Hold hands, Dear Readers—yes, I have it, and it’s a bit of a bleeding but increasingly illiberal column—I fully intended to use this column to lower the temperature of our national debate. Pour oil into troubled, slippery sewer waters. Do not butter the burning feeling of injustice.
But when I woke up this morning, I realized that I was suffering, truly suffering, from the gluten-free diet. I don’t know if you’re aware, but GFD stands for “Generalized Anger Disorder.” You too? Ha. What were the chances?
If you’re as bothered by Meghan Markle’s ginger jam as I am, I guess it’s pretty high. I don’t know why, but every time I come across her American Riviera – Cat’s Whiskers/Baby Head Smell – Orchard brand, I want to bite a pillow.
Now that you’ve brought a limited edition strawberry jam (50 jars handmade and given away to a select group of influencers), I’m afraid you might have an aneurysm. Her. Only. For this reason. FOR THIS REASON. Annoying.
At least I’m here to let Montecito-sourced soft fruit live rent-free in my head, which means the joke is on me. I wish I could laugh. Instead, I groan in pain at the insignificance of it all.
Downsizing means that every time I buy a new piece of jewelry, the latch is so small that I need a neurosurgeon trained in computer-assisted manipulation to open and close it.
My new pool pump arrived without a plug; Something even the Freddo Index can’t explain. Olive oil is so expensive now that I sauté veg in La Mer face cream – £2,200 a jar, of course, but it keeps my courgettes enviably moist.
I’m no economist, but I have a feeling that when the Office for National Statistics next announces the basket of goods and services it uses to calculate inflation, that basket will no longer include vinyl records, rice cakes or even cheese and onion air packets. This included chips. I have a hunch it will be empty except for a bunch of car tires.
Who can keep changing their tires when our roads are so full of potholes that Netflix has apparently ordered a series called ? Goodyear Badyear It’s based on six ordinary families trying to make it to an out-of-town supermarket before their Bridgestone falls apart.
Nothing works, especially the parts of the NHS that rely on years of waiting in queues. The social care sector is collapsing before our eyes and I still struggle to understand why 10 years ago I had a better mobile signal in the tropical rainforests of Uganda than I did in Somerset.
How are we supposed to upgrade anything when you can’t even guarantee Wi-Fi on the train? But our politicians are too busy whining about things that don’t matter, in a cynical and calculated attempt to distract us from what matters. Anyone interested in selling Angela Rayner’s townhouse? Really?
The sacking of Conservative MP Mark Menzies for allegedly soliciting party funds to pay “bad people” late at night is absolutely stunning. Parliament houses are not like that. With apologies; I grew up in a place like this and it was lovely with a downstairs toilet and all, but still this dull, disgraceful inquiry is a red (haired) herring that reflects badly on the Tories who have it very much to themselves. fish to fry.
Not only do they exhaust our patience, they also waste the police’s time. Aren’t there bike thefts the Old Code should have ignored and hate crimes it should have pursued?
I feel my GFD anger growing at the lack of humility and responsibility with which the Conservatives continue to whine about winning the election. What would they actually do if they won?
Can you imagine the terrible, silent silence that No 10 would fall into if they did this? It’s almost worth voting Tory to see who faints or vomits first as Liz Truss drives the Estonian tank onto the rose garden lawn and the bloodshed begins again.
Meanwhile, north of the border, the SNP has officially gone out on a limb, asking young children to become LGBT allies. Or maybe it’s a BLT? I haven’t lived there in a while but I believe the diet is still pretty terrible.
Especially when trans nonsense is being forced down everyone’s throats by a group of extreme activists. Sorry, did I say extremist? I meant the lunatics and vagabonds to whom the nationalists sold their integrity with the promise of youthquake votes in the next referendum.
The problem is that by then these wrong-headed idealists will have grown up, realized they have the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe, and will have been duped enough to embrace the misogynistic myth that a biological man can be a woman and there will be no Hogmanay fireworks in Edinburgh. Become a patch on pyrotechnics. Cue the gender bonfire of beliefs.
I can continue. Generalized Anger Disorder is as follows; the cost of stamps, the fact that I can’t get my prescription drugs from the pharmacy, that poor bastard who did 20 years of service and then bought a sack from Sainsbury’s for a few bags of half centimeters for life. from a night shift. The smell of electronic cigarettes.
I’m afraid I’m offended. The only thing that can heal me now is Japanese art. kintsugiWhere liquid gold stitches were used to repair damaged vessels. But I suspect it will take something much rarer and more valuable to fix me. I need balm for my soul.
Sorry to ask, but does anyone out there have a batch or two of handmade Montecito jam?