the winter of our discontent

I've been away from my desk for a while but my intentions are to get back to more important things here at the Dougloid empire.

We're coming up on some important anniversaries here, and as is the practice here at the Dougloid Towers we mark the occasion and try to do it with some original thought.

The most important one of course comes tomorrow on the ninth anniversary of the attacks on our beautiful city of New York, and in remembrance of all those who perished. As long as one man remembers, you live on.

And somewhere along in here is the third anniversary of the recession, although nobody;s really sure when it started and a lot of people probably should have seen it coming and bailed out before the Great Skedaddle and Educational Explosion Of Life As We Knew It.

Suffice it to say it is a new and cold world we find ourselves in, but one thing's indisputable about hard times-it focuses the mind wonderfully on what's important and what's not.

Recessions end in time, as will this one-and in another fifteen or twenty years there'll be another one because people forget-just like Sunday's hangover repentance morphs itself into Friday's cocktails.

It's worth remembering the quote from Richard III is incomplete, and the focus has been on the part mentioned but there's more:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this Sun of York;
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean is buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Richard III, Act 1 Scene 1.

In a sense, the message is one of hope although in the play things went downhill from there.

So, hope to you. Do not fret too much. The harvest comes. Liberation has arrived for a small child I know.

Change is in the air. Ramadan's ended, everyone on that side of the house has a chance to tuck into some victuals, Rosh Hashanah is underway with its celebration of life, and summer's heat is nearly over. The harvest is coming along nicely and my apple tree's doing better than last year.