It’s Saturday evening, I’m sat listening to music and drinking beer while I type this.

The dogs are asleep somewhere after another long day of walking and running around with an occasional nap or snuggle break and life is very calm.

I’m now at the point where I’m really not that fussed by anything now, I KNOW I should be angry at the constant horror show that this country has become.

I should be raging at our incompetent and possibly corrupt government, I should be mortified and disgusted that actual terrorists get better treatment than normal concerned people and I should be screaming from the rooftops about Prevent classifying concerns over mass immigration as a potential terrorism red flag.

But I just can’t hold on to the anger these days.

So much is wrong and I don’t think it’s fixable, the roller coaster of civilisation has started the longest and scariest descent of the ride and the maintenance crew has been replaced by Bonobo monkeys who seem to have found a drug stash, so I don’t think that there’s going to be an ascent.

Not for us anyway.

So my little brain has started to cocoon itself off, I’m focusing on the good things, daily long walks with the doglets, getting to grips with the things that need fixing – the photo at the top is a shed door. I was going to pull the whole thing down but I’ve cladded the outside and put in a new floor.

If it ever stops raining, I’ll make a new door and fit it.

Simple little tasks that I’ve not typically done throughout my life – I’ve always been too busy.

I’m joining the welfare committee of a local ( national) Forces Adjacent charity and joining the Mayor in a few weeks to open a school fair.

I’m horribly respectable – and according to my mental lifecycle clock, I’m about ten years early for this sort of thing.

Just to keep my hand in with the old world of work, I’ve given the Feral Ponies an introduction to a major company and they’ll get an internal recommendation from one of the directors ( if they want to apply for any jobs) because I’ve vouched for them.

It was nice to be offered an open ended ‘ we’ll have something for you if you want it’ too.

But I don’t really.

Not right now, I want to go for early morning walks in fields of grass, barley and wheat, I want to watch the birds of prey and listen to the quails in the undergrowth – while waiting for Cairo to decide that they might be fun to chase.

I want to watch Milo grin at me so that I’ll throw him a treat and I want to just stop and stare at the beauty around me.

The days are still getting longer for a few weeks and the crops in the fields are ripening quickly, I’ve got lots of sawing and cutting, drilling and fixing, painting and oiling to do – all watched by the doglets who seem to like this new life and follow me everywhere around the grounds.

It could be a lot worse.

So for now, I’ll take the calm and peace. I’ll put the anger aside, I’m not sure it’s helping anyway.

Better to try to be content than to fight this battle against shadows created by our own government.

Anybody who reads this drivel even occasionally knows that I love books.

So, like Galadriel, I shall diminish and fade into the background.

I think.

Maybe

“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illumined her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

“I pass the test,” she said. “I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”