I HAVE taken this ledge to my mother’s house for a few days for reasons explained below. The view remains much the same, as in gloomy, but this visit reminds me that news comes widescreen and in a narrow personal squint.

The world cinemascope is still screening the same news, the unreeling horror of what is happening in Ukraine, the lethal sweep of Vladimir Putin’s cruel ambition. And the U-bending insanity of his logic in telling Ukrainians that if they continue to resist his troops they risk the future of their country – “And if that happens, they will have to be blamed for that.”

That’s quite the twisted leap: I am invading your country and obliterating your citizens, but if you resist, everything that happens is your fault.

Narrowing the focus, we see that Boris Johnson has a six-point plan to solve the Ukraine crisis – an improvement, I guess, on a three-word slogan, although none of it seems particular to Johnson. It’s almost as if he said that just so the newspaper headlines would say that he had a six-point plan (which they dutifully did).

The seventh point, unmentioned, is the hope that his past sins and poor behaviour will somehow be forgotten, erased by events. For now, perhaps. But any notion that Johnson has suddenly become a world-class leader will eventually wither under the glare from that big screen.

Besides, the idea that any of our politicians is having a “good war” is deeply distasteful. I tell you who is having a bad war: everyone and anyone in Ukraine or being forced to flee their homeland. Trying to earn political capital from that unspooling misery is far from a good look.

A headline in the Spectator literally said this: “Liz Truss is having a good war.” That is, of course, true if you consider a good war to be a chance for many pointless photo-ops and empty-vessel interviews, in which the Foreign Secretary’s robotic mutterings convey little besides her own perceived importance.

But now we must return to the widescreen cinema club. We interrupt this news to bring you unlikely statements from Home Secretary Priti Patel and Culture Secretary Nadine Dories.

Patel would like to say that she popped over to Poland (poor Poland) and noticed that Ukrainian refugees were fleeing true terrors. All those other refugees and migrants she has demonised and told to go away presumably just fancied a cheeky day out and a boat trip.

As for Dorries, she turned tearful while praising the BBC for the standard of its reporting on Ukraine, after previously berating everything about the BBC and wanting to yank it up by the roots.

All of this and more is to be found filling the big screen. On the smaller screen off to the side is the roll of personal news, the lives we keep on living while worrying about the distant lives of others.

This morning I drove my mother to hospital. She turned 90 two months ago, remains bright as a button, but today she faces an operation, her first medical problem. The news on that front will be clearer by this day’s end.

For now, I wait and worry, eyes flicking between the widescreen of world news and the small screen of personal news.