“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

— George Santayana

Now, I’ve got a great admiration of what I’ve read of Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás’ quotations over the years. I know little of the man or of his wider works and that, I think, is how it shall stay; I’m honestly not much more curious than trying to fit his words to modern-day events.

I’m not sure I wish it were thus, but it is.

Anyway, the one at the top of the page is perhaps most relevant to today, but in a way I’d not really considered previously.

I’m not clever enough to create a plan that asserts authority over others in a way they cannot see, that blinds them to the loss of their freedoms and those they’re taught to despise. Neither, I think, are those who are in power here and in other places throughout this mad world of ours. Nevertheless, whatever it is they are doing, and for whatever reason they are doing it, it’s working.

I have to say though that choosing the insidious beginnings of populism/nationalism, fascism, all the other -isms from 1930’s Germany as a blueprint to govern, though lazy, though utterly abhorrent to me, is completely understandable; it worked.

But for fuck’s sake, given what they could have done with the power handed to them, why‽

I (perhaps we as a family) needed a distraction from the frustrations of politics and from the mental anguish of coping with the restrictions imposed/self-imposed during the current coronavirus pandemic, so I ordered the Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit game.

An aside: we have a typical board games Compendium. Only my youngest daughter (daughter 2) and I really spend much time with it. Chess is our game. She’s a keen student, a shame I’m a novice-level player and no teacher isn’t it! But we enjoy the contests, and that’s all that matters.

Honestly and perhaps selfishly, I didn’t want to play from the compendium (or jump into Minecraft despite daughter 2’s multiple asks), so bought the new thing.

My daughters have read the Harry Potter books and watched the films multiple times (understatement!), bought many and disparate forms of merchandise, and lived the franchise. Ok, ‘franchise’ is a rubbish word to use but I’m writing this in the early hours of bin day so yeah…

My wife isn’t particularly interested, but she knows enough that, after a visit to London’s and especially the pilgrimage to Kings Cross Platform 9-3/4 last year she booked us on the UK Harry Potter Studio Tour earlier this year, you know, during a time we could do things, go places, see people, drink Butter Beer…

If’s an amazing experience; if you’re even a casual fan it’s something I can recommend without hesitation. Go early, it takes literally (not figuratively hours to get round. It’s well worth saving up for too, it really is. (And the shop is nowhere near as tightly-packed as Kings Cross’s.)

Me? I’m a big fan. I’ve seen all the films multiple times, find something new each viewing. I even started to read the first book, felt the need to pause as I found out Vernon is a… (ok, I’m an engineer, it’s all good stuff this!)

Incidentally, I’ve not had the inclination to read anything other than bedtime stories to the girls in recent years, but wax a voracious reader as a child:young adult.

The game arrived yesterday and so around teatime I played a round with, ok against, daughter 2.

It gets Baz’s seal of approval both as game and as that distraction. There are questions that my wife in the other room answered (gleefully!) or are obvious to a fan of any level, or need a knowledge only multiple viewings/readings can bring, or are downright sneaky in their apparent simplicity.

Who didn’t play, and why?

My wife’s not interested in games much which, though puzzling, is ok. (This is a judgment on her character!)

Daughter 1 (the oldest) is a newly-minted lockdown teenager, with all the personal issues attendant. (I’ll bring her round to a session eventually, see if I won’t!)

Ruby dog, though she appreciated a tiny piece of my pastrami sandwich, her achievement unlocked after patiently nuzzling my knee under the table for a while, wasn’t even worth interested in the unused game wedges in the box on the floor beside our dining room table,

Mollie cat, who didn’t even attempt to cross the table after her teatime; perhaps she’d learned that interrupting me during my working hours wasn’t profitable, dunno. But today is indeed another day.

So, as distractions go, this game, oh yes, it is most definitely one.

Um…

Yeah.

Ah…

Daughter 2 beat me.

Which, though I expected her to, was nice.

Result.

Here are 2 comments of mine in the village Facebook page, responding first to the dilution of the government’s lockdown message, and then (indirectly for obvious reasons) to a couple of arseholes stating that care homes and the old should be left to it whilst the rest of us just get on with our lives.

[First, this:]

Whatever’s said, like everything else that’s gone before here, it’ll be unclear and thus open to interpretation. It’ll result in the broadening of what people wish to be the scope of their personal freedoms and will dilute the core point of *all* that’s gone before, that we’ve got to look after each other in the midst of the most deadly pandemic in living memory. And so, entirely unnecessarily, more people will die or have their lives blighted by the long-term effects of this virus.

Track and trace is months too late and shoddily implemented, the request made to the >10,000 people entering the UK every day to self-isolate is by this point risible. The sooner we’re treated like adults by the government the better.

[And, responding to said arseholes, this:]

For anyone here to even *suggest* it’s ok for people you don’t know to die simply to benefit the economy is morally indefensible. To bring cherry-picked statistics ignoring *old people* to the discussion, well…

The current official death toll – spread over just 2 months is 31,587 – which already exceeds the average annual rate by quite some margin.

From this:

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-06/how-does-the-wuhan-coronavirus-compare-to-seasonal-flu/

‘Although flu might not seem like a deadly illness, on average it kills around 17,000 people in England a year.

Public Health England told ITV News: “The number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications varies each flu season.

“The average number of deaths in England for the last five seasons, 2014/15 to 2018/19, was 17,000 deaths annually.

“This ranged from 1,692 deaths last season, 2018/19, to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15.”’