Remember a certain Roman emperor who fiddled while Rome burned? Our lot aren’t even good enough to play the recorder let alone make a Stradivarius sing.
Meanwhile the very foundations of Eastbourne have been trembling this afternoon as the plucky Brit, Katie Boulter came back from losing the first set 6-1 against two-time champion and Wimbledon finalist Karolina Pliskova from the Czech Republic to win in three sets. It’s not quite Radacanu winning the US Open but it’s enough to get success-starved tennis journos dunking their quills and waxing lyrical about the next British ‘star’. With Wimbledon on the horizon, households across the land will be full of “did you see Serena, isn’t she amazing” and “isn’t Nadal so sexy/twitchy/boring”, delete as appropriate. It’s amazing how so many people suddenly become experts on tennis, when for fifty weeks of the year they’re more interested in what’s on for supper.
Am I sounding a trifle cynical? I fear so, but it’s quite hard to find anything to lighten the mood just now. Even the bloody days are getting shorter! Still, it’s a beautiful warm, sunny, summer’s day today so I guess that’s something to be grateful for.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 