Outliers

Welcome to this week, same as last week. Or, is it? I haven’t posted for a while, just too blooming tired from rushing around and staying positive. How exhausting it is just trying to keep on trying. But never fear, doom and gloom, begone. It helped that I had a couple of days off last week and spent most it just messing about, mooching around London with no particular place to go. I bring you glad tidings of great joy. Life continues, people are doing their thing, and the human spirit thrives. I spent an afternoon wandering around the V&A, looking at my favourite stained glass windows and the excellent collection of sculptures, eating the reassuringly overpriced afternoon tea (though, gotta say the Earl Grey and Raisin scone was pretty good), and walked into the cold, awash with tea.

Exhibit A, Natural History Musuem Winterwonnderland was in full swing and even though I had a rotten cold, I loitered in the cold just soaking in the sights of normal life. I paid for it by having to spend most of the next day in bed but it was a small price to pay:

Even better, I can announce the winners of the ‘People Of The Month’ award. Yes, I know it’s still only the 15th but it was a shoo-in.

I was watching one of the most depressing vidoes I’ve ever seen. It showed a group of young Chinese children with QR codes hung around their necks, waiting in line to go in to school. What kind of world reduces children to QR codes? They’re not even numbers. I could have wept. Then, a miracle. As the camera panned down the line of children, one of them started to smile and wave and then another child 2 spaces away joined in, then another in the next line. Yes, I know that they’ve got masks on, but trust me, they’re smiling.

Oh my actual giddy aunt, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. This is why we will always win, no matter how oppressive the system is. There will always be one irrepressible person for whom the glass is half-full. It’s why we quote Solzhenitsyn not Mein Kampf. As a Christian, I of course think – Greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world – the divine spark can never be extinguished, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. But, even if you’re not a believer, you still know in your Noah (sorry 🙂 ) that we are immortal, we cannot be suppressed permanently. I’ll probably never know the names of my three young friends but I think of them as a superpower team – The Indomitablest. May God bless and keep them, along with all the other children. Have a great week.