Possible Worlds

I’ve been having a quiet time. The house is a bit cleaner. I’m 6lbs lighter. There’s nothing else to report on the domestic front. I’ve been too busy doing nothing to be writing.

Meanwhile, the TV news has been gripping. It is over a week since I left myself a note listing two blogging ideas:

Volcano

BNP

The world has moved on, and it’s almost a shame as I might have liked a memento of how I responded to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland that closed UK and European airspace for days. It all seems like a distant memory now. We weren’t much affected by the blue, vapour-trail clear skies. There was only a coat of ash on all of the cars to remind us. Too thin a coating to write a satisfyingly rude message. I was reminded of the song Every Day Is Like Sunday by Morrissey, where the lyrics run, “Trudging back over pebbles and sand/ And a strange dust lands on your hands/ And on your face”. That old song was written with a view to nuclear apocalypse, now we live with a mood of environmental disaster. It seemed to me that the ash that had blown in the light breeze for 1700 miles to fall on my car was a warning of how, in spite of human technologies that appear to have everything under control, nature can crush us all in a moment. Taking this view is of course not very profound, and hasn’t influenced my behaviour at all. Lights still left on all over the house, tumble dryer in constant use…

The elections are looming. Labour are doing very badly. A significant number of people on Facebook are posting right wing, BNP style group memberships, especially around St George’s Day These are people I know and it makes me very sad. At first, I tried to fight back a little, but it has got progressively disheartening. My prediction for the elections: Conservatives win with narrow majority, Liberals in second place. Hung parliament that will focus on electoral reform. The only hope is, I have a very poor record of predicting reality TV shows, I’m trying to think of it that way. It’s surely for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.