DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND – THERE IS A FAULT WITH REALITY!
On Tuesday morning last, we woke to glorious sunshine. Our bedroom window overlooks The Green and there we saw a fantastic sight; never before have we seen such a thing: hundreds of Terns squadroning the skies above; a great flock of them wheeling, weaving, diving, turning and exulting it would seem, in the warm morning.
Were they lost? Had their bearings somehow become impaired? Had no leader emerged to take them all off to the estuary where they usually love wading and shrimping? Was it ominous? It was certainly beautiful and it went on for nearly an hour. Nobody knows; yes, it was almost spooky.
Since the new dispensation implied by The Cummings Scandal has come into effect we thought it a lovely day to join friends in their garden in Lindsey, Suffolk to celebrate a birthday at midday – our first excursion over the river into the next county in these confusing times. How daring. Neither of us needed our eyes tested, neither needed a pee, nor did we stop; we had the roof down, wind streaming around us along the lanes and hedgerows all the way to the celebration of Mali’s birthday.
Prosecco, quails eggs and salmon mousse canapé’s, poppadum’s and guacamole, hot pastry cheese straws fresh from Jacqui’s oven and other snacks besides.
All two metres apart but getting closer with time and the “Cummings” effect!
But hey – who cares? Our leaders certainly don’t!
Driving over to Lindsay we both remarked that we were each experiencing a high degree of anxiety, unease bordering on depression. Why is this? Tony and I are lucky. Our circumstances are barely changed really, by this Lockdown. We are both retired; we don’t need to work; we can open our front door and have friends literally two metres away on either side, a wonderful conservation area in front of us made up of The Green, the paths leading away into the fields and woods and a reasonable supermarket within easy, pretty walking distance of where we live. We have no debt, we are both, now that we have recovered, well and our home is crammed with books, music, devices with which to stream, to communicate, to watch endless box sets and a kitchen filled with all the food we’d need and, without wishing to trumpet-blow, “menu’s made by moi” that most would die for. Even Alexa functions well!
Apart from the cancellation of all the Spring & Summer plans, and the clamp on our movements, its as though nothing is happening around us to spoil the day.
So why these feelings of anxiety, of edging toward black dog? Are we navel gazing do you think? Is this self-indulgence?
I was struck by this quote in one or other of the papers. It was first seen in Paris during the 1968 Riots but could equally well apply to us today here:
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND – THERE IS A FAULT WITH REALITY
We came to the conclusion that it is the confusion, sadness and uncertainty evident all around us that has affected us too, despite our charmed existence. The nation seems to be having some sort of nervous breakdown brought on by the awfulness of nearly four years of the Brexit crisis and compounded by the arrival of Covid-19 and our leaders’ poor ability to manage either.
On Monday the Prime Minister (hereinafter Bojo)’s eminence grise, the arrogant, unrepentant and sociopathic Dominic Cummings held a press conference to explain why he is allowed to live by rules and we, hoi poloi that we are, the great unrespected unwashed, have to live by different rules.
The nation is livid. Even the Conservatives are enraged; well, some of them at any rate. We were treated to an hour’s worth of the most ridiculous excuses and explanations you can imagine (how truly stupid does he really think we are?) and the clear conclusion that Bojo has absolutely no intention of sacking this man who many now regard as the real power behind Bojo, an unelected libertarian with an agenda that makes many tremble.
A lot of people are fearful. They worry about the consequences of the double whammy of Brexit and Covid-19 on their entire existence from jobs to money, from the nation’s whole social & economic wellbeing to whether or not to send their kids back to school.
This anxiety is as airborne as the virus and may well in the end do more harm than the virus unless someone doesn’t come up with a visionary plan to set things to rights.
Bojo and his team are incapable of this. We are sick and tired of the old approach that has laid bare its weaknesses in the past years culminating in these days of sadness when we watch Britain go slowly down.
We need a government of National Revival. We need every idea from left and right to move us forward. We need a new political dispensation based on broader representation, decentralisation and greater accountability. The first past the winning post system must go; there must be an elected upper house; a trimmed down monarchy; a new constitution.
The “old order” bleats that it has worked for a thousand years why cannot it work for another thousand? It has reached its sell-by date, surely? It fails to reflect the multi-cultural, diverse nature of our Union and there needs to be a visionary who can command the respect of everyone to get things right.
And Bojo the Clown and his dishonest team are not the ones.
Quite a conversation in the car Tony & I had; we agreed that our anxiety is the same as everyone else’s and that truly the Nation does not know what to think about anything any more.
On the way home the sun was still shining but the heat had gone out of the afternoon and a chill breeze was blowing off the estuary where we could see our Terns flocking in the mud.
