Out Of Control

Hmmm.  Out of control  is this week's allotted blog theme. It begs the rhetorical question "where to begin?" 

Daily Covid-19 case numbers are at record levels. Thankfully the vaccination programme is mitigating the worst effects on people's lives, though the UK has the highest daily death rate in the world at the moment (a fact that is not given wide publicity)! 

Or what about those sickening reports of Russian soldiers committing atrocities against the civilian population in Ukraine, bombing homes, hospitals, schools, raping, torturing and executing ordinary Ukrainians for not welcoming the invasion of their homeland with open arms and garlands of flowers? 

Then there's the most recent IPCC update from the UN's climate scientists, published earlier this week,  warning that the world is on "the fast track to disaster" and it's "now or never" to implement the changes needed to restrict the increase in global warming to 1.5 degrees.

But I suspect for most people the pressing concern is the escalation in fuel and domestic energy prices, already rocketing and set to rise further later in the year. Coupled with the knock-on effect on the cost of just about everything else, it's going to make life extremely tricky for millions of people, exacerbating the widening divide between the few who have so much and the many who have so little.

It might seem simplistic to say that those who are in control have allowed things to get out of control, but it's true. What's more, they have permitted this because frankly it is to their advantage, the oligarchs, the powerful industrialists, the right-leaning political establishments. 

Unfortunately it's also true that we have permitted them, because we handed them a mandate at the ballot box. How many years of Tory-imposed austerity have we suffered? At least a decade's worth. And is there anybody alive who still seriously thinks Brexit was anything other than a con and a costly mistake?

We need to get things back in control on so many fronts. It's a daunting prospect. Where to begin? Well, there are local elections in many parts of the UK next month. Maybe that's a good starting point, an opportunity to back a different, more ecologically sound and socially equitable way to manage how everything works.

Here as a distraction from all that angst is a painting by one of my favourite artists. By the way, did you know that the post-impressionists were accused of being out of control for painting in the manner they did? Hmmm.

To conclude, here's my latest poem. I assure you, it's bang on theme.  

Says Anne

Dressed in black frock-coat and bowler hat,

he saunters the evening boulevard, carrying

a painting under his arm; instinctively stops

and looks back over his shoulder.  Precisely

then, the children throw their stones at him,

mocking this incongruous form who wisely

ducks without delay into a nearby archway,

rings a doorbell, which happens to be mine.

I don't care who it's by, says Anne, you can't

hang another picture up.  I won't allow any

more holes drilled in my walls; the house is

riddled with so many, it may well soon fall!

The above is all true, actually, with the exception of the imaginative join in the last line of the second verse. The first part derives from my reading of a biography of one of the greatest post-impressionist painters (you've surely picked up the clue as to who); the second is a wry reminder of how topsy-turvy life could be with my most recent, (variously controlling and out of control), now ex- wife. 

  

Thanks for reading, S ;-)