The river was cold this morning, although my leggings are thick enough that I didn’t realise until I was rib-deep, by which point I had to start swimming as hard as I could back and forth across the river while the others got in just to keep the blood flowing to my hands. Neoprene gloves and socks will be needed soon, sooner than we’d all hoped, I think. But I don’t mind that cold yet, when we pay that to enjoy silent herons overhead, a still dawn, and ducks beside us, unseeing of their company until a dog runs by on the bank and they flap away, naark naark naark. 

I found a chunk of Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy when I was tidying my room recently, and he foresaw so much of our current cultural situation – TV and film and music and books as comfort, as trash, as distraction, as manipulation – that I am forcing myself to be a tougher reader, viewer, listener. I can’t bewail the kids liking Pokemon (fucking Pokemon) (…*Pokemonnnn*) but then watch only those things that make me feel safe and amused, never challenged or horrified or upset. I mean, as with everything, it is grey areas, and middle grounds, but I can’t live forever in a Michael Schur-flavoured cloud of good faith and optimism, however vital I believe those to be. I also need to absorb and contain those truths which are less pleasant, because that’s what all of us need to face right now, to be able to think about, and talk about, the hard work we can do to right those wrongs. 

Speaking of which, this excellent old episode of Desert Island Discs was repeated on my feed recently, with Judith Kerr. Her story is devastating for what she escaped, for how narrow the escape was, for her remembrance of all those who weren’t as lucky, for her gratitude and positivity after everything. I tried to sing along to her choice of Bud Flanagan’s Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler as I made a packed lunch for school this morning, but I started crying halfway through. How are the children not used to my collapsing weeps, yet? It’s a wonderful episode, though, with wonderful music. And (I think) I want to know what makes a country fall to fascism and what makes a country fight it, and welcome in refugees with genuine open arms, not imprisonment of children and exploitation of adults; what makes our better impulses stronger than our worst ones. 

And speaking of that (and Michael Schur, actually), as part of my ‘making myself read things when even the headline terrifies me’ campaign this is very good: “The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad”, in which James Fallows discusses how when governments fail to function as they should, community government often picks up the slack, helping people around them on a day-to-day basis to access homes, education, healthcare. One interviewer “suggested the situation was like people fleeing the world of Veep — bleak humor on top of genuine bleakness — for a non-preposterous version of Parks and Recreation.” So that’s nice? 

Finally, speaking of things that make me feel safe and amused, I got up this morning with actual intercostal pain from how much I laughed at Stath Lets Flats most recent episode last night. (I had tried to watch the series before and hadn’t even lasted through the first episode. We watched the whole of the first series in a couple of nights this summer at my second attempt, and my GOD it’s brilliant.) If you watch them all, and don’t find the closing line of ‘A Battle of Our Lives’ funny enough to make you laugh through the whole credits, and then again every time you remember it, then please find something that does because it’s such a great feeling. 

1. The Uses of Literacy here – staggeringly, written in 1957 and as searing as ever. Perhaps writing something about it in October will be my reward for meeting my big September deadlines.  

2. Sue Lawley talks to Judith Kerr on Desert Island Discs here. 

3. “The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad” here, which is genuinely worth reading before you gather your spirits about you and sashay into helping people locally, however you can. 

4. Stath Lets Flats, which, truly, is the gift that keeps on giving (and this review, while it does describe many of the best jokes, also captures much of what makes the programme so very, very excellent.) CLAP, YOU BLOODY EGGS