About everything that CAN go wrong with the world at the moment IS going wrong, isn’t it?

There’s our unwelcome new friend Covid, still lurking in the shadows ready to leap out and bite a few of us even now, which can seem a little surprising because figures aren’t published as often as they used to be, a couple of years ago.

But there are still quite a few hundred still suffering in hospital, some of them seriously ill, we just don’t hear so much about them now, if at all.

Then we have all the dreadful ‘excitement’ of a war going on in Ukraine, just when the world was settling down, ready to enjoy a period of comparative peace; now, suddenly, we find that we aren’t too far removed from another World War, and it all rests in the hands and mind of a crazy Russian who could take it into his head to press the button at any time, day or night!

More or less guaranteeing a world without life for many centuries to come if he did so!

Pop down to the Falkland Islands, and suddenly the Argentinians are sticking their heads above the parapets again, having forgotten no doubt, what happened the last time they tried to claim the place as their own!

Is there going to be another bust-up with the UK over this?

Move quickly across the globe to the Middle East, and it won’t take you long to find at least one scrap going on, between Israel and Palestine.

They’ve been bickering, and taking pot shots at each other for years and there’s very little chance of that ending soon, while almost next door to them there’s Iran who’s leaders seem to hate everyone, even their own people, and they are also trying to make atom bombs with which to threaten everyone else as well.

China is another problem, this time in the Far East. The Chinese just don’t give a damn about anyone except themselves.

They give other, much less fortunate countries than themselves, vast sums of money, in return for being able to build God knows what sort of structures there, all for world “peace”. They want to trade with everyone but deny most of those countries the right to trade with them, which is peculiar, and they seem to have been the original creators of the Covid virus, which they very generously gave to the rest of the world.

Then we have Korea!

The words “loose cannon” come immediately to mind at the sound of that name, they go against all the carefully laid plans arrived at by the great powers on both sides of the political world, firing off Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles all over the North Pacific area, shooting smaller rockets right across Japanese territory, terrifying everyone there in case a mistake causes one to come down.

And they are even worse than the Chinese when it comes to not giving a damn what the rest of the world thinks.

Then, of course, we have the two conjoined problems that are so popular at the moment, “global warming” and CO2. In both cases, the world seems to be just about split in two, half of the scientists and population think they present a death knell for everyone, unless we find a way to get rid of one of the most useful gases in the place, CO2, (ALL plants live by CO2, just as animals live by Oxygen, gasses they and we would die without), and by so doing cure the overheating they reckon we are having to live through.

The other half of the scientists and population think it’s all a hoax, dreamt up by very rich people and countries to wangle even more money out of our pockets and into theirs.

I have no idea which half is right, but I suppose in the next twenty years we should know, one way or the other! (Not me maybe, at eighty-eight years old now, I’ll be very lucky to still be around to see who was right).

And what do we have to look forward to, as an antidote to all this doom and gloom? (Long pause, while trying to think about what I can write next!!).

Oh dear, there isn’t a lot that springs to mind, is there?

Surely we’re not in such a bad state of repair that I can’t think of anything positive to say. . . .

Actually there IS one small thing, just to set my mind working again, we seem as people, to be giving a lot more freedom to the artists of this world, to put their works on the sides of buildings and silos, a lot of it really excellent work too – it’s what the ghastly graffiti has matured into, no longer do we get those ugly ‘signatures’ blighting the buildings of a city, we are now treated to some REAL art.

All of which makes me think of the other fine things going on all around us, especially in the fields of electronics and medicine. Surgeons now perform operations with the able assistance of computers, some of which can actually carry out certain types of procedures with more skill than the medicos themselves.

Computers are taking over many of the tasks that used to be classified as ‘manual’, and they help in many ways to make life easier for us all, something that I actually find vaguely disturbing; what if we make them SO useful that eventually we program ourselves out of existence?

Well anyway, there’s a little bit of future ‘progress’ to hope for, and who knows what future wonders are still awaiting us, in the years to come? After all, people of the early nineteen hundreds had no idea of self-drive cars, jet aircraft, electronics, heart transplants or being able to make a ‘local’ phone call to a friend in England, from Australia, did they?

So anything is still possible!

Text & building/wall images © 2023 Brian Lee 
Images taken in Yarram VIC by Brian Lee