Being Busy and Knocking America.

I went to Ashbourne this morning to deliver a sample to the doctor. And when I got back I made a phone call to the person who presumed so intolerably on my good nature last night. And then I went for quite a long walk. And then I made my lunch and ate it. And then I washed the car. And then I did some work in the garden. And then I made my dinner and ate it. And then I washed the dishes, vacuumed my office and kitchen, and did the week’s ironing. (I was good at writing essays at school, you know, because I hardly ever used the term ‘and then.’ Thought I’d try it now that I’m getting old.)

I dislike being busy. I fear that if I allow the musing faculty to subside to slow burn I might suffer some sort of brain atrophy.

Tomorrow I have two appointments at the surgery, one for an ECG and one for a consultation. I wonder how much that would cost me in America. Fortunately, I’m not in America. And on the subject of America, I saw two historical references today.

The first was to Senator McCarthy, which caused me to think what a monument it was to American national insecurity to create a body called the Un-American Activities Committee. The second was a post I made about the incident when Colin Kaepernick took the knee instead of singing the national anthem with hand on heart, an action for which he got soundly pilloried. Together, they led to the indelible impression that courage and freedom of expression take second place to blind patriotism in the land of the free.

What I found personally scary, though, was this:

If you’d asked me when the Kaepernick incident happened, I would have guessed at about two years ago. My blog post was written in September 2016, more than five years ago. I’m feeling quite unsettled by the speed at which the years flash by now.