Britain has gone mad

War rages in the Congo and the UN are forced to retreat putting the lives of millions at risk. In Afghanistan Britain's 4th occupation of that ragged nation looks like ending the way the previous colonial ventures did as we cling on to a few streets in Kabul. In America there is hope of a black Democrat removing the lunatic Republicans from power. In India bombs kill dozens in Assam. Around the world people brace themselves for a possible 30s style Depression. And what have the headlines been here for a straight week? Two comics make a dirty phone call to a man who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers back in the 1970s.

Britain has finally gone mad. Maybe its because house prices have fallen by 17%. Maybe its the prospect of a Jarrow March of estate agents, bank clerks and telesales callers. Maybe all the binge drinking has just unhinged us all. Whatever it is this country is crackers.

Imagine travelling back in time to 1929 a few days after the great crash and finding that the news papers and conversations for the whole week were all about Fatty Arbuckle phoning W.C. Fields and telling him he's slept with his grandaughter and broadcasting the conversation by wireless. And then finding that everyone, even Herbert Hoover, was obsessed with it. The granddaughter in question is in a band called the Satanic sluts, is a self-confessed swinger and.... see I'm doing it too, I've gone mad.

It's a bright, cold, sharp October. The leaves have turned and are beginning to fall, its really beautiful. It's half term and Tom and Isobel don't want to go for a walk of more than ten minutes because they are happier curled up in front of a video. In a couple of years we could be scrabbling in mud for grains of rice in a tin shack in one of the shanty towns that spring up around Bath. I'll be trudging all day in shoes with holes in looking for work like something out of a Steinbeck novel. Isobel will be at my side looking up me hungrily. Then, just as in The Bicycle Thieves I'll crack and commit a minor crime, like stealing a can of cider, a get chased by an angry mob through the streets of Bradford-on-Avon. So with that future in mind I'll let them stay in front of the video a bit longer.

It's Halloween tonight and Tom has invited his friends round to watch Star Trek and dress up as Klingons. In five days it'll be Guy Fawkes and if Obama wins we'll go out and watch a firework display, drink a hot cup of mulled wine and toast America. If he loses we can all kiss our arses goodbye so we might as well throw myself on the bonfire.

See you on the other side. x