A Little Fiction – Five Minutes in the Car

“…So, do you think that bees know that they’re going to die when they sting you?”
“I don’t think that a bee knows anything. A bee just is. A tiny tangle of neurons with honey-making facilities at one end and munitions at the other. They are driven purely by instinct – like a man at a free bar.”
“If they did know they were going to die, would they still sting you?”
“But they don’t.”
“So, there they are, settling nicely on your nose when they decide they might just give you a bit of a dig and they never, not for one second, think to themselves, ‘Actually, this might not end well for me.’ Nothing inside of them says, ‘Hang on, if I do this, much of what I currently have inside of me will then be on the outside of me, and wearing internal organs externally is never a good thing.’?”
“I don’t think a bee is quite that rational, no.”
“We had a swarm of bees in our garden once. The sky was black with them and the noise was horrendous, but when they settled they formed a ball about the size of a football. It was nice, kind of sleepy, just a gentle buzz to it and a few little stragglers flying lazily around it – until I went just one step too close. Then the whole thing got angry. The buzz became irritated. It throbbed. It was a clear threat: ‘just one step closer!’ So I stepped back and suddenly the whole thing became calm again. It was definitely thought through.”
“I think it’s just instinct isn’t it? A reaction to perceived threat. There’s nothing they can do to affect it.”
“It’s a bit of a stark life though, isn’t it, being a worker bee? Up at the crack of dawn, flying from plant to plant collecting nectar to feed the young; mind that hornet; dodge the man with the folded-up newspaper, knowing – or, if you’re to be believed, not knowing – that if you wanted to sting the annoying little kid with the cricket bat, it would be the last thing you ever did.”
“Well, it’s not something that you would ever have to worry about, is it? All the worker bees are female. The male bees are called drones because they are boring, energy-sapping users who exist solely for the opportunity to mate the minute the virgin queen drops her guard. They are useless wastrels who sit around doing nothing all day and get fanned and fed by the females for their trouble. They don’t even have a sting in their tails. Remind you of anyone?”
“Well, it seems to me that if these drones just lounge about the hive all day being fed and watered before popping out every now and then for a bit of nooky with royalty, maybe they’re the ones with brains.”
“Well, it’s not all beer and skittles. It’s a single-use penis, I’m afraid. A couple of seconds of frustration for the queen and then the drone dies. I suppose it saves him having to help raise the kids.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I like insects. It’s why I married you.”
“You have to feel sorry for male insects, don’t you?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, like those spiders: one chance to mate and then straight away afterwards the female eats him. It’s not very romantic is it?”
“Romantic? It’s life isn’t it. You forget that males are here for only that one single function. If you didn’t contain sperm, we’d have no use for you whatsoever.”
“Oh yes, so who’d open your jars?”
“I’m sure there’s a gadget for it.”
“What about checking your tyre pressures, your oil level? What about topping up your windscreen washer fluid?”
“Gadgets for all of those, I’m sure.”
“Ok then, what about a woman’s other needs?”
“Oh, there’s definitely a gadget for those…”
“You say that, but can you actually imagine a world without men? …Well?”
“I’m sorry, I was just imagining…”
“There are loads of things that women can’t do you know.”
“Really? Outside of getting women pregnant and peeing standing up, what might they be?”
“When did you last clean out the pond pump? When did you empty a mouse trap or de-worm the cat?”
“Choosing not to do things is not the same as not being able to do them. I choose not to fart at the dinner table, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.”
“Well, even if you’re right and all that men are good for is making babies, that, at least, is one thing you can’t do without us.”
“Yet… We’re working on it.”
“Well maybe we’re working on having babies without you.”
“Really? That will be good. Who’s going to change their nappies?”
“…How far have we got to go?”
“Before we can make babies without the messy bit? Well, we can do that now can’t we?”
“I meant before we get to the hotel.”
“Why, do you need the toilet?”
“Oh, very funny. I can’t see the sat-nav. I just wondered how many near-collisions we might have before we arrive… Don’t you think you were a bit close to that cyclist?”
“What cyclist?”
“The one on the… Oh, very funny.”
“We’re about an hour away. Look, the doctor told you that you needed to rest your ankle, why don’t you give your mouth a rest too?”
“You hate driving in silence.”
“I can put the radio on.”
“You hate the DJ.”
“I can change the station?”
“Not since you broke the tuning knob when you decided that you hated the song that was playing.”
“Oh… Well you’ll have to talk to me then.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps we could avoid the bee conundrum for a little while though.”
“Right, so… Do you think that wasps know that they’re not going to die when they sting you?…”

Running In, Please Pass

I have loved football all my life and I continued playing it until my late fifties at which point I started to become rather over-agitated when kicked by children, deciding that my subsequent reactions were not always beneficial for my blood pressure. I found being kicked by people of my own age so much more acceptable, but so few of them were still at it. And I don’t want you to think that I was totally averse to a bit of kicking myself, but when those you are kicking are younger than your own children, it all starts to feel a little odd. Frustration started to take hold and I considered it wise to heed the signs that it might be advisable to call it a day. We are not talking elite football here; there were no uniformed paramedics on stand-by. If I had suffered a heart attack, somebody would have had to nip round to the local Co-op on their pushbike to find out whether the community defibrillator had been nicked again. I fear that the black shroud would have been tightened around me long before the hands of the on-call doctor.

Anyway, I stopped playing and I should be able to say that I thought no more about it, but that would be simply untrue. I think about it all the time. Not going back of course. I am sixty three and even though I know that I am fit enough to do it, it is the reaction of the other players, potentially a quarter of my age, that I fear. The possibility of not being tackled, lest I should break, is not something I choose to consider. The possibility of not being substituted by the manager whilst having a mare, lest I should be terminally upset, is not something I would ponder. There is definitely no going back.

So I now need to contemplate ‘Walking Football’ and, it may be a sign of my softening brain, but there are times when it almost feels like a good idea. There are also times when I question the entire rationale of taking myself off to play a game with a bunch of old codgers who cannot run anymore. Me, an old codger who can run, sometimes for seconds at a time. Is it really appropriate? Could I play football without, at least, breaking into an amble? Would I be forced to chase the ball like Benny Hill chasing a scantily-clad nurse*? How fast is it possible to walk without breaking into a trot? Is there, perhaps, a maximum walking speed and, if so, how is it measured? It all sounds just a little too complicated to me. Maybe I need to look for some other form of low impact sport to replace those that propriety dictates I can no longer do. What about cricket with a foam ball and a rubber bat; tennis with no opponent, but with the ball on a length of string; perhaps touch rugby could be slowed down by tying boot laces together and wrapping the ball in Velcro. Maybe I should take up Crazy Golf, I’m sure the walk would do me good.

*If anybody below the age of fifty is reading this – although God knows why they would – they may need to Google Benny Hill and watch Youtube in order to understand what I am getting at. I wish it to be known that I cannot be held responsible for attitudes that were fifty years out of date before Mr Hill started employing them. Just saying…

A Peep Into the Future – The Hope is in the Past

So, it started with me finding this little article on the internet which explains that mental acuity does not start to collapse until the age of sixty and, being sixty three, it set me off thinking about what I might already have forgotten: what might, quite recently, have become beyond my mental capacity. I cannot complete a Sudoku, but then I never could. I would ask you to remember that my own understanding of mathematics is only just a little less tenuous than Boris Johnson’s grip on reality. I constantly end up with two sixes in the same block and a corner, somewhere or another, with nothing but the numbers they gave you to start with and ‘fuck fuck fuck’ scrawled across it in ballpoint pen. I’m not totally certain whether this is a symptom of a rapidly deteriorating brain, but then I wouldn’t be, would I? I’m trying very hard to remember what I could do a mere forty-two months ago that I can’t do now and the only thing I can come up with is the ability to remember what I was doing forty-two months ago.

What I am able to do with alarming frequency is to stumble across internet stories that predict my all-to-imminent decline and demise. Seconds after reeling away from the realisation that whatever my brain was once-upon-a-time good for, it no longer is, I stumbled onto this little beauty in which scientists seek to relieve the anxieties of the ageing by revealing that they are close to discovering why people suddenly become frail at the age of seventy. This is six and a half years away (I cannot work that out in months without a calculator, and I’ve no idea where I’ve put it). Less than the delivery time on the average SCS sofa.

And now I discover that, at sixty three, I should actually be long dead – although I’m not entirely certain what, exactly, an Airedale is*? According to the Bible I’ve got six and a half good years left in me yet – although, if I’m honest, I don’t think the Bible actually says how good they will be. It just gives me three score years and ten to play with (although no idea of why that’s not three and a half score years) but no idea of how I would be best placed to employ them. I could really do with some kind of timetable for my life:

0-20 years – grow up
21-40 years – teach my children to grow up
41-60 years – teach my grandchildren to grow up
60+ years – grow up.

If I have less than seven years left, I have no intention of spending them like a ‘grown up’. I truly hope that my mind and body will not retreat fully into childhood, but I’d be very happy to recapture the spirit of ten-year-old me. He did not spend a single second worrying about ‘decline’. If I’m honest, ten-year-old me didn’t waste a lot of time fretting about the future at all, he just got on with today.

Of course, ten-year-old me didn’t have the internet, but I’m pretty sure that if he did, he’d have had the common sense to ignore it.

*It’s a dog apparently, so I guess that means that I’m ok for a while yet, although by my calculations – I found the calculator in the fridge – if I was a dog, I would actually be 441 years old and therefore far less keen on ‘walkies’.

N.B. as I write this, two and a half years down the line, a growing sense of some sort of natural immunity and here I am with Covid. My wife succumbed three days ago and since that time we have lived in face-masked isolation, swabbing down and disinfecting for all our worth. Oddly, my symptoms are completely different to hers: is this a different strain or merely a different reaction to the same one? I have no idea, but rest assured everyone, unlike 5G masts** I don’t believe there has ever been a case of Covid being caught from WordPress. Please read on – normal service will continue. As much as it ever did…

**Yes, this is a joke. I have not gone completely mad!

Too Much of A Good Thing

The worst part of going home is always the journey there. Our own journey today is a fairly modest one, but add together the several hours spent kicking our heels between hotel check-out and taxi pick-up, forty five minutes en-taxi, three hours at the airport IF the flight is on time (note that is a big ‘if’) four and a half hours in an airborne Pringles tube, an hour standing around the wrong carousel waiting for a suitcase that is already on its way to Addis Ababa, followed by an hour’s drive once we have managed to find the car (which, as if by magic, never appears to be where we left it) and it all adds up to a proper old pain in the butt. Add in the stress factor – Will the airport be hot and packed, will the flight be delayed, will the taxi driver attempt to kill us all? – and the return journey really has very little to recommend it.

The ultimate destination is, of course, home and getting there means mounds of laundry, shopping and the dreaded return to work. I love my work, but none-the-less, working with the knowledge that ‘Yesterday at this time I was drinking an ice cold beer in a beachfront tavern’ is not always productive. There is no place like home, but there is quite often, somewhere else you would rather be. Whilst it is perfectly possible to get too much of a good thing, it is a whole lot easier to get too much of a bad one. One short snatch of ‘Lady in Red’* is enough to ruin anybody’s day. A short snatch of ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’ can ruin a whole Christmas. I can honestly say that I don’t think I have ever had too much of being on holiday, but I have very often had a hatful of getting back home again.

So, I’m writing this in the bar, cradling my one small pre-journey beer of the day, popping salted peanuts and wondering how long I would have to stay here until it really did feel like too much of a good thing? Before the call of home became too loud? Perhaps I have an in-built need to decorate that I am not currently aware of. Maybe I have a suppressed need to grapple with the day-to-day logistics of matching net income with gross outgoings. Maybe I have a natural disposition towards self-harm (or D.I.Y and Gardening as most people call it). Maybe a week is just enough. Although, if I’m honest, I would very much like to reserve my decision until I’ve had a second one.

Anyway, there you have it. I will (unlike most of my country it seems) be back to normal next week. I cannot promise that my posts will be any more considered, any more logical or, indeed any more amusing, but – and here’s the big thing – there will only be three of them. I do hope that’s a good thing.

*Chris de bloody Burgh

…And I will, of course, also be able to settle down to read some of your own blogs – I can never have too much of that…

Becoming More Greek

Today is the last full day of the holiday and, whilst I have written every day, I realise that what I have written is in no way an informative travelogue. I doubt very much that you will want to know where I am (Crete actually) or what I have done whilst I have been here (bugger all if truth be told) but none-the-less I feel that there are a few things I can tell you that you might be able to lock away for future reference.

We have been coming to the Greek Islands – more usually smaller examples than this one, but somebody made us an offer we couldn’t refuse – for more than thirty years, and it generally takes us about twenty four hours in the country before we ourselves begin to become more Greek.

The Greek Islands are Beautiful (with a capital ‘B’) but always slightly scruffy – almost unfinished. The Greek people are by nature incredibly friendly and accommodating. Nothing is too much trouble: they will say ‘Yes’ even if they know that they will not be able to deliver. The phrase you will encounter most frequently is ‘Yes, of course. No problem.’ Everything operates in Greek Time. Greek Time passes very slowly. Fifteen minutes in Greek time can seem like two hours – and usually is. In fact if you are told that something will be ready in fifteen minutes, that time is not measured from now, but from some future time of the other persons choosing – and you will never know what that time is. Anyway, what’s spoiling? It will take you (neurotic Anglo-Saxon) a little while to adjust to this, but quite quickly you will come to realise how right they are. Adjust yourself to Greek Time and everything becomes much easier. There is always time for one more beer.

Because it is so hot, the Greek people generally have their main meal much later into the evening. There is no Fast Food here and you will almost certainly not find anybody in a hurry to take your money after you’ve eaten – although they will be very quick to fill up your ouzo. Life is far too short to fret. The world would be a much better place if we all became a little more Greek.

So, you’ve got here and you’ve adjusted your body clock, what else is there that you could possibly need to know? Maybe you should consider the enjoyment there is to be gleaned from a Greek shower. Generally hand held, you may or may not get hot water when you turn it on. Either way, you will not have it by the time you turn it off. It’s good for the skin I think…

…So today is our last day in this beautiful place and what I am most reluctant to accept is how quickly I will become English again on touch-down at the airport. I can feel the angst and neurosis rising in me just thinking about it. I will immediately expect things to be done when promised and in a time scale that I can, at least, understand. I will once again get used to the fact that, by and large, nobody wants to make you happy unless they are paid to do so; that generally people do not smile, that most things are far too much trouble, and I really hope that I can hang on to Greek Time for just that little bit longer, but then I find myself staring at my watch. Doesn’t this taxi driver know I’ve got a plane to catch?

A Brief Examination of the Male Psyche through the Medium of the Public Urinal

I have the vague suspicion that I may have been, to some extent, here before. If certain parts of today’s rambling leaves you with a distinct sense of déjà vu (literal translation ‘Well, that book was a complete waste of money’) I can only apologise and hope that you might, never-the-less find sufficient in the other bits to provide a few minutes of entertainment and (dare I say it?) education.

There is a point, when temporary uncertainty flashes through the male brain, at which the sight of a urinal comes as a great relief: you are in the right room. I am of an age when a wordless icon on a toilet door does not necessarily cut it for me, but unless the world – or its physiology – has changed far more than I imagined, you can relax when you see the little porcelain stall, you don’t get them in a ladies lavatory. The world is, however, changing – gender neutrality is the new black – and in the interests of all concerned, I feel it important that everyone understands the rules…

Let us begin with the typical four stall wall, running from the hinge side of the door – thus hidden when the door is opened – to a corner in the room. When a man faces four empty stalls, he never uses the first one, near the door, as he would feel too vulnerable. Nor does he use the corner one, as he feels too trapped. He will always use stall two or three, and as vulnerability usually trumps entrapment, that will put him at stall three, just away from the corner. Now, the most important of all male toilet rules comes into force: you never stand immediately alongside anybody unless there is no proper alternative. So, the next person into the loo must now use stall number one, nearest to the door. Enter gent number three. He has to stand next to somebody, but he does not have to stand between two, so he goes to the corner. Enter male number four. He has to use stall number two. He cannot just walk out, although he is tempted (the embarrassment factor would be just too high) so he takes his place. This routine never varies. Look straight forward. NEVER speak!

‘So,’ I hear you thinking out loud, ‘you are on holiday, why on Earth are you so occupied with urinals? Is there something you should be telling us?’ Well, no, but here’s the thing, I have just used the toilet at the bar of the hotel for the first time and there, squeezed between the door and the corner, are just two urinals and I am all at sea etiquette-wise because – this is a bar after all – somebody is almost certain to follow me in and I need to know what they are likely to do. The space is small. If I go for stall number one, will the newcomer squeeze past me to get to stall number two? If that is the prospective scenario, then I must go to stall number two myself to prevent such an embarrassing situation arising, but who – other than Jack Horner – heads to the corner out of choice? Bravado is required. I go to the corner and when the next person enters I allow them to believe that the person at stall one has left whilst I was ‘mid-mission’, aware immediately that this will ultimately require me to ‘finish first’ and squeeze my way out past them.

Man number two duly enters, appraises the situation instantly, and prepares to use the only toilet cubicle in the room instead of the urinal, until he realises that it has a frosted glass door. Somehow he feels more exposed behind this than at a urinal and quietly withdraws and waits patiently in the corridor outside.

It is good to know that a certain order remains in all things…

Loves

Two of my deepest held holiday loves, gin & tonic on the twilight balcony and The Times Cryptic Crossword combine to ensure that I spend many hours staring at a half empty grid and a page of clues that make far less sense than they’re meant to. I don’t (yet) resort to the method of an old friend who, when in difficulty, would make up answers – and sometimes words – and if the mood took him, new clues to indicate that his answers were, after all, correct. He took great delight in leaving the newspaper, open at the finished crossword, for all to see. It gave him great delight to think that some poor, beaten soul might turn to his completed grid to help them complete their own, only to discover that the answer to 13 Down was ‘SKRIBLIB’ the clue to which, unlike his/her own copy was ‘Sound made by tongueless frog’.

I love a day on the sunbed, be-booked and all music’d up, and I love the sea, but I do not like a combination of the two. A day on the beach is, for me, as bad as it gets on holiday. (I lie: I once spent a sunbed day next to somebody who played Chris de Burgh all day on a tiny, tinny speaker that actually made my teeth itch. I think I may have tried to drown myself that day.) However, I am one of two, and the other one of two loves a day on the beach, so off to the beach we schlepped. Our beach of the day was a tiny cove, semi-submerged for part of the day (there is a certain frisson to lying on a sunbed as the waves lap ever higher up the legs) and accessed by a five minute scramble across and down a rocky hillside. It was so inaccessible that I was amazed to be charged €8 for the hire of the beds and to be offered a food and drink menu shortly after we decamped. How did they get the drinks down without the ice melting? How did the cream in the doughnut (‘Extra special fresh’) not turn to cheese? How, in God’s name, had a man of my own age got the bloody sunbeds down there in the first place? Had they parachuted them in under the parasols? They didn’t have a toilet though which, at least in part, may well explain the warmness of the sea.

I don’t like sand in ‘stuff’: personal ‘below stairs’ equipment, shoes, teeth and most particularly sun cream. What can be worse than a liberal application of factor 30 over an enormous portion of beach? Skin does not burn, it is sanded off. My wife says that it makes her skin ‘feel alive’. I try to explain that it is only because she has almost entirely removed her dermis, exposing raw, tingling nerves underneath, but to little avail.

She is currently enjoying the last few rays of the dying sun beside the pool whilst I am enjoying the last few watery gin dregs before the ice completely melts and discovering that, today, 13 Down might well just be ‘SQURROX’*.

*Word stolen from the inestimable Mr Milligan.

Walks

We like a nice walk in the holiday morning, she-who-deserves-much-better and me. Just a potter, you understand, shorts and flip-flops rather than boots and rucksacks, but it’s always good to get your ten thousand steps in before the first morning beer. Holiday rules are, of course, somewhat more flexible than domestic regulations, and the first beer of the day normally arrives about two minutes after I notice that somebody else has already got one.

Walks here fall into two categories: uneven and rocky coastal paths that lead, via treacherous coves and cliffs, precisely nowhere, and rocky mountain paths that lead to the same place – only higher up. When we get to the terminal point of the-middle-of-nowhere we turn around and try to remember where we came from. (I mean that in the physical sense, rather than the metaphysical – although ‘What the f*ck are we doing here?’ has crossed my mind from time to time.) I’m not sure what it is about cliff tops that always leads me to the edge, but whatever it is, I wish it wouldn’t quite frankly. The conviction that I just might be the first man to actually fly is not an easy one to shake off. It’s the last thing I would do (quite literally) of course.

On our little treks we have encountered many different types of indigenous flora and fauna (often scaly and mostly with many, or no, legs). I recall with startling clarity having to catch a lady who had a bit of a fainting episode as she tried to alert me to the fact that there was a fist-sized spider crawling up the back of my shirt. Unfortunately her swoon brought her into closer proximity to the meaty arachnid and it was uncertain which one of us (and I include the spider) felt the most uncomfortable at this stage. In the end she swiped the beast away with her handbag and we parted with smiles and waves, but no words, as she did not understand English and I did not understand terrified screaming.

On another occasion a friend managed to collect a Praying Mantis of quite alarming proportions and was most put-out because I couldn’t stop laughing at how much it looked like Jiminy Cricket perched on his shoulder (although it was, in his mind, more the size of Long John Silver’s parrot). He had the last laugh on that occasion though, as later in the holiday my wife and I managed to acquire a cicada under our fridge which started calling for companionship at a volume which, in James Bond films, would have brought down aircraft. Nor did it want to leave. In the end it took offence to a liberal spraying with anti-perspirant and made a dash for the door which, thankfully, was open. I think of him (Her? I always think as noisy things as male.) every time I hear cicadas in the trees – which is probably why we don’t walk in the evenings…

Now and Then

As one of my great reader-friends would say, ‘Here’s the haps’. I have been on holiday for a few days – apologies for lack of comments, likes etc during that time – and I decided to write my blog, as normal, but from the beach. In fact, I wrote six short posts, none of them with any particular point or direction, and each of them took about as long to write as I think they will take to read – and for that I apologise. However, whatever their shortcomings, I have decided to publish them exactly as written over the space of the next six days. I hope you will forgive me…

In keeping with my normal routine, by the time you read this, ‘now’ will be ‘then’ – I almost always allow myself at least a week from writing to publishing which does, on occasion, allow the world to overtake me, but also allows me something of an airbag against the possibility of saying something so crass that it does not belong even in my blog. I do read this stuff, so believe me, I feel your pain. Anyway, in the ‘now’ as I write, I am on holiday and hoping to maintain my bloggy routine from a sunbed with a beer and sunglasses dark enough to ensure that nobody knows what I am really looking at.

It is hot here: the sky is cloudless blue and the sun has forced the world into a protective haze of factor 30, ice and alcohol. While some gamely undertake listless lengths of the now tepid pool, most fill the moments between one bar closing and the next one opening by reading. The only conversation a gentle murmur of weather appraisal: cooler tomorrow apparently, less breeze and, yes, get some peanuts while you’re there if you can.

The bodies around the watery margins are a glorious salmagundi of the human form. Some inordinately proud of such flesh as they can decently expose, strut and flex in the sun whilst others, less certain, cover themselves in loose fitting T-shirts and huddle in the shade of sun umbrellas that require the attentions of at least four weight lifters to erect. It is a strange example of the human psyche that only those who really should never wear a pair of Speedos, do.

It is the same sun that turns some of us a glorious brown and the rest of us salmon red: that means that the more ripped amongst us appear sickeningly fit whilst the rest of us adopt the appearance of peeled beetroot. Being of the beetroot persuasion myself, I generally smear myself in more cream that the average profiterole and, in an attempt to prevent curdling, head for the shade of a bar.

We are approaching the hour when the pool empties and everybody heads for shade and food, leaving a single child in a unicorn inflatable, obliviously spinning round and splashing to their own tune. Life for them is long, but still not a moment to be wasted, whilst those of us with precious little of it left stare at the sky and wonder ‘Why?’ The main problem at times such as this is that inspiration does not lie in the majesty of the infinite, but in the man trying – unsuccessfully as it goes – to clamber aboard a pool-bound inflatable in the very middle of an otherwise empty pool. It lies in the diminutive elderly grandma who has decided to join the muscled youths for a game of volleyball. Possibly local, she clearly speaks a different language than the boys, but they all laugh in the same one. I pause in the hope that she might be better than them all, but she isn’t. She is, none-the-less, fully included: a triumph of human spirit and a restoration of faith, and it cheered me up no end.

Now, if I can just find some inspiration…

Everything I Know About Politics (In 500 Words – Providing I Pad it Out A Little Bit)

Here is my understanding: politics is a spectrum and at opposing ends there is Communism and there is Nazism and the thing is… they are exactly the same. (I have the uneasy feeling that I may have peaked too soon here, as that is pretty much where my understanding ends, but I’ll plod on anyway: understanding is very over-rated in my opinion.) So, now I think about it, politics is not a spectrum at all, it is a circle. Whichever direction you take, clockwise or anti-clockwise, if you keep on going and refuse to listen for long enough, you end up in the same place: a totalitarian nightmare. It is so weird that the far right so detests the far left (and vice versa) when they are both fighting for the same thing: disenfranchisement for the majority, vast riches and ungoverned power for the tiny elite. Both of these systems thrive on corruption and function only because those that rule are completely divorced from those they rule over.

It strikes me that these despotic leaderships can only successfully function when the area over which they rule is vast – Russia and China – and probably explains why the Third Reich in Germany were so focussed on the kind of expansion that, eventually (and thankfully) proved to be its downfall. The benefit of magnitude is that things can be hidden. We can only scratch at the surface of what goes on in China, and Putin’s claim to be protecting the world from Ukranian Nazis rings exceedingly hollow when he is at the head of a State that behaves in such a manner. In such a State that the rest of the world is treated with disdain whilst the home population is treated with contempt. Such contempt that they never get to hear about it.

So, here we are, the rest of the world, arranged at various compass points around our political circle. We have a single collective aim: to try to stop every other tinpot dictator from making his way towards the extreme end of the circle (except, of course, circles don’t have ends and if somebody stops you going round to the right, there will always be someone to help you make progress round to the left – unlike the M25, of course, in which case progress in any direction is generally impossible) and to do this, we have the Leaders of the Free World. Let’s look, we have Joe Biden in America, a man who looks so confused it has to be an act and whose greatest asset is that he is not Donald Trump. In the UK we had (until yesterday) Boris, and tomorrow will have who-knows-who to stumble through the next two years prior to an ignominious defeat either in a party coup or a general election. And in France we have a man whose main aim in life is to become Napoleon – if only he could remember which way he needs to turn.

Do not panic fellow Earthlings, there is definitely a way out. Let’s all start building a rocket before the buggers blow us up.