No more whinging

These have been strange times. My friend E from Utrecht emailed me recently in reference to a recent turn of mad events, and said "Wow, you guys haven't been spared much over the past five years". By golly, I thought, she's right. And mentioned this to R, in rather an inward-looking, Eeyore-ish way.

R thinks differently. R thinks it's all a matter of perspective. Actually, he thinks, we have been spared ALL sorts. Yes, my back gave out and I had no end of time lying around on floors looking at Helping People with a pained expression, BUT...I didn't need surgery in the end, did I? J stopped our hearts 14 times in as many months with her rather sinister twists on febrile convulsions which left her a motionless greyish-blue and us gibbering wrecks BUT...she's fine now, isn't she? R got knocked off his bike this summer in a hit-and-run in London, which imprinted his bike forlornly into the tarmac, BUT...it was only the bike, wasn't it? And the meningitis, well, that was horrid, but the dark forecasts we were given that night with relation to cryptococcus, haven't come to be. Have they? And finally, my mum. And this is the hardest bit to play Pollyanna with, but I have, and I think she'd agree - yes, she was suddenly, hastily whipped away by cancer just when J had been born, BUT. She DID get to see him. And cancer is very often far crueller in its decision to linger. That, at least, she was spared.

To borrow from Jerome, R comes out quite sensible at times.

And in any case, things, all round, are looking up. Just one crazed and vile situation blazes on in the face of all credulity, but you know? I really think the time has come to fight back and so, there may even be a chink of light at the end of this particular tunnel too.

It's all a matter of changing your perspective. As my great-grandmother used to declare, in response to any whining "Come on then lass, I'll take thee to't graveyard and see if owt will swap with thee". To be frank, sadly one doesn't need to be as drastic as the graveyard. Iraq, North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, Gaza et al are all equal cases in point. I really wouldn't want to swap there either.

So, you just have to spot the lucky bits when they are there, right, R? Although, really, I'd quite like things to be just a little bit boring for a while now. To catch my breath a bit, you know.