BEACHCOMBER 104 YEARS OLD AND STILL AVERTING CATACLYSMS...

THE plot so far: the world is in a mess. We’re trying to get out of a pandemic but not sure we’re doing the right thing.

We have too much carbon oxide for the good of the planet and too little for food production. Our petrol is in the wrong place. Our houses are full of toilet paper we bought in the last panic and nobody has invented a way of using it to fuel our cars. We have seen a shambolic exit from Kabul caused by massively wrong information while the populace as a whole is losing the ability to put apostrophes in the right places and use “I” and “me” correctly.

Things are going wrong at a far greater rate than we can make them right but, as promised last week, Beachcomber is on the case, for his invention of Cataclysm Theory is just what the situation needs.

The world is heading for the state known to the theory as Critical Mess which can bring about the annihilation of civilisation unless we identify the fundamental cause of all the problems and tackle it directly.

So I have been meticulously charting all the disasters that have happened and can now reveal my conclusions. We have done those things which we ought not to have done, such as eating pangolins, letting viruses run wild and queuing for petrol we don’t really need, and not done those things we ought to have done, such as wearing face masks, getting out of Afghanistan in an orderly fashion, and not putting an apostrophe in it’s when it’s short for “it is”.

The wisdom about doing some things and not doing others was in the Book Of Common Prayer in 1662, but it’s too late for prayer. The only hope is for education, as politicians have trumpeted for years, but all they have done is more things that ought not to be done while not doing things that ought to be done.

After 10 years or more in our educational system, far too many people emerge not knowing that simple plurals do not take apostrophes, and when to say “me” and when to say “I”. Such things matter. Precision in language is a sign of precision in thought, and clear thinking is what is needed. Let’s try teaching children to think and the next generation may have a chance.

“Education,” said Albert Einstein, “is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school,” so let’s give the young something important to forget.