Wednesday 6 June 2012

Sunshine after the rain

A nightmare journey home following some public transport issues coupled with miserable, drizzly weather but having climbed 6 flights of stairs to my little flat, it all seems ok when I look out of the window.

Funny how such little things can change my mood...

Tuesday 5 June 2012

Jubilations

Not that I am a modern day Scrooge but it has been very easy to enjoy an additional 2 days off work that have been granted to us all here in the UK to celebrate the fact that Queen Elizabeth II has been ruling over us all for a mammoth sixty years.If I had been more organised, I would have copied the masses who have taken this opportunity to take cheap holiday in the rest of Europe where flights are cheap, the weather is sunny and no one else is on holiday. As it goes, I have managed to stay in London whilst avoiding the many public street closing celebrations that caused great inconvenience for everyone but really only benefited the privileged few who were able to get tickets on the boats/concerts/parades etc.

So putting the ridiculous to one side as I am no royalist (?), it's still impressive to think that this one person has been Queen for sixty years. It's quite amusing to think what Prince Charles is thinking too - he will know he has nothing close to a diamond reign left in him and that's if he even out survives his mother! Sixty years... what does that even mean? It was certainly before I was born. It's a measure of time that is difficult to imagine in this modern age when emails can be sent in seconds, marriages can end in hours and presidents can be ousted in months as we have been seeing during the Eurozone crisis.

My mother comments on cyclical fashion if she sees me in oversized sunglasses and flared trousers but even that is only the 70s. In the 50's, my mother would be born, the 2 Koreas were fighting for dominance, the first jet plane would be flown, Albert Einstein would turn down the Israel Presidency, a gallon of gas cost $0.20 and  polio was still a disease that was causing an epidemic in the mighty USA.

Pretty impressive how much has changed and what has been achieved globally during the last sixty years. Yet there is still so much to be done in terms of diseases that need cures, mouths that need to be fed, international frictions that need to be resolved and some over-indebted countries that need a funding solution. Can't wait to see what we can do in the next sixty years!