January Blues

The roller coaster stopped.  It was at the bottom, which is lucky in one way because it would be a bit dangerous to exit a roller coaster at the top of a loop but being at the bottom is a very miserable place to be.  There are so many things to be a bit depressed about at the moment:  It's January.  It's dark.  It's cold. There is a global recession.  We have a conservative government.  Michael Gove is ugly.  Cruise ships hit rocks.  People in Arab countries set themselves alight.  Standard and Poor's are giving lower A level grades.

It all feels so gloomily familiar.  Obviously, it's always cold and dark in January.  My daughter will turn 18 in a few weeks time and I am constantly reminded of how I felt at that age.  When I was 18 there was a conservative government and a recession.  Life felt gloomy.  We had assemblies where we were told that none of us would get jobs and that there was no money for anything.  There were differences.  Instead of being told we needed to work until the age of 68 and beyond we were told that we would have to retire at 50 because there wouldn't be enough jobs for everyone (maybe that's why we feel so cross - a broken promise!).  We also lived with the constant threat of nuclear obliteration but now it's global warming.

I was a geeky teenager.  I read science fiction, revelling in the thought of a post-apocalyptic world.  I sat with my friends, drinking cheap red wine discussing everything that was terrible in the world.  Thinking it was cool, I went on CND marches and stood at Speaker's Corner listening to idiots.  I even threw an egg at Keith Joseph (Michael Gove in 1986) when he visited the college I was studying at.  At the time the government wanted to prove that degrees should only be awarded by 'proper universities' and wanted the Polytechnics to revert to Institutes of Technology and offer Btec-type qualifications.  We were particularly upset about this because it would mean that we were studying at South Hertfordshire Institute of Technology and although it may have been true we really didn't want to have to confess to having achieved a SHIT degree.

I still like to read Science Fiction and maybe some of my gloom is caused by my current impulse choice from the library.  It's called the End Specialist by Drew Magary.  A book about a world where a cure for old age has been found appealed to me for about 3 pages and then I realised I definitely don't want to live forever.  Not least because it all ends rather badly with people being killed and eventually nuclear Armageddon.  Now the book is finished chocolate cake is needed.