My father had a saying, an old Suffolk “saw”: “While fools go prating far and wide, we stops at ’ome, my dog and I.”
There is a certain truth in that. The world seems to be getting more “foolish”, and I am less convinced that prating far and wide – a public life of activism for its own sake, be it political or journalistic – makes much difference to the betterment of the human condition. And anything with “global” in its name makes me run for the hills.
For isn’t it in quietness – at ’ome – in the local places and with the little ordinary things – that goodness happens? And where goodness happens, change looks after itself.
How media language is reshaping your mind
Media tropes assail us constantly. New catchphrases turn up in what we read and hear that we soon find ourselves …