Hilarie: Don’t worry about the end of the world, admire the cherry blossom

May 2 2009 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

AS A natural-born worrier it is my job to ponder the world’s insanities and problems while taking my daily lunchtime walk into town from the office.

Of course ruminating over such things doesn’t achieve anything, but someone has to do it.

This week has been a particularly bad one. I’ve worried about everything from the demise of bees and the atrocities of the Taliban in Afghanistan to swine flu and the imminent global disaster that awaits us in 2012 when there is to be a solar flare that will bring about Armageddon.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to worry about first, which is where lists come in useful. I’m a great fan of lists.

On my many lists of things to worry about that don’t involve world catastrophe are a number of family-related issues.

My father once told me that he never stopped worrying about his children. I was 40 when he said this and there was the sudden realisation that I had, in fact, embarked on a lifetime of worrying about the Offspring.

Firstborn, the boy with the dangerous hobbies, is currently top of the list.

When he returned to uni at the end of last week his parting shot was: “I can’t wait to get back because we’ve got a great caving weekend coming up.’’

Since joining the Caving Soc, which he pronounces ‘sock’, he has become a born-again troglodyte. He sports a Caving Soc T-shirt that depicts a human figure in various stages of evolution, which says ‘Cavers, the missing link?’

His other hobby is climbing. Combine the two and there is little my son can’t do with a mountain – either on top of it or underneath.

It’s all extremely worrying. And puzzling.

When questioned closely about the caving it would appear that he spends his weekends sloshing about in ice-cold underground streams and squeezing through unfeasibly tight tunnels, some vertical and some shaped like the U-bend of a toilet.

He frequently emerges soaked to the skin and then faces a long, soggy night on the floor of a caving hut.

It sounds awful.