Guilty

Things are happening 'out there' about which I can do nothing. It is not yet nine o'clock in the morning and already I feel guilty about being useless. Worse follows: I start feeling guilty about feeling guilty! I am old, and the hardest exercise I take is putting on my own socks of a morning. So what am I supposed to do about the Greek debt crisis? How can I influence Rupert Murdoch? I can send £10 to UNICEF to deal with the Somali famine, but can anything I say make the gun-mad factions see sense? We know too much. Way back as a 'copy taster' on a provincial evening paper I had to sift what mattered from the shoals of material pouring off what in those days were 'the wires' from local, national and international news sources. There was always too much. What, of all the things happening around the world, do we really 'need to know'? Ancient peasantry had never heard of China, never mind what was happening there. Good news brought 'from Ghent to Aix' took days. Marathon runners gave way to to pigeons, to telephones, to morse code, and now to instant technology so that we know what's happening before it has happened. ' Breaking News' is on our screens by the minute. So.... I have said my prayers, and have switched to Classic FM, alternating with R3 and R5Sport extra  (Can somebody silence Boycott?).  Now all I have to fret about is whether rain will interferer with the Lord's test. But hang on there's an Indian fast bowler with a hamstring problem.  So what with that, and the rain, I have something positive to worry about. So needn't feel guilty at all.