Spring is in the air.
Azina has laid two eggs so far and a lot of bitches are in season in W6. All reminders that life goes on, no matter how much humanity is bent on self-destruction through war, famine and climate change. I wonder if it might have been better if history had been frozen at Merrie England. Of course I mean Professor Welch’s ME and not Jim Dixon’s more realistic approach to history. We have been watching Robin Hood and Ivanhoe – both the former, nevertheless two, great old movies, if you like that sort of thing. “The industrial revolution was the greatest planetary disaster since the invention of the wheel”; discuss in fewer than 5,000 words, if you are applying to a Russell Group university and have £9,000 to spare. For applicants to other universities just pony-up 9k, no questions asked. If you’d like to go to a polytechnic no dice; they are called universities these days. Days when the UK should raise its game and stop teaching English, Anthropology and Psychology; subjects in which I got a degree and an agreeable three years becoming a trainee alcoholic. All I learnt was long words like polemic, marmalade and achromatopsia.
On the Eastern Front
Although I have travelled a bit I seldom met anybody except guides, drivers, hotel staff and other tourists. This changed in 2019 when I was in Moldova, Ukraine (twice) and Belarus as an OSCE election observer. On election days I spent at least half an hour at each polling station (I usually visited at least a dozen) and much longer at the dreary count and reconciliation of the results. There was plenty of opportunity to talk, usually to the polling officers and civil observers, sometimes to voters. I had an interpreter, now called a language assistant. There was the governor and his warders in a prison for women, mostly murderers; the young man learning the drums but he hadn’t heard of Ringo Starr or The Beatles (both in Ukraine); teachers, farmers, tradesmen all keen to talk about themselves and usually ask about England. It was much harder work being chatty than filling out the election observation forms. However, it was worth the effort. With only two exceptions (in Moldova) I met thoroughly decent people in all three countries. In Moldova and Ukraine standards were high. In Belarus the polling station staff were similarly professional and engaging but they were experienced in manipulating the votes and pretty shameless about it too. It was like watching the pea and thimble trick in the car park on an Irish racecourse. The OSCE were scathing.
A truism, I know, but wars are created by individuals and whole populations of decent citizens suffer and are killed in pointless exercises in megalomania that are ultimately defeated.