The Answer, My Friend...

At 6:00 a.m. today the wind was blowing at 23 mph from a South Easterly direction. At 9:00 a.m. it had dropped to 10 mph and switched to a Westerly direction. By 12:00 noon it's predicted to have fallen to 3 mph and blowing from the South. By 3:00 p.m. the forecast says it will be further reduced in strength, but now it will be from the East. By nine o'clock this evening it will have turned again and be coming from the North (brrr!). What on earth is going on? It seems we're in some kind of vortex, albeit a weak one. The only consistent factor to this aberration is that whichever direction the dear wind is coming from, and in whatever strength, it will bring rain all day. How terrible. Who wants to head out into the world in this weather? This puts into jeopardy Gordon Brown's hopes of us spending our way out of the current financial difficulties. I wouldn't want to go shopping in this.

This leads me to reflect on how we sometimes waste time involving ourselves in some meaningless exercise without recognizing it. Have you ever found yourself watching a television programme, only to snap suddenly out of a kind of trance to realize that what you're watching is a load of old rubbish? I have. Something similar happened to me this morning when I was listening to the Brian Matthews programme on BBC Radio 2. In this programme he plays a lot of very obscure recordings from the 1960s – mainly stuff that is justifiably forgettable (and thereby not even pandering to nostalgia which of course, ain't what it used to be). Eating my breakfast, I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was listening to a song by the Brook Brothers (1961) with the somewhat ridiculous title of "Ain't Gonna Wash For A Week". The lyrics were as meaningless as the title and sufficiently snapped me out of my listening lethargy to have me reaching for the 'off' switch. Hmm, I must discover a more consequential way of spending my time.

My guess is that you now feel exactly the same as you read this blog....

Catch you later.