Is there any normality left around?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gradually, but only gradually News is creeping up the screen on my Guardian mobile app, so that my initial shudder as I am forced to consider (and relish) the length of the queue to see the coffin of the late Queen is gradually being superseded by things of somewhat more immediate import, like how we are going to survive the winter without shedloads of debt.

     I realise that Monday will however be a day swamped by full and exhausting coverage of the Funeral, and I am sure that I will not be exempt from a full-scale broadcast here in Catalonia.  When I fled the UK in the summer of 1981 to escape the supine coverage of The (first) Marriage of the present King Charles III, I made the mistake of going to the US of A where, believe it or not, there was greater coverage of The Marriage in NY than there was in London!  I spent my time telling those gushing Americans who congratulated (!) me on being British and therefore having a special relationship of with that doomed relationship that I was a Republican – thought not, I hastened to add a Republican in the American sense!

     I sincerely hope that after Monday, things will get back to some sort of normality where the destructive and vicious policies (if they are worthy of that epithet) of the Conservative government can be considered and shown to be the worthless pieces of selfishness that they so clearly are, to anyone outside the Cult of Neoliberalism!

     If the astonishing dedication of certain parts of the British population in standing in line for umpteen hours can be defined as in any way positive, then I suppose I would have to hope that something of the same dedication is given to the more pressing problems facing the population that the death of the unelected head of state.

     Talking of American Republicans, one commentator pointed out that the fixation with trying to ban abortion shown by many on the right demonstrates a concern for the unborn baby right up until it is actually born, then the anti-abortionists demonstrate not a jot of concern for the health of mother or baby.  Pro-life seems to be concerned with the unborn, as soon as there is a live and kicking human being in the world, the concern of those fanatics seems to fade away.

     I only hope that the dedication and respect that people have clearly shown to a corpse, can be extended to the living after the Queen has been laid to rest in Windsor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     The number of food banks that a wealthy and developed country like Great Britain has is a disgrace.  Charities that run these food banks have pointed out that with rising prices they are not going to be able to cope with rising demand.  The Tory government has systematically de-funded social services, so that the winter of 2022-2023 is going to be one of deprivation and distress.  I hope that the spirit that drove so many people to give up their time to wait in a queue will recognize that there is another pressing reason for them to devote themselves to a higher and living cause.

 

     Support your local food bank or volunteer if you can! 

     If everyone gave the time that they spent queueing or gave the equivalent amount that their time was worth in a donation to the food banks, then I would commend their concern.

The Coming Storm

 

 

          

 

 

 

 

 

Are people in denial?  Do they really think that the winter is going to be just another season?  Why isn’t there much more outrage at the threat of heat/food/accommodation poverty that IS going to take out a chunk of the population not only in the UK but also here in Catalonia?

     It is easy in an affluent seaside resort like one in which I live to see little evidence of deprivation.  The shops are open and seem to be doing well, people are coming in their drove to the beaches and exclusive new development along part of the beachfront is full steam ahead.

     And I suppose that is part of the point.  If you have money then much of the hand to mouth poverty is going to pass you by. 

     Am I going to stop plonking my bum on my expensive opera seat for the next season?  No.  Not yet. 

     But do I notice that even casual spends in the supermarket now always seem to be 100 euros and above? 

     Yes.  50 euros used to be enough to fill my tank, now it comes nowhere near.     My rent will be increased by the cost of living rise in percentage terms; my income will not.  If I wish to continue my present standard of living, then my pension will have to be augmented by dipping into my savings.  I tell myself, that savings are there to be used not to be mindlessly horded – as if I have ever had wallet that didn’t have scorch marks on it from the money burning its way through!

     I am by no means rich, but I also do not want to plead poverty.  I am aware of the increasing costs of everything and acutely aware of the diminution in the adequate provision of those social services that I have paid for throughout my life through taxes etc.

     My expectations (as a complacent Baby Boomer) are for my path through life to be relatively smooth (free education up to university level; job for life; pension; health care etc.) and I have little to complain about when I look back.  But the future is different.  Fixed income and rising costs are not good companions – and as I am reliant on my pension, government talking about the difficulties of maintaining the present levels of payment and then talk of different rates and speculation about not keeping to past rules are all things that concentrate the mind.

     The crisis of Covid was, while it was going on (and as long as you were careful, and lucky!) a fairly placid disaster.  Stuck at home, washing your hands like a fully conscious Lady Macbeth, finding ways to stay sane and waiting for things to get better.  The worry was not paying for things, but rather getting your hands on them.  It was almost as if time and the economy were in abeyance.  It was a period of waiting and hoping for something not to happen.

     That was then and this is now.  The idiocy of Brexit and its inevitable deleterious consequences; the catastrophe of the pointless invasion of Ukraine; the failure of normal politics; the lingering after-shock of Covid; the stuttering and virtual collapse of social services – a catalogue of horror and despair. 

     Yet the sun is shining and people are on the beach and in the cafes having a good time.  Because now, during the holidays, the summer holidays, is not the time to be thinking about the harsh realities that are going to hit, hard, in the autumn.

      In T S Eliot’s much quoted (and more often misquoted) “Human kind cannot bear very much reality” from The Four Quartets, he accurately summarises the tendency for us all to avoid those things that are difficult to take in or accept.  We like our dystopias and Armageddons to be narrative devices in stories or films rather than what’s going to happen in the next few months.

     We are going to have to bear it!