The Times They Are A ‘Changing

Being a teenager in the 1980s was fun, but a bit scary too. On the one hand, there was lots of great music to listen to in your bedroom while experimenting with luridly coloured eyeshadow. On the other, a B-movie actor was in the White House and the threat of nuclear war permeated our waking dreams. Back then, the satire practically wrote itself. “Spitting Image” was a must-see for all self-respecting teenagers, and Ronald Reagan made frequent appearances. “Gaddafi? Gaddafi Duck?” was one of his sayings, and “The President’s Brain Is Missing” was a regular feature on the show. Mrs Thatcher and her cabinet of cowering yes-men, the Royal Family as we’d never seen them before and the Davids (Owen and Steel) kept me chortling week after week. No surprise then that the show is back, with a whole new cast of characters, including the POTUS.

In the interests of full disclosure, I need to warn you that this week, my blog is political. I could have written about anything, I suppose, but the events across the pond have been so jaw-dropping that I feel I can’t leave them alone. Fortunately, we live in a democracy, so if any of you, valued readers, disagree with me, that is your right.

I’ve tried to understand the American political system several times over the years, but I have now given up and that’s official. Swing states, electoral college vote, primaries, caucuses – you what? Over here, you go to your local polling station and put a cross in the box of your choice. That’s it. Four years ago, when the American people spoke and elected the 45th President of the United States, I was a little surprised, to put it mildly. His term of office has been marked by divisive, revisionist, racist, misogynistic, protectionist and isolationist policies. Plus, tweets. Oh, so, so many tweets.

And yet, in spite of four years of frankly unbelievable behaviour, still we didn’t know who was going to win the election. Last week, driving across Mid Suffolk in the dark to pick up my son and listening to Radio 4, the reactions to the news that Biden might be in and Trump out were remarkable.

Let’s pause there for a second. When I was thinking about this blog (and as you can see from the time of posting, I’ve done a lot of thinking), the book which popped into my mind and wouldn’t go away was, “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.” Why? Because of the scenes where the winter with no Christmas imposed upon Narnia by the White Witch starts to come to an end. The children, accompanied by Mr and Mrs Beaver, are walking through Narnia when they start to notice the thaw.

“They walked on in silence drinking it all in, passing through patches of warm sunlight into cool, green thickets and out again into wide, mossy glades where tall elms raised the leafy roof far overhead, and then into dense masses of flowering currant and among hawthorn bushes where the sweet smell was almost overpowering.”

Lewis’s writing takes some beating, and the scenes where the Narnians start to realise that their long winter is over and dare to express their joy at freedom are powerful indeed. I’m aware that it was a close thing. Slightly over half of the American people voted for Mr Biden, and slightly under half for Mr Trump. Listening to the news, I heard the BBC reporter speaking about the impromptu celebrations all over New York. In the background, I could hear car horns beeping and people cheering. A few of them were interviewed. They sounded like Narnians to me, freed from a long winter.

Of course, they were all Democrats or at least not Trump supporters. There were plenty of people who weren’t nearly so happy, the major one being the President himself. As I write, he still hasn’t conceded defeat or congratulated the President Elect. This is a first in American history. The satirists must be rubbing their hands in glee.

My favourite tweet from the President read thus. “We won. By a lot.”

Just five words which summed up the last four years for me pretty successfully.

We don’t know what the future holds. But I have hope, for the first time in a while, that divisions will decrease, agreements will be reached and walls will come tumbling down.

I’ll finish with a little more CS Lewis. This is Giant Rumblebuffin knocking down the gates of the White Witch’s castle with his club.

“The gates creaked at the first blow, cracked at the second, and shivered at the third. Then he tackled the towers on each side of them and after a few minutes of crashing and thudding both the towers and a good bit of the wall on each side went thundering down in a mass of hopeless rubble; and when the dust cleared it was odd, standing in that dry, grim, stony yard, to see through the gap all the grass and waving trees and sparkling streams of the forest, and the blue hills beyond that and beyond them the sky.”

That’s how it feels to me. The dust needs to settle and there’s a lot of rubble to clear away. But for the first time in four years, I can see beyond to the blue hills and the sky.

Images from the original imprint of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Ruth is a freelance writer and novelist. She is married with three children, one husband, four budgies, six quail, eight chickens and a kitten. Her first novel, “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge”, published by Instant Apostle, comes out in February 2021. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities and blogs at Big Words and Made Up Stories. Ruth is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at ruththewriter1.