I am allowed a soppy moment or two, I think. Well even if I am not, let me get away with it, OK.
I am feeling a whole lot more cheerful today.
Is it the sunshine? Is it that snowdrop flower pushing its head through the snow to claim its natural status as a symbol of hope in deepest Winter? It might be. Well I told you I was having a soppy moment.
My back yard is showing me that all is most definitely not gloom and doom today.
Maybe it has been listening to that Mahler symphony (No. 3) with its healing powers and its majestic, long adagio ending where for once long slow music can be joyful, optimistic and profound rather than tragic, funereal and tearful.
It is so much easier being miserable.
Well whatever it is, sunshine, snowdrop, Mahler, thanks for the morale boost.
It may just be, of course, that after a highly sociable few days with friends and family, I was just dog tired yesterday but today I have got my energy back. Enough to fight the bad symptoms of my illness and enough to dismiss all that growing pessimism.
Talking of pessimism, what about Iran and North Korea then?
They’ve sure been busy with their missiles and rockets.
South Korean spy satellites have spotted a long cylindrical thing being transported on a train through North Korea. If it is, as they think, a Taepodong-2 intercontinental missile it could be capable of hitting Hawaii or Alaska. Cheery thought.
Iran sent a rocket into space yesterday too. A message of hope says the Iranian president. Hmmmm……well, if you say so Mr. Ahmadinejad. Less hopeful people think it is a technical test run for nuclear missile technology. It could lead to a nuclear missile capable of hitting Israel, a country not on everyone’s party list at the moment.
I am not going to get down-hearted though because my new hero, President Barack Obama is going to reopen the non-proliferation treaty negotiations with Russia in the hope that both countries will drop their nuclear warheads from 5000 each to 1000 each.
Well that would be a relief wouldn’t it! Just think, in the 1960s, both sides had 75,000 nuclear warheads a piece. Now, if the negotiations succeed, they could only, in a moment of crisis, deliver 1000 nuclear explosions each. That would be so much better! Wouldn’t it?
If they retaliated, which I guess would be the idea, that could mean 2000 Hiroshimas. Wow!
Of course, now we are being told they need these weapons because of Iran and North Korea and a number of other bad guys who would be less sophisticated than the former Cold War superpowers. Who started this game, for God’s sake?
Well good luck President Obama. You will need all of your undoubted skills to sort this one out.
Luckily Russia is running out of money so they should be in a friendlier mood than of late. North Korea and Iran might be less easily seduced by your charm and they don’t need 1000 warheads each. One perfectly aimed one would be quite sufficient.
But looking on the bright side of things, didn’t you love Barack Obama though when he admitted that he had “screwed up” yesterday over two of his senior government nominees who had to stand down over tax irregularities. I so like a man to admit he was wrong.
The more senior of these two nominees, Tom Daschle, who was to be the U.S. Health Secretary, apparently, had made a mistake over his tax payments….like not coughing up £89,000 ($128,000) in taxes for a car and driver that had been supplied by a Democratic donor.
Well, excuse me, but when I read those figures again, I wonder, £89,000 for a car and driver!!
I’m obviously living on the wrong planet.
This would have been the man to bring in all those health reforms so urgently needed in the States, where the poor have some chance of decent health care. How could a man who could overlook £89,000 know what it is like to be one of those folk asking the government to spare a dime?
There is such a divide between the very rich and everyone else these days, don’t even start me on those bankers, that I am pleased I don’t have a very tiny, almost harmless, non-proliferated, little person to person warhead at my disposal. The temptation would be too great.
Meanwhile, I am going back to more cheerful thoughts. Sunshine today and more snow tomorrow.
Let’s all have fun!