It’s easy to think that everything is shit, there are so many things wrong with the country and the world that you could be forgiven for seeing that a bleak existence is all we have to look forward to.

But I just watched something live.

On the phone that I’m typing this.

The same phone that’s controlling streaming music that’s playing while I cook chilli, drink a raspberry vodka martini made from my own raspberries and look at the ancient hills beyond.

I just watched science fiction become real.

A booster rocket in America just docked with uncanny precision into a massive metal arm.

This was impossible when I was growing up.

But so many things were.

And now we take them for granted.

I don’t travel for work or go to an office unless I have to, I sit in my own office that’s around 30 metres from the house, with music playing over the same steaming system and I can do four or five things at once.

If I look backwards, my grandfather was a blacksmith and he made me a bookcase from what would have been an amazingly expensive wood for him at the time.

The mahogany that he made it from looks as new today as it did fifty years ago and he’s the only person from my past that I’d like to talk to.

He taught me about the balance needed in nature, about how to pick nettles with your bare fingers and how to look at the world with open eyes when you can.

He also made sharp things, the apple doesn’t fall that far.

I’d love to talk to him and show him the world that I live in, I’d love to tell him about all the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen.

I can’t.

But I can pause and think about it all though.

So….

What’s all that wonderment business about?

It’s a recurring phrase from a film called the Great Northfield Minnesota Raid as said by Cole Younger ( played by Cliff Robertson) –

‘Ain’t that a wonderment’

And here we are.

Growing up, I never imagined that I’d chat to people that I hadn’t met, send and receive photos and LEARN SO FUCKING MUCH EVERY DAY just by using a device didn’t exist until my 30s.

Or that an artificial intelligence could generate a picture like this within 10 seconds.

On the same phone

Or…..that I’d have a robot lawnmower that needs to be rescued when it’s icy.

Or that I’d be being watched by a dog that wants to go outside – and that at 16:33 on a Sunday afternoon, I can take a photo of her…

You get the idea.

It’s a wonderment – try to enjoy it.

Happy Sunday