Bertie doesn’t sleep with me because he prefers to sleep with R.
R doesn’t sleep with me because I snore. Bertie sometimes snuffles but neither of them snore. This is good because, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I can only get back to sleep listening to the BBC World Service. It is repetitive – excellent for lulling me back into the arms of Morpheus. Yesterday was a record – from 1.30 until 8.00 – drifting in and out; dreams and BBC all mixed up; a great documentary about wolves, the shipping forecast, Farming Today – I got snatches between dozes.
You have heard Lyse Doucet reporting from Kyev. I don’t want to trivialise her courage and reportage but you may be curious about her accent. She is Canadian (New Brunswick) and jolly plucky, like American Virginia Cowles some eighty years ago. What a way to earn a living and perhaps a dying. A contrast to Evelyn Waugh’s depiction of war journalists in Scoop.
I am an optimist. Germany in 1945 recovered and has become a major nation in the EU and the world. Of course it’s ironic that West Germany adopted East Germany. If you are a Putinist you might say Russia is likewise trying to adopt Ukraine. I’m not a Putinist. There is a tide in the affairs of men and it seems the tide is a democratic one, on the flood; unwelcome in Moscow and Beijing; welcome in the west but perhaps catastrophic if it leads to confrontation.
There is an inevitable shift of economic power from west to east. Also an inevitable, irreversible shift of demotic desire for democracy that the autocratic rulers of Russia and China will have to address; and a few ‘stans too. Damned if I know how it will play out.