This may seem a rather improbable title for a blog at this particular juncture in human history, whilst we descend ever-further into end-times apocalypse, replete with plagues, pestilence, and pub closures (no!) - but I really mean it. And I intend this article to cheer you up. But, I'm afraid I'm going to have to depress you a little first...

It's pretty clear we are on course for an exceptionally challenging winter. The government has already confirmed there will be blackouts of indeterminate periods, "mainly", they say, affecting businesses, but they "may" affect households as well (that means they will, and probably on a very large scale). Scores of households already can't afford their energy bills and so are being thrown into impossible dilemmas regarding "heating or eating" - or stopping paying altogether, and taking all the risks concomitant to that (which I don't advise, by the way - what I've done and what I recommend is to cancel your direct debit - now, not on October 1st - and set up a standing order instead, paying what you can. I can't promise this strategy is risk-free - what is? - but it seems the best option of all of them and the least likely to have undesirable consequences).

Even more concerning is the risk to larger business premises, which don't even have the protection of a price cap on energy bills that households do, which is a looming and imminent threat to businesses up and down the land and, therefore, to all they employ and provide for. So many small and independent businesses were already struggling - especially after lockdown - so what will be the consequences for them of ever-spiralling energy bills that are literally limitless, combined with a dramatic drop in footfall because everyone's staying in to save money to pay their own energy bills?

(That's why I advise everyone to go to the pub - or café or coffee shop etc. - as often as possible, to use their power and heat - therefore saving on your own - whilst buying a drink or a snack to help them keep going.)

These energy price hikes will affect all large venues that cater to the public (pubs, restaurants, leisure centres, theatres, gyms), but what I find particularly sinister is that the government is subsidising libraries and museums to serve as "warm hubs" to members of public who can't afford to heat their own homes. These establishments have now been given handsome bursaries to fit themselves with the kind of furniture that makes them suitable venues for people to spend many hours in at a time.

Meanwhile, cafés, coffee shops and pubs - already equipped to be comfortable, warm, social venues where people can spend hours at a time, and that have the wherewithal to provide hot meals and drinks, too - have been given nothing.

Why subsidise environments that are not designed to host as alternative "houses" to people, over those that are designed to be precisely that? "Pub" is literally shorthand for "public house". Struggling hospitality businesses could have received subsidies and incentives from the government to stay open longer, and have been supported to offer subsidised hot drinks and hot meals, for people who can't afford to heat and eat, all at a fraction of the cost of paying libraries and museums to totally alter their infrastructure in order to enable them to do this (and they still don't have the facilities to mass-produce hot meals and hot drinks that hospitality venues do).

So why has this happened? It's for the same reasons there is an (engineered) cry for the energy companies to be nationalised. It is because museums and libraries are "public" (state) owned facilities, and cafés and pubs are not, so, more and more money is going to be ploughed into these state-controlled facilities, and funnelled away from independent ventures, to engineer the collapse of all independent enterprise and full state control of everything, which has always been the goal. However, when I say "state-controlled", I don't mean a national state - I mean a global one.

The purpose of this winter is to fully destroy altogether any remaining faith in national governments, who are - by design - behaving in a staggeringly incompetent way which is going to make life near-impossible for millions over the winter. Millions will lose their businesses and livelihoods as energy costs become impossible to meet. Millions will become seriously ill and die from not being able to heat their homes or get enough to eat. Many more will die from complications from the "vaccine" (a time-delayed poison which whistle-blowers always said would start to do the most damage at the 2-3 year point, which begins this winter), and the horrendous delays in getting an emergency ambulance, given the "inexplicable" rise in heart attacks and strokes. Most hospitals will break under the pressure.

That all sounds pretty dire and it is meant to. This winter is meant to be the most challenging period any of us have ever experienced, to weaken us physically and break us psychologically, in order to bring us to our knees so we are desperate and begging to be saved - having completely lost all faith and trust in our governing institutions who allowed this horror to unfold.

It is only when a people is this demoralised, this desperate, this broken, that they will accept the "saviour" One World Government as a solution to quaint and antiquated ideas like national sovereignty and democracy.

So what can we do? We can't stop the already soaring energy prices, we can't stop the planned blackouts or food shortages, and we can't stop the consequences for the already-jabbed clogging up the hospitals (though there is every reason to believe we can stop them getting another "booster", about which there is huge scepticism). However, this is what we can do: we can adapt to and overcome the challenges, rather than breaking under their weight.

Throughout history, human beings have typically had to deal with terrible loss and adversity, and find a way to bear it and keep moving forward. The relative peace and prosperity we have enjoyed in the West these last seventy years is really unprecedented historically, and it is by design that the ruling classes have waited until now to unleash their perfect storm "dark winter", when they know almost none of us are old enough to remember real struggle, of the types our grandparents withstood and overcame. My own grandfather was nearly murdered by the Soviets at age 25 (his brother was), before enduring several years in a Siberian prisoner of war camp. My grandmother lived through the Blitz in London, and lost her father as a child, followed by her only sibling as a young adult. Yet, they survived, thrived, and built new lives, going on to have three children and four grandchildren - and all these descendants remain alive and well today (my grandfather died in the 1980s, and my grandmother died in 2017, aged 90).

We're not used to these kinds of challenges (and, hopefully, sitting in a cold house eating baked beans from the can won't be quite as bad as a gulag), but that doesn't mean we're not equipped to handle them. Our ancestors did, and much worse besides, and their genes live on in us - if they could survive and thrive, we can, too - and we must (and we will).

Obviously, this winter will be challenging, but challenges and hardship don't only have negative connotations - I'm sure many of us have heard the older generations say something to the general effect of, "what this country needs is a good war!", alluding to the incredible community spirit, sense of purpose, and pulling together, World War Two saw in this country (and in many others). It's no secret our communities have become very fragmented and people very atomised in the subsequent decades, but a crisis galvanises community, and I certainly saw that through the Covid lockdowns, as I'm sure many did.

I moved to Huddersfield, my current location, in October 2019 knowing nobody (except for my marital co-resident, and cat). As of today, I have dozens of like-minded friends in the local area, friends every bit as good as I have ever had (and in many respects, better, because these friendships were forged on profoundly important shared beliefs and values, and not just the fact we used to sit next to each other in Maths, etc., as are the "coincidence" beginnings of most friendships). These friendships were born out of a sense of urgency and necessity and the idea that we are going to need a "tribe" as and when the s**t hits the fan - and now we, and people up and down the country, have that. I didn't have it before and therefore I feel this is something to be very cheerful about indeed.

It may sound very counterintuitive, but the reality is - whilst I have certainly had moments, even days, of uncertainty and despair - I've probably never been happier than over the past two years, and that is largely because for the rest of my life preceding that, I had a very strong sense of foreboding - an indefinable anxiety that "something bad is going to happen" - that the world we were living in and all it's seeming opportunities and freedoms were not "real", somehow, not durable, and it was all going to be snatched away. It was this enduring sense that led me to predict the pantomime plague in April 2019.

So when this all happened - when the gaudy decorations came tumbling down and we were faced with the stark reality of the predicament we were really in - I felt a profound sense of relief, because, there it was, that "bad thing" had finally happened, so I could stop worrying about it happening, and start fighting back.

This is when I started forging important connections and getting active, including composing a collection of over sixty letter templates, used by me and hundreds (or maybe thousands) of others, to challenge test, mask, and vaccine demands, and that have (whilst not effective in every case) had real and tangible results, including enabling a little boy to get his urgent cataract surgery, allowing people to visit elderly relatives in care homes, and so on.

Obviously, these kind of comparatively small victories are not on par with "toppling the New World Order", but the problem I think 'the truth community' often faces is being unrealistic in their ambitions, which is a recipe for disaster, depression, and breakdown. I wish we could topple the New World Order and I certainly don't believe the overlords will ultimately "win" completely (as long as we remain unbroken, they haven't won) - but I'm also realistic about what we can likely achieve, and evidence has repeatedly shown that the road to a generally happy and fulfilled life is for there to be a good general match between your expectations and your achievements. If you, for instance, are an aspiring thespian, and your expectations are that you will become a rich, famous movie star, but you end up working in a shop and doing some am dram in the evenings, you are likely to become depressed and unfulfilled.

But if you reframed this, and saw what a powerful impact you can make to your local community, what a fantastic service it is providing well performed, affordable productions, and how much fun you can have making said productions - and that being a rich, famous movie star probably isn't that desirable anyway, given how most of them end up (drug addicted, disastrous personal lives, prematurely dead etc.) - then you will likely no longer be depressed and unfulfilled, but rather fully immersed in the vibrancy of life (with all the ups and downs, joys and disappointments, that brings).

So I would apply that equally to our current predicament: can we completely halt the wrecking ball the immensely wealthy and well-resourced ruling classes are currently taking to our societies? Very unlikely. I'm all for a miracle, and while I'm doing all I can to encourage people to support local businesses and stop them collapsing (go to the pub!), I'm also realistic enough to know that this winter is nevertheless likely to be a time of mass business closure and struggle for many.

I have faced that stark reality head on, because facing it (rather than living in denial of it) empowers me not to be psychologically annihilated as and when it happens. I will be able to bend - to adjust to this new reality and move forward - rather than break - because I have not intensely resisted and denied reality and so have no tools to deal with bad things when they happen.

I know the future looks in many ways "depressing", but I am not depressed. I wake up feeling quite positive most mornings, because there is so much to do. We have friendships to forge, communities to build, preparing to do, and all the general deeply human work implicit in developing a new future.

The picture accompanying this article is of a splendid little local gem I discovered recently, a beer garden at a local pub. And okay, that pub might, sadly, be forced to close its doors (at least temporarily), but that lush garden will still be there. Those gorgeous views will still be there. Those great people will still be there (well, maybe not there exactly, unless the landlord decides to leave any remaining kegs outside...). The point being, many desirable and delightful features of being alive are going to remain fully intact, despite the malevolent machinations of the overlords.

So, please don't despair, and please do bear in mind there are plenty of reasons to remain cheerful. As they say, the future doesn't belong to "the fittest". It belongs to those who, in a crisis, will not break, but will bend and adapt. So please don't see the challenging weeks and months ahead just as something you have to "survive" - but as paving stones (albeit rather pot-hole ridden ones) to a future in which we can, and we will, thrive.