Returning from holiday – did I mention I was on holiday? – I’ve hit that wall named reality. Pampered as I was, grilling under a wam, even hot, Canarian sun, I made the mistake of thinking life might always be like this. Of course it isn’t because real life ain’t that way.
I wasn’t oblivious to what was going on at home, back in the dim and distant days when KamiKwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss were running the country (into the ground), because these days you can’t, unless you never look at the internet. Nine days in a relative form of paradise – sun, cheap Estrella, no asthma – rather spoilt me. I completely forgot about the numbing effect of the British autumn, which will become even more numbing and downright depressing from the early hours of Sunday morning when we are forced to turn the clocks back. Christ: it’s dark enough by teatime as it is.
One reason for feeling so flat is that I forgot my own advice on preparing myself for eventualities. For example, if I am speaking at a funeral – something I have done all too often in recent years – I prepare myself beforehand by imagining what it will be like, including possibilities of what might happen. Preparation, when my mind is strong enough to cope, is everything. Leaving our holiday behind, I didn’t think of anything. Now, I’m a little overwhelmed by the dark, the rain, the cold, hearing terrible stories about how the NHS badly let down someone I knew and loved in the final weeks of his life and, oh, Rishi ‘Fucking’ Sunak, a prime minister with more money than God and twice as much as King Charles.
I’d forgotten how gloomy things are back home, as I called it when I wasn’t back home. Inflation is still going through the roof and wages aren’t keeping up. Food banks seem to be the main growing industry in our land. Utility bills are still going to be eye-wateringly expensive and still too expensive for many. The collapsing NHS, underfunded schools, the ongoing disastrous effects of Johnson’s hard Brexit. Reasons to be cheerful? Not many.
I think I’ll get over this pretty soon because compared to some poor people, many of whom I am about to meet when I start working for a local food bank, I’m doing okay. And I suspect I will start to feel better when I’m doing something useful to help desperate people.
But I didn’t prepare. I wasn’t ready for reality. I hadn’t thought beyond where my next ice cold pint of lager was coming from and I certainly hadn’t imagined the grim British autumn, which is pretty stupid on my part.
If you can’t afford a holiday, I don’t mean to rub it in, honest. I’m afraid I think I did rather rub it in but those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.
