Last time I wrote one of these pieces our riverbanks weren’t garlanded with bog roll. The Home Office wasn’t breaking its own rules – and other people’s – and describing our situation wasn’t talking the country down. I did notice our sharknado of calamity, but was distracted by catching Covid before the vaccine. My post-viral thyroid gland began gleefully destabilising what had been a perfectly acceptable normality. I called it Nigel – after Farage. I spent 18 months being so sleeplessly speedy that I finally asked a wise friend if this was, perhaps, like being on cocaine but without the fun. He assured me cocaine is also without the fun and suddenly Westminster’s resentful paranoia and spite made a lot more sense…
I also had the thing thing. Did I mean to write cupboard? Did I mean brick? Nouns became random – including the noun noun. For a writer, this was less than ideal. I’ve improved, but when I glimpse Robert Jenrick and think bespectacled semi-sentient buttock, I do briefly wonder if I mean that. He usually provides a helpful clue – for example, by declaring the defining characteristic of housing for refugees should be cruelty. Still, life remains hard to grasp – possibly because legions of information warriors are profitably firehosing threats at me 24/7. And I have brain fog. You know – thing thing.
