Thursday January 13th – the garden is steaming, the sun is drying off the rain water. Leaves slip-slide all over the lawn, and Big Ed, a northern guy who chops trees and trims bushes, is coming on Saturday to give us an estimate for a ‘reight good’ tidy up.
I know we should be doing it, after all why use a gardener when you can do it yourself; it’s like hiring `Mary Poppins’ to read a bedtime story. In our defence, we have been afflicted with coughs, colds, Omicron, tiredness, lack of enthusiasm, lack of motivation, lack of will, lack of energy and lack of get up and go since our get up and go got up and went on Christmas Eve.
Today, however, the sun shines. Thankfully it’s cold so I dont have to battle with Climate Change anxiety about the heating up of our planet and our back garden.
2022 has started with much rubbing of hands and secret tittering at Gardengate. The fallen Fat Controller has finally revealed himself to be what we all knew, a self-entitled falsifier of facts. The shabby father of many and husband to her, shows contrition only because he’s been found out. His apology is captured in a bubble of hypocritical spittle. The Etonian has about as much remorse as ‘DOMINIC youdidn’tseethis CUMMING.’
Schoolboy antics of revenge, playground retribution, tit-for-tat retaliation. Vindictive, spiteful malice is at the heart of our Government. As the medja roll out story after story it feels as if us (as opposed to them) are beginning to prise our eyes open to see the truth. PPE providers who are in bed with Members of our elected Parliamentarians who are in bed with business colleagues who are in bed with corrupted politicians who are in bed with whoever they can lay their greedy hands on.
Ok, so I’m an old rebel, but I am also a pensioner who survives on a wing and a prayer. Luckily I have a brother who invested and played a different game to me. He will dip his hands into his deep pockets and help out his younger sister, if need be, but I’m from the bunch of baby boomers that never saved, never imagined life after 70, never bought shares in anything and never saw the end of a career. Now, instead of nestling into gentle retirement playing bowls and eating Sunday lunch in a carvery, our disposable income is spent on red chard, spinach and gas bills.
Yesterday I drove my BMW z3 to the spice shop, bought dates and coriander, a bag of garlic and a packet of smoked tofu. Then I parked in Waitrose’s car park and went down in the lift to reduced grapes, reduced beansprouts and eight cans of beer. It was cold and sunny and I was ready to get home to a cuppa. I returned to BMWz3 sports car and turned the ignition key. Nothing! I turned the key again. Nothing! I loaded five bags of shopping into the boot and onto the passenger seat and called the old git. I wailed. I called the AA and waited to be cut off, which I was. I called them again having had another session of breast beating. The AA told me to sit tight and one of their mechanical angels would be with me at 16.55. They messaged me to say it would now be 17.10. I called home and sobbed my way through a broken monologue.
We have one car which now serves three of us. Good for the planet but deeply frustrating for my mental health. Our neighbours are great but thems to the left where out; thems to the right were working, and the other option had his ansaphone on. Mid conversation the AA man arrived -way earlier than they had said. He took the bag of shopping off the passenger seat and said that the passenger door refusing to open had nothing to do with what he was about to work on. He also warned me that he didn’t think he could fix it. The moon came out and I saw my poor car as a metaphor for my life. Old, knackered, grubby and falling to bits. Both doors open like two arms that had given up. The AA man slid underneath the car pulling out wires and unscrewing thingies. Finally he stretched over the passenger seat and the car started. The immobiliser on the key ring was defunct. The immobiliser was fitted twenty yers ago to stop anybody stealing a brand new shiny silver two seater. Twenty years on, no fucker would want to touch my dented, ancient Beamer, so immobilising the immobiliser was neither here nor there.
The AA man looked at me with an empathetic gaze.
‘This car is OLD’ he said as he put away his torch and tools and told me to go home.
I returned to the cottage freezing and frayed.
And then I watched the news at 6.00, again at 10 and even Robert Peston.
And as the Son of Stanley attempted to cover his tracks I calmed down. It has been said that when Capitalism dies we’ll all go down with it, it has also been said change is inevitable and the only constant. So with a little bit of luck and unlimited optimism, are we now living through the demise of selfishness? Are we about to witness regrowth? Are we watching the wild shenanigans of an obsolete class of beings, doing whatever they can to stay alive.
I do not wish ill will onto Boris and his cronies – well maybe I do – but I am loving that a group of egotistical self absorbed arseholes are at last being seen for what they are – a bunch of spineless, gutless berks who have as much interest in the young and old and vulnerable as I do in the welfare of Andrew the Prince of Hyperhidrosis.
I’m off now to make a coffee, eat two dates and watch the lunchtime news to see what will be revealed today.