Of Mice and Men and Women and Things.

The weekly visit to Uttoxeter was a little odd this morning. Women of various ages kept smiling at me, and several young men on bikes nodded to me. One even said ‘hello.’ Have I somehow become a local celebrity, do you think? And then there was the matter of the woman store assistant in B&Q for whom I’ve held a bit of a candle for something like twenty years. But maybe that can be left for another post a little further down the line (when I’ve stuck my courage to the sticking place and have something – probably humorous – to report.)

But of course, today’s real madness was going on over the big water. I saw the headline about Trump claiming that he had ‘taken a bullet for democracy.’ Well now, I said recently that he had uttered the first sensible words I’d ever heard from him when he said ‘I shouldn’t be here’ (even though he’d intended something quite different from the meaning I’d chosen to take.) But of all the dumb things I have heard him say over the years, this latest claim is the dumbest of all. How can it be that a man can say something so transparently misconceived and so gloriously stupid, and yet still people cheer? This is America?

And then we got the big news: old Joe is pulling out of the race and handing the baton to his female assistant. I said to Mel a few weeks ago that I didn’t think America was ready yet for a woman President, and I still hold to that opinion. But who knows? Could it be that there are enough people strategically placed in the swing states who are so desperate to keep the dunderhead out of the White House that they’d vote for a wombat with rabies to achieve that end? You never know, do you? After all, this is America.

(And I decided this evening that I’m no longer fit to engage with human company, but I decline to say why.)