A Strange Man In Strange Times

Having a difficult day today. Can’t even tell you why. Probably tired, after a weekend tickled by insomnia and unpleasant thought patterns. I’ve done my usual thing – find a new little ‘game’ (in this case – recasting old movies), got really excited by it, obsessed about it for a week or so, played it to death like a child with a new toy at Christmas, then got fed up with it, then berated myself for wasting so much time and effort and mental energy obsessing about it already. What could I have achieved in a week, I told myself at 2.13am this morning, had I not been spending my time trying to decide who could be a modern-day Clark Gable in a remake of ‘Gone with the Wind’?

Never mind. Onward and upward.

It’s quite overcast and chilly here today, too, which probably doesn’t help. After a couple of days of Summer warmth, it’s a shock to return to the weather that we should really be having at this time of the year anyway.  I do feel that we’ve been rather spoilt so far during lockdown, weather-wise. It’s probably a bad thing really, as it’s probably a sign of accelerated climate change, but we’re not hearing anything about that anymore, are we? Not hearing anything about ANYTHING expect ‘CV19’ as I believe it’s now being called.

Greta Thunberg must be spitting feathers.

It will be interesting to see what happens when we get detailed readings at the end of this year. With air travel virtually at a standstill, and probably less than half the automobile movements that we’d normally get, will there be a noticeable effect on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere? You must have seen the satellite images of the skies over China, and how air pollution shrank to virtually nothing during their quarantine? I’ll be very interested to see if that is repeated worldwide, and if it is, will that have any effect on people’s attitudes? If the rate of atmospheric warming slows or even reverses, won’t that finally be proof that manmade activities are responsible for the changes we’ve been seeing, and becoming increasingly affected by? Won’t that finally kick the naysayers into the shadows, and provoke people to petition governments to stop ignoring the issue and do more? Will this realisation, coupled with a collective understanding of what’s important, born from an altered mental state induced by being isolated, make each and every human take responsibility for their own part in the future?

One can only hope.

I’m rambling now, so I think I shall bid you adieu.

RC 27-4-20