Sad. Sad. Sad. That's how Tone used to greet the morning after a heavy night in the tavern. Often enough, you'd like to think, in good Presbyterian Belfast. Any way, today S.A.D. in capital letters stands for an affliction nearly everyone you meet claims to be suffering from. The letters stand for something like Seasonal Afflictive Disorder (or Disability or Debility). But it now goes on all year round. It's a bug, say many. It's That Thing that's going around. Medical practitioners may give a prescription to calm you down or pep you up. They don't know anything more than that it is a sort of malaise of the times to be always complaining.
Some laymen say: it's all those chemicals they're spraying on our food. Maybe, indeed. Others talk vaguely of inversions in the climate. Makes no sense. And young and old suffer. The young used to get chickenpox and other infections which had a known cure procedure. Now, they too have the bug, the thing. It can't be pollen, because that isn't year round. This condition is. And it's not just introverted city people. A lively, wiry, landscaper, who may be out at 7.30 a.m. winching trees out of the ground and recklessly throwing himself into all manner of digging, sawing, mowing, scything, confesses that he feels out of sorts when he has time to think about himself.
So, is it an illusion? Is it like the effects of the Persian Gulf war, which, it is now admitted in some quarters, come from poison gas not detected at the time? In other words, is stuff drifting on the wind from the East to us? And don't you remember the Swedish professor who claimed that all atomic establishments should he closed off for ever?
It's a dangerous world we live in. A poisonous world in many ways. Have you ever inhaled the spray from a machine distributing pesticides on a field of crops?
The driver may be wearing a mask. You, passing by, are not. Adding everything up you're lucky to be alive at all. Just carry on, even if, as Tone put it "dull as a post all day." Pretend that a brilliant summer faces us.