This might just be one of the most difficult blogs I have ever written. Maybe. I do not use the word depression or even depressed. Depressing is OK but the first two are not. If you wish to know why this should be the case then feel free to read this very early blog, Retirement and Depression (2013) when I still had my psychologist hat on.
The reason I mention this now is that I am finding these to be depressing times. I have just said goodbye to a very old friend. To cut a long story short this old friend goes back to 1953 and I first made my acquaintance with him or her in a trunk full of National Geographic magazines left by my father who had recently died. He subscribed to this magazine all those years ago and as a rare memento of him I have kept them ever since. But I digress.
It was in these pages that I first became aware of that place known as America. Specifically in the form of the adverts at the back for cars, trains, TV sets and so on. All so glamorous and so much more exciting than the rather drab British versions that were around at the time.
Anyway to cut another long story short so began a love affair with that country that has lasted until the last few months. Now I am done with America. It is no longer the wonderful place I once knew. It used to be generous, friendly and to some degree a place I always wanted to be. Well not anymore and, before I go any further, I should make it clear I am not talking about the many friends we (Mrs Summerhouse and I) have made over the years of living there, buying land, visiting both for work and vacation. I have finally run out of patience with one man – Donald the Trump.
Apparently he doesn’t rate this country anymore thinks we’re not his friend, we’re unreliable and some bollocks about Winston Churchill and something about entering a war already won, interesting from my perspective – true of America in the first world war if not the second etc. See how upset I am, I’m reaching for hyperbole and inaccuracies.
Well let me tell him, hyperbole aside, that goes double for us. With his latest war-mongering effort and he accused us of not supporting him I found myself thinking and now writing, well good, if Trump thinks we are wrong then we (Keir Starmer) must be doing something right. Tony Blair, Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage say he’s wrong and so I repeat, doubly, here can be no better indication of his being absolutely plumb in the right.
But yes, it’s depressing and my usual tactic of burying my head and pretending it’s nothing to do with me isn’t working. OK, this blog is not much but I’m hoping it will do for now. It should because I have written many times that writing this blog is a form of therapy and the way I’m feeling currently I need all the therapy I can get. And maybe when Trump has gone, which he surely will, maybe America will return to the country I used to know and loved so well.
So there we are I hope that my small gesture turns out to be overly dramatic and that as many of life’s certainties fall around me, this one can be replaced before I am too senile to realise its return. What a sad blog to have to write. I sincerely hope I don’t have to write another one.