At last, I
have resolved the niggling issue of having different types of valve on the
front and rear tyres of my bike. Ostensibly, this was not problematic because I
had bought a pump that connects to either, but when I needed it most, midway through
a longish ride, it broke. My choice of a replacement was limited to whatever
was available at the first shop to which I could push my stricken machine, so I
came out of there with a very nifty (and quite expensive) lightweight ‘racing’
pump, which I soon discovered to be annoyingly impractical. Yes, it worked, but
its adaptor for the differing valves was a plastic fitting so tiny that my
fingers found it awkward to extract from its hidey-hole and re-position
appropriately. Worse, the whole thing was about six inches long and impossible
to grasp firmly and effectively. Since
Monday, however, when I acquired matching valves and a man-sized pump, I have felt
happier about being back on the saddle.
I know, I’ve
been called pernickety before. But, in a world in which we are at the mercy of
overwhelming forces, both natural and political, there’s comfort in controlling
whatever we can to make life more enjoyable – or less annoying, depending on
your point of view. And it’s not that I’m a complete control freak. Take, for
example, the community choir. (There is a hierarchy of choirs, by the way, according
to their degree of expertise. In this context, the word “community” is a
euphemism for “entry-level”.) I’ve attended twice now and, as a participating
singer, accept that I have no authority over the repertoire or how it is
arranged, nor may I criticise the efforts of other members. This is challenging
for someone who wants everything to be ‘just so’, yet I accept that teamwork is
inherent to the enterprise, so I do what is expected of me. A good dose of working
as a team is a useful antidote to selfishness, a reminder to stay rooted in society
and a distraction from fretting about that over which I have no control, like geopolitics.
Most of us
are insufficiently rich to be in a position to influence the outcome of
political power-struggles (yes, in case you hadn’t noticed, democracy is bought
and sold). The very rich are in charge and act constantly to consolidate their
stranglehold on power. Those who perpetrate war may legitimise their motives on
religious or nationalistic grounds, but the real goal is invariably the
acquisition of wealth. If this is true, it makes sense that Donald Trump should
propose ending at least two wars, simply by putting forward commercial
propositions. We shall see. Meanwhile, those who suffer are the cannon fodder
and the civilians caught in crossfire.
As
interested as I am in geopolitics, there are mornings when I open the papers
and skip over the headlines about this, that, or the other autocrat’s latest outrages
on humanity. With a sad resignation, I search instead for some good news or, at
least, a story that is not about destruction of the planet and its inhabitants.
I suppose editors include such items purposely to leaven the burden of gloom
and doom and avoid reader burn-out. This morning, I did the skip and landed on the
story about archaeologists uncovering a pharaoh’s tomb, the first to have been
discovered since that of Tutankhamun in 1922. Fascinated by archaeology’s forensic
potential to tell us what happened in the ancient past, I’m always drawn to
news of its findings, as I prefer evidence-based speculation to mythologies.
But the uplifting effect of this particular story wore off pretty quickly when I realised that it’s really about yet another autocratic dictator who nabbed all the wealth for themself and – a particularly selfish move, this – took it all to the grave, presumably to avoid inheritance tax. In the three-and-a-half millennia since then, not much has changed. It’s enough to drive a chap to tinkering with his bike.
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