November 8th.

We have a NAD STEREO INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
A DENON CD PLAYER a
SONY DIGITAL RADIO and a
FOSTEX GRAPHIC Equalizer.
They stand one on top of each other under a shelf of games and two shelves of CD’s which stand on top of loads of large gardening books and the landline which stands on top of four more shelves of CD’s.
Remember my husband is an old musician with a penchant for good sounds and the dawter, also a muso, has nuanced hearing. If it’s not loud and clear then you can go jump in the lake.

If you turn the NAD and DENON on then you can play any number of CD’s. We have shelves and shelves of music – alphabetically placed so Bach is placed on top of Bob Dylan. If you walk across the sitting room there’s a book shelf I bought from ‘Help the Aged’ that has everything from Native American drumming to blousy Ballades from Chopin – we have everything from Brahms and Liszt – whether you are sober or not.
Those three electronic boxes, which sit on top of each other next to an armchair next to a shelf stacked with Tarot, Nordic Runes and Hopi Animal Cards, I have just been told, are practically obsolete.
Instead of a tower of Hifi equipment we are meant to have any number of blue toothed connections; Spotify, Streaming, and Podcasts. Fucking endless applications of cordless crap so today, on 8/11/22 it has become glaringly obvious that all my references are obsolete. All – planned so we have to keep upgrading.
I do not know the difference between my reels, posts and instas, I haven’t got a clue how to download, upload or we-transfer. I am not cognisant with upgrading, zooming or whatsapping.
In short I am not a silver surfer I am a tarnished ‘ancient’ bobbing around in a sea of dated detritus.

My whole life is predicated on obsolescence from kitchen appliances to bathroom requisites. All planned may I add.
My whole life seems to be rewinding back to the fifties when sweets had just come off rationing and small girls were dressed in liberty bodices. A fleecy undergarment, for women and girls invented towards the end of the 19th century as an alternative to a corset. It was mostly worn for warmth. 50’s Britain had no central heating, frost on the inside of the bathroom windows and icicles hanging from the towel rail was as common as flu and Horlicks.

Now should anybody get nostalgic at my upbringing they merely need to turn to Sunac & Co. and before you can say ‘matron bring me my bed pan’, likkle Rishi is with one snort turning us back to Clem and Winnie and their austerical government. For make no mistake, as I write by candlelight with fingerless mittens on my frozen hands, there will be the return of hot water bottles and legless chairs, since most of our furniture will be set alight to keep us warm.

There will be fewer teachers, fewer nurses, fewer postal workers, fewer bin folk, no warmth, no fun. No hope?
Well of course there’s hope otherwise what would be the point of getting out of bed? Of course there is hope hidden in the murky puddles and settling behind the storm clouds. Of course there is hope but it has to be nurtured and believed, it has to be present in all thoughts and dreams. I’m all too aware that holding onto hope is like holding onto a trapeze bar with coconut oil on your palms and a whistling wind blowing around your nether regions threatening to plunge you into the raging torrent below. But if we don’t hold onto hope the leaders of our trembling world will continue to fill their pockets whilst the rest of it and us and the elephants will be damned.

Watch the news once to find out what’s happening.
Watch the news twice and risk high blood pressure.
Watch the news for a third time and you are in danger of losing all hope.

The Trumps and the Putins, the Xi Kingpins and the Victor Orbáns preside over frightened people. Masses and masses of people who have been fed dog turds in the belief that it’s foie gras. Masses and masses of frightened people are sinking in the slime of corruption believing they are being cared for by their elected/unelected leaders.
My room full of obsolete sound equipment is being threatened by the noisy clammer of social media, bitter voices that spew out shite which the uneducated swallow like sperm in a whorehouse. Why even today that arsehole Elon Musk is encouraging a dissatisfied nation to vote for the orange wanker. Nostradamus, Rasputin and Baba Vanga all predicted wars and famine not to mention AI intelligence gobbling up the human race, they forecast humanities climate fatigue and global exhaustion which conveniently for the cunts of the world finds us all burying our heads in the sand.

But we must not despair there are those out there who are fighting on our behalf, glueing themselves to lampposts, risking their lives on motorways on our behalf. We may scoff at their tactics, we may think it’s just theatre that the government are allowing to take our eye off the ball, but they are facing the enemy of the people whilst most of us moan in our cots.

My spectacles broke. I am waiting for my new glasses to arrive. I am living in a world of diminished vision. Ain’t that a metaphor. The idiot at Halifax destroyed the wrong bank card after an incident of hacking, so I have no means of paying for the groceries, rising petrol prices or the builder who is coming for the second time to mend the guttering. The cellar is flooding so the cottage smells of damp and defeat. Ain’t that another fucking metaphor BUT I will not lose hope. I will not lose faith. Even though all around me scream we are doomed. I remind myself that grass grew on Chernobyl through radio active concrete and that fungus evolved which lunches on nuclear fall out. I’m grasping at whatever nettle I can find. It stings but I’m seeking out whatever positive voices I can find. This is from the ‘Talmud’.

BEHIND EVERY BLADE OF GRASS THERE IS AN ANGEL WILLING IT TO GROW.