Virtual Travel

Saturday 6th February, 2021

Another day of rain was forecast although dire warnings as to snow were echoing across media waves. So when I drew the curtains at 9am I was not surprised to see the sleet. After a quick breakfast and four mugs of coffee I set out to purchase the newspaper. I decided to drive as it was so wet and cold and also so as to keep the car battery charged. It has been leaking or dying on me and is an expensive hobby to allow. Thus I drove toward St Andrews and then back passed Tentsmuir forest and through Tayport to my local Cooperative shop. I noted the huge swathes of fields under water and many of the roads had deep puddles through which one had to drive carefully. The sleet continued the whole journey and later in the day, when I walked, I noticed the enlargement of streams and waterfalls. I have become very sensitive to dropped litter and rubbish and bemoaned to myself the mountains of detritus lying everywhere even on the back small lanes off the usual beaten track.

I arrived at the shop and bought the newspaper as well as a pot of peppered hummus for lunch. On arriving home I read the paper with its headline on Captain Sir Tom next to the Scottish threat to close the road borders with England. All sorts of opinions within the paper and all sorts of politicking between countries from the accusations of the Indian Government that there was external interference over the Farmers strike to Russia's snubbing of an EU envoy and expulsion on EU diplomats over the comments on Navalny's imprisonment to Chinese fury at Britain's shutting down of some Chinese television company to many other such comments as Trump being refused access to Intelligence Reports. Fortunately I had coffee to keep me happy while reading it all.

Then I noticed the rain had stopped so I donned boots, jackets, scarves, gloves and grabbed my litter grabber and headed out. I so need the fresh air and the exercise. There were fewer walkers than usual but just as much litter. I walked for 40 minutes and only toward the end did it begin to rain again and grow windy and cold.

Since returning I have watched an Episode of 'Finding Alice ' and gotten hugely irritated that I cannot get on to ITV programmes without demands for enhanced fees.

So after some hummus and home baked soda bread I headed for a siesta. I have an extraordinary book ' The poet and the Murderer'. The latter Mark Hoffman was an extraordinary forger. I am utterly amazed at his ingenuity and the revelation of how many forgers through out history have perpetrated their trade. One of Hoffman's forgeries was 'The oath of a Freeman' claiming to be one of the first American printed works. It is too complex to describe Hoffman and the world of forgery but I came across a passage in the book which caught my attention:

"I thank God," Sir William Berkeley, the Royal Governor of Virginia wrote in 1671, " that there are no free schools or printing and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning had brought disobedience, and heresy and sects in to the world, and printing has divulged them......God keep us from both." This brought to mind the Myanmar Military Coup leaders cutting the Internet in their Country as well as the threat to BBC Panorama reporters for revealing corruption in the World of Boxing. There are sadly many such repressive actions by Governments, yet there are also trolls and conspiracy theorists and traducer and purveyors of lies on the Internet and those deliberately attempting to disrupt and destroy people and politics and religions. A muddled world indeed.

An old pupil, Justin Wheatley, has, I am informed, just published a novel based on the 'greed and mayhem of the City'. His Sister sent an email round robin to suggest we buy it. The news and rumours and theories and gossip and commentary and Facebook opinions and so on re the Covid vaccine would make one believe one was living in a chaotic dystopian society.

Well, I am hanging on to sanity even if I do escape at times in through the Looking Glass and find it less odd than the world in which I live. Isn't it all fascinating?