I’ve watched quite a lot of combat footage from Ukraine. I’ve seen many people die horribly. War is neither noble nor just, though it is sometimes justified; it is, though, a great bloodsoaked machine that consumes all in its path indiscriminately.

Every day now that something minor goes wrong in my life or I come up against some trifling inconvenience, I think to myself, At least I am not being hunted by drones on some Ukrainian battlefield. And my day seems vastly better after that. I have a great life in comparison and in absolute terms. I will not die pointlessly and brutally, forgotten, in some farmer’s field south of Kharkiv.

That is something to be grateful for.