I’m writing this on a ferry, going to Europe. Why Europe? Because every now and then I like to eat fruit and vegetables that aren’t rapidly self-destructing after hideous journeys and because, in Europe, there’s a chance I can earn bits of money. Many arts workers now find working outside the UK impossible, so I’m very lucky in this regard. Still, HMRC no longer processes the forms that prevent me from paying double tax on overseas earnings. So I pay double tax. Can I claim it back? That remains a bit of a mystery. But you’re welcome, Europe – enjoy your relatively functional infrastructure and wide range of perky tomatoes. Never mind – you say tomato, I say: Are these rancid objects meant to be sweet potatoes, or goblin testicles? Both? Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor of the exchequer, popular Freudian slip and Norman Bates lookalike, is trying to scare the bejesus out of us with a fiscally impossible plan to abolish national insurance. But most of us have no bejesus left to give. If he announced he was issuing woodchippers to every Department for Work and Pensions office so they could just be rid of pesky pensioners, poors and sickies, that would simply feel like an average Tuesday.
But I shouldn’t think of that – too stressful.
Why ferry? Because I’m trying to avoid further damage to our burning-yet-also-drowning world, although I look forward to the age when the remaining species out-evolve us and take over. I’m backing the octopuses and raccoons. Obviously, if I had Musk amounts of money, I would be encouraging humans to breed lavishly so they can work as serfs in my very theoretical Mars boondoggle and/or developing self-crashing, spontaneously combusting, finger-nibbling electric vehicles. As it is, I just donate money to Trees for Life and spend a lot of time on trains. Also I spend a lot of time stuck on trains, waiting for platforms, or stuck on platforms waiting for trains. As you’ll be aware, the button-eyed ideologues who abhor the idea of my owning a share of my own railways are perfectly OK with state ownership of UK railways by other countries eager to claim a slice of Europe’s highest rail fares. Renationalisation in Wales and Scotland, and even in northern England, came too late to prevent French, German, Dutch and Italian rail companies learning that helpless passengers need only be sold tickets. The whole travelling-from-somewhere-to-somewhere-else part of the transaction is a troublesome add-on that can be completely avoided with enough underinvestment and destaffing. And maybe entirely automated trains and stations can be rolled out for human beta-testing to produce real-world data on all resulting injuries, deaths and irreversible fugue states.
I shouldn’t think about any of that either. Stress. Still, in a world of terrorised civilians, bombed kids, expanding hydrocarbon extraction, mass extinction, delirious arms dealers and submerging islands, with every smartphone a shiny little engine of bewildered dread, wilful ignorance and stochastic terror… pondering a squid prime minister or being too digitless to play the piano only creates an opportunity for calming contemplation.
I definitely shouldn’t contemplate the millennialist Christians doggedly ticking all the boxes on their Jesus is a’Comin’ apocalypse checklist in hopes they’ll be rapturing upwards any day now and getting a drone’s eye view on sinners’ and unbelievers’ torments. I also shouldn’t wonder which civilisation-ending volcanic event will obliterate us first: the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, or the Canary Islands going off like a vast fragmentation grenade? When I first saw the king’s most recent official portrait, it felt weirdly familiar. After all, aren’t we all staring blearily into the future while enduring some kind of hideous meatstorm? Plus, there’s a butterfly – nice.
Talking of butterflies, the butterfly-shaped thyroid gland in my throat isn’t helping my stress. I call it Boris – because I’m just trying to exist, but it’s determined to jam its lardy finger on to the maximum-overdrive button with no warning and give me the heartbeat of a hummingbird watching Saw X. I call it Boris after Boris the premier, who inflicted flashbacks on anyone who has ever ended up with a dodgy bloke unpredictably kicking holes in their life. Back in the pandemic, I stupidly didn’t spend my time partying, profiteering, undermining the NHS, encouraging communal dining and generally cheerleading for Team Death. I was wasting my time getting Covid, trying to cook anything I could actually taste, getting to know long Covid and then discovering that my disgruntled immune system was punching my thyroid into hyperactivity. Graves’ disease settled in and merrily undermined the functioning of my personal economy and infrastructure. Over 18 months or so, I developed new hobbies like collapsing, twitching and never, ever, ever bloody sleeping. I began bumbling about witlessly, breaking, burning and forgetting things that were really important – it was all so very, very Tory. My whole endocrine system was starting to behave like an endlessly reshuffling cabinet of rage-tweeting, Nazi-curious incompetents who have always left their moral compass in their other jacket. Even my bouts of urgent digestive dismay just reminded me of our shit-smeared beaches.
Seriously? We haven’t sorted that out yet? We’re all OK with kiddies wading in excrement? What the hell?
Boris Thyroid has been restless of late, amplifying stress almost as much as GB News. Its namesake has oozed out of Westminster and back into journalism, but still my Boris thrums on, restless as a carnivorous butterfly in a blood haze. Sometimes I seem to hear it whisper bizarre scenarios in Suella’s eight-year-old-lisping-Martin-Bormann-quotes voice. Sometimes I feel it grow tiny arms and legs and even tinier rain-soaked trousers, but there’s no effing way I’m renaming it Rishi.
And sometimes, hypervigilant as many of us are for many shitty reasons, I notice the world shifting, old narratives unwinding. Eventually, we’ll hit rock bottom, a point when things could change, when there’s even a chance to make them better. Here’s looking at you, 4 July.
