Driving up to Bath from Cornwall, Friday evening. Radio news: there's a mountain in south-west France that is expected to survive the end of the world - which is due on 21st December this year. Okay, fine so far, Mayan long-count calendar, and so on. Main point of the story: people are flocking to this mountain because they believe they'll be rescued by aliens just before the e-o-t-w. Form an orderly queue on 20th Dec.?
    And the punchline of the story: "the authorities" have closed off access to this mountain. Eh? Surely this is a tourist opportunity: if I was expecting to embark on a long journey, I'd want a packed lunch. Although I suppose the postcard-sending opportunity would be limited, if all my friends and relatives were about to be ended along with the world. Maybe a cuddly toy for the children, and a last coffee at a pavement cafe.
    This is "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" all over again, isn't it? Further research: the mountain is Pic de Bugarach, and the closure is a public-safety issue - large numbers of believers are expected to attend. That mountain does have an interesting profile ... maybe I should sculpt it in butter on the kitchen table. And find an app to play some simple notes, plus colours. [Key detail missed: the aliens emerge from the mountain in this version.]
    But I was thinking about ... not being allowed to indulge your beliefs. Before I got the details, and the public-safety angle, I thought: yes, there is a mindset whereby "the authorities", in whatever form, shut down beliefs that don't fit. I think Francois Truffaut was right: Richard Dreyfuss and the rest of them shouldn't have been shut out; they were invited. If rock concerts, rock festivals and presidential rallies can be managed in a way that minimises the public-safety issue, shouldn't these people be allowed to visit their mountain?
    After all, what exactly is the threat to our world view?
    

What if today is a perfect day, and I can't see it? I suppose all days are perfect days, all nights perfect nights, and the gap between experience and perfection is ours to examine. Four days back from Japan, hosting the inertia brought on by a cold caught on the night before flying. So long those flights; a moment's vision of the absurdity of scooping up a plane-load of people and depositing them at a different point on the planet. Child with a bucket, taking water around the beach. While another plane takes the same number and dumps them back at the origin. Pity we can't stay where we are, doing each other's jobs.