Blog 4! The first of 2026…

How are you? Very well I hope, if a bit fatter, and thinking about the new year? May you be happy and blessed throughout it.

I was thinking about new year resolutions… and I don’t think I’m going to make any. There are things I would like to do and achievements I’d like to attain, there are habits I’d like to lose and plenty of recipes from my cookbook collection with which to experiment… so I have no resolutions for 2026 other than to make it a year well lived.

Do what does it mean to live well in a world that is burning? I think I’ll start with the ‘attitude of gratitude’ principle, giving thanks for the blue of the sky, the bird of prey stooping by the roadside, the beauty of wood – warm, polished, carved or natural… a china cup, double glazing, music, my dentist.

I don’t want to slip into Pollyanna mode. I give myself the freedom not to be grateful for everything. There are thousands of issues that I don’t fully understand… perhaps because the complexity around them furnishes my thinking-engine with too many squirrel trails… and all the information you would need to draw a conclusion is simply not there.

I may start writing letters. Who knows? If just one idea is deemed useful, how and whom might it help?

Last night at a party in Argyll we had a humdinger of a conversation about energy, mostly renewable, but more about the ways in which governments attempt to legislate for improvement. Three of us agreed that the approach at the moment here is not very efficient and also urban-centric. You cannot expect rural communities to support their infrastructure in areas such as law enforcement and agriculture using entirely electric vehicles, for example, where there are no charging facilities for miles and not enough power to get a vehicle up a 25 degree gradient. You also can’t build renewable energy farms on carbon sinks like wetlands or bogs – these are irreplaceable resources that already exist.

So I suggested we write to the government with some ideas. People didn’t want to. Why? Well, they already belong to organisations that are there in order to inform policy-making. There’s a tiredness and a perception of unreasonableness on the side of the party to whom we would be writing. In some cases it’s the sheer stubbornness that comes from the fixed beliefs of a particular personality that they perceive as problematic, in other cases the bloody mindedness seems to stem from the nastiness of a mind set not on the public good but private gain. Both of course are assumptions and these should be challenged. Here’s where Pollyanna might come in useful – to write with the bright confidence that whatever one writes will be read and taken seriously – if not Pollyanna, then Pratchett’s Constable Carrot, or Due South’s Constable Fraser.

There’s a letting go here – an idea can be set free to grow and improve as it flows around, with no one hanging on to it as their individual property. So if the originator isn’t credited, no bother – let it fly to the heights it can reach!

The other thing, the moral imperative, is perhaps a bit trickier. Is there a moral imperative to share good ideas, good because they are grassroots led – comments on top down policy problems generated by context? I think there is. If too much thinking is centralised, it becomes stagnant and overly specific, which does not help useful implementation. Could I myself consider this a duty – not to become a member of the green biro brigade, but instead, a messenger – in consultation with sensible people, experts in their field, whose views are not currently being solicited? But people shoot messengers, don’t they?

The other moral risk here is to feel that once is enough. I’ve written – so whatever happens now is out of my hands. I made a sound, threw a pebble, articulated something important, so that’s my responsibility over.

It’s not. But this isn’t an infinity game either. So, like Carrot and Fraser, I can write again… with the presumed confidence that I will be heard, with evidence, with an expansion of my case for writing, maybe a prayer alongside. Maybe three times? Perhaps I could make more of an effort as well to find the right name – the key person who will listen. What is ‘enough’? Do I keep pushing?

I think, in an older, kinder, possibly less communicative time, ordinary people developed relationships with those in authority by doing just this.

I’m thinking about it. I’m reminded of that wise saying ‘Do what you can, where you are, with what you’ve got’.

Happy 2026, people! I’m refilling my fountain pen…