Catching Up (again)

I seem to spend far too much of my time apologising for not having blogged for a while. I've started various entries, made notes on others, but never quite got round to writing a full-blown entry. So I'm going to stop apologising. It's repetitive and non-productive and I should be writing more interesting things.

Such that today, I'm going to post more of a collection of short-but-sweet views, largely inspired by the news.

Firstly, I was saddened to see that Stephen Sutton has died. Hardly a surprise, but sad nonetheless. It must be (a very) little consolation to his family and loved ones that he achieved so much more in nineteen brief years than many of us manage in our three score and ten. Perhaps he will have inspired a few more people to get off their backsides and do something useful. RIP, young man. You deserved a better shot at life.

Other young people still in the news who also deserve a better shot at life are the girls in Nigeria, held prisoner by the Boko Haram terrorists. I get the impression that the Nigerian authorities were at their wits' end trying to deal with the group, and that in some ways, the mass abduction will turn out to have been a good thing because it will have drawn the rest of the world's attention to what is going on there, getting other countries involved and possibly putting an end to such treatment. I realise that this is a bit like saying the sinking of the Titanic was a good thing because it improved maritime safety; I'm mostly trying to find a silver lining to this particularly dark cloud. Fingers crossed that the girls are freed soon.

At the other end of life (almost), I tried watching a couple of episodes of 'Vicious', starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi. Both are fabulous actors and it should have been a joy to watch, but the script is so laboured and unfunny that even its stars struggle to salvage it. I see that voters on IMDB have given it ratings in the low 8s but I can't see myself bothering to watch the second series that is about to start. A real waste of talent.

That's it for this week. If no-one complains, I may make this the style of future blog entries!