The continued warfare in Ukraine, monsters like Trump, Putin, Johnson and Farage pushing lies and division, the spiralling prices of dwelling driving essentially the most susceptible additional and additional into poverty.
I’ve acquired to be frank – typically you simply must unplug from this hell world, don’t you? So, this week, a little bit pleasure.
We’ve returned house after three months in California to find – it’s SPRING. Nicely, it was for a day or two after we arrived, with temperatures a balmy 63 levels down right here within the south-east of England. (OK, round 17 Celsius for children and non-Individuals.)
Then, in a single day, it plunged right down to freezing. However nonetheless, the daffodils are all out, bunnies are capering on the verges, the clocks have gone ahead and The Masters is subsequent week. So, spring it's.
Just lately, this time of 12 months at all times brings a sure feeling for me. I need to get house to Scotland. Extra particularly, to Irvine, down on the Ayrshire coast, the place I grew up.
I need to see my mum. I need to stroll on the seaside. Go for espresso at Gro down on the harbour. I need to look longingly on the patch of grass throughout the street the place the Magnum Leisure Centre stood for over 40 years.
I need to go for a drink in The Turf, the place I sipped my first completely unlawful pint within the winter of 1982, the place we’d spend the Friday and Saturday nights of our youth: me and Keith and Graham and Tiny and Larry and Basil and Gordon and Rab and Kevin and all of the Andys.
I need to play golf at Glasgow Gales and Ravenspark, the place I learnt the sport from my dad a lifetime in the past. I need to see the cherry bushes of their temporary, stunning full blossom on Golffields Highway, simply not far away from my mum’s home.
I at all times get this sense initially of spring however this 12 months, maybe having to do with spending so lengthy on the opposite facet of the world, it's particularly acute.
Belief me – it wasn’t at all times this fashion.
I used to be the form of teenager who couldn’t wait to get out of the city they grew up in, who was determined to stretch their legs and run away, to Glasgow, then London after which to Los Angeles.
In my 20s and 30s, you’d have needed to coax me again to Irvine with fizzing cattle prods and blistering pokers.
After which, within the final decade or so, that each one began to alter. Now, each spring, as Easter approaches, I'm crammed with an nearly painful eager for house. The Germans name it “sehnsucht”. The Portuguese say “saudade”. However it's the Welsh who've the very best phrase for it – “hiraeth”.
I at all times took the time period to easily imply homesickness. However it’s really a bit extra sophisticated than that. It additionally incorporates strands of nostalgia and longing, interlaced, within the phrases of journey author Lily Crossley-Baxter, with “a delicate acknowledgment of an irretrievable loss – a singular mix of place, time and folks that may by no means be recreated”.
And there may be an ache, a sorrow that comes with all of this. A form of grief. As a result of, regardless of how lengthy you stare at that patch of grass, the Magnum is rarely rising again up by the earth.
I solely have the reminiscences of the issues I did in there: Taking part in Asteroids with my wee brother. Studying to swim within the big pool.
Stumbling across the ice rink in rented “purple panther” skates, ELO’s Mr Blue Sky or Elvis Costello’s Accidents Will Occur blaring out within the chill air, these songs putting us within the late Nineteen Seventies, once I was on the cusp of turning into a youngster.
I’ll by no means once more stroll these fairways with my father, useless and gone nearly 30 years now.
And there are family and friends who won't ever increase their glass to me in The Turf bar once more. Larry, Keith, Gary. All gone.
However my mum continues to be there. The seaside continues to be there. The Turf and the golf programs are nonetheless there. And there are nonetheless pals. So, I’ll be heading house this Easter, my coronary heart filled with the hiraeth, to refill on the issues that basically matter.
In our present hell world, I hope you and yours get the possibility to do the identical.