Mr Grumpy looks on the bright side

A couple of weeks ago, at a family party, my elder brother, in his understated way, told me that I was in danger of becoming a GOM. By this he didn’t mean Grand Old Man, in which case he, as a renowned academic, would have qualified way before me.

In fact, on the basis of my blog, which he visits occasionally, he believes I’m becoming a Grumpy Old Man. Au contraire, I replied, you just haven’t been reading the right posts. In at least one post in five, I’m all sweetness and light. Well OK, maybe one in ten over the past eighteen months.

In my defence, it isn’t every year that America elects a president intent on blowing his country to smithereens, and the will of the British people is subverted by lying politicians and Russian bots.

But yes, dear brother, there’s plenty to smile about. So to balance things out a bit, here are a few positive thoughts guaranteed to put a spring in the step.

David Attenborough is still making wonderful TV. No matter that the old boy is too decrepit to mess with komodos or tickle gorillas any more, the new series of Blue Planet is magnificent, even if it does spend quite a lot of time warning us that if we keep chucking Tesco bags into the ocean, we’re all doomed.

Donald Trump will eventually expire. By that I mean that his presidency will sooner or later end, unless the lunatics in the asylum manage to make him dictator for life. In that event, the demented heffapsycho still has a limited shelf life.

We’re still in the European Union. And will be until March 2019, unless the bleeding obvious jolts enough Members of Parliament out of their career-protecting ideological delusions and persuades them to call a halt to the whole thing.

Another Ashes series is coming up. I’m talking about cricket, in case you weren’t sure. Once again the unstoppable England cricket team will crush the Australians like cockroaches on their own turf….won’t they?

The England football team is on the up. After two triumphant goalless draws against Brazil and Germany, we will once again carry all before us in the upcoming World Cup….won’t we?

There has been no mass shooting in the United States for at least three days. This wonderful news surely justifies the arguments of the US gun lobby. If they can go three days without a massacre, maybe we in Britain should go gun shopping. Anything to Make Britain Great Again.

Britain still has a National Health Service. Just about. No matter that all those foreign doctors and nurses are leaving in droves because they don’t think we appreciate them anymore. Sooner or later they’ll be replaced with local talent. No matter that later could mean many years, and that in the meantime we’ll have to put up with longer waiting lists, higher mortality rates and fewer hospitals, the NHS still stands, and that’s a good thing, right?

80% of us are too old and ugly to be groped. For those of us who don’t live in India or Egypt, are over thirty, have nothing to do with showbusiness or politics, don’t work in an office and aren’t female, what joy it is to walk the streets with nothing to fear, apart from muggers, acid attackers and random shooters.

Ken Clarke is still a British MP. I don’t like his party, but that’s irrelevant these days, because it doesn’t exist any more as a coherent entity. As long as old Ken is still around in Parliament, calling out the liars, the hypocrites and the plain stupid among his fellow MPs, there’s always a chance that the Brexit nightmare can be consigned to history.

And the best news of all is if we hang around long enough, we’ll all be in thrall to artificially intelligent masters, who will have no time for Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Kim Jong Un, Robert Mugabe, Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Caliph Baghdadi, airport security, jobsworths, officious gatekeepers, intrusive mortgage lenders, inflexible traffic wardens and Harvey Weinstein. The moment we step out of line, Computer will say no.

You see? Lots of things to be cheerful about. So with smiles on our faces, we must get on with our lives, and realise that things could be a darn sight worse.

Is that OK, brother?