The end is near

Here in France, it's still only 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the penultimate day. So, everything still exists here, and it's business as usual. But, at the moment I'm writing this blog post, New Zealand is no doubt starting to fade out forever as a civilized community.

And my native Australia should be getting ready to go Down Under. Everywhere, particularly among the enlightened folk in Byron Bay, there's a feeling in the air that the end is near.

The great Jim Morrison once expressed this doomed feeling in a poignant style:

TV reports inform us that French highways are already crammed with vehicles heading to the south-west.

Their destination, of course, is the tiny village of Bugarach, whose mountain allegedly has room for some 30 million survivors.

As I've already pointed out in this blog, I persist in believing that Mayan cosmologists got their computations slightly screwed up, and that the right place to be protected from extermination is in fact the magnificent magic mountain just across from my house at Gamone: the Cournouze.

Consequently, I'll be packing up here this evening and wandering across to Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne, with Fitzroy and the two donkeys. In the middle of the forthcoming dark night of celestial tribulations, if I can find an operational Internet connection in Châtelus, I'll write a blog post to describe what's happening here. Before publishing it, I intend to do a quick check, of course, to see whether I still have any potential readers throughout the world. Otherwise, there's no point in carrying on my blogging. So, if you hear from me within the next 24 hours, that will be good news both for you and for me. Meanwhile, to all my still-existing readers: Happy Apocalypse!

BREAKING NEWS: Here on the edge of the French Alps, I'm happy to say that my constant belief in the magic survival powers of the great Cournouze mountain seems to have paid off, because the alleged Final Day has dawned and everything's fine, including the weather. On the other hand, the Antipodes worry me greatly. There are rumors on the Internet that every sign of normal humanity in New Zealand has been wiped off the face of the earth, and that only the Hobbit population remains, hidden deep in Middle-earth. As for feedback from Australia, I'm getting no intelligible signals whatsoever from Byron Bay, not even from their flourishing Raelian community. (In an initial version of my remarks here, a regrettable slip of the pen caused me to write "intelligent" rather than "intelligible".) So, I'm forced to conclude sadly that the good old days of whale spotting from the lighthouse, surfing among the sharks and drinking beer in the local pubs are almost certainly a thing of the past. The world will miss you all...

BUGARACH CALLING BYRON: Trying to get through. How many survivors in Byron? Everything normal Bugarach. Extraterrestrial visit this afternoon. Nice fellows.

Byron received extraterrestrial visits? What color? Can we forward you Bugarach extraterrestrials?