Realising that you can get far too much of a bad thing

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I’m probably the last person in the world that should be dishing out any advice or tips on the amount of news we have to absorb on a daily basis. After all, I have been gainfully employed for many decades at this stage in playing my small part in checking out stories of a local interest that hopefully play their part in the public forking out a few euro each week to keep in touch.

An overdose of news though has to come with a health warning. A few weeks back, as the Taliban/Afghanistan story started to dominate all headlines and TV/radio space, I listened for the first half-hour of the one o clock RTE news.

Now, don’t get me wrong, RTE provide a comprehensive and reliable news network that’s always good to get a solid line in what’s happening in the world around us.

But after a 25-minute, non-stop barrage of analysis from Afghanistan, I just had enough. All I wanted to hear about then was maybe something of a more local or lighter vein.

Maybe the bull that got lost in the fields of Westmeath; or the gardener from Offaly who grew giant-sized turnips; or a pensioner from Sligo who ran a marathon backways. Anything of a more local or lighter interest . . . but 25 minutes without a break of the Taliban and Afghanistan had nearly left me in a state of slightly disturbing mental anguish.

It probably has been the same with the Covid-19 coverage, which none of us can afford to ignore, but yet we don’t have to fill our every waking moment with the latest statistics, the up-to-date dire warnings of impending disaster, and the feeling that we’re all doomed.

Incrementally, one can slip into a pessimistic mental gait, and during that lunchtime news bulletin as I drove out the Tuam Road, I kind of said to myself what can I do to stop the Taliban taking control in Afghanistan. Okay, so I should have a conscience about these things but if all the US billions and military might couldn’t solve this thing, what’s the point in a two-bit journalist and small farmer worrying about the situation.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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