Doomsday on Trinity Street

The seemingly endless hot spell still dominating, I wandered along Trinity Street on route to the Market. Opposite St John's College was the seemingly permenant  crowd of Chinese tourists taking pictures of the building, their families or themselves.  The railings of All Saints Garden were, as usual, festooned with a profusion of laminated posters advertising various cultural events, mostly connected to the University.

One for a play called 'Doomsday'
caught my eye. 'Love like the world's ending' the strapline. Underneath another lamenated notice talked of a 'paradigm shift in biology'. Meanwhile, in the news much  talk of food shortages and stockpiling along with plastic pollution killing marine wildlife and leading to environmental disaster.

A little further along a box attached to the railings dispensed the end if the world sounding 'The Epoch Times'. A mother with a scared looking child on the front page, next to a picture of a hand holding what looked like some sort of dice. The Epoch Times is the newspaper of the Chinese Falun Gong religion. Branded a dangerous cult by the Chinese Authorities, it's adherents are described as victims of human rights abuses by the Chinese Government in the West.

The other end of the street, in the window of the University bookshop a mocking skull stared out. Part of a Shakespeare display, but equally part of the apocalyptic cavalcade I had been presented with along the street. A narrative powered by the unrelenting and abnormal weather brought by the heatwave.

On the way back I took a detour around All Saints Garden. Along one side yet another laminted notice offered a series of talks on 'Wellbeing'. A current buzzword, which appears to have emerged with difficult times. In order to achieve 'wellbeing', if only temporarily, various strategies and mental tools are employed. Yoga, meditation or mindfulness are often promoted. I favour going for a walk, it normally helps. But on this one real and imagined horrors had been brought to the fore.

I appeared to have been drawn into a world of the end of the world. The searing desert-like heat. The recent encounter with the low budget Mad Max like figure of the Viker Biker and subsequent viewing of 'No Blades of Grass'. Watching the return to pre-industrial Britain dystopia in the 70s children's TV series 'The Changes'. All these things had preceded this walk.

The poster reminded me that, if the end of the world was nigh,  it was largely beyond my control. No point worrying about it. Try to enjoy and appreciate the now.  Writing this a couple of weeks after the event, the heat has subsided and with it sort of equilibrium had been restored, for the moment at least. I didn't need to go to the wellbeing talks. If instead, it had said 'walks' I might have been tempted.