Problems? Yep. Solutions? Not so much.

FFS. The news in this country may be one of the most free on the planet, and I do count us lucky, but seriously, when The Guardian editor picks this as a recommendation, I do despair. Seriously? This is what is important right now? Which decade healthy, happy, becoupled women should choose to get up the duff? ARGH.

I'm emailing a guy at the moment who's an education journalist and briefly hinted at my feelings of depression re. the academies situation. He said he'd always assumed the Tories would get in, so he's been thinking of it as a depressing reality for months now - but he agreed that it is an appalling idea. This from someone who comments on education policy for his full-time job.

And now I'm reading a book - a brilliant book, mind - about South Africa, called Ways of Staying by Kevin Bloom, a Jewish South African whose liberal nature struggles to come to terms with the murder of his cousin. I didn't understand the title at first, but turns out it's about how to remain in a country when, all around, there are so many signs that you should leave. The writer is enviably observant, putting in crisp details about, for example, interviewees' hand gestures and plate management, all of which paints an extraordinarily vivid picture. The country's certainly beautiful, and certainly interesting, but... I'm getting the picture that it's a dark, bloody mess. We're discussing it next week at book club, and with several members of our group connected personally to SA, I fear it may be a fairly feisty evening. I will take my mace.

My fictional husband is going to cheat on me. Africa's crumbling. The global economy's a disaster. China's human rights are appalling. The middle east is as corrupt as it's possible to be. Pakistan is bubbling. Iran has The Bomb and isn't scared to use it. The UK is moving into a new era of educational segregation. There is awful stuff happening in Jamaica. And I still firmly believe that all we can do is work to collapse the gap between rich and poor. Poverty in itself does not drive people to violence and other crimes. Inequality does. I read about South Africa and feel sick to think of all us Western tourists driving from airconned hotel to fenced-in restaurant when there's so much darkness and hatred a stone's throw away. But it's here too. The violence is not as bad, thankfully, but the envy, the anger is here too. The difference is, we haven't been colonised recently. Not since the Romans.

But am I working to collapse the inequality gap? Erm. No. Far, far from it. And instead of confronting this, I wiggle my big beak further down into the sand and enjoy the feelings of the hot grains moving in between the feathers on my neck and head.

Anyway. So the macro state of affairs is all a bit depressing. In happier (micro) news, from inside the Bubble of Denial... I learned how to play Don't You Want Me by The Human League at ukulele class last night, my mail-order tent arrived and Glasto is less than four weeks away. Phew.