Something In The Air

Recently I decided that I don't pay enough attention to the important institutions of the parish and make myself available to them, with the exception of our Church school. So yesterday I called in at the old people's Day Centre not to do anything in particular beyond seeing who was around and what was happening. I found Audrey, the manager, in her office in a mood to complain.

"You should have been here a minute ago. I was having to deal with a group of very rude people. They came in to complain about the annual trip to Eastbourne, that they didn't know about it."

"But you don't organise that, and everyone knows it happens every year. And there's still three weeks to go."

"I know! And they were so hostile. There was no call for that. I don't know, everyone seems so bad-tempered at the moment. There isn't a lot of community spirit about."

Well, I wonder why that should be, just at this point in time. I find myself subscribing to a kind of spiritual version of miasma theory: that big events in which everyone is involved, or a community is involved, and the things that are said about them, do have an effect on the way people behave towards one another. Put like that it seems absurd that we should think any differently. Human beings do not, however much they may tell themselves they do, live their lives in a succession of discrete boxes separated by reason. When they get annoyed about one thing, they're likely to get more annoyed about others than they would otherwise be.