Salman Rushdie took a quote from ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’  “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” And this is why there are novels, poems, songs and biographies of work and of people written - to hold onto what we know as true for as long as possible remembering the stepping stones that were laid down for our work and we provide for those that follow.

We seek him here we seek him there and the whereabouts of Yevgeny Prigozhin the Russian General who took a group of mercenary fighters towards Moscow and then back again, is reminiscent of Humpty Dumpty who took a big fall - as I remember - and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

The Government party-gate reports are in, and the votes on ‘did Boris Johnson break the rules the government set for us all?’ were cast. 354 ministers said yes, 7 puffed no while a few slippery ones went missing. It is too much all too foolish and for this moment I am closing my eyes and ears.

It came on Saturday - effectively immediately - Boris Johnson resigned from his parliamentary seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip - a Greater London constituency inside of the M25 Motorway for those who need to know - It was on the front page of the Financial Times Weekend Supplement but - below the fold. Michael Heseltine, the former deputy Prime Minister under Margaret Thatcher - keep your friends close but your enemies even closer - described the move as “a brilliant coup de théâtre - and - it is … totally unprincipled and dishonest.”

On Monday evening our plane touched down in Athens Airport 59 years after we left - not knowing if we would ever see each other again. The drive to the city dips in and out of old memories. Small towns and old olive groves spread out in age, showing dreams made, broken and reset as the trees are realigned to the country’s fortunes. The scattered sage and scrub are muted in the decaying dusk before we enter the city center where there is not a refugee to be seen.

It was raining - of course it was - with the steadiness that puts up umbrellas and gives rise to the English complexion. It was not cold.

Once again the Government’s knickers are in a twist - and all of a sudden it doesn’t seem so far a stretch between rapping Gary Lineker’s knuckles, clipping Sir David’s prime-time wings, and jailing Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Mother is very angry . She has tried to hide it, burping and farting, holding her wind in as best she can until she exploded. Two weeks after this initial emesis she has vomited again. The latest death count is to 47,000 and still rising. How can one care for the fusses of politicians and small scrappy wars where the planet is so attacked by the creatures who feed off of her.

As the flurry of this last scandal broke, a government minister - whose name is not worth looking up - suggested that if anyone feels intimidated by a police officer they should ‘Wave down a bus’. It is clear that this government, like those before it, are as afraid of the police as are the general public. It is not surprising that this week a crate of 1071 rotten bad apples was left outside of New Scotland Yard in London, enough to ruin every batch of hard cider coming out of Somerset.

November rolled like storm-tossed tumbleweed into December and the nights slid earlier into darkness each evening. Now December is ending and even through the storms covering America the light is beginning to return.