Desperately boring times but very healthy ones. No parties, no girls, not too much boozing, lots of smoking and reading very late into the night. And non-stop training and sport. What else can one do when locked in with one’s wife and one’s son and with nostalgic thoughts of a time when people gathered in groups? It seems very long ago but do any of you remember when people gave parties?
Desperate times demand desperate measures and make for desperate columnists. Meditation might be good for philosophers and their ilk, but correspondents need to get out and get the story. The only thing to report nowadays are the sleeping habits of cows — standing up — plough horses — ditto — and Swiss peasants, with one eye open in case some billionaire foreigner robs them of their hay.
For some strange reason I keep thinking back to my youth and the 1950s, the best decade since the golden age of the Athenians in 430 BC.
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