What Really Scares Me...

...is the realisation that I've now written over 200 Saturday Blogs! Man, that's four years hard labour at the blogface with a fortnight off each summer for Greek delights. Where has the time gone?

A somewhat facetious opening, I know, but it's milestones like that which make you reflect on what you've been doing with your precious hours (Saturdays, weeks, months...) Naturally I've enjoyed writing all those blogs and poems (some better than others, admittedly) or I wouldn't have done it for so long (and four years is quite a long time). I was meant to be writing a novel, but the Oystons' cynical custodianship of Blackpool FC led to me putting much of my time and energy into Blackpool Supporters' Trust and the blog was easier to fit alongside that quite consuming activity than trying to progress a book. Blogging is a good discipline and still a stimulating challenge, so I'll keep it going for another year and then have a re-think.

As to  what really scares me  on a personal level (if scare is the right word and accepting that the fear doesn't have to be particularly rational/realistic) - that would have to be the prospect of exposure to prolonged cold, especially when combined with wet in the form of ice and snow. I've never been attracted to ski-ing or winter holidays.

Of course snow is pretty to look at as it falls, fun to play around in for a while - but on an industrial (or should that be a meteorological) scale? No thanks. Preserve us from the freezing crystalline killer. The prospect of global warming concerns me slightly, but the thought of suffering the ravages of a prolonged cold climate worries me more. I'd hate, for instance, to be plunged into the constant frozen gloom of a mini ice-age. I bought a copy of Anna Kavan's dystopian classic Ice a few months ago ("no sun, no shadows, no life, a dead cold") but I haven't plucked up the courage to read it yet.

Think of the devastation caused when cold and wet conspire for any duration - it decimates wildlife, it's a danger to the young, infirm and very old (I'm not there yet); it completely disrupts the progress of the everyday. Think of the vast natural reserves consumed in keeping warm in such an environment. Think of the mental health issues (of which SAD is the tip of the proverbial iceberg).

No, give me a temperate climate, thank you. I'm so pleased to be living in the jewel of the north, situated on the Fylde coast, a place that doesn't freeze up for months on end; and I cross my fingers that we're not in for a vicious winter, given that the swing of the seasons becomes more exaggerated.

Which thought leads on to things that scare me on a societal level - and right up there is the insidious resurgence of right-wing institutions of which Donald Trump's elevation to the White House is a truly frightening portent. Not only has he reneged on America's commitment to tempering the man-made causes of global warming, he's also backed out of treaties on nuclear arms limitation and is trying to tear up his people's rights to health care and civil liberties. A racist and a misogynist, he is allowing extremes of prejudice to appear acceptable in pursuit of the invigorated American nationalism that right-wing commercial and financial institutions have as their abiding agenda and that 'ordinary white folks' appear to be sucked into supporting. This is divisive politics at its most ruthless. If you haven't read It Can't Happen Here (the novel by Sinclair Lewis), put it on your Christmas present list. Donald Trump is the dangerous figurehead of a new cold war movement...

Frosted Trumpkin

Closer to home, what scares me more than America under the Trumpkin is the unholy alliance of clever cynics and unreasonable fools in my own country and the thought of where their populist flood-tide might carry us before it drains away, leaving a pile of wreckage that will take years to recover from.

Cue a poetic swipe at that fulminating misler, Boris Johnson. This is something I wrote a few weeks ago for National Poetry Day after seeing newsreel of BoJo whipping up a storm at the Tory Party conference. I hope its sentiment is clear - a poem not really about coffee...

Borista!
I asked for a double-espresso,
complex, dark, spicy, vital,
cultured, stylish and urbane;
(think Athens, Milan, Paris, Rome).

He served up some hideous latte,
a full-fat, frothing aberration,
boorish, bigoted and bland;
(Scunthorpe, Witney, Dover, Frome).

Not what I ordered.
Can't get the staff!


Thanks, as ever, for reading the blog. Stay thoughtful and keep warm, S ;-)