I am reaching the end of Rings of Power. I will not mourn its ending, but I am all for a 3rd season if they can somehow develop this story further. Sauron is an interesting character, and maybe I have an issue with the Elvishisation (Humanisation?) of him. The nameless, featureless, all-powerful baddie of the books and the films is mysterious and fills us with fear for those exact reasons. In Rings of Power he appears as just an Elf- though full of machinations, of schemes, and subtle power to twist the mind - and the evil loses something in this. I cannot put my finger on it but something is missing.
Anyway, that wasn't the point of today's little missive.
Today, I want to talk about Hazard Lights. If you've car, you'll know what they are. Every light flashes (unless its a BMW and we know they've had their indicators removed surgically upon creation - and that's almost a joke) to warn other road users of trouble ahead.
This morning, on my drive to work, I saw some Hazard Lights.
They were attached to a fast moving Mercedes or somesuch other posh car. I spotted it as it drove up the hard shoulder past every other patiently waiting car, including my own. We were waiting to join the main road, using the zipper/filter move as we went from slip road to motorway.
It sped, with all reckless speed, along the hard shoulder, the lane reserved for emergency vehicles and broken down cars with those hazards flashing. It was as if those lights and the cost of the car itself gave it the right to do so, to travel past every other waiting car, every other person on their weary way to work.
It was an act of arrogance which though I witnessed, I could not comprehend.
Perhaps the driver was on the way to hospital carrying a woman giving birth, a child with serious injury, I don't know.
However, it was likely just an arrogant idiot more consumed with making money than any kind disposition or mission of mercy.
And it stuck with me today.
This culture of uncaring, of entitlement which we see so much about and hear so much of in the news, does not exist.
All of those cars waiting, the many hundreds on that road who took their turn, queued in the best fashion of the English are the true culture. That idiot in the posh car is the exception that proves the rule - he is the anomaly, the outlier, the flotsam which should sink to the bottom of the sea never to be seen again.
Actually, Episode 7 of Season 2 of RIngs of Power has been quite good!
Silver linings!
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