Hastings Battleaxe yearns for glimmers of hope…

Well, I’d delayed writing this because last night we were supposed to go to a concert – guess what, postponed. One of the musicians has Covid. Instead, we stayed in and watched ‘Don’t Look Up’. It gave me nightmares, but not for the reasons you’d imagine. Glimmers of hope? Well maybe, but hard to know as Omicron gallops unstoppably across the globe, but it looks as if (touch wood) some of our yearned-for holidays may happen…  We’ve tried to have our usual walks, even though the weather has been very up and down – mostly down. Here’s a couple of motivating photos to start us off – the long road ahead, photographed in Winchelsea last Sunday, and this grand thing, stitched for me by my friend Jan…

So what about ‘Don’t Look Up’?  For those that don’t know, the film is the essential watching de nos jours, a comedy/satire about a couple of scientists finding a comet heading straight for Earth, and their efforts to tell everyone about the planet-destroying consequences. It is obviously all about climate change. Philosopher and I didn’t rate it that highly – there were a few entertaining moments, but by and large we felt bogged down in a two and a half hour morass of troweled-on, heavy-handed obviousness.  What bothered me was not the film itself, but reading some of the reviews – as if the writers had just woken up to the themes in the plot.. That the media is obsessed with triviality and celebrity… people don’t want to hear about nasty and difficult things… politicians are only interested in what will get them re-elected… we are all held to ransom by a very few ultra-rich folk who only want to get richer… Well, who knew?  How can these things be a surprise to anyone?

Glimmers of hope?  Apparently we have all got to learn to live with the virus. I don’t mind that, but worry that the virus might not be happy to live with me. Virtually everyone I know is either stressed to the eyeballs or poorly with one thing or another, or both. I know we can’t carry on like this, and at some point, the only way will have to be onwards and upwards, but at the moment it all feels very out of control and worrying.

We have umpteen holidays planned this year… Portugal, Cornwall, Italy, Turkey, Russia, and a brief cruise on the Queen Mary 2. What, the readers cry, is Battleaxe mad? Well, probably, but Philosopher and I are both getting older. If we don’t do some of these things soon, we never will.  Have just gone mad and booked five nights in the Imperial Hotel Tramontano in Sorrento.

Readers will know that during the pandemic I have fantasised about sitting on that bar terrace, Campari soda in hand, looking across the Bay of Naples to Vesuvius.  Well, am going. Vaffanculo, Covid…  I may sound carefree, but have you tried booking travel insurance lately? Heesh, you need a mortgage.

Anyway, here are one or two nice photos from our walks:

And to finish, enjoying a glass of fizz on our balcony/belvedere this morning in the sun. Perhaps we could christen our house ‘Villa Belvedere’… What do you think, or is that just too Mapp and Lucia?