It is a shame that while we are trying to find ways to grow our economy thinking long-term (pension funded) we are fearing short term tariffs from the USA as if our financial futures depended on the whims of a new government and a spoilt president.
I will be having lunch with people much smarter than me who I know will put me right but my thinking is that we should not be distracted but should continue to consider how our nation can grow into the future, self confidant in its history. We can’t lose our sense of humour as the markets do, there are better things to worry about than Trump’s antics.
My lunch worries me (as does the backspace key on my board). I am going with some friends to a posh place in Farringdon and I don’t know what to wear and how to behave myself and I’m like Britain in the tariff dispute, a little out of my depth but knowing that this is what people like me used to manage very well.
Shal I leave it to my colleagues who are smarter than I am? Or shall I just be myself and see what happens? I think I will be myself and not play to the rules of the restaurant and clever people who know the game.
The same applies to my job. I want to do my best and if it is not good enough, I am not in the right occupation!
It is soon to be Valentines. my thoughts turn to how to please my love, not on how I may be protected from economic shenanigans.
I do not want to worry about Thames Water which has allowed it to ripped to pieces by (overseas) corporate financiers. My worry is that the water I take from my tap is drinkable and that I am not dragged into supermarkets to buy four litre packs of Evian or some such nonsense.
In short, most of us live simple lives which are about doing simple things well. It is extremely aggravating to have to live lives we do not understand because of Trump or Thames or because we are going to some class war exercise at a local restaurant which features is fancy fashion magazines.
I do what I can in a job that I know and that is all I do these days. I do not aspire to power, I aspire to happiness and to making other people by what I do. I think this is the conservatism of later life, I really like what I know.
