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Do grant me the indulgence of this one piece

A duality of reportage

A Brief Fantasy

I woke this morning some time shortly before 8:00. It was 26.5 degrees Celsius outside, according to the weather reports. After quickly tending to myself, I went out across the hall to shower; I would have to be in town by 9:30 for an appointment with my manager.

I lathered, rinsed, soaped, towelled myself dry, then put, as best I could, on my suit; I could hear the buses starting from the terminus outside my house, and departing, every fifteen minutes; another one was due in about ten minutes.

The sky was clear for the most part, some fair-weather cumulus clouds were in the sky. I fully expected that this would be the sort of day when fifty wars would find their genesis, where many men and women would be beaten, where hundreds of millions of people would cry profusely, and several hundred million would get their hair cut.

And I wondered to myself ‘What sort of day is it today?’

After a quick mental calculation, during the rather laborious task of tying my shoelaces, I figured that I wouldn’t have time to prepare breakfast, so I dashed to the nearby newsagent to purchase a small, foil-covered oatmeal bar and a newspaper, before jumping on the bus that was just waiting by the shelter when I got out again.

I made my way to the back of the bus, put down my case, and unwrapped the bar before, taking note of the nutritional contents before surreptitiously disposing of it under my seat. I then took a breath, and opened the papers.

“TERRIBLE SORROW”, I read; the article explained that there was a deep, deep anguish in certain people at the moment, and anger also, more more intensely-felt than yesterday’s relatively mild depression. I sat back and thought about that for a moment; it’s very easy to just read what one reads in a newspaper, but one must let it sink in to achieve full effect; surely there were a good many rapes involved, also murders; maybe defaulting on loans accounted for a good amount, maybe legal bills for the rest. It was probably financial in nature, I figured, maybe the market crashed again.

On to the bottom of that page “Malaise turns to Infinite Regret”; I read – reading in more detail of this drama, that “the sense of cynicism in many had lasted for what had seemed an eternity, but now they felt that worst had come to pass and suddenly it seemed that they had no more hope of happiness for the rest of their lives”, I was able to reasonably infer that it related to a much-debated change in taxation laws in Pakistan that was probably passed due to political pressure from large companies that was to leave many of the struggling poorer classes more destitute than ever. Or maybe it referred to the opening of a rather unpleasant factory whose construction had long been opposed by local residents on entirely unreasonable grounds; I know one can only read so much into the factual content of newspaper reports, but I like to think that there is such a thing as empathy. Saying this, it can be rather amusing to mistake the emotional content of a marital breakdown with that of a civil war; but I’ve never been through a civil war whereas I have been through two failed marriages, so allow me my projections.

Near the back: “A large proportion of Irish people are feeling rather jolly today; rather happy; rather as if they have few worries indeed”. Surely a weather report. No forecast though. No need for them anyway; people make their own weather.