Writer and planetary modeller David Angus recalls recent global and personal events in a letter to his dead parents, from anti-vaxxers to flying a Spitfire.
By now Jill Mole should be with you and Arthur Mole, if there’s an afterlife. As you can imagine, much has happened since the outbreak of the Covid virus in 2020, now that it’s 2026.
The good news is the virus is now no worse than flu for many because vaccinations were developed that could deal with it. That didn’t stop an anti-vaccination movement developing, mostly in the States, where measles and an ‘explosive diarrhoea’ bug are now on the increase. This is most likely because of declining medical support which is down to Trump – believe it or not – becoming president again, whom you might remember was president before Covid until he was voted out.
More on that and the present state of the US later.
People were worried about the side effects of the vaccination, repeated yearly. I welcomed it, though I experienced a side effect the first time. But I put that down more to the rum I had in celebration.
Since then I’ve had the virus 3 times in fact but each time was no worse than an ordinary bug and I was able to recover before long (I’m lucky though; the disease lingers on in some people, known as ‘Long Covid’). Estelle, the girl who lived next door to us in Burghfield, had an explanation for that when I got her in touch with my sister during a visit to Estelle, now living in Spain. ‘Your brother’s not normal’. That raised a chuckle from my driver.
My relatives in the UK are all carrying on as normal in Cornwall, as they are in Australia I guess, and as I am with my job: taking a girl with special needs to and from school. I’ll carry on doing so for as long as I’m able, or still here, or I hit 90. It suits me so well. I’m still in reasonable health, even doing indoor climbing now and then, though I’ve developed something of a belly. I was warned against that in a comical but incredibly effective way by a boy with Down’s Syndrome who told me it was a ‘baby’ repeatedly in a professional bedside manner. You can’t argue about things like that with children so I was sorted out in a way that you, as my parents, could only have dreamed about!
The world lurches from crisis to crisis in an increasingly crazy way.
I believe I mentioned the Russian leader, Putin, attacking Ukraine, which became a separate country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The war is still going on, longer than WW1 now, and Putin is not winning it, gaining Ukraine border strips near Russia and launching drone strikes (flying guided bombs) on Kyiv at the cost of similar drone strikes on Moscow, with WW1 scale casualties. It’s strongly suspected that Putin was involved in Brexit and in getting Trump into power.
As if the Russo-Ukrainian War isn’t enough, Trump has managed to expand another war in the Middle East by bombing Iran, leading to Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, throttling oil supplies and increasing prices for all. This latest round of Middle Eastern conflict began with Hamas slaughtering Israelis at a pop festival and taking hostages. Israel responded by bombing Gaza to hell, killing many more Palestinians in an ongoing genocide.
Trump seems to be trying to make the USA as unpopular as Israel by raising tariffs, wanting to get shot of NATO and overseas medical aid, ignoring climate change and threatening to take over Greenland of all places. What he’s doing within the US is even worse; piling money into Immigration and Customs Enforcement otherwise known as ICE. They have become a thoroughly nauseating organisation composed largely of semi-trained misguided armed thugs with a grudge against humanity, licensed to kill innocent US citizens including two in Minneapolis with zero immigrant background, licensed to round up anyone they don’t like the look of and incarcerate them in windowless warehouse centres for an unknown period where a disgusting aspect is commercial reward for holding them there. A tragic aspect of this is children separated from parents and sometimes arrested too. Deaths have occurred in these centres, nobody’s safe and there have been nationwide demonstrations against this. I feel this is not a million miles from the Nazi brownshirts if not the SS and when this ghastly situation is got rid of I say that every ICE employee ought to stand trial!
Someone here who might be called upon to do that is Nigel Farage: a persistent immigration obsessed pest who together with Dominic Cummings and Boris Bullshit brought about Brexit. Farage has looked as though he might become the next Prime Minister and he’d like to curse the UK with an organisation like ICE which is an appalling prospect; but here the news gets better. Farage is involved in a financial scandal, has tried a political sleight of hand by resigning and standing again as an MP in a by-election. The main parties have pulled out of this election, so Farage’s main opponent has become a fellow with a dustbin over his head! This is less insane than it sounds since the absurdity of this “candidate” is really effective in ridiculing Farage and Count Binface is becoming a folk hero. He might just win too since Farage is hardly ever in his constituency. Meanwhile there were 2 Conservative Prime Ministers after Boris Bullshit, then Labour eventually won with Keir Starmer becoming PM. He was good at playing the long game to gain power. Meanwhile it became known that Larry the cat (no less) at No. 10 Downing Street was lasting longer than any of them; so Larry gained social media power before Binface did with a ‘Vote For Larry’ campaign and he became really popular. Keir Starmer was not so good at using power for the better, so he’s just been superseded by Andy Burnham, previously the Mayor of Manchester, who seems to be the best chance for rolling back the damage done by the Tories and maybe rejoining Europe.
Two things are more of a concern now for the human race than politics. One of them is AI, short for artificial intelligence. Computer technology has become complex and advanced enough to at least simulate some sort of intelligence. One can converse with it as an aid to research and I’ve been ‘working’ with it on a time travel show I’m organising to the point where it can create visuals and insert animations into my photographs. The worry is that our species could become too dependent on it, be outsmarted into an evolutionary dead end and even exterminated as in the Terminator scenario where the machines declare war on mankind. There’s been a case already of one company’s AI jumping to another company and doing something it shouldn’t and being surprisingly out of control. I’ve sensed this kind of thing for awhile because everybody has wound up with smartphones which are half phone half computer gadgets about the size of a large-ish diary. People are too dependent on them and seeing many people with their noses stuck into them reminds me of a Doctor Who adventure: where aliens arrive bearing a miracle gadget for everyone which becomes a form of invasion.
The other is the climate crisis, which is developing faster than the scientists thought with huge fires breaking out in Canada, smoke obscuring the sky over northern US cities. Europe is as badly hit if not worse with fires at this moment menacing Bordeaux, Madrid and a Suffolk nuclear power station! I refuse to call it hot under 30 C but we had a heatwave topping that in the last week of May! Too early. It’s now the end of July and there have been multiple heatwaves since May with Gosport actually having the record at 36.1 C for one of them. I don’t know why since we’re on the coast and it should have been hotter inland. England’s south coast though is on the northern fringe of the hellhole that most of France has become, with the temperatures there rivalling the Middle East, although France is next to the Atlantic Ocean. It may be suffering more than Spain because Spain is more mountainous and more altitude makes a difference.
How have I been through all this? Well, I won’t deny I’ve gone through a few miserable experiences and more frustrating, irritating ones, but I won’t go into them because I’m achieving a lot too. To raise morale on the domestic front I now have wall displays including my uncle’s spears, a pygmy arrow and even that Stone Age club for a junior fancy dress party Dad made for me all those years ago. I made a trip to the States seeing Lake Superior before Trump took over and to Nepal where I was able to get a light aircraft flight to see Mount Everest, looking just as it did in that book Dad had. Last year was a brilliant year in which I gained a pension including a lump sum from my Special Needs job while continuing to work. This enabled me to climb the Dolomites at 76 and fly a Spitfire! One of the books I inherited from you has a photo of a Spitfire instrument panel which came in handy when we were flying around the Isle of Wight. I’ve also been granted a monthly column in an online magazine run by Portsmouth University, by my University contact and drinking buddy, Tom. This communication may well be this month’s article.
The greatest achievement last year though was possibly the greatest honour I’ve received: I became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society! Travelling through 45 countries and successfully tackling the world’s biggest cave may have had something to do with it but the main reason, I’m sure, was the huge globe I had slaved away at for years at Emilie’s being on permanent display at the RGS. Compliments came flooding in, there are letters after my name now, I’ve attended dinners and classy functions in London and was even asked if I should be referred to as ‘m’ lord! To be honest, I’m thoroughly enjoying the pomp and circumstance and being held in higher esteem than I’ve been used to. Both of you would have been proud of me.
And you know what, it’s not over yet! I’m a member of the British Interplanetary Society too and I thought I’d try my luck at bagging a Fellowship there as well, since I did a talk there on my planets just before Covid and previous speakers have included Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan and even the Nazi rocket scientist Werner Von Braun! The last email I received on this was very positive.
Picture ‘Forest fire at Umatilla National Forest. Photo by Brendan O’Reilly’ used under a public domain Wikimedia Commons licence.
