Bounce the baby
by John Craig
What a year. For little reason at all, here's a quote from my favourite book of the year, the Letter From America collection issued following the death of Alistair Cooke. Happy winterval.
"Politics will undoubtedly bedevil us till the day we die, but' even the prospect of early annihilation should not keep us from making the most of our days on this unhappy planet. In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put us off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest polititicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby."