Do you know? I think that things are starting to become just a tiny bit worrying.

It’s this pandemic, you see. One day we are told that the numbers are slowly improving and then it throws a curved ball onto the pitch.

It’s as though the thing can think for itself.

This time it’s the variants that are concerning the experts.

The good news is that the vaccine is still effective, but the bad news is that the variants are not playing by the rules and seem quite able to dodge the bullets.

Lately, I’ve been starting to have some niggling thoughts pushing towards the surface of my brain.

There is much talk and discussion about global warming and melting polar ice caps.

We are seeing our weather patterns changing with rivers overflowing one day and running dry the next.

There are heat-waves in March and frosts in August, wild fires rage in California and Australia and tropical rain forests are burning down.

I hate to say it, but we are looking into the barrels of a shotgun. We are looking at the beginning of the end of the world.

Oh no we’re not! Oh yes we are!

But just think. Try to look at it logically. It won’t be the first time that it’s happened and it certainly won’t be the last. Our planet and its residents are continuously evolving. From our beginning to our end, we are slowly but surely running out of time.

We have exploited and abused our valuable resources. We have all but lost our big mammals, like the black rhino, the elephants and the so-called big game animals.

Our modern farming methods are at the expense of the vanishing insects and invertebrates that were the food for the declining bird numbers. We are supposed to be the superior species, but can’t we see that we are digging our own graves.

The end of the world, as we know it, could be closer than you think.

But hang on, the old Greek philosophers have been telling us the same old stories for thousands of years.

The end of the world is nigh! But how long is nigh?

I have been reading about a recent archaeological dig in South America.

The scientists have been revealing the remains of some very large, grass-eating monsters. These beasts are estimated to be 90 tonnes in weight and about four times the length of a double decker bus. They reckon that they died out about 98 million years ago.

Now get your brain round this. If these fossils are 98 million years old and have reached the end of their natural days, how long after them did it take for our lot, the homo sapiens, to take over?

Try to stay awake, I won’t be much longer. But as I said earlier, how long is long? The scientists seem sure that they can prove the past but how can they prove the future?

They can’t, they can only guess. We are under a threat, we are offered a vaccine to combat this threat but no one really knows if it will work.

The choice is yours to take. My vote is yes and Brown Eyes agrees. We shall see.

The nurses, the doctors and all those thousands of hospital staff who, every day, risk their lives to save ours deserve our thanks and our trust.

We are up against a tough enemy. If the future proves us right, so be it. If the future proves us wrong, well hey-ho, here we go.

I’ve been reading these little 20-second poems that have been popping up, so here is one from me to you:

’Another day, another dawn

’A sigh, a groan, a stretch, a yawn.

’The day before has gone, it’s old,

’Tomorrow never comes, we’re told,

’So don’t waste time on scheme or plot,

’Enjoy the now, it’s all you’ve got.’