Andrew Dickens Afternoons

It is quite something to walk into a kitchen at 6.30 in the morning to discover your partner in tears. And then, when asked why, for her to gasp out “Notre Dame is burning down”. There’s a mute moment after something like that. A flicker of time where you wonder if it’s all a joke and then a sinking feeling. The realisation that something of great beauty, something with 850 years of history, something extremely rare could be gone in an hour.I often used to wonder if you could take a resident of Athens from 2000 years ago and bring them into the present and showed them the Acropolis today, and see their shock of how that temple broke. The Roman Forum was a centre of all world civilisation and is now a rubble pit with ghosts.It’s a reminder that nothing lasts forever. There’s a transience to our existence. One we wilfully ignore. It’s human nature.It’s what the National Party is learning after the Key Years. So enamoured of their popular leader they thought nothing could spoil the party, so the shock at his sud