Scargill

Our time in Spain was, until someone had the bright idea of Brexit, largely a summer sport but with the 6-months-at-a-time rule blown to hell, it makes more sense to spend the bulk of our time in the sun. Even today as 2020 draws to a close, it is for sure, cold in the shade in Andalucia, but distinctly t-shirt weather in the Southern Spanish sun.

It seems like we might have a spot of rain this week – something of a novelty – I doubt it will last. Stunning to think we’ve been performing this back-and-forth between the Northeast of England and Southern Spain for more than 12 years now, after decades of travelling around, mainly in Europe and the USA but also as far as China and Japan. In the end there are not THAT many places with the same combination of relaxed lifestyle and decent weather and right now, the idea of going from one country to another and facing two weeks isolation doesn’t seem very sensible.

None of which stops us from keeping in touch with our friends at home and we MIGHT be on the cusp of getting decent speed broadband at last. What we have now is good enough for HD TV but with not a lot to spare.

Does all of this means I’m ignoring the world’s problems? Hell no – but I’ve done MORE than my share of battling incompetence and it is time to back off and make the best of the “golden years”.

It’s a constant source of sadness for me that despite the Internet offering the potential to give more knowledge to more people than ever before in mankind’s history – in reality this wonderful technology has done little more than give fruitcake conspiracy theorists a larger and more gullible audience than ever before.

While those of us who truly want to learn are spending more time than ever before acquiring genuine new knowledge, it seems that significant parts of the population are happier listening to ever-increasing social media SHITE – to name just two of the more dangerous and/or preposterous claims – chips in the anti-viral and the moon landings being staged – both of which are incredibly insulting to the countless thousands who put in the work to get us to the moon and back several times and to the memory of those worldwide who have already died due to lack of an anti-viral combined with irresponsible social behaviour.

Maybe Musk is even brighter than we give him credit for – moving humanity’s smart people off-world could be the best idea yet.