At this moment I feel like I probably would have done in the 1930s: – that the world is hurtling towards a catastrophic end. Even before climate change fries us, our population is multiplying to a level that surely can’t be sustainable; whole peoples are moving around the world unsettlingly; grotesque inequalities are incubating social and political enmities that will probably break out in a variety of violent ways; nations can’t agree on how to meet the climate crisis; people are reverting to instinctual rather than rational ways of thinking and behaving; Fascism – or something very like it – is raising its ugly head again; capitalists are taking advantage of us; fools and tyrants are at the helms of the leading nations; one of them is threatening to sue the BBC for a million dollars; and West Ham are third from the bottom of the Premier League. It’s mighty hard to get away from thoughts like these; especially when you’re in bed and can’t sleep. (It’s four o’clock in the morning as I’m writing this.)

(12 noon.) Well, I’m now over my ‘black dog’, as Winston Churchill used to call his bouts of depression; but not because I want to disown any of what I wrote in the night. I suppose my better mood now – or apathy – comes from the knowledge that at my advanced age I’m not likely to live through the coming ‘catastrophe’; although I realise that that’s somewhat selfish, in view of what my children and grandchildren, and their generations, will have to endure.

Sorry kids. It’s my generation that has left you this mess. Yours is the one that will have to clear it up. It’s systemic, as I argued two posts ago, and so getting rid of Trump and Britain’s press magnates won’t do it alone. But you could maybe start with them.

And after all, we recovered from the 1930s.