books

Anxiety, Sport, Maeve, Sadness, and Ukraine

Hope you’re all doing well. It’s a tough time. Again. On the Zoom the other day Adrian said: ‘First we had to deal with Trump. Then we had to deal with Covid. And now this.’ He was, of course, referring to Russia’s brutal and barbaric invasion of Ukraine. We talked about watching or not watching the news. Doomscrolling. The pitfalls of getting sucked under by the horror. Or ignoring it and not being informed. I said I’d watched the BBC news on Monday night and it featured an item from a children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv. Unspeakable horror. Last Friday I got news that my friend Maeve was dying. Poor Maeve. It’s too sad to think of her, so I try not to. But of course I do. And her poor family. And everyone in our book club, which Maeve has been a member of for over 30 years. Earlier