Polly ticks is a parrot that’s swallowed a watch.  You will rarely find me addressing what some TV commentators identify as ‘the perlitical situation’.

I have, moreover, filed this bit of thinking under The Parrot Has Landed, which I usually reserve for light humour or whimsy, though the topic of politics currently is less light than it has been for some time.

There are now more wars going on in the world than have been since the Second World War.  Those of us who are old enough to have been alive at the end of WW2, or just after, may recall that the Peace Dividend included a feeling of optimism, safety and the bad stuff being behind us.

Other than children, who I hope are mainly protected, there cannot be an adult alive in any country, let alone those being destroyed by war, unaware of the terrible state the world is in.  I read in a newspaper magazine of tech savvy people being kidnapped, trafficked and forced to work online duping citizens, mostly the unwary elderly, of other countries, out of their savings.  Some of the kidnapped were from African nations, the traffickers were from Asian countries and the duped were mainly Westerners.

It is impossible to turn on a television without being aware of the news of the current state of the crisis in the Middle East.  Currently there are over a hundred countries round the world actively engaged in conflicts with other countries.  I am writing this in Britain, where the current hot topic is what to do about people fleeing wars, putting their lives at risk, having paid all their savings to traffickers, crossing the channel, one of the world’s busiest seaways, on inflatable boats about as safe as a Lilo.  We are not alone, Norway and Sweden have designated reception centres for illegal migrants, to name just two countries.  France and Italy have reception centres, mostly inundated.  I could go on, almost every liberal Westernised country is seen as a safer place to be than a country at war with another country.

What is going on?  How do we get past this?  What should we do?  Whose fault is it?

I was very fortunate to teach English as a Second Language in a language college in the Seventies.  This brought me into contact with students of all ages from many countries, when I was still only in my Twenties.  Teens and Twenties are good years to have your opinions changed and your ideas broadened.  It is true that the language college was private, therefore the students were drawn from those that could afford the fees, or whose parents could afford the fees.  Despite this rein on all of humanity who wished to learn English, I came into contact with many ideas and many opinions.  Some young people were sufficiently inexperienced to be solely reflecting the values of their parents, especially it seemed to me, those coming from restrictive countries, some of whom had difficulties being taught by a woman.  However, at a certain age, the reproductive urge is so strong that ingrained prejudices took a back seat to the need to get out there and mingle.  I watched attitudes shift, almost by the day.  The need to communicate with other young people when the only common language was English, was helpful to my purposes to say the least, you wouldn’t believe how fast you can teach students chat-up lines.

The college had a policy of host families.  Occasionally the arranged host family failed and I became the host family.  One of these students is still part of my extended family, loved as well as my cousins and definitely on the catch-up and Christmas card list.

What I learned in those years is that people are people are people. All round the world.

We all want to make friends, we all want to be happy, we all want to do the best we can do, we are all interested in the future and our part in it.  In fact I would go so far as to say that everyone I’ve ever met is doing the best they can do with what they’ve got at the time.

I must have taught, children and adults, absolutely hundreds of people.  Given that my first class had 43 children in it, probably hundreds of hundreds.  I have also spoken to and interviewed hundreds of artists working in miniature.

In all that time I only met one person, a seven year old girl, who I considered to be genuinely bad.  I don’t think she was bad to the bone.  She was child number six or seven and the first, longed for girl, after all the others being boys.  She was, as the saying goes, spoiled rotten.  She was used to her opinions being law, her needs being met without question and the stamping of her little foot being a cause for turning the world around.  The slightest thing that was not to her liking provoked instant screaming rage, that lasted until her needs were met.

I did, of course, teach many difficult children.  I began teaching at a school that was designated special needs some years after I began there.  Quite a number of parents were in prison and some home conditions were dreadful.  One little boy in the class next to mine had only jelly sandals to wear and no socks, the only hot meal he ever had at home was chips that the local chip shop saved for him.  On pancake day the school kitchen served pancakes that were actually Yorkshire puddings served with watered down golden syrup.  Children could eat as many as they wanted and he always won the contest to eat the most.  He was a fat,  cold, mottled white, neglected, unhappy little bully.  I felt so sorry for him.

What you do about a bad childhood is up to you.  In the Seventies many children who were classed as difficult would now be diagnosed with a range of mental problems.  I had many arguments with colleagues about dyslexia, some teachers thought the children were just idle, I could see they were trying their socks off and have subsequently taught many dyslexic people to read with a system I developed from various teaching reading schemes.

Very often the dyslexic people I taught went on to do extremely well in adult life.  They were so used to finding life less easy than others, they got into a habit of trying extra hard at everything.  This is a very good habit to get into.

Some people get into a habit of trying hard because they have a horrible or needy parent. Early learned skills of appeasement can produce skilled negotiators in later life.  Finding the balance between that and constant people pleasing is a great life skill.

Not everyone regards the trials of life as a chance to collect some skills or an opportunity for self improvement.

Some people want to get even.

Some people don’t even want to get even, they want to win, at any cost, though not to them.

Here we come to politicians.  I have only personally known one person who was very keen to be a politician.  He was controlled by his grandmother from the moment he was born.  She decided he would be a solicitor and keep her in her old age and frequently told him so.

I also, of course know many teachers.  Teachers are often people who had little choice in childhood.  Their desire to correct the failings of their own youth can extend to teaching others to improve the world in general.  The fact that the teacher only has six hours in the day to help the child whereas the child’s family, good or bad, has the other eighteen hours, might be the reason homework was invented.

There is an almost endless list of dictators both ancient and modern to whom you could attach a bad childhood as causality.  Dictators starting wars, invading other countries on the slightest pretext, depriving their own citizens of rights, property and freedom.

However, it isn’t what happens to you, or even physical or mental disabilities that start the descent into madness, and the desire for unfettered, addictive and toxic power, itself the most destructive force; it’s what you do about your own perceived deficits and grievances that counts.

All politicians who have any reasonable length of tenure go either slightly bonkers or stark staring mad.  It’s just not good for anyone to be surrounded by yes men and yes women 24/7.  Disputation is the foundation of democracy, the well spring of consideration, the start of seeing someone else’s point of view.  Moral relativism is the doctrine that says in various forms that there is no right or wrong, just different points of view.

Here in England we were so lucky to have had the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century.  Cheerless Oliver Cromwell had a very different point of view from the monarch, Charles 1st.  Parliament got going, which at the time, could be suspended by the king if he didn’t like what was going on.  We know the outcome, Charles lost his head and the country became a protectorate, but only as long as Oliver Cromwell was alive.  His son was not his father, Charles the 2nd was fetched back from abroad and gradually there developed the wonderful system we have now where elected politicians can make laws which are not legal until they are signed off by the monarch, a person with an hereditary job with no actual powers, who we keep in a gilded cage which belongs to us.  It is a most beautiful balance which favours the people of the land and denies permanent power to anyone who fancies it.  It also gives us an apolitical monarch whom we can use to make friends with other countries for us, regardless of the political affiliations of their rulers.

All of the above might be the start of an answer to the question: whose fault is this? The answer being, possibly, the rection to negative influences in the formative years.

It is not a problem either to answer the question:  What is going on?

The world is out of balance.  Wealth and power is in the hands of a few people, vast numbers of people have very little, including very little freedom.  However, this is a generalisation.  Any television reporter, reporting from almost any country in the world, is doing so against a back drop of shopping centres, full of people shopping, and cars.  You have to get right into the middle of a war zone to find only donkeys and carts.

Throughout history vast imbalances have a way of righting themselves.  Dictators go about their lives surrounded by bodyguards for a reason.  Caligula, Caracalla and Commodus were all really nasty Ancient Roman Emperors who were assassinated by their bodyguards.  Quis custos ipso custodes?  they may have wondered as the Pretorian Guard forcibly ducked their head under the custard until the bubbles stopped.

That’s what is going on.  What history would teach us about that, is to stay safely out of the way and wait for the change.  Change is the only constant in the universe, it will come.

What should we do?  If you are what they used to call on television ‘of a nervous disposition’ it is recommended that you do not watch every bad newscast, doom scroll, or in other ways stick your head too far into situations you cannot control.

My SMIL, who was prone to depression, was given the above advice in the form of ‘Turn the TV news off’ by her doctor.  He pointed out that there was nothing she could do about the awful things she saw.  He added that the likely outcome of watching every depressing bit of news was only to make her more depressed.  The possibility of one elderly lady stopping a war in a country several hours away by aeroplane being zero.

The OH likes to read the newspaper to find things to be outraged about.  He never reads out loud the cheerful bits and he is undoubtedly addicted to doom scrolling on his phone, interspersed with videos of birds, dolphins and rather more useful instructive videos of woodwork.  These would be more helpful if he had done something about the collapsing floor of his shed, other than moving everything into the sun room in the perfect spot to trip over.

Here we come to the crux of another problem.  If you allow all of the awfulness to overtake your life, it prevents you living your life, yourself.

Access to all the bad news in the world is a recent development.  In most of history up to about a hundred years ago most people knew what was going on in their village.  Any news was not only local, it was so local you could do something about it. Popping round to borrow a cup of sugar, or see if someone who had not been seen for a while was alright, was standard practice.  This state of affairs was of demonstrably lengthy duration.  A Yorkshire farmer, whose views of the Civil War currently raging, were printed in a book, is on record as saying:  Oh yes, the King and that lot in Parliament.  I knew they was at each other’s throats but that don’t affect me.  I’ve got the harvest to get in.

I have a couple of phases of my life which, were I questioned about popular songs, political movements or art exhibitions in a quiz I would have not one clue about the answers.  The phases were for the first five years of motherhood and the years during which I was carer for my mother.  I can, however sing you the theme tune of Postman Pat, and I have a reasonable grasp of the law in relation to the responsibilities of the borough to the rate payers who live there if they become long term incapacitated.  If WW3 had started then I’d have been very up to date with what I could do for the care of the people for whom I was responsible, any of the wider questions would escape me completely, I was too busy living my own life.

I love miniaturists, I really do.  Having interviewed so many I am still in awe of people who have had really awful life experiences, and, instead of getting bitter and twisted, or vowing to get their own back, or seeking control over other people and making their lives a misery to show them, they get busy modelling the world.  They make a model and put all their control and skill into it.  All the bad stuff goes in.  Out comes art.

Here is the answer to the question: what can we do about it?

Very little unless you want to become a politician, even so you’ll have to wait for the next election and get elected and you’d better have some good ideas about a whole load of other questions too.  You could, of course be a protester.  One of my favourite cartoons is a Snoopy one in which Lucy is parading around with a sign on a stick.  The sign says : Help stamp out things that need stamping out.

For normal people happiness lies in the answer of the seventeenth century farmer, every miniaturist and doll maker.  Get your head down, get busy.

If WW3 breaks out, you can be sure I shall give another perlitical sit rep.

Until then I have dolls to dress, quite a lot of backed-up gardening to get round to, some birthday cards to make and then stuff to do for the next Miniatura.  As always.

If you want to be happy, make like a miniaturist, sweat the small stuff.

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