June started out with exciting plans. After two whole years apart, my dear friends were due to arrive from the US on June 25th. This was our third attempt to get together. Covid had other plans in 2020 and 2021. Surely, we, and the rest of the planet, had earned smooth sailing for the third go around? Exmoor, The Cotswolds, and London look out! Here we come!

But what the actual heck? I spy on my news feed shortly before our guests’ expected arrival thousands of suitcases waiting at Heathrow to be reunited with owners who’d been wearing the same underwear for a week in Lisbon or Barcelona. That is, if their flight took off at all. Apparently, the UK can’t get background checks completed in a timely manner so airlines and airports can’t rehire enough employees to run a full schedule. And that only matters if you can actually get to the airport.

Those of you following the labour disputes in the UK will understand that Saturday, the day my friends were supposed to arrive, was the third day of the national train strike. What the actual heck, again? Roads would potentially be chaos from London to Exmoor as everyone tried to reach their Cornish beach holiday or Devonshire weekend home or Somerset cream tea. Tumbling off the red eye from Chicago, crumpled, bleary-eyed and stiff, is not exactly fun without the added joy of a possible five-hour traffic jam to deal with once here. But hey, at least we friends would be together at the overcrowded service station or in line for the ladies’ loo, and it would be entertaining to count overheated cars on the hard shoulder of the M5. Unless one of them was ours.

Assuming we survived the motorway tailbacks, we had tickets for The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. We had a delightful rental cottage in Bourton-on-the-Water waiting, and we had hiking and cream teas and pub lunches and long catchup chats waiting for us on Exmoor. (We decided not to pack the Pimm’s for hiking lunches. Some of our Exmoor coastal footpaths have a long and steep drop into the Bristol Channel.) Fish and chips was obviously on the menu for our friends. I’d even prepared an introductory booklet on why the jam goes on the scone before the clotted cream. As long as planes flew and roads eventually cleared and trains eventually ran and all the cream tea shops stayed open, this would be a trip to remember. We couldn’t wait. I’d spent a lot of time planning to show our friends the best England has to offer during this, their first visit to my homeland. We’d make them just as welcome as if they’d been visiting royalty. Even the full-sized cardboard cut-out of Queen Elizabeth still held court in the living room. She just needed a bit of a dusting after three weeks.

You may have sussed by now the trip didn’t happen. With only days to go before take-off, a ‘What the actual heck?’ freak tick bite rerouted our guests from Heathrow to a US hospital. And just like that, the world seemed to implode on us again. Instead of COVID, it was a different health scare that threw us off kilter. At the same time, the US Supreme Court, henceforth to be known as the ‘What the Actual Heck’ Supreme Court ruled everyone in America (or maybe it was only in New York, but at this point let’s just call it everyone in America as that’s the reality of life there) could carry a concealed weapon, no questions asked. The following day that same WTAH Supreme Court sided with those who deemed no one should be able to access appropriate healthcare. If you’re a woman, that is. If you’re a man, it’s written into the Constitution that Viagra may fall from the sky whenever you push a little blue button. To sum up the Supreme Court’s week, apparently no questions can be asked of anyone wanting a gun but a million questions can be asked of a pregnant woman. By people she has never met. By people who have no knowledge of her personal circumstances and care nothing for her life. Said strangers then get to make judgements and medical decision on her behalf, with no expertise or thought for her privacy. Got it?

Oh, and the Ukrainian war looks ready to expand. All nations are in ‘What The Actual Heck?’ territory now.

I know. This could be construed as a rant. And it is. But it’s also a warning. While we’re focusing on planes and trains and automobiles and where to get the best cream teas and how busy it is at the motorway service station loo, our minds are distracted from two much bigger issues:

1. Nothing is more important than our health.
2. Democracy is not inherent. It requires constant vigilance. We the Distracted People are all that stand between sanity and something that doesn’t look or feel anything like sanity. Or democracy.

(And breathe, Tracey. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. That’s it. Good. Repeat.)

Seriously, what the actual heck? I just want to write humorous fiction set in gorgeous locations. That all. But I can’t ignore what’s going on in the world or there will be no humour and no gorgeous locations left. I have to step up and speak out. So, what can I do? Well, I can vote in the US and I can virtually meet a Ukrainian family tomorrow to see if my Exmoor sanctuary can be a sanctuary for them too. I can do little things that hopefully lead to bigger things. I can’t just keep repeating ‘What the actual heck?’ over my morning cereal as I read the news.

The good news is our friend is recovering and the trip is rescheduled. I wish the fix for what ails us on both sides of the Atlantic was as simple as a fistful of antibiotics. It won’t be. But I hope to have the world fixed before my friends arrive later this year. One day at a time, Tracey. One action at a time.