I wonder what there is left to hope for. People say that – with the best of intentions, I know – but I look around and see nothing but despair.

You might argue this has happened before. The eighties. We’ve matched their insane inflation today. Who, other than the sanely wealthy, was happy then? It took near a decade to repair that damage, and we didn’t have the ever looming threat of environmental disaster on the horizon. The weather gets worse every year. Everyone shrugs, or hunches over their phones wrapped up in warped conspiracy theories that climate change is all a lie.

When I was a child and learning to write, I wrote very neatly and always as close to the edges as I could get away with. The teacher joked I was “trying to save trees.” I wasn’t consciously doing that, but I was aware in a dim child’s way that paper was precious snd over production caused problems. Ergo, I couldn’t find the humour in this – I was trying to not use too much paper, which was surely saving the school money if nothing else – and all I got was “silly goose” style patronising jokes.

Nothing really changes. I had a dream last night, a child sitting on a rocky over hang and looking at what was left of the valley before. Fire had burnt it to cinders. The skinny cat seated at her side remarked simply, “they’ll never learn.”