Just a short blog this week, as we’ll be away visiting my family in the Midlands by the time this post goes live. (No internet connection, so we’ll be off the grid.)
I’m writing this on Friday morning, the morning after the referendum before. Outside, it’s grey and raining; inside, to be honest, after that result, too. I’ve always striven to keep this blog a politics-free zone, feeling that Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings summed it up best: when asked which side he was on he replied, “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side.”
Thistle at path’s end
Well. I won’t change that now. But waking up this morning and hearing the news, and watching some of the victory speeches, I was reminded of the old joke about the man who, warned by po-faced evangelists that if he didn’t change his way of life and friends he’d end up in hell, said he’d stick with the devil he knew because “he’d rather go to hell with all his friends than end up in heaven with you lot”.
Ah, well. As the poet said, The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on; sometimes pausing only to make an obscene gesture in passing. Time to face the future with a positive attitude and a belief in the essential decency of human nature…
Or, failing that, dust off those application forms for a New Zealand passport…
[Comments will be turned off this week – partly because we won’t be able to moderate or respond, partly because, well, you know. Normal service will be resumed next week. See you then!]