We shut the curtains on the hot and burning world in the week after Christmas. Avoiding the supermarket, eating leftover pavlova from the fridge, we turned on the TV in search of streamed fiction to take us away from endless updates about the inferno: the suffering animals, homeless humans and corrupt politicians.
Our 16-year-old son was starting to question the point of living, arguing he should be allowed to get drunk on New Year’s Eve ‘because it’s the end of the world anyway.’
