Well, I left you lot in charge for 5 years while I grieved and bled and generally tried not to die, and now I’ve gingerly stuck my head above the parapet, let me tell you- you’ve made a right mess of things. This is a list of things that changed i.e. totally disintegrated in my absence. The wine pairing music track this week is Tomorrow’s Going to Be a Better Day by Billy Bragg.
I should say that I wrote this post before 150,000 fascists marched on London at the weekend. I was in Leicester Square that night and it was so deeply upsetting and frightening that I’m still sitting in shock and dismay at the events that I witnessed. I am white and carry all of the safety that comes with that, so solidarity to all the people of colour who are living through this. My MP, Peter Kyle (a man who physically ejected me and Dan from his office last year for supporting trans rights) said about the march that it’s good to see that free speech is ‘alive and well’ and that he ‘wasn’t at all disturbed’ by the racism and violence shown on the day. Quite the take. To be fair he did go on to say that Peter Mandelson is a man of ‘singular talents,’ sadly omitting that one of those talents was being best mates with the most notorious paedophile on the planet.
Right…things that have changed. Buckle up ‘cause it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Eyebrows- simply no longer in the same position on the face as they used to be. They really, really shouldn’t be that high up on your head. It looks silly. Stop it.
Geo-politics- totally fucked, mate. Watched the news this week and Prince Harry meeting up with his grumpy dad was higher up in the running order than Poland declaring that they are ‘closer to military conflict than at any time since World War II.’ Call me old fashioned but I just don’t think that a family feud, however fancy, should outflank the upcoming apocalypse.
Royal Mail- one of our most venerated and oldest institutions was sold to a Czech billionaire by a Labour government last year and bang- the universal service agreement was dead. The re-brand states that we now have to call it simply ‘Post Office’, and the new ads feature sinister M3GAN-coded animated dollies who I fear’s only desire is to bring on the singularity and enslave us all.
Faeces- we all shit everywhere now, apparently. It started on the beaches during Covid times. Previously it had been seen as…well…ill mannered to…you know…actually defecate in front of strangers in a public place, but hey ho, somehow the memo got lost in the post (probably by ‘Post Office’) and now it’s- literally - fill yer boots time. Last week I swam in the Mixed Ponds at Hampstead Heath. I was happily breaststroking away when a posh couple in their 20’s swam past me. She said ‘do you want to swim to the end?’ and he replied ‘no, I’m really weak today because I’ve got such bad diarrhoea.’ WHHHHHAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT THE ACTUAL FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK? I made an involuntary whelp and the woman turned round to me and huffily said ‘what’s your problem? He’s not doing it now.’ So many questions, really so many, but the first two that sprang to mind were: ‘how do you actually know that he’s not shitting himself at this very moment’ and ‘why are you defending an adult man who is so mind-blowingly inconsiderate that he doesn’t see the issue with muck-spreading his toxic effluviant into an untreated pond?’ Gurl, have some self-respect. If you think this is a UK problem then try not to gag at this VICE article on the amount of people who shat themselves in NYC’s public poo(l)s this year. We are all doomed.
The worried well- see ‘Faeces’ above. People simply won’t stop telling me about their ZOE-induced blue poo. Please do note that there is honestly nothing I would like to hear about less than your My Little Pony ca-ca. I especially don’t want to hear about it when there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. As an ongoingly very ill person this self-obsession is hurtful and just plain weird. Also, I hate to break it to you, but these wellness apps are not your chum. They have a vested interest in keeping you looking at yourself and not at what’s going on in the wider world. While you are obsessing over your REM cycle, step count, BPM, calories, glucose spikes, blood oxygen levels and GPS position they are taking over everything. When people own your data, they own you. Why are you selling yourselves so cheaply? The sheer levels of bovine passivity and willing self-infantilisation in this country has shocked me as I have emerged blinking into the light, post-shielding. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, kids- while you pretend that the world isn’t burning and stare at your pores in your illuminated magnifying mirror they are laughing at you- well, laughing then dismantling democracy. Stop trying to optimise yourselves and start optimising the planet.
Out of office: it’s gone! Disparu! When was it deemed not useful to tell people when you aren’t working? I have a theory that it’s because late-stage capitalism has blurred the lines of home and work so successfully that we can no longer tell the difference between the two. It really is useful though, so can we bring this one back, please?
Trains- what a hellscape. I recently went on an Avanti journey so dystopian that the case is currently with the Rail Ombudsman. I think the highlight of my trip was when I very nicely asked the attendant (in 1st class because I thought it might be less brutal in terms of my health) to wipe down the filthy table because I am immuno-compromised and she responded by screwing up the paper placemats, throwing them in my face and walking off swearing. Avanti’s contempt for disability has been nothing but grotesque throughout the process but it’s good to know that the bosses are joking in presentations with hilarious slides such as “Roll up, roll-up get your free money here!” detailing how the taxpayer is bankrolling Avanti to the most ludicrous extent. They ended with “And here’s the fantastic thing! – if we achieve those figures, they pay us some more money – which is ours to keep – in the form of a performance-based fee!! Sound too good to be true?! Well on this occasion it isn’t – it’s the absolute truth!” End of days stuff.
War of the Worlds starring Ice Cube- if you know you know. If you don’t know, consider this your warning.
Botox/deep plane facelifts/Ozempic- tightening, shrinking, mutilating, injections, poison. As a properly ill person I simply can’t conceive why you would choose to maim yourself on a regular basis. I would do anything not to be in pain, so the fact that you don’t have to endure operations and procedures but do it anyway really boils my piss, to be honest. I know that I’m supposed to judge the system of patriarchy rather than the individual but I’m about to say something really unpopular. Within these awful, powerful, multi-billion dollar destructive societal structures we all still have agency- you still have a choice. Please stop renting out your own face and bodies to the system. Own yourself, rise up and have the courage to be yourself. Laugh, age, crinkle, sag, eat. I know you can do it! And whilst you’re enjoying your Hob-nob have a think about how the hell they managed to sell women on having a face that is no longer able to express joy, anger, sorrow, loss, happiness or anything at all. The levels of control inherent in this face-freezing are so Handmaid’s Tale it should be laughable. (Sadly, we wouldn’t be able to tell if you were laughing.) Being trapped in your own death mask should be the nightmare, not the goal. Mobilise/help/upflift/volunteer/listen- basically, beautify your souls first, worry about your face later.
Wifi on the tube- this one was a shock. The London Underground used to be one of the only places where you were legitimately totally uncontactable, thereby freeing us to daydream, read, flirt, stare into space, chat and generally chill. Last week I looked right down the packed tube and I was the only person not on their phone. It was silent and everyone was so utterly dead-eyed that I had a little panic attack! It was like the zombie apocalypse.
A pause at this point to ask- do I notice all this stuff more because I have been totally out of action? Do you feel like a frog that has been slowly boiled; that it all just crept up on you so inexorably that it feels normal, or are you folk as freaked out as I am?
Manners- gone, baby, gone. I’ve been shoved over so many times that I may as well declare myself a pavement inspector. If you are able-bodied I doubt you realise how many times a day you swerve to avoid someone barrelling into you. As a person with mobility issues, I don’t have that luxury and so down I go. I also reserve a special place in hell for those people who look up from their phones in complete surprise and annoyance when they find you directly in front of them on the pavement. It’s a pavement. In a city. There are other people in cities. You did the same thing five seconds ago. You simply cannot be as surprised as you were the last time…and the time before….and the time before….and the time before.
Runners- a whole post coming on their profound levels of feckless cuntery. Yes, ‘not all runners’, but frankly, a lot of them.
Responsibility: we recently took Della the Rescue Hound to the vets. I said that walks had become quite stressful as people don’t seem to be able to control their dogs anymore. He sighed, really sighed, and then told us that many owners come in and tell him that their dogs have ADHD and autism so feel that they can’t possibly be held responsible for the fact that their prestige sports dog has just ripped a large chunk of flesh out of the arm of an unsuspecting toddler in the park. Come on people- just take little Loki to puppy school. Chatty GPT hasn’t helped. It’s so busy reflecting its owner in the Narcissian pool of self-obsession that people are now writing prompts to stop it from over-flattery. If you have to write the words, “from now on, do not simply affirm my statements or assume my conclusions are correct. Your goal is to be an intellectual sparring partner, not just an agreeable assistant’ you should feel in your bones that it’s not your friend. If you do have to say this to a mate, please take some time to reassess your life choices up to this point.
Gobbing- so much flob on the pavements. (Why can no one control their bodily fluids anymore?!) I took my lovely kid to the West End recently and they came out of the toilets saying that a man stood over the basins, footballer-snotted out of both nostrils, gobbed into the sink and then just left. Les Mis just didn’t have the same allure after that- can you hear the people gob, gobbing the gobs of angry men etc.
Women can kill too- call me cynical but I did suspect that #metoo might have some..ahem..consequences for women. The sheer proliferation of WOMEN CAN BE JUST AS VIOLENT AS MEN ACTUALLY storylines in TV dramas has given me the giggles. In ITV’s Ridley, every single killer in the series turned out to be a ruddy woman. What are the odds? (Spoiler - very low.) If you want to hear about the actual statistics on who commits most violence in the UK then do give Kate Nash’s brilliant song, Germ, a listen.
Old and vulnerable people- Over 230,000 people died in the UK the recent Pandemic. Nearly a quarter of a million people. And yet absolutely no one talks about it: I sometimes feel like I fever-dreamed the whole thing. If I do try and talk about my experiences, people shuffle uncomfortably and hotfoot to another subject as quickly as they can. It’s so lonely. The first thing I noticed when I came out of shielding was how few old and disabled people were out on the streets. Do you know why? Because hundreds of thousands of them died. It feels so bloody sinister that no one talks about this. This is yet another Jedi mind trick of late-stage capitalism- don’t let this be you.
Waitrose – Still full of people who have effectively won the lottery of life but who without fail look utterly fucking miserable and massively peeved. Ah well, good to know that some things will never change.
Phew. If I sound angry, I suppose it’s because I am. We can do and be so much better than this. If you have something to say on the terrifying slip into hyper-individualisation and the general enshittification of the UK then please do add them in the comments. But then- once, we’ve got it off our chests - let’s talk about ways we can all do something about it. I’m not going down without a fight. No pasarán!
