Thank God for some good news. Following the horrific murders of two youths in the Knowle West area of Bristol and the discovery of a dead baby in a pub toilet in Leeds, I just wanted to hear something – anything – that wasn’t unremitting gloomy. And so it was that I heard the news that King Brian and Kate Middleton have both been discharged from hospital following their medical procedures and are going to recuperate at home. That, my dear reader, is good news and given the more serious content I have included in the opening paragraph you would hope so, too.
Having recently returned from a long weekend in the Roman/Viking city of York, I found the news I was reading distressing. If the domestic news wasn’t as upsetting and dispiriting enough, there’s the possible descent into World War Three to think about. My late mum, who lived through World War Two in Rotterdam, so she knew a thing or two about these things, always said the next big world war would start in the Middle East. I was at an age where I didn’t know where the Middle East was, or who lived there, but her words somehow stuck with me.
Part of the problem is of course me. I’m the one listening to and watching The News, as well as choosing to get breaking news blasting out of mobile phone whenever something happens. And by its very nature, The News, tends to be bad. News at Ten never starts with ‘BONG! Nothing much happened in Gaza today!’ ‘BONG! There was no crime in Nempnett Thrubwell today!’ ‘BONG! Rishi Sunak told the truth today!’ Because The News doesn’t work like that. Planes not crashing and trains arriving on time is not what fills the airwaves.
When Brian and Kate went into hospital, I wrote a gentle piss-take about it and there I was adding to the bad news. I have no particularly feelings for the royals, and to be honest I’d be glad if we got rid of them, but despite all the weirdness of having an elite royal family in the first place, why would I want any of them to be ill, or to mock them for being ill? I don’t want them to be ill, nor should I mock them. Christ, there’s enough bad things going on in the world without that.
The bad news can grind you down and I do know people who consciously avoid The News because it brings them down. I am not some macho man, facing down the worries of the world because I feel it, too. And awful, unnecessary tragedies, day in day out, can have a corrosive effect on the spirit. Including mine, which is why I concluded that it was good news that the royals were getting better. We take what we can get.
