Substack diary no.136: Monday, 27th. April 2026

Blue sky and sunshine again, but this time the temperature is expected to rise to a high of 20 degrees celsius, so closer to an early summer day than mid spring. It is also very calm out there with a negligible breeze. For the time being I am still wearing the heaviest and warmest of my overshirts indoors, but I suspect that might change at around lunchtime.

I glance at my iPhone this morning and see the picture of the slide show of the day, made for me by Apple Photos. I do not play it, although sometimes these auto-generated slide shows are quite good. It is me kissing Rena at our wedding, and it brings back memories, not of the strangeness surrounding the wedding itself, but of a thought that I believe was expressed by Rena herself – but which I was already thinking. ‘It is just you and me’.

For some time we had, each in our own way, considered ourselves alone in the world. Alone is not the right word, especially as it conveys a sense of sadness, but right now I can’t think of a better one. I think we may have occasionally felt the gentle tap of sadness hovering around the margins of our thoughts, but that was not The Thing. It felt sometimes like we were each up against the world in some complex and nebulous way, as if we were outsiders who did not quite fit in. That phrase of Rena’s resonated with me and I knew exactly what she meant: now we have each other. We no longer have to face unpleasantness alone.

There is a great deal of unpleasantness in the world today and, whilst I spend too much time alone at home, I am glad of a handful of friends who are thoughtful and who successfully filter out the dense fog of lies, sophistry and trivia that oozes from our smartphones (!?). It is not quite so easy to avoid people who soak up any old crap on social media and repeat it in public without thinking or understanding, oblivious of their own idiocy and with no shame whatsoever. It is so refreshing to be out in the sunlight!