Fidelma Cook

BLESS me, readers, for I have sinned. My column should have been written and sent hours ago after returning from my immunotherapy. Instead at almost 8.30pm I’m just starting, making extra work for the sub tomorrow. Shockingly unprofessional.

Oh, yes, there is a reason – well, two actually. After staring at my blank screen for close on two hours, I accepted I hadn’t a thought in my head.

I decided we didn’t need more again of my cancer musings – God knows life is miserable enough for most of us as it is – and as I have little life outside LM these days there’s bugger all to tell you about.

And my rage against the state of the world and its politicians is so great that I would only produce a homicidal rant. Admittedly that hasn’t stopped me in the past but it is in danger of becoming tedious.

My second reason/excuse is that since Pierce added me to his Netflix I’ve become a binger. At the moment – long after the rest of the country – I’m living after Culloden, mainly ogling the hero’s bare bum, which is on semi-permanent display in Outlander.

That truly is instant gratification; click next episode and up it comes again…. the backside that is….. just like that. No waiting a week to see him get his kit/kilt off.

However, pleasurable as it may be, it still isn’t helping me write a column. (Checks word total. Groans.) I have no desire to write about the Sussexes beyond saying they’re not too bright greedy brats, nor Salmond and Sturgeon; I’d quite like to write about the ghastly partnership of Vine and Gove but fear my cruelty would overwhelm me.

I couldn’t care less whether people can have a summer holiday or not or that the pubs will open soon…or not.

I do care that life has been reduced to the importance of having the liberty to go maskless at the expense of others’ protection.

I do care that the continuing contempt in which women are held shows little sign of abating – if anything it’s increasing in its ferocity and hatred.

I care about the increasing cruelty towards creatures great and small as if by doing so we assert our superiority and dominance.

And as gentle wild creatures are driven into “civilisation”, our streets are abandoned to feral youth, arrogant in their belief that the world belongs to them.

But I don’t give a toss about people’s right to hunt, maim and kill in the name of sport or turn desperate people in search of refuge away from our shores to preserve this island race.

I loathe with a passion the racists who seek excuses to despise others because of colour or religion, dressing it up with pompous cant.

I loathe the paucity of thought that dresses everything from sausages to potatoes in the Union flag to market that superiority while allowing businesses to go to the wall. I care that we’re becoming a nasty, divisive people instead of the calm, thoughtful nations our education was to prepare us for.

But looking to the lies and corruption of our so-called leaders, one could ask why blame the people? If leaders lead by example then is it any wonder the state we’re in?

How many of us, I wonder, still feel a hope for the world we inhabit? Still feel we can draw back from the brink? I honestly no longer know if I do any more.

We seem to be swirling in a miasma of hopelessness and latent despair. At what point do we cry, “Enough!” and, more importantly, how do we do it?

Well, so much for a cheerier column. Perhaps it’s not possible anymore unless one avoids anything remotely human and therefore our own humanity or rather what’s left of it.

I’ve decided the only way to retain mine may be to binge-watch a Highlander’s bum. Desperate times etc.

‘I loathe the paucity of thought that dresses everything from sausages to potatoes in the Union flag while allowing businesses to go to the wall’