Trump’s been sworn in and the reverberations are being felt all over the world. It’s as if Alderaan has just been obliterated. God help us. Although if the speech is anything to go by, He might be exclusively on America’s side. So we might as well invoke the Force for all the good it will do us.
Here in Dorset, the sun rises and then sets, as it does everywhere else in the world. For now at least.
There is a real beauty in these crisp, winter mornings. Glorious skies, aeroplane vapour trails like firework rockets trailing through blue and grey skies and my shadow walking through the trees.
There is drama in nature and drama in the village. Thieves target parked cars in the dead of night, stealing loose change along with more valuable items from garages. They return a few days later for another go.
A yellow helicopter circles overhead. It’s not the Air Ambulance or the coastguard or the police. It’s the electricity board. No wonder bills are so high.
A pair of jackdaws chase a third, which has a chunk of bread in its mouth from our bird table. They fly one behind the other, swooping and spinning, until they are joined by a seagull, far from its shoreline home. The orderly line falls into chaos, the first bird drops the bread and the jackdaws retire to the branches next door’s ash tree to regroup. The seagull yells its melancholy call and heads for the ocean.
The chip van chugs by to the next village and then returns an hour or so later as the people come out of their homes, pied piper-like, into the cold, pulled by the invisible string that is the smell of salt and vinegar, freshly-cooked batter and sausages.
Tonight it’s Spice and Rice night at the local pub. Time to drown our Inauguration Day sorrows with a pint of cider and a plate of curry.
