Today I have in the words of E. F. Benson’s Lucia been “terrifically busy about nothing“. Whether sadly or not the indisputable truth is that life in the country during this relentless pandemic has descended to a collection of mundane exploits. We of Sleepy Hollow reputedly have little to divert us apart from art festivals, film clubs, rides upon the alameda, rushing waterfalls, stone and brick homes and vast stubbled fields.

I confess a similarly unvaried conduct when it comes to the daily news. American politics has overtaken me. In what is perhaps a futile attempt at accommodation I purposely flip between the so-called “Right, Conservative” and “Left, Liberal” radio stations.  Initially it stimulates nothing but hardened thoughts in which instance I immediately shift to Laugh USA for temporary relief from the party lines which characteristically become increasingly incensed one against the other.

“No one in London has time to listen: they are all thinking about who is there and who isn’t there, and what is the next thing. The exquisite present, as you put it in one of your poems, has no existence there: it is always the feverish future.”

“It isn’t that I find fault with London for being so busy,” she said with strict impartiality, “for if being busy was a crime, I am sure there are few of us here who would escape hanging. But take my life here, or yours for that matter. Well, mine if you like. Often and often I am alone from breakfast till lunch-time, but in those hours I get through more that is worth doing than London gets through in a day and a night. I have an hour at my music not looking about and wondering who my neighbours are, but learning, studying, drinking in divine melody. Then I have my letters to write, and you know what that means, and I still have time for an hour’s reading so that when you come to tell me lunch is ready, you will find that I have been wandering through Venetian churches or sitting in that little dark room at Weimar, or was it Leipsic? How would those same hours have passed in London?

While flying through the bucolic roadways of Renfrew County today I couldn’t help but wonder when listening to a description of Trump’s latest emissions from the White House whether there is nothing but determination by the Americans to confound one another. Certainly the stuff of vengeance reared its ugly head once again. Apparently Trump has recalled his abuse at the hands of the Democrats in the Robert Mueller investigation to sanction his protraction of the transfer of power following the presidential election. It is meanwhile an unsettling environment for the citizens of the United States of America. Not to mention an unforgivable delay of financial aid for the millions in distress.

Rapidly I am coming to the conclusion that “social media” is about as intellectual as listening to drunken teenagers opine during a common room card game. The indisputable lapse into the vernacular seems to capture the thread of interest.