Martin Hesp on Saturday

A look at the shifting sands of modern life

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WELL... let's hope this one's going to be better than the last one. On the world stage, I mean there's been little to complain about during 2025 in this quiet, leafy corner of the lonely Brendon Hills. Speaking as an old geezer pushing threescore years and ten, things have been as good as a chap could expect.

We really are fortunate, tucked away in this green and fertile peninsula of ours. No one's really come here to bother us since the Normans crossed the Channel in 1066, unless you count the Nazi bombing raids of WW2. A few plagues have swept through, but no widespread war or major famine has soiled our landscapes with bodies or blood in a thousand years.

So we should count ourselves lucky. Even the planet's most scary problem, global warming, has yet to really cause us the life-threatening problems experienced elsewhere. A few warmish heatwaves and a bit more rain... that's the Westcountry sum so far, along with the odd drought here or there. Touch wood (if that's the right thing to say in this particular case) we've had nothing in the way of vast forest-fires wiping out thousands of hectares. There've been a few floods, but nothing like the walls of water that have caused loss of life in other places.

We've been fortunate. So far.