Peter Matthews
Picture a millpond on a summer’s evening. The last of the day’s sunlight angles through the low hanging leaves and sparkles on the water. The light catches a strand of a spider’s web wafting through the air and the sound of a small stream trickling into the pond lends an air of almost unbearable serenity.
Over by the reeds, in the shadows on the far side, you can make out some gliding, bobbing shapes: ducks. The calm is punctuated, every now and then, by a light chorus of quacking. It sounds so much like laughter you can imagine one of them has just told a joke.
It’s a picture of tranquillity. The ducks move easily across the water, stopping occasionally to pop theirs heads below the surface. Sometimes, if the depth requires it, they will upend themselves completely in the process, leaving only half a duck, vertical for just a moment. Calm is restored when the front end reappears and a spray of water glistens in the fading sunlight as it is shaken off. There could hardly be a more perfect setting.
A bit like some people’s social media profiles. As you stroll through the leafy suburbs of Socialmediasville, you’d be forgiven for wondering how people with such wonderfully full and rewarding lives have the time to share it with the rest of us. Or why they would feel the need to do so.
But as you glide towards the group you notice light rippling on the water. What might be causing that? If you look beneath the surface you may see that one or two ducks are paddling frantically but going nowhere. And did you see the way that drake looked at that duck? She pretended not to notice but I think she did. What’s going on there?
Somebody once said “things are not always what they seem”. I suppose I am saying it again – and something about books and covers.
These are challenging times. Grocery prices are up, the housing market has all but stalled, and there doesn’t seem to be much good news on the horizon as we head into winter. So it’s not surprising there are some ripples on the water.
It’s all relative of course: We are not under fire, and as far as I am aware, no women have been arrested in Cambridge this week for not wearing a head covering correctly. Did you read about that? A man threw yoghurt at two women whose head coverings came off in the ensuing confusion and they were immediately arrested. Bonkers. And we are supposed to believe that we live in a rational world.
There are those who feel they’ve worked it out, and you’ll find them on Victoria Street most mornings, hoping to give you the good news.
I’m not having a word of it. The more you look at the world around you, and the people in it, and what some of them are getting up to, the more you realise it’s all mad.
