Status Updates From A History of the World in 1...

'They're expected to muddle through by themselves. Nature is supposed to take over, like the automatic pilot on an aeroplane. Yet Nature, on to whom we pitch responsibility for all we cannot understand, isn't very good when set to automatic.'

'All novelists know their art proceeds by indirection. When tempted by didacticism, the writer should imagine a spruce sea-captain eyeing the storm ahead, bustling from instrument to instrument in a Catherine wheel of gold braid, expelling crisp orders down the speaking tube. But there is nobody below decks; the engine-room was never installed, and the rudder broke off centuries ago.'

So far, there are repeated themes of unfortunate sea voyages involving unbalanced people, with repeated appearances of woodboring beetles.

'She must have seen them first on a Christmas card. Six, eight, ten of them, harnessed side by side. She always imagined that each pair was man and wife, a happy couple, like the animals that went into the Ark. ... But her Dad said you could tell from the antlers that the reindeer pulling the sleigh were stags. ... Father Christmas ran an all-male team. Typical. Absolutely bloody typical, she thought.'