The 'Silly Season'

I think it was half a lifetime ago in 1985, during my brief flirtation with newspaper distribution, that I first heard that expression.  The revelation was prompted by the variety of main headlines on the front pages, some of them at first glance seeming complete nonsense.  "They call it the silly season," I was told, "because there's no news, and the writers will grab at almost anything to fill the papers."

No news - nothing happening - what nonsense!  There's plenty to talk about: war in Ukraine and the knock-on effects on both food supply and energy prices; problems in the NHS, and the associated non-availability of an ambulance when you want one because they're all queued up at A&E; train strikes and the apparent impossibility of dispute resolution, meanwhile people can't get to work because the railways aren't running.

And any positive action to resolve some of these problems is apparently at a standstill.  As one person put it, we have a zombie government.  And why?  The whole nation has to wait while a couple of hundred thousand people - less than 0.5% of the electorate - decide who should be the next Prime Minister.  With all these important matters to be attended to - to say nothing of the climate crisis - we have to ask, why does the key step of replacing the PM have to be strung out over two months when, with a bit of re-structured decision-making, the same body of people could have been given a greater choice and a new appointment could have been made within a week.

It is, indeed, the silly season.  And on the home front, as with newspapers, there is no news.  Out of the blue, I had a phone call the other night from a distant cousin, and we fell to discussing my 'new' home and how it compared to the one that she and her husband have inhabited for the last few decades (they're now in their mid-to-late eighties).  I happened to speak of the shed at the end of my back yard, and my reluctance to go into it.  Her home backs onto open countryside, and her immediate reaction was that I should beware of rats ... a problem they have to contend with constantly.

I recalled this conversation this morning, as I looked out of my window.  I had described to her the contrast between the view to the front over a small estate built in the 1960s or -70s, and that to the rear, overlooking the backways of the neighbouring street and an Edwardian terrace, built to accommodate workers in the nearby coal-mines.  I now reflect on the way that my present front vista resembles that where I grew up.  We lived by the roundabout, so our window presented a view along a road, rather than of houses directly opposite.  Here too, there is a roundabout, albeit not circular.  There there was a lamppost on the roundabout, here illumination is from a street lamp mounted on one side of the junction, and on the roundabout is a telegraph pole.

What a contrast between my quiet street, part of what is, in effect, a cul-de-sac and the madness of the wider world, where there is panic about getting from A to B, and the real or foreseen dilemma about finding food for the family or heating the home.

But it's the silly season.