'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Butterfly Summer

In Western Europe hundreds of thousands of butterflies are flying from North Africa, to Great Britain. If you are swimming in the Western Mediterranean you may well have a stream of butterflies flying over your head, making landfall prior to their journey across the Continent.

I like to think that the butterflies know that we are in for a sweltering few months and they had better spend two of their five weeks of life making this incredible journey. I base this flight time on a flying speed of around ten miles an hour which can be given some help by a following wind, which the butterflies probably know all about. There is no science involved in this estimation but I bet it is not far from the truth.

As a statistic it is interesting, but if you are either swimming in the Med or strolling in the British country side and happen to witness this sight, it is a spellbinding, magical experience that will stay with you for life.

Since writing the above, I have been told that this swarm has been promoted by an unusually wet spring in Morocco which has resulted in a massively larger number of butterflies than usual hatching and flying north. I am also informed that hoards of them are arriving in Scotland, where they are likely to be treated to another dose of the wet conditions that they have been so spectacularly flying away from. This makes no sense unless of course it does turn out to be a scorcher, so I am sticking to my baking summer scenario.          

But does this auger more than just a hot summer? Past generations would have surely drawn more dramatic implications. Perhaps something like; ‘If the butterflies come, you will be blest with a son.’ or ‘a Prince will arise when there’s a butterfly sky.’

I like to think that if there is an omen attached to this phenomena then it is a positive one; perhaps something to do with the advent of peace between us or indeed the arrival of a peacemaker amongst us. There can of course be little doubt as to who that would be. After listening to Barack’s speech in Cairo, one can only hope that his hopes don’t turn out to be as short lived as the butterflies themselves. It is obviously what the great majority of people want, but what the people want and what the people get are mostly very different things. Looking objectively at the goal Barack has set himself, one has to doubt that he has a realistic chance of anything other than a minor success or two, but the magic of the man as with the magic of a sky full of butterflies makes one believe that there actually is a bona fide chance of him making it all happen.

Somehow, America will again come to be regarded as a bastion of freedom and the friend of all nations. Somehow, insurgency will find itself without a place to hide and somehow a Universal understanding will come about which will free those who are oppressed and connect us all with the real problems that we so desperately need to face.

Both the butterflies and Barack are up against colossal odds, but you know what they say; ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the butterfly’. Let us do all we can to make it so.  

   

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