Are sexuagenarians prone to pessism? It’s easier to worry about the future than look forward to it, on many levels, but we must keep buggering on.
I was given some excellent books for Christmas but first I must finish Harold Nicolson’s absorbing diaries. It is January 1947; Harold is sixty and far from optimistic.
” … in five years from now we may find that France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Greece have all gone communist. That the smaller Western Powers are like rabbits in the python’s cage. That the whole of India is under communist direction and that we will have troubles in all our colonies and dependencies. At the same time there will have occurred in this country a split between the present Labour leaders (who take a patriotic or nationalistic point of view), and their left wing (who take an international or Red Flag point of view). The latter will, owing to the acute poverty of the country, gain ground among the working classes. Thus if a conflict comes between the USA and the USSR we shall have a very active fifth column in this country. The great bourgeois mass, terrified as they will be by the prospect of atomic war, will wish only to please Russia. The minority who see that we must side with America will be called ‘war mongers’. And we shall thus lose our independence and our Commonwealth. I say that this is what will probably happen. To ignore this probability is to be both cowardly and blind. To be frightened of it is to deny one’s own soul. Because nothing really happens which is as bad as the imagination forecasts. Time brings unexpected alterations. The danger may pass.”
That puts our little local difficulty with the EU into perspective. Perhaps we will have a happy 2019? “Nothing really happens which is as bad as the imagination forecasts.”
I’m looking forward to going to Italy, France and Greece in the first half of the year, seeing more of England and reading lots. Chin up, happy new year!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBJLKlx0A-g
Happy New Year Christopher!
Hopefully, you’ll add Ireland and the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival to your busy schedule: https://blackwatervalleyoperafestival.com/
One of the many delights of this blog is, generally, the way in which the author avoids the predictable big news stories. I admire the fact that he ploughs a different furrow, even though politics and Brexit may feature on occasion, casting their long shadow.
In the comming twelve months he would do well to limit his discussions to the arts, architecture, family and of course Ireland. All issues about which he is able to write about competently.
Sending greetings for a happy and prosperous new year.
HH