Recently, as civilisation has proceeded on its journey to hell in a handcart, I’ve found myself picturing a rocky coastline somewhere: a collection of giant boulders, standing impassive amid the crashing waves of a turbulent sea. I’m not sure where this coastline is, exactly, except that it’s miles from any human habitation; I also know that it’s been there for millions of years, and will persist for millions more. There’s something profoundly calming about considering the world from the perspective of these rocks. Pandemics don’t perturb them; politics certainly don’t. And the daily irritations and anxieties of little life are so utterly irrelevant, from their vantage-point, as to make it briefly hilarious I could ever have thought such things mattered at
