Murray swart We killed the unicorns
KIMBERLEY has one month of good weather per year and this has come and gone. For now, look forward to a long, hot festive season where relief from the heat is all in your imagination.
I’ve always found it funny how people “never remember it being this bad in the past” and while these individuals should be entitled to their opinion, albeit based on the fudged statistics of their own self-serving sources of information, more often than not these insights do precious little but create more hot air to tickle the mercury and hasten global warming.
These “pearls of wisdom” are usually shared by the same individuals who remember many times that never happened.
These are people who have vivid recollections of a time when politicians were honest, children were obedient, crimes weren’t as prevalent and clouds were made of the candyfloss farts of unicorns.
You see, retrospect is a funny thing. How you remember something is not always how it happened but heaven help the naysayer who points this out to you.
I’m not saying that the cost of living is not on the increase, nor am I saying that crime isn’t a major concern and I’m certainly not saying that global warming is fabrication. I would never be that naive nor dishonest. I’m not an idiot nor a politician.
What I am is trying extremely hard not to have little beads of sweat drizzle between the keys on my laptop as I sit in an air-conditioned room writing these words.
After all, Kimberley is damn hot, as it is every year this time and there is not much I can do about it but hide away from a scorching earth like a coward, leave, complain, or all of the above.
While I do so, there are a few things I’m not going to do.
I’m not going to try and recall whether it is any better or worse than in the past. I’m not going to look back at the end of October 2017 and pretend I can compare the two. I can’t.
I’m not going to remember the good old days of times gone by and remember, with fondness, a bygone era where everyone was happy, telling each other how perfect life is. If there was a time when Kimberley wasn’t a furnace for six months and frigid for six, separated by two weeks of bliss on either side, I don’t remember it and if I did, I would be lying to myself and others.
If there was a peaceful time, when we didn’t have to lock away our valuables and when people were nice to each other, I don’t remember that either and to say I do would also be a fabrication.
Like a pleasant mid-summer’s day in the Kalahari, last year’s comfortable conditions are a myth and those memories are as fake as the sincerity that we can expect from the candidates who will try to convince us that they have a good story to tell in the build-up to next year’s elections.
These are the same stories we’ve heard before but never bothered to recognise as lies at the time.
Even now, in retrospect, we don’t recognise the dishonesty. Why would we? That would mean we have to acknowledge that it was this bad in the past. It’s always been this bad. Those are clouds. Not unicorn farts. We killed all the unicorns. We just can’t remember.