Nightmare holiday

When we book a holiday, we assume it will go ahead as planned and there'll be no last-minute glitches to stop us in our tracks.

Luckily we've never fancied Greece so we didn't book a holiday in Rhodes. Those vacationers who happened to be there when the wildfires broke out must have been tearing their hair out and wondering what was coming next. Hotels burning down, luggage lost, flights cancelled, bedding down who-knows-where. Dream holidays in ruins.

Meanwhile those holiday-makers who've booked a stay in Rhodes some time in the future are wondering if it will ever happen. Every day they ask the same questions. What's the latest? Are the fires still burning? Are our flights still on? Does our hotel still exist? They're left in an uncertain limbo.

Not forgetting of course the distressed residents of Rhodes themselves, who're seeing their homes and businesses burnt to the ground and tourists keeping well away. They can't just jet back to their home country, they have to adjust to what's going on around them.

To cut down on flight pollution, we decided on staycations this year rather than anything more ambitious. We're glad we did. We've booked a stay in Liverpool in a few weeks' time. This being the UK we can be sure temperatures will not hit the mid-forties celcius. We'll be lucky if they reach the twenties.

We were in Melbourne once when the temperature hit 40 celcius, and doing anything in that heat was almost unbearable. Anything higher than that would have been pretty gruelling.

The urge to destroy

One of the many things that baffle me is the crazy urge to destroy that some people possess. However you look at their actions, they make absolutely no sense except as a brainless desire to annoy and inconvenience other people.

Right now there's a massive wildfire in the Mourne Mountains, 30 miles south of Belfast. There have been many wildfires there over the last few years, some of them clearly started by arsonists. Why deliberately destroy many acres of beautiful scenery and innocent wildlife?

A 24 year old man has been arrested in Surrey after dozens of mature trees were randomly chopped down. Again, there have been other similar tree-felling incidents over the years, and never any plausible explanation. Needless to say, the locals are always incensed by such vandalism.

Memorials, monuments and gravestones are regularly defaced, broken and covered with graffiti. Plastic rubbish, which could harm or kill marine creatures, is left on beaches. Obstacles placed on railway lines could cause crashes and derailments. Equipment in children's playgrounds is wrecked beyond repair.

Goodness knows what the motivation is. Is it some personal grudge or grievance? Is it the urge to disrupt other people's seemingly happier lives? Is it the need to impress some bunch of friends they hang out with? Is it to give them a sense of power? It's a mystery.

It's impossible to understand why some people want to destroy something valuable and life-enhancing rather than to nurture it. Unfortunately it can be the work of a moment to destroy something, while nurturing can take a lot more effort and dedication.