Thoughts on a brief quiet morning

The house is quiet. The young people are all busy sleeping or out with friends. It's a dull day outside but warm and cosy inside. Most things are done, or as ready as they will be. Just a few things to pick up tomorrow: the goose, some fresh cream, maybe some cheese.

I feel peaceful. It's been delightful to have so many comings and goings and to see so many happy smiling people, pleased to see each other. There's more to come over the next few days and then travelling further afield in early January to catch up with family in other parts of the country.

Picture from an email from the Friends of the Botanic Garden. The fountains in the carp pond still in action in the middle of winter. I've enjoyed discovering the Garden this year. It's always uplifting to visit and wander round.

Frankie Boyle was writing about the plight of the satirist in his review of 2018 Let's forget Brexit and enjoy our last Christmas with running water in the Guardian. Among the outrageous behaviour by parties too numerous to mention and his attempts to make sense of it, I was touched by the humanity:

Consider again the plight of the children starving in Yemen. It’s a hard thing to consider. It’s OK to admit that, I think – that it’s hard to empathise: you don’t know much about it, you have your own plight, and it’s a difficult thing to think about. To consider that, in a world that has pub lunches, wristwatches, golden retrievers, the novels of Donna Tartt, the music of Kendrick Lamar, flumes and The Amazing Spider-Man, there is still a plight where you starve to death, as a child, for no reason.

I mean, there is a reason, that I suppose has somehow made itself too obvious to mention. The reason is that some people are addicted to money and power, many of them pathologically so, and we let them do what they like. In our name, and with our taxes, we let them kill who they like in the service of their bored, baroque perversity, because we don’t care enough to stop them. We cannot seem to rouse ourselves, even as they move to turn the world into a consuming flame. We are running out of time to save the children of Yemen, and ourselves – and yet we could still, in theory, be redeemed.

I wonder if it will be possible, in 2019, to do this.