Authors Electric

               The Problem of wishing ‘Happy’                                                        Frozen pond, foggy day In the weeks before Christmas just past, when I was writing greetings cards to the many friends we haven't seen or communicated with regularly or recently,   it felt more appropriate to wish them hope than happiness …. Indeed is it ever right to   assume happiness is uppermost in the minds of far-flung friends? After such a year, who knows what might have happened in their lives? Floods, fires, and hurricanes are commoner, Covid and its consequences lurks throughout the world. Hope was a better fit. Even though, or possibly because, I found myself dragged down by the dark damp weather, and the short days, into a feeling of hopelessness. I’ve  ...

Aargh another new year dawns and goodness knows how it will go. For the first time in my life, when writing Christmas cards, I couldn’t bring myself to wish the recipients a Happy New Year, when the chances were that at least half their families would be isolating and that New Year would be cancelled anyway. All I could do was add fervent hopes that 2022 would prove a better year than 2021. Which, to be fair, covers a lot of possibilities.  So here are my wishes for 2022:  Covid vaccinations for all Photo by  FRANK MERIÑO  from  Pexels 1. Covid vaccinations offered to all, including young children.  2. Anti vaxxers come to their senses.    3. Kindness ceases to be Something People Talk About and becomes Something People Do.     4. Truth resumes its rightful place in the cold, hard world of Facts, away from the warm, fuzzy one of Feelings where it has been corralled of late.  1, 2 and 3 are self-explanatory. 4 plunges me (and yo...

Back in 2015, somebody made a clever joke that I wished -   a) I’d thought of myself (naturally)   b) the person had made it five years before, giving us so much longer to enjoy it.   It went something like this:   Prospective employer : So, Ms ------, where do you see yourself in five years’ time?    Interview candidate : I don’t know. I don’t have 2020 vision.   No 2020 vision here Photo by  Ksenia Chernaya  from  Pexels With 2020 behind us, that joke has taken on a kind of tragic grandeur, of Socratic irony even. Nobody had 2020 vision. E xcept for a few far-sighted scientists and medical experts who knew we were in for a pandemic but couldn’t say when. And if they had pointed to 2020, who’d have believed them? Yes, yes, we’d have said. Don’t worry, we’re used to flu. We’ll be fine.  A wonderful thing, hindsight. By the time you read this, we’ll all have 2020 vision. Just, er, backwards.  Spectacular sour...