The sights and sounds of the ups and downs

I have been in the garden brushing away the flies, ladybirds, and wasps, while the artist works on a kind of dream rendition indoors. Trying to write with the children playing is not difficult when compared to some people's distractions in the world, and in truth I can hear the traffic more than the children, motorbikes mostly, and await with well-honed foreboding the sound of a high-speed crash. This is not unfamiliar territory. It is perhaps the same with the Middle East, Persian Gulf, North Africa and Central Asia. We all hear something. We know the situation is bad. And some of us fear it will get much worse. Also, with a kind of well-honed foreboding we await the sound of a high-speed crash. (Nuclear? No, we dismiss.) Which is why as well as writing I have also been reading a book today by a man I met on a number of occasions and with whom I once gave uncredited advice. His latest volume covers one of the countries in the present fragmentation, the strongest perhaps, and though I have only just begun it I can see already the problem I have with my own ignorance. I can never for example seem to grasp fully why things have to fall apart. Over two thousand years ago these people were the most sophisticated on the planet. Renowned for their rectitude and wisdom, they were hunters, poets, and musicians. Indeed for a while they would use art rather than weaponry as their principal means of persuasion. So what went wrong? Did the flies, ladybirds, and wasps get too much for them in the end? Were they obliged to withdraw indoors? Today once again we have some of the so-called most sophisticated people on the planet, on both sides some might argue, people famously keen - again, on both sides - on rectitude, thinking they have the answer, and maybe some of them do. But what can you really do when you hear a motorbike drive too fast? What can you do when you see a wasp on someone’s nose? Warn them? Strike out and risk being bitten yourself? Or, like a woman I met on a two-masted brigantine once, keep calm until it passes? I have a friend who would know. He is cleverer than me and writes about insects well. Hang on. Wait. Another motorbike. (A beat.) Phew. No. It’s OK. (Actually I thought there was a wasp, too.) Wait a moment, shall I just go inside and listen to the news instead?