Strange Times

Brazil has voted in a heartless Devil, Sri Lankans are throwing chairs at each other in Parliament. Trump is a noxious shitty stain. China is burning coal around the world. Brexit is back firing like a monumental fart. Davide Attenborough does his best, young folk are ‘woke’, but there is an exhaustion with the magnitude of it all.
Who do we turn to for leadership?
Whilst we all know that the end of cycles can be brutal, somehow I have to remind myself that endings are also beginnings.
When the late night news tells us that scientists are calling for a radical repositioning otherwise in 30 years our little earth will be scorched and dead, just what do we do?
I went to the gym today and ran on the treadmill for 30 minutes listening to ‘Snarky Puppy.’ Walked, ran, walked, ran. I wore my swimsuit underneath a long black sweatshirt, so that after the cardio I could just slip into the pool. Fifteen minutes of affirmations and spluttering water out of my mouth.
Then the jacuzzi and a series of sitting positions so that the jets of warm water pummelled me bits. Then the steam room, and finally the sauna. In the middle of all that it came to me that women could be our salvation.
I had to read Aristophanes’ ‘Lysistrata’ when I was at Drama School.
It is the comic account of one woman’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War, as Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace.
She had them swear an oath that they would withhold sex from their husbands until both sides signed a treaty of peace.
As I swum my lengths I wondered whether it could work now. It’s a possibility that is not so far fetched. I imagined women of all faiths, races, continents, seducing their men, then tying their hands together, and gently taking over the world. Not with guns and bulldozers, but with quiet female rationality.
‘You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one’ – thank you JOHN LENNON – Men sure as Hell have mismanaged our little planet. ‘But what of Theresa May and Hilary Clinton?’ said the woman sitting in clouds of steam in the steam room, ‘We have to start somewhere’ I said.
What is the way forward?
Climate change, plastic, deforestation, animal cruelty, austerity, greed, we’ve been here before with knobs on.
My tree in the avenue tells me not to worry, that good will out. The old git says it’s a purging. But I worry for the dawters generation and the ones after her.
I have a warm little cottage, food in the fridge, a roof that doesn’t leak, all the material trappings of the 21st Century, I have friends and family. I wish that for every soul on earth. The first step is to get everyone reading ‘Lysistrata’, or as Mr. Lennon also said “Give Peace a Chance.