Blain’s Morning Porridge, April 7^th 2026 – Reflections on a morning after the night before….

“You can get along without money, you can lose your dividends…”

We think we know the patterns – how markets resonate and repeat. But…. Do we? Every so often the Earth’s polarity shifts – but its never happened in recorded history so we don’t really know. Every so often the World’s basis changes. Make merry while we can. Enjoy what is real. The rest is just numbers. You are measured not by the digits on your bank balance, but by the numbers of your friends.

Link to Podcast

It is July 1914.

I have what may be the worst hangover in recorded human history. We had the very best day ever, yesterday.

Easter Monday in the back garden with our very best friends. The barbies were fired up: Blain’s Slow Pork bites, Chipotle Salmon and the ultimate proof that God exists: Herb Crusted Yogurt-Marinated Lamb Chops. Hugs and kisses as we told each other how wonderful the wines were (an Alberino and a Super Tuscan by Antinori) and as evening fell we were drinking them by the case full! Inevitably the laws of demand and supply caught up. Soon there were none left and the darker recesses of the cellar were explored.

It was a party to celebrate nothing in particular except friendship and the sheer exuberant joy of it. We were deep into California Reds as Artemis II rounded the Moon and headed back towards the Blue Marble. The music was 1970-80s, the love, the bonds and shared memories were genuine… and I think we might have recited the whole of the Top Gun script from memory. Southy, Darren and I solved the mysteries of the universe a couple of times.

I do not “feel the need for speed” this morning. Alka-Seltzer has been consumed.

It was the best of times.

This morning…. Do we face the worst of times?

Cold, hard reality approaches like an accelerating panzer division storming through the Ardennes. We can’t avoid the coming stramash. The £2 litre of Diesel is upon us. 39 days of Disruption have consequences. The headlines and what they imply – the end of Nato, stagflation, and the rest – are bruises erupting across our faces as the punches start to land.

The Americans are celebrating the recovery of one single God-Squad Colonel as the greatest feat of martial prowess ever. The guy got shot-down. It’s called war. In the cold, hard light we look at the photos of the scorched wreckage of two Special Forces Fat-Alberts, the lost Warthog, the four lost helicopters, and remember the Persian desert in 1979. We shake our heads in disbelief.

Who is fooling who? If this is victory – what will defeat look like?

Those of us who know… know we are not only unprepared for what may follow… but in denial – which is not just a river in Africa. Whitehall looks calm on the surface, but below there is furious catch-up paddling as the tectonics of our future start to twist

What was is over. There is a widening rift. It deepening with every twisted, angry, malevolent comment the President makes. His nation is a’dither. The fools follow him blindly. The wise men look, in vain, to the laws, the courts, to the Constitution, the holy writ of democracy, hoping their faith in words written 250 years ago will restore common sense, decency and direction. Sadly, words are just words. They are faded ink on old paper. History resonates. Nations decline, Empires arise from the ashes – and fall.

And so it comes. The world faces tumult.

America thinks its immune. They have oil. They have AI. They have the fantabulous US Navy, the USAF, and the American Army. They have it all.

Over here..? Not so much. My chum who leads tanks tells me his regiment, with a history that was storied before America was even a thing, is using APCs that are older than most of his troopers grandfathers.

This is what happens at the end of an age and on a hungover Tuesday. We suddenly wake up from a dream to the nightmare reality. So we fool ourselves. We believe seven implausible things before breakfast. We believe things never change, forgetting we are the present because our forebearers swept the previous past away decades ago.

Prepare for shocking change.

At best it might be disruptive inflation. Markets will wake up. Millions will likely lose jobs, their livelihoods, their homes and their future. The already broken structures of decaying welfare and health services will simply stop pretending to cope. We will cling to hope and to gold – forgetting you can’t eat either.

At worse it will be terrible war. Not the sanitised version we know it from films and TV, but gory, tragic, horrible and visceral. Where there are no winners.. only losers. No Dambusters. No Battle of Britain. No Band of Brothers. Just nasty, brutal drone borne death and missiles raining destruction. The Bomber will always get through.

Financially? You really don’t want to know… No. You really don’t.

And in a ballroom in a ruined city someone will uncover a statue… upon it will be these words…

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

On the other hand… “Things are never as bad as we fear, but seldom as good as we hope..”

Normal service tomorrow…. If the headache pills work…

Bill Blain

Author of the Morning Porridge
CEO Windshift Capital
Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital