Nombrilist? Me?

With the castigatory authority that only an ex-wife possesses, Mickey has of late chastised me for the self-absorbed nombrilism which... she says... characterizes my 2015 blog posts. What can I possibly say in mitigation? That the first half of the year was fraught with with existential gloom, and that even posts which were little more than marginal diary notes were hard to formulate?

I should, I am told, share my thoughts about issues more profound and less parochial than the price of grocery staples in the various shops within my mobility range (this latter being further reduced when the temperature rises above thirty degrees).

• Should I, therefore, express a view concerning the film footage in which the Queen as a child appears to give a Nazi salute? But I dealt with the extraordinary Anglo-German ambiguities of the thirties in my book Chance Of Reign.
• Should I deplore the depressing travesties of democracy we currently witness not just in Greece? 
• Should I address the topic of the brainwashing of teenage girls by religious fanatics? We have learned that many have been recruited at an age when they were particularly vulnerable, that often they were the children of families who for generations have been devout in their faith, that they sought a demanding mission which could make sense of their lives within the context of their cultural heritage. According to a series of thrillers I've been reading, set in Ireland, merciless cruelty was not unknown in the places housing Brides of Christ (and you thought I was referring to Dai'esh?).

I do not promise to abandon navel-gazing as I continue to negotiate the maze in which I am still a bit disorientated.