Day 89

When I was walking back from my very intense acupuncture session yesterday, an old song came into my mind that I’ve not hummed for an absolute age, and that I used to sing to myself when I was still running 3 or 4 times a week. It’s an old Norwegian lullaby, or at least we used to sing it to the children as a lullaby. It’s called Lykkeliten, and brought back so many memories, and before I’d even got through the first few bars, my eyes were streaming. The passing of time does this to us. And it’s not all because of rose-tinted spectacles. What I was crying most about was that lost innocence, not just of the children, who are now all grown up, but of ours, their parents, we who were at the beginning of the path then, with so much passion and energy and hope, convinced that the world would become a better place, that we would all find our place in it, our rightful place, and that romance and peace and happiness weren’t just illusions. They are not illusions, of course, but the world has veered off course since then (even before then, if we’re truthful), and the attacks on decency and respect and honesty have been relentless. Mind you, humming that song all the way back lifted me, made me think that not all is lost, that there will be better times and ages ahead, for all of us. I also remember thinking that when they all grew up, especially O, they’d be standing on tables raucously singing the lullaby, just like Mario Lanza sings Drink in The Student Prince. Ah, the dreams of youth.

Massive aircraft noise over Norwich here this morning, and nothing at all showing on my flight tracker. Echoes of war? Or just vainglorious exercises to persuade the people that the UK government means business when it doesn’t? I know what I think. How much does it cost to run a fighter jet for an hour? And how much does it cost to run a hospital for an hour? I don’t have the numbers, but am sure they would make enlightening reading. Just as it is enlightening to remind people that the UK government threw £37 billion away on a useless, mismanaged and corrupt covid-19 Track & Trace system which had nothing at all to do with the NHS, whilst actually spending that money on the NHS would not just have ensured a more effective managing of the pandemic, but would also have gone a long long way to saving the NHS and supporting people in poverty.

A lot of people are doing a lot of posturing right now. I have written to my Conservative MP again asking her what she is going to do about the fact that Boris Johnson has now been shown, without a doubt, to have lied to Parliament. As usual, I won’t expect even an acknowledgement from here. These people think they are above the law, think they are better than us, think they can do whatever they want to do. And the way our voting system is structured, they can. There is no difference between them and Putin, and Trump, and Hitler, and Nero, and Attila The Hun, and any other tyrants you can think of on the spur of the moment.

One last thing – a strange thing. I used to have to lift the handle of the door to the garden study to make sure it stayed closed. It’s now closing without me having to make that extra movement of my hand. Either the ground has shifted, or the study has shifted, or the mechanism has healed itself. I’ll settle for the last. It’s a positive. I remind myself that there are many positives, and always will be.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 46