Well, we got through February. I'm not sure whether it's fair to say that we got through it OK, but we got through it. In fairness, in this part of the country we did get through it OK, but elsewhere people were not so lucky. Even here it was horrible, right up to the end. Yesterday's bonus morning, February 29th, was one of the wettest of the year so far, and that's one of the wettest of what has, I believe, been the wettest start to a year ever recorded in Britain. Still, today, 1st March, was very pleasant with plenty of sunshine. Mind you, rain is forecast to return tomorrow morning at about 4am, when the temperature should be around 2 degrees. So spring it may be, but we're certainly not 'there' yet.
As you can deduce from the content of the first paragraph, I'm currently feeling even more like Simon & Garfunkel's 'Only Living Boy in New York' than usual, ie I get all the news I need from the weather reports. The recent weather reports have been particularly helpful in answering my query about whether it has been the same storm all the way through (which has at times seemed to be the case) or, rather, a succession of storms, one arriving just as its predecessor leaves. We knew really that it was several, but even so I hadn't appreciated how many.
It was Storm Brendan when I went to Ireland last month and the plane was diverted from Limerick to Cork. Then it was Storm Ciara when we went to Wolverhampton with Hidden Pearl and Storm Dennis when she ran at Lingfield the following week. That was only two weeks ago. I was expecting to hear of a Storm ... (girl's name, beginning with E) and then Storm ... (boy's name, beginning with F) etc. So, even knowing that the storms have been coming thick and fast, it was a surprise to find out that we're already on to Storm Jorge. Warm, dry, settled spring weather really will be a godsend if/when it finally arrives.
On other matters, I very much enjoyed watching the Saudi Cup and its supporting races yesterday. Maximum Security and Midnight Bisou are two horses which I very much admire so I was thrilled to see them fighting out such a stirring finish. Am I allowed to say that? I fully understand the feeling that Saudi Arabia's (what seems to us) medieval approach to gender and sexual equality, as well as its foreign policy, is so totally reprehensible that we ought to have nothing to do with the country. But at the same time I can't help feeling that there is some justification for those who have chosen to have dealings with the country, assuming that they have actually given the matter consideration rather than merely swallowed the lure of the big bucks without thinking about it.
This isn't as clear-cut as, say, the boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era. Apartheid was forced on the people by the government despite it being popular with and for the benefit of only a small minority of the population. As I understand it, the situation in Saudi Arabia is not similar; that the
mores in the country are deeply embedded among the population and that the government might meet as much resistance in trying to change things as the former South African government used to meet while trying to keep things as they were.
I think that it is possible to see the Saudi Cup as a sign that the government there is trying to westernize the way of doing things. If that is the case, it is not axiomatic that one should just dismiss the attempts as bogus and treat them and their instigators as pariahs. It's a hard one. And I'm not sure that we're necessarily in a position to throw too many stones. We shouldn't forget that homosexuality was illegal in this country until as recently as 1967 and that gender equality has been even slower in coming. The ordination of women only came to the Protestant Church in 1987, while it still hasn't come to the Catholic Church. The death penalty was used in Britain as recently as 1964 and only abolished in 1969 - so should we be so appalled that it hasn't yet been abolished in Saudi Arabia?
As regards the death penalty, I imagine that it would end up being reintroduced here if the government were unwise enough to hold an 'advisory' referendum on the subject. You think that that's unlikely? I can't see that it would be any sillier than holding a supposedly advisory referendum on our membership of the EU. At least we'd know what we were voting for, which none of us did when asked to adjudicate over EU membership. The only two facts that we thought we knew were that the NHS would receive an extra £350,000,000 per week if we left, and that agricultural subsidies would be unaffected - and we now know both of those to have been untrue.
It's only a few weeks since our supposed great ally President Trump boasted of having had a minister in the Iranian government assassinated. Is that civilisation? How high is our moral high ground? Should we not consider giving others the benefit of the doubt?
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