Interpretations

Looking at images of the utter devastation in Samoa I realise how our media downplayed the initial impact of the tsunami. The picture I’d got early on listening to the radio and looking at the internet was of physical damage but people had been given warning and so had sought and found high ground. Not so! Those poor souls caught in nature’s relentless force.

Four lucky men were on their surfboards and were far enough out to ride out the fury. In any calamity there will always be tales of good luck and tales of bad luck. With my disability I’d be a goner if I were on a beach and such an event occurred.

China celebrates sixty years of successful Communism. If it hadn’t abandoned Communism it might not have been so successful.

It’s about a year since I gave up driving. I’ve been dreaming recently of driving the car quite a lot. Anne thinks that my subconscious is telling me I want a change of scene. That’s not my reading of the situation. I see it as regret for a loss of independence. There’s been of late a bit of confusion over a prescription. Last night’s dream had me driving to the doctor’s to sort out the problem.

I’m reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, a novel about Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell who rose from obscurity to be Henry VIII’s prime mover in the English Reformation. The book has had rave reviews. I’m revelling in it – history and character, the stuff of good novels. The interplay between Cardinal Wolsey and Cromwell is brilliant. I’m up to the stage where Wolsey has just died.

Mantel gives Sir Thomas More a bad press. He has long been one of my heroes but not according to her. Well, like General Montgomery it’s a matter of interpretation.

It’s always struck me as ironic that Henry in his search for a son and heir divorced Katherine to marry Anne Boleyn and when that poor lady only gave birth to a daughter he had her executed on a trumped up charge. That daughter turned out to be Elizabeth, England’s greatest monarch.