I was sat at traffic lights the other day being depressed by the voice on the car radio.
As the newsreader listed the latest horrors from Ukraine a sense of deja vu washed over me. Hadn’t I sat at these same lights last year feeling equally miserable over Covid? The year before wasn’t it Trump and the year before that, Brexit?
Whatever happened, I thought, to feeling joy in your soul?
And then I turned to my left and saw a dog wearing wraparound sunglasses with its head poked out of the window, its big ears flapping in the wind as the car pulled away, leaving everyone who’d seen it doubled up with laughter.
My good mood lasted for hours. Because nothing puts human worries into perspective more than a dog with its head out of a car window thinking they’re the king of the world. Especially when they’re wearing shades.
It reminded me that even in the most depressing of times there is always something funny to lift your spirits. Indeed humour is the great panacea for human misery as poverty-stricken and oppressed communities have discovered over the centuries.
Jewish comedian David Baddiel tells this gag about the Holocaust: “A concentration camp survivor goes to heaven and tells God a Holocaust joke, to which God says ‘that’s not funny’. And the survivor replies, “Ah well, I guess you had to be there.”
His point being, God wasn’t there. And laughing about that basic flaw in holy doctrine is a coping mechanism for survivors.
So if the barrage of bad news is leaving you mentally on the canvas, look around for the laughs that block out the depression. There’s plenty about.
Foreign secretary Liz Truss bestriding the globe believing she’s giving off the aura of the Iron Lady, when she looks and sounds like a shopping channel presenter on the graveyard shift.
Prince Charles saying the plight of Ukrainian refugees is “heartbreaking”. But not so heartbreaking that he’s offering to put any of them up in his 547 spare rooms. Scores of Met police evicting squatters from a disgraced oligarch’s home when their normal policy for law-breaking in big London houses is to politely ask the suspects to fill out a questionnaire.
The Government attacking India and Pakistan for refusing to condemn Putin’s war (they get cheap wheat and energy from Russia) while Boris Johnson crawls on all-fours to Saudi beheaders begging for cheap oil.
MPs awarding themselves a £2,200 pay rise when they told the public sector workers who save lives that they should settle for a weekly clap from doorsteps.
Roman Abramovich flitting from yacht to jet to find somewhere to live like a desperate refugee.
Nigel Farage still believing he’s relevant because he anchors a show on a TV channel that attracts less viewers than Katie Price’s comedy bazookas draw on OnlyFans.
And, best of all, intelligence agencies believing that the Botoxed stain on humanity, Vladimir Putin, may be dying of brain disease or cancer.
So smile and cheer up.
Whatever’s happening and however bad things seem, the world will still be there when it’s over.
And dogs will still put their heads out of car windows believing the future’s so bright they have to wear shades.
