He could have turned on the TV or the radio but he expected few surprises and he felt quite drained of outrage. He guessed there would be global revelations of tax avoidance, financial fiddles, bent MPs, another mass shooting in the USA and the President of the USA going about Asia seeking forgiveness for the cloud of radioactivity he was about to dump there in the course of solving the problem of North Korea.

Meanwhile the glaciers were melting and the mass extinction came a day closer as the plague upon the earth – humanity – increased. All he could do was try not to be one of the very bad guys. As if the opportunity to be bad ever came his way…

He did sin but only in a small way. He ate meat that exploited animals, drove a diesel, drank tea and coffee with sugar, wore leather shoes; the normal small private mindless sins that contributed in a minuscule way to the big fat public ones. He was a paid up consumer, a member of the fraternity, doing the small ordinary things that contributed to the rape of the planet and many of the animals and people upon it.

This wouldn’t go on.

He knew he and we were doomed. It was only a matter of time. Time just fluttered down like the deep sea snow of organic matter. And he walked upon fragments of the past.

At 73 he was beginning to accept that he should stop waiting for his life to happen once all these nuisances were dealt with and accept that dealing with all these nuisances was his life. It always had been.

So best get on with it.

He decided to make his morning coffee; a medicinal cup to get him through the energy dip after breakfast and out on the road of tidying the kitchen, looking at his to do list and doing stuff…