On Friday afternoon I walked down to my local sub-post office with a bag of parcels. I waited in the slow-moving queue and when I got to the front, the counter clerk dealt efficiently with the first three packages. They were each weighed, labelled and dropped into a plastic sack. Then I put the final one on the scales. “Where’s it going?” asked the clerk. “The Isle of Man,” I replied.  He looked doubtful. “Where?” he said. “The Isle of Man,” I repeated patiently. He stared at the parcel, frowned and tapped away on his computer. We had another exchange that moved us no further forward and after consulting his screen again, he turned back to me, handed me my parcel and charged me for the others. “I can’t take that one,” he said. “That place doesn’t exist. Please step aside.” He started serving the next customer while I went to the back of the queue to think. Eventually it occurred to me that the Isle of Man might have postcodes and if so then this might help. So I checked on my phone and sure enough, the intended address had a postcode starting IM4. The clerk didn’t look pleased to see me when I got to the front of the queue again but as soon as I uttered the magic postcode, and he tapped it into the computer, everything went swimmingly.  He nodded, printed out a label, and my parcel went to join its fellows in the plastic sack.   

I was amazed that the clerk had believed the computer instead of me—as if I was likely to be sending a carefully-wrapped parcel to an imaginary island. And then I remembered that I too had recently fallen into the trap of blindly believing what technology was telling me. I’d been planning a week’s holiday in Ireland and the basic outline of the trip was to spend time in Belfast, Dublin and Galway. We were flying to Belfast and home from Dublin—that bit was straightforward. But when I consulted Google Maps to work out how to travel between the different cities, the only options that came up were buses and coaches. “I guess there are no trains in Ireland,” I thought and when I told Mike he didn’t disagree. Fortunately, before I booked all of our various coach journeys, a train-geek friend asked about our plans. It’s always nice when people show an interest. “We’re travelling around by coach,” I said. “There aren’t any trains in Ireland.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. There’s a wonderful train system. I used it last year.” And he was right. It was wonderful. 

It’s hard to know what to believe when information comes at us from countless different sources. And the news is particularly tricky. These days I find it overwhelming because many of the issues are so complex that I simply don’t know what to think. I’m confident in my beliefs that recent UK governments have been incompetent, that Trump is despicable, global warming is real, Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and the level of civilian suffering in Gaza is terrible. But in so many matters it’s difficult to unravel exactly what is right and what is not. As Jonathan Freedland said recently, the people affected by the Israel-Gaza Conflict have suffered decades of pain. It’s not like a football match where you can support either one side or the other. It’s dreadful for people on both sides. And to something more trivial—are Harry and Meghan petulant attention-seekers or misunderstood game-changers. The only answer I can give is “I haven’t got a clue. How could I possibly know what things are really like for them?”   

I no longer watch the news on TV. And I’ve heard many people say the same. But I don’t want to shut my eyes to what is happening in the world, and so for the past couple of months I’ve been getting my news from The Week. I have a subscription and it arrives in the post every Friday. At some point in the weekend I try to sit down and read it pretty much cover to cover. What I like is that it doesn’t take an angle. Instead it gives a summary of how a range of different publications across the political spectrum, have reported news stories. It doesn’t necessarily help me make up my mind but it does at least improve my understanding of the issues and nudges me away from polarised conclusions. And in addition to UK, European and World news it has science news; business news; sports news; obituaries; book, film, theatre and art reviews; TV recommendations; a cartoon; a recipe, and even a weekly update on The Archers.  

It’s a small thing but it’s helping to keep me steady at the moment when so many of us are feeling small and impotent in a troubled world. I was talking about that with a friend this week. She has family in Israel and is extremely distressed about the conflict. “I feel so powerless,” she said. “I’ve thought hard about how to help and there’s nothing I can do to change the situation. The one thing…the only thing…I can do is to concentrate on being the nicest person I can be. That makes a difference to the people around me. It’s something I can believe in. So that’s what I’m doing.”

I’ll end on that thought and send greetings to one and all—wherever you are but especially if you’re on the Isle of Man or travelling on an Irish train this holiday season. Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.