What is an R rate?

I can’t remember.

Do you have to wear a mask?

I’m not sure.

Is the virus all over?

Who knows and does anyone care?

So it’s back to normal then.

But it isn’t really, is it.

12-year-olds are going to be vaccinated, without their parents’ consent.

The UK government has a traffic-light system list of countries we can visit on holiday. A travel agency will happily let you book and charge you £10k for a family trip to Florida, that the US government won’t let you take.

Afghanistan has been returned to the year 2001 and their population is fleeing the Taliban.

The US president seems once again to be unfit for office. And ABBA have reformed (a perky return to pop’s highest peaks?). 

The UK media is angry because an alpaca was put down.

And an ex-soldier wanted to get his pets to the UK before Afghan translators and others who helped the occupying forces.

Globalism, that magical thing created by travel and IT, has shrunk to the size of national borders (if you are a country) and your lounge (if you are a human).

The world is slowly falling off its axis.

The Olympics, and now the Paralympics were a distraction, as were the highest ever transfer fees in football. Andy Murray made a good fist of losing in the first round of the US Open. Sport continues, but somehow the world is completely wrong.

Animals are loveable, migrants are just numbers and Covid recedes to where it was 18 months ago; pretty much nowhere.

Where does work fit into this new normal?

Where do you want to work?

Seriously; geographically, which is the best country for you? 

You don’t want to go somewhere that is likely to be wiped off the face of the world by some weather disaster.

You don’t want to work for a company whose reputation is about to be trashed for their lack of green credentials, sexual impropriety at the top level, or fiscal misdeeds.

Do you want to work from home or in the office? Or a bit of both? 

Medicine and healthcare look like perilous occupations, tourism is all but over, education is a petri dish of disease. What can you do?

The UK is going to host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 October to 12 November 2021. And this is going to be a watershed moment in our history.

Advertisers, previously flirting with the idea, have now jumped wholesale onto the green bandwagon. Brewdog’s latest advertising campaign says: “We are the first carbon-neutral brewer, we plant trees for every beer you drink.” Of course they don’t; who’s going to swallow that crap?

Pretty much everything we use comes in single-use plastic; toothpaste, contact lens solution and lenses, everything used by the NHS, facemasks. That is a huge circle that needs to be squared, and it can’t be. So it will be covered up, conveniently forgotten as other problems force their way onto the political and media agenda.  

As I write, the Red Arrows are flying overhead, at the Bournemouth Air Festival; they are cracking the sound barrier and are amazingly impressive, but they will soon be gone and people will look back saying; ” What the hell were we thinking allowing these kind of events?”

F1 will go, as will most foreign travel. The world is shrinking before our eyes.

So most people are considering their options and good advice is thin on the ground.

We have all had significant freedoms removed from us in the past 18 months and to an extent, our obedience to governments and on-the-hoof laws has infantilised us; so perhaps the general advice I would offer is what I would give to a young daughter or nephew:

Try your best to do what you love.

Unfortunately, it is all about who you know. Cultivate your contacts. And help others. 

Keep your education going as long as you can.

If they’ll have you, stay with your parents.

And keep your eyes on cryptocurrency.