TheGoodTheBadTheBoth

"Let's play the Glad Game" a friend suggests one day "Just like Pollyanna. Come on, you start"

I try, I really do. I regularly make lists of things I like, I count my blessings each day (and trust me, there are many) and I challenge myself to turn bad into good and sail through life on a cloud of endless optimism. I take time to notice snowdrops in Spring, I have fun buying colourful hats and scarves in Winter, I even buy people February presents sometimes to cheer up the dreariest month.

Yet I can't help feeling that Pollyanna, protagonist and title character of the 1913 classic was just a little unrealistic. Bad stuff happens and sometimes you don't float along on a cloud, you have a cloud over your head - a dark looming black one. Of course I'd never consciously set out to promote a rival "Bad Game" but I just think it's OK not to be glad all the time.

So I'm starting a blog with both - the good the bad the both.

A strange day to start

I have a thing about starting things on a Monday, or on the first of a month, or that creme de la creme - New Year's Day.

Today is none of them, it's a Thursday in almost exactly the middle of April. But various things are going on and I need a distraction. I've quit Facebook for a while, I'm not working this week and good and bad things keep jumping out at me screaming to be blogged about.

I've thought long and hard about whether to start with the Good or the Bad - should each blog post consist of one of each, or should I swing from one to another as and when the mood takes me. I think I'll start with one of each - if I have a day where I have nothing bad to say, I'm not going to fight it. If I have a day where there's nothing good going on, I'm not looking hard enough. Maybe happiness then will have a slight lead, who knows.

Abraham Lincoln said that "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" - and I agree, we all have a choice to be happy and those people who mope around consistently bemoaning their lot in life are not top of my list of people I want to be stuck in a lift with. Yet again, I think there are times when you're not happy and sometimes it's as worthy and as interesting an experience as the times when you're on top of the world.

Before I launch into a philosophical debate on fate and determinism against free will and self help, I want to clarify that the bad blogs (I hope) aren't going to be dark clouds of gloom set against a backdrop of melancholy depression. They're just not the good ones. But that's OK.

Just In Time

I have been positively rubbing my hands together with glee this weekend at the thought of how perfectly timed this blog has been. There is a situation going on right now that demonstrates the good the bad the both idea on a NATIONAL scale, in that the whole of England and indeed a large percentage of Europe is affected.

There is no air travel.

Granted, this is not something to be "glad" about for the one million plus passengers who are currently camping out in airport lounges for a fifth consecutive day, or for those who couldn't wait any longer and are hopping their way across continents on boats, hire cars and overpriced trains. Weddings have been missed, people have run out of money far from home and schools, hospitals and businesses are lacking vital people who can't return to work. So it's not great.

The reason for the lack of airtravel (for anyone whose been hiding out in a rural cave lately) is a volcano. An eruption under the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier in South West Iceland has created a cloud of ash over one of the world's busiest patches of airspace. Volcanic ash has bought Europe to a standstill with a knock on effect that eclipses that of 9/11 and all other terrorism threats.

So, it seems I've started with the bad. Yet I honestly think that there is some good in all of this - at least for those of us not stuck in an airport living off ready made sandwiches.

For a start, the skies are silent. A friend of mine who teaches a class of already rowdy, noise loving teenagers says the absence of planes roaring overhead and sounding out her calls for attention is blissful. She can be heard, the classroom is quiet (er) and they are all realising just how much the planes distracted them. I doubt those people who live on the London flight paths are really missing the relentless buzz of arriving and departing planes either.

The complete chaos that has been caused has also requested everyone - passengers, pilots and news followers - to realise the problems with our current utter dependence on air travel. The world, to some people, has literally stopped - they simply can't operate. No one, even those most unconcerned with environmental issues, can stamp their carbon footprint on the skies this week - they're having to sit back, hold tight and adapt to a world that no longer offers them three continents in a day.

As if in compensation to all those who were unable to take off on sunny holidays this weekend, the sun shone consistently over the whole of England. The skies were vast and blue - with no trails of cloud from passing planes, inviting us all to lie horizontally on a grassy common and gaze up to the sky and its beautiful emptiness. People went for walks in the countryside, they had picnics and barbeques, they wore sunglasses and flipflops, it was as though Summer had truly arrived.

Perhaps this is why all those abroad seem so desperate to get home. There are stories of people stranded in Sydney, Barbados and Hawaii - all of whom are tearing their hair out trying to get back to England. A week ago I'd have killed to be in any one of those tropical destinations, yet this international crisis (reportedly set to be sorted by giant navy rescue ships) has made us all grateful for being at home - something we usually take for granted and something that really is pretty special.