Clarence Penhaligon’s descent into “The Great Silence” began on a Tuesday, when he calculated that reading a single headline about the housing market aged his skin by approximately three weeks.

That was just one aspect of the daily negative news barrage about the economy, climate change, wars, maple syrup shortages, tariffs on everything, and the constant threats and insults from the presidential lunatic south of the border.

To preserve his health, Clarence decided he had to disconnect.

He didn’t just delete his social media; he hired a specialist to scrub his digital presence so thoroughly that even Google started suggesting he might be a fictional character.

He replaced his smartphone with a 1998 Nokia brick that could do nothing but play Snake and receive texts from his mother. But even then, bad news crept in. His mother would text things like: “Hope you’re safe from the global butter shortage!”

Clarence........

© Peterborough Examiner