Cornwall Life: August 2019 23CLASSIC CORNWALL
SIMON TREGONING
classic.co.uk
@classiccottagesI
t is a bit depressing but not
surprising that, in the last
couple of years, the number
of people in our country who
sometimes or often shun the
news has risen from 24 per cent
to 35 per cent. Guess which
subject was the most avoided?
You guessed it. It is the B word.
When asked what made us
cover our ears, 71 per cent said
Brexit. Most of us will probably
sympathise with the other
reasons for ducking the news
which ranged from it being too
negative to a significant lack of
trust in its veracity.
I am definitely a victim of
‘news distress’ although I should
admit that it is self-inflicted.
For some reason, I choose to
wake up every morning to John
Humphries. He is invariably
attempting to tease some
vestige of truth or sense out
of a politician who thinks that
they are going to impress us by
endlessly repeating the sound
bite that they have cooked up
the previous evening with their
teenage advisors. But who is
worse, the politicos for treating
us like fools, or me for tuning in
and listening?
Having kicked off the day
frothing at my radio, I then
repeat the whole exercise at the
end of the day with the TV news.
There is something paradoxical
about sitting with a calming mint
tea whilst watching the steady
litany of depressing world news
and the latest madness coming
out of our ivory towers. However,
I will normally grind out the full
half hour of the ten o’clock news
in the vain hope that there will
be something in the local round
up to improve my mood.I am pleased to say that it does
usually help, if only because
some of the pieces are so ‘local’
that I feel lucky to live in one
of the safer, nicer places in the
world. And then there are theproper ‘off the wall’ stories that
send me up to bed with a smile
on my face. One of my recent
favourites was the daily update
on the cat which was stuck on the
Tamar bridge. She confounded
all the brave attempts at rescue
until she just turned up at home
two weeks after having gone
missing and hours before they
were going to close our mainline
rail link to go and get her. I think
that it was probably an identity
crisis. Devonian or Cornish?
Needless to say, she made the
right decision. Brexit and bedtime is often made easier with a
serving of local news, writes Simon TregoningFroth to fluff
‘She confounded all attempts at
rescue until she just turned up at
home two weeks after having gone
missing and hours before they
were going to close our mainline
rail link to go and get her’
Thinkstock