What's to be done ...?

I've been watching the news again. Perhaps I should give up the 10 o'clock news habit, but I feel compelled to absorb some by the habitual route even if I do go to bed churning it over. All these poor people in England who've been flooded again - is it simply the different terrain, or the fairly recent move to building on flood plains, or what? When I went to bed last night I was certainly aware there was a storm, but drifted off to sleep between gusts and woke to sunshine.

This being the case, and because we'd arranged to visit the builders in the afternoon, and because our respective Pilates classes had been cancelled over the weekend, we took ourselves off to Loch Striven for a morning walk. It was crazily exhilarating, especially for the first part when we were walking into the still very gusty NW wind, listening to the trees on our right roaring and creaking and to the waves breaking on the rocks to our left. In the way of windy days of sun, I became totally overheated by the time we were walking back and ended up carrying my jacket and feeling hot in a T-shirt. 

The builders were an irritating addition to the huvtae list. Our kitchen sink, installed 19 years and 10 months ago, has developed a hairline crack in the corner. When I found it (I was cleaning the sink) it was barely visible, looking like a hair stuck to the side, but underneath it is dark brown and crusty and reaches all the way to the waste pipe. It would be messy if it gave up suddenly; the firm that made it has gone out of business; the guarantee would expire in a couple of months anyway; a customer reaction (blessed be Google) warns "don't touch this with a bargepole" as the writer had the same problem after a couple of years. So I reckon the least troublous solution is probably a new sink. 

Blipping the loch breaking on the rocks (I feel so proud that I caught the spray!) with its amazing, white-streaked colour. And as I do this, I'm reflecting on that blinking news again - the floods, the damage, the threat of war - and on how we all just get on with our lives as long as we're not personally affected. If there is a Johnsonian war, will we just go on until it gets to us? And that's where the title comes in:

"How constant the rumblings are, yet what’s to be done
But till our vineyards, paint our atria, 
Pay formal visits to the homes of friends,
Love and beget and do what we should do,
Now the whole world is one volcano grown;
And though we would fly, there is nowhere to fly to?"


(Hilary Corke)