It is to be expected when a being reaches the age that I’m at now. You can’t carry on hoping that there will be a happy ending waiting to happen to everybody. Come to think of it, I don’t want a happy conclusion to this struggle of a life to be shared by everyone. There are people out there who do not deserve a happy-ever-after as they are the ones who set themselves to deny such outcomes for others.

The world has moved towards realistic opinions. That means that the left leaning liberal fluffy thinkers are rapidily being dispatched onto the wrong side of history’s bed. History has not ended and it has not achieved a yin/yang balance between greedy capitalism and freeby politics. We have moved back to the dog eat dog, cat eat cat, rat eat rat, red in tooth and claw scramble for existence that has always…

Back to the goshawk.

There was something beautiful about that bird of prey, even as it was ripping the still fluttering woodpigeon to pieces. Even that bit was edifying though I would prefer that nobody heard me say that. It wasn’t the gore of the scene that pulled me in but the purity of the event which was as scary as hell and not a little bit repulsive. Somehow though, the goshawk and the woodpigeon seemed to be acting out something for the world to take notice of. Imagine if the woodpigeon was a teenager like me, wandering through its normal day, flitting from branch to branch whilst making those warm cooing noises that they make. Imagine it was me with my baseball cap pulled down so that it was difficult to see my eyes. One moment I would be lost in my own importance and the nonchalance of just…

They still keep calling me. I am only able to hold it off so much. Inevitably, I cave into the pressure. Could I work in a school that is in some godforsaken part of the country? Maths, she said. I hate maths. Yes, I said and almost instantly regretted it.

Our middle daughter seems to have the virus. She’s locked in her accommodation at university and she’s trying to battle it out, not wanting to bring it home with her. Spreading the virus is something that decent human beings should not do, but when your child is showing signs of being ill, very ill if not attended to, where does being a decent human being stop and being a parent begin?I woke this morning, we both woke very early, and my wife told me that I shouldn’t do the day’s work. I agreed.

Later in the morning, the middle daughter…

Saturday used to be my favourite day. It was a day of staying in bed until the very last, of drinking lots of tea, having conversations about the news, and indulging in property-porn. For the uninitiated, P-P is looking at foreign properties in France or Spain. By looking at properties for sale, we were there, in mind if not body. We all have favourite days and for me that was Saturday.

All days are now similar. The getting up and the going to sleep are all the same. There are no divisions, just time, ticking away unnoticed.

In the other world, we would be making the most of these days that are not ruled by work. Some sort of decent breakfast would follow our gargantuan consumption of tea. I would put a Saturday morning cooking programme on and saunter my way through it whilst doing other small tasks. I would…