Not that long ago, but it feels like a lost age, the Big Worry used to be that there was nothing to talk about over the water cooler any more. Because we watched our own flavour of streamed television and were targeted with personalised ads on Facebook, we in the 21st century had no common cause. Even the little list of events comprising the news was kind of irrelevant. We were never going to have a national conversation again. We wish.  In fact, public debate has not been fracturing but snowballing.

Now we have a giant rolling snowball of ‘mono-news’, a single topic that obliterates all others for years at a time. First Trump, then Brexit, now the pandemic: the water cooler is so busy it needs constant disinfection.”.   (Helen Rumbelow in The Times)

My comment:  One of the (usually dubious) benefits of old age is that you can read a whole newspaper and half an hour later barely remember a single thing you’ve read.  This turns out to be a blessing.  Items that riled you up in the past – the lies, misrepresentations, the political shenanigans, the incomprehensible interpretations of christianity – all are blessedly consigned to an inaccessible part of what used to be a brain.   Of course, you cannot then discuss it all with your wife, but then you usually agree on most things.  Only now such conversations about current affairs are even shorter.  So much better to go for a nice walk in the Spring weather.