So it’s September 13th. It’s a beautiful day. A proper Indian Summer day, and even though it’s warm, it has the feeling of the beginning of Autumn. Perhaps it’s the feeling of a whiff of wind or how the colours change subtly. Everything felt on the surface quite content. The hens scratching around in the run, people picnicking in Museum Gardens, the pond looking better than perhaps it ever has before. The early evening sun.
And yet, and yet. It’s a long while since I’ve written one of these blogs. On the face of it, that may reflect how Covid has receded into the distance. And perhaps there has been a temporary lull in the UK, if not in other countries.
But walking back from York this afternoon, I couldn’t escape a feeling of overwhelming sadness and uncertainty. So much of normal life seems under threat from a government that wants to destroy and disrupt. Covid cases are escalating whilst people circulate outside pubs, the government want to break [international] law, they chastise migrants and asylum seekers for fleeing across the Channel, accusing them without irony of breaking laws that don’t exist. A government who is creating an entirely fabricated culture war to deflect from their incompetence. And almost worse is that although the polls show the parties neck and neck, there are seemingly over 40% of people who would still vote for the Tories.
But it’s not *just* this Government. It is the utter uncertainty of what lies in front of us. I find it difficult to think life will ever be ‘quite’ the same. People talk of building back better, and I wish I shared that optimism. But even in the space of a few months, it seems clear to me that people have lost any sense of perspective so quickly and many are innately selfish. Whether for others less fortunate who could die from Covid, whether for the future of a planet, or perhaps even most of all for the younger and future generations. Perhaps I am just feeling despondent and grumpy, perhaps on a rainy day in November, I’ll see the sunlight ahead of us. Just let’s hope if it appears, we can see it in us all to share that sunlight more widely.
