Looking On the Bright Side

If laptops had come along earlier, I would have learned to compute at school and would not now be pecking at my keyboard with only one finger.  

 When I was growing up (something my wife disputes) only well-to-do families had a bowl of fruit in their house when no one was ill.  Nowadays otherwise-healthy people often tell me unblushingly they are fruitarians.  "Fruit and nutcases, more like," I think but don't say, it's better that way round.

 Monty Python star Eric Idle wrote the song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, in which he reminds us that 'life is quite absurd' and that 'the last laugh is on you.'  (Me, I think he meant.)  This seems to have been borne out in the case of the author Zola, who wrote a novel of the same name and then was killed by a badly ventilated chimney.  Like teenagers, chimneys are trouble once they start smoking.

Life is a perishable skill, but even today it is not without its bright side.  We live in the age of wonder drugs -- I could take three or four guesses as to which ones are your favourites right now.  (Me, I even have a favourite arm.)  

We have indoor entertainment thanks to various device-screens.  We have online shopping thanks to hard-working credit cards.  We have brave nurses whose hard work puts us all to shame, and soon we will be happily mingling with our family and friends again, even if we never did before.  (Is it compulsory?  I'm fairly sure hugs are quasi-illegal in certain parts of Scotland.)

Where exactly is the bright side located, and how close does one have to stand to get the best view of it?  Are sunglasses necessary?  Why are we advised to look on it rather than at it?  Should we squint, like when we glance at the sun?  Which isn't possible very often in Scotland either, lucky you in the Algarve.

Oddly enough, our ancestors may have survived because they weren't more positive in their outlook on life.  They seemed more attuned to danger and therefore more likely to survive and pass on their genes to us cowardy custards.  Basically, we may be programmed to have trouble looking on the bright side.  Cavemen's bearskins had no silver linings.  (Ironically, cavemen wearing elk skins were themselves hunted by black bears, who smelt elk.) 

Our present preoccupation with all things coronal caused me to recall that the corona is the outer part of the sun's atmosphere that we see during a total eclipse.  It is hot and dim, but you still wouldn't want to get too near that particular not-so-bright side, because it is hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun.  Better by far to stay on those Algarve beaches.  And remember to turn over when your bright side gets too red.