Random Thoughts on Everything

up, up and away

Just got off an eleven hour flight, and I’m feeling discombobulated.

Why do I live here on this increasingly petty island in the north-west of Europe? It’s a question I have been asking myself with greater frequency in the past 16 months, since October 7.

Yes, my turquoise paradise has been replaced by flat monotone grey. Outside my windows, I see a miserable London sky leached of all colour, and no yellow orb to warm my bones. But it’s not just the weather. Nor the endless cycle of doom laden news. It’s the potholes, the traffic, the drab politics, the roadworks, knife crime, road closures, and temporary lights, the rising antisemitism, angry van drivers, soggy Amazon parcels, gender politics, self service check-outs, pro-terror marches, empty high street shops, long airport security queues, under staffed hospitals, scruffy, overcrowded trains, phone theft, street crime, invisible policing, inept MPs, the BBC, Sky News, Ed Miliband, and the painful reality that ‘never again’ is untrue.

I expect my complaints are the stuffing of middle-class angst. My white privilege, as WFH Gen Z would claim, in its blind or ‘vision impaired’ scramble to become more equal and diverse. *Trigger alert* the Empire has fallen, and with every passing day the UK’s former shine grows dull. For me it’s sad and impossible to ignore the welcome home statistic, that 65% of this week’s global incidents of antisemitism occurred right here in the UK. Formerly salt of the earth Brits have morphed into a humourless post Brexit, post Covid, soup of inefficiency, blame and fury. Football fans unfurl banners of hate without repercussion, homes are burgled whilst police prosecute online posts, oil protestors ruin priceless artworks, university students have apparently gone barmy, and those in power have stopped listening. They who know best, are brazenly dismissive of the too silent majority.

With the exception of J.K Rowling’s outspoken stance on women, and Ricky Gervais, whose comedic fame allows him to joke on any subject. It’s only a masochist (or inept politician) who can risk the backlash of voicing an honestly held belief. And surely it’s only the bravest (or most foolhardy) willing to become comedians now that language is a minefield, and trolling such a fun sport. Authors, terrified of being cancelled, are setting their stories in the past, pre AI, pre social media, pre the questionable mores and fake niceties of the 2020s.

This is however a joyous time to pick from the one hundred plus genders currently available for self-identification. My personal favourite is Xenogender … to be beyond the human understanding of gender. Beam me up Scotty … my suitcase is packed.