WEARISOME WITTERINGS FROM A WEARY WITTERER

There are some mornings when I can’t think a coherent thought or string a decent sentence together and this morning is just one of those mornings. So why on earth am I still randomly babbling out these meanderings if I’ve got nothing to say?

You know, it’s just one of those days when I haven’t slept well and for some unfathomable reason that made me unwisely head for the keyboard in the middle of the night and think I should write something, but it all kind of fell apart, but then I decided to plonk it out there anyway and then I got up to face the working day thinking that I shouldn’t have, I really shouldn’t have, and now I should attempt to write something a bit brighter and yet, when I sit down and actually try and think there’s that “whole lack of a coherent thought” thing happening, coupled with the whole “unable to string a decent sentence together” thing and I find myself bashing the keyboard almost out of a kind of habit or more basically a need to just put words down.

It doesn’t help that the rain is blatting down and the skies are slate grey and it’s looking like being a thoroughly miserable, almost wintry morning weather-wise, with the slight caveat that at least it’s not as flippin’ cold as it was yesterday and I’m not going to be shivering as I do my “creative thing” today and the gears of my brain aren’t as likely to seize up in the way that I seriously began to wonder if they might do at one point yesterday. Polar explorers have told tales of how the cold can literally feel like it’s freezing their brains, but I never truly believed that such a thing could happen in my own home whilst I’ve got the central heating switched on.

It also doesn’t help that the old motor-car started making an alarming noise as I rattled off into town in the dawn’s early light. The poor, venerable machine. It’s my own fault for telling someone only yesterday how well the old jalopy is holding up. Some people believe in the power of words, I’m told. They think that if you say something bad, then something bad will most likely happen. Others believe that you shouldn’t tempt fate or in just plain and simple bad luck, but, for whatever reason, on this sleepy morning, a potential glitch has emerged that will have to be addressed.

But not yet.

Not now.

There’s work to be done.

And it could be worse…

So very much worse.

These minor troubles are no better or worse than anything most of the rest of us will have to cope with today, and they are absolutely insignificant compared to what a lot of people will have to endure on a day that might very well be the worst of their lives, or indeed for those in some countries where every single day they live is worse than anything I will probably have to experience in my entire life.

I just remind myself every once in a while how lucky I really am. How privileged I am to have been born in one of the richer nations of the world and how easy I have it when I come to think about it. A cleverer man than I’ll ever be once said: “Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.” Sometimes I just wake up and forget it, that’s all, and have to remind myself.

I occasionally have to remind myself that others sometimes forget it too. I was sent a message recently about the current financial climate and “looking after our own first” and it bothered me deeply. Surely there is an obligation to those less fortunate than ourselves, not because it’s a moral choice or because it’s politically expedient, but because it’s quite simply the right thing to do and we are in a position to help? Fundamentally, I believe that people do believe it, and the response to telethons and charity appeals would seem to generally support that opinion. People who send me these messages are the very same people who send me emails telling me to put things in perspective, that “if I have more than a dollar a day to live on I’m better off than half the people in the world”, or that “if I have a full fridge, clothes on my back, a roof over my head and a place to sleep, I’m wealthier than 75% of the world’s population”, or if “the world was a village of 100 people I’d be in the 1% that owns a computer” …you know the sort of thing, they tend to fly around the wibbly, wobbly web every so often and we all get them. I’m just surprised I suppose when someone who sends me that kind of message then sends me something that is the complete opposite of that point of view and doesn’t seem able to see the disparity. Maybe I’m just easily disappointed. Who knows?

Then, of course, another radio documentary about income tells me that a lot of us in the UK are always miserable because we all think everyone else earns more than us and that in reality we don’t realise that only 10% of the working population earn more than 50K a year and only 20% earn more than 40K, yet most of us believe that compared to everyone else we’re somehow worse off, not doing so well, convinced we’re living in absolute poverty because our TV set isn’t state-of-the-art or our mobile phone isn’t the latest model or we haven’t got the new video game, but very few in this country really ever have to walk five miles to fetch a bucket of fresh water, and most of us can take our basic education and general healthcare pretty much for granted, and very few of us indeed starve to death unless the circumstances are particularly unusual.

Sometimes we really don’t know how lucky we are. I see film of children in Africa beaming with joy at simply having the opportunity to go to school and realizing what a difference it will make to their lives, and I see some of our schoolchildren seething with resentment at the prospect and I wonder some wet and miserable mornings where we lost our sense of perspective.

Damn it! I got political. I promised myself I wasn’t going to get political. All that ever does is make people back away. It never changes anything. Nobody ever altered their point of view by reading something like this. It’s more likely to entrench them in their point of view if anything. Time to just shut up, I guess.

Just ignore me. I told you I hadn’t slept well.

Anyway, the coffee’s hot, the heating’s on and there’s food in the house and a living to be made, and so I’m ready to face whatever minor irritants the day chooses to throw at me.

“Cheer up, you idiot!” (He said to himself) “Life’s really not that bad”.

Although, it seems that for someone with nothing to say this morning, I ain’t half going on about it.