Dancing in the Ashes

I was in Habitat the other month, during the closing down sale, filled with some sort of morbid curiosity. I've never really encountered a situation so desperate inside a homeware shop.  People darted in and out with armfuls of cushions, while a van braved some bollards outside to make off with a bed. People were haggling over shelves, and I don't mean the ones you put up at home. I mean the ones inside a shop. The shelves they put things on. Display shelves. Nearby, two urchins rummaged through a box that was turned over to selling Point of Sale plastic display stands. The ones that you slip a sheet of cardboard into to mark 'CLOSING DOWN SALE'.


It was like watching the sack of Rome.

Everything Must Go

Watching the news recently has become an exercise in masochism, with the Doomsday Clock at five to midnight. BBC News used the phrase 'economic Armageddon', a phase so final and definite as to have people actively looking for mushroom clouds. Tesco, the bastion of the highstreet, watched sales slump as the general public decides to live without food. Barretts shoe shop goes into administration, and Thomas Cook look for a bailout. The unemployment figure has reached a point where numbers no longer make any sense and have been usurped by the phrase 'most people'.

So why am I writing this? Is it because I'm magnetically drawn to bad news and enjoy spreading general misery and gloom? Partly. But mainly because I've given up. I have given up so much, I have given up on apathy. What has replaced it is a little bit like sociopathic fascination. Something about the sheer desperation and futility of our current situation has made the entire world into a joke.


Of course, if one man deserved credit for such a hilarious and uncontrolled implosion, it would have to be David Cameron. I've never seen anyone in the world who can manage to look completely serious while kicking a clown in the balls, but David can do that. He has one of those faces.

Seriously, Nick, I don't give a fuck.

This has, of course, been prompted by Cameron's decision to keep us out of anything that would restrict our financial sector and any sort of European Crisis package. Way to go, David, you've killed us all. At least we get to watch it all burn down, laughing like a deranged supervillian. I know that's my plan, anyway.