I'm in despair. I was asked to write a whimsical column but, I'm afraid, I just don't feel very whimsical. COVID doesn't help but the state of the world helps even less.
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There are a few good reasons for bleakness.
My Jewish friends feel beleaguered. For the first time in their lives, they see anti-Semitism - Jew-hate - rising around them. And an intelligent non-Jewish friend said that Jews were not discriminated against. I mentioned the Holocaust but it made no difference.
My partner's Japanese pilates teacher wondered if the Israeli government had massacred its own citizens to gain sympathy - she'd read it somewhere on Telegram! She, by the way, had refused to get vaccinated against COVID, though she said she would have done so if there had been a Japanese vaccine.
There is a madness afoot.
And yet, I fear we ain't seen nothing yet.
The polling from America indicates that Donald Trump may well be selected as the Republican candidate in next year's presidential election, and that he might well win.
A man who lies as easily as he breathes (maybe more easily), who is either delusional or, more likely, dishonest about his defeat at the last election, may return to the ultimate power on this earth.
His election would presage the end of democracy in America. Have no illusions. It's as big as that.
COVID and maldod
Of course, one of the reasons I may be feeling so bleak is that I have COVID, and what I need is maldod.
There are a few Welsh words which do not have an English equivalent and maldod is one of the best.
It is that smothering we need when we are ill. Pampering comes closest to it but doesn't quite get there. We are pampered, I imagine, if we spend the day having our toenails painted at a spa, with a servant filling and refilling our glass with sparkling wine. The plate of chocolate at our elbow is constantly refilled. That's pampering - but it's not maldod.
Maldod is when your partner brings hot buttered toast and two runnyish boiled eggs to your bed when you are ill. It is being wrapped up warm near a stove when you have the flu - or COVID.
Or given a "cwtch".
Again, there is no exact translation. A cwtch is a kind of hug, but the kind of hug you give a baby or a child - one which protects and encircles with love.
That's what I need.
I may have caught COVID on the packed flight back from Britain a week ago, though it was already out and about again in Australia, so who knows?
Adrian Esterman of the University of South Australia told me there are two reasons for the unwelcome return: "(1) waning immunity due to people not keeping up to date with their vaccinations. For example, only 23 per cent of Australians aged 65 and over have had an updated vaccination in the last six months. (2) Some new highly transmissible variants taking over in Australia."
There was another virus on the flight. The couple next to me from outer Melbourne opined, unbidden, that immigration had made London unpleasant. I should say that I find the cosmopolitan nature of London invigorating, and usually choose not to engage with the complainant, as I did this time.
As an antidote to the racism in the seats beside me, the young honeymooning couple of Indian background in the row in front had a good riposte to the white Brit next to them in the window seat who asked them if their marriage was arranged.
"No. We met on Tinder," the woman replied in a thick English accent, shutting him up.
Brits come in all colours. The members of its cabinet may be daft as brushes but they are a multi-ethnic picture of the country.
Thank goodness for that. I feel better already.
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