It’s only human to be optimistic
Kate puts on bravest face More tragedy for Travolta
HOW like brave Kate Garraway to use the throwaway word “tricky” to describe her first day back on the Good Morning Britain sofa after her husband Derek Draper was hospitalised with coronavirus.
Kate’s fans – and I’m one – know that she is perennially peppy and a stranger to selfpity. She conquered the I’m A Celebrity jungle with panache. Only she can testify to the agony she and her children have endured for the last 14 weeks.
Of course, she’ll never truly reveal the torture of loneliness, sleepless nights, anger, frustration and fears for her two children’s future. Doctors told her to “get on with life” and let them focus on Derek and she has taken them at their word.
Kate, above, is a trouper, a consummate professional, and we’re thrilled to have her back.
She’ll see to it that we’ll never fully know the emotional cost of bringing her sparkle back to our mornings.
IKEEP catching myself doing it. I wager you’re doing it too. Despite the evidence to the contrary and the professors intoning their mantra – “A vaccine may never be found.This virus could be with us forever” – don’t you find yourself somehow convinced that the whole ghastly thing will be over by September?
As TS Eliot wrote, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality”. We’ve had more grisly misery than our fragile brains can take. We need to get to the “all things shall pass” part. We’re desperate to stop acting out this hideous B-movie, aching to fast-forward to the final part in which Bruce Willis, still sporting a pristine white vest, climbs out of the burning wreckage in rude health and starts living happily ever after.
Somewhere in what is supposed to be my informed, adult brain is a message – based on nothing more than hot air and fantasy – pumping into my system. It stems from the cyclical impact of all previous Septembers.
We all have an in-built sense that September signifies a beginning. The school year starts. New plimsolls, pencils and protractors are purchased.
THE Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is celebrated with slices of apple dipped in honey to ensure a sweet and fruitful 12 months. Harvest begins.After the long hot days of summer we gear up to graft until Christmas brings pudding, redemption and cheer.
Struggle as I may, and watch terrifying bulletins as I might, I can’t quite shrug off the notion that, as in the D:Ream song used by Tony Blair to mark the dawn of New Labour, Things Can Only Get Better.
Am I simply self-soothing, telling myself the things I long to hear just because I want them to be true? Am I demonstrating my feeble ability to cope with the genuinely heartbreaking? Or does optimism in the face of a society ravaged by a deadly virus while balanced perilously on the brink of economic catastrophe show something reassuring and positive about human nature?
As our soldiers trudged towards the front in the First World War, knowing their role was to be cannon-fodder, they sang: “Are we downhearted? No!” They were neither naïve nor ignorant. Their spirit was simply unquenchable. If you are still smiling now, could it be that a little of their famous fortitude has trickled through the generations?
ON last Sunday’s film night at home, we unanimously voted for Grease. How can that film be 42 years old? Crackling with saucy one-liners and sizzling with schmaltz, it plunges us straight back to teenage years and reignites lifelong feelings for the irresistibly cool John Travolta.
Afterwards, we watched his “teenage wedding” routine with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction for dessert.
How sad then to learn our idol has lost his wife Kelly Preston, left, to breast cancer at the absurdly young age of 57. They had been married for 26 years and mourned the loss of their son Jett at just 16.
On celluloid he’s forever at the drive-in with his gelled quiff – in real life he has been beset by far more than his fair share of tragedy.
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IF you are still separated from your grandchildren and they are of reading age, give this a whirl. Ask for a copy of the same book they are enjoying and read it yourself.
The shared experience is enormously uniting. Discussion flows. Debate is intense. My six-year-old Zekey introduced me to the oeuvre of the inimitable Maud Hart Lovelace.
You haven’t lived until you’ve worked your way through three 600-page volumes of the Betsy-Tacy stories and been floored by the insights of your own descendants.