Mood: worried

The pollen count must be up or something but in the last day or so, I've been plagued with a vague sense of free-floating anxiety about nothing in particular.

If I focus, I find I'm worried about:

the bees;

Peak Oil;

being thrown in jail for being a wildly politically incorrect Christian;

rising food prices;

the possibility of the village post office being closed by the government;

my council tax bill (which is odd, because I just paid up in full);

the fact that there was nowhere to go for Triduum that wouldn't send me into a blinding fury and make me want to raze the church to the ground with my bare hands (I realize now, I should have taken a day trip to Birmingham...next year);

the fact that Gordon Brown is going to be Prime Minister without-a-mandate for at least another year;

the fact that, despite his good looks and charm, moderate intelligence and vague good will, I really don't think David Cameron is up to the job;

the fact that despite all the evidence that it was a Really Bad Idea, women still have the vote;

the fact that the ancient system of English Common Law is being systematically replaced with a European/French/Napoleonic concept of law in which citizens only have the rights specifically detailed in legislation...all other activities and thoughts are outlawed by default;

the state of the trains;

the fact that every time I read a passage from Hansard, it becomes more obvious that the Honourable Members and Peers are totally barking mad;

the fact that Britain seems to have fallen under some kind of mass enchantment that seems to be equal parts pathological indifference to civic life, cultural amnesia, and rabid addiction to pleasures of appetite.

and the general nightmare horribleness of everything in the modern world.

Today I did a bit of shopping and the person I went with bought a little flannel for her grandson who likes Winnie the Pooh. But he doesn't like the Winnie of A.A. Milne and E. H. Shepard. He doesn't know about that Bear. He only knows Disney's nasty greedy Americanised cartoon. That's all you can get in shops if you look for Winnie stuff.

Is the real England in hiding? Is it living in caves in the hills waiting for rescue?

"Narnia was a sad country. Taxes were high, laws were harsh and Miraz was a tyrant."