UK wonders if it's suffering from mass hallucination

Across the UK, many are having difficulty believing that what’s currently happening is real.

There’s a worldwide pandemic that we still haven’t seen the last of. There’s a war in Ukraine, which Putin started just to show how macho he is and prove he can’t possibly be gay, he just likes having photos taken with his top off. And to prove how sane he is, he’s also literally ‘gas-lighting’ Europe, by turning the gas off and on, probably cackling maniacally as he does so.

This year, an unprepared and un-air-conditioned UK has sweated through two 40˚C heatwaves, forcing us to realise that climate change isn’t something that only happens in David Attenborough documentaries.

We’ve endured ultimate omnishambles Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, consoling ourselves that surely, he was just a nightmare which couldn’t last. Then we woke up to the unbelievable reality of Liz Truss as PM, a woman whose brain has less power than a Poundland battery. Her one saving grace is that she can at least dress herself properly and use a hairbrush, unlike her predecessor who lumbered through his premiership looking like a roll of old loft insulation that had fallen out of a skip and been p*ssed on by foxes.

And now the Queen is dead. You don’t have to be a royalist to feel a sense of unreality and shock that she’s gone. Although most of us never met her, she was a constant presence throughout our lives. We saw her face every day on money and postage stamps. She was part of every Christmas, like the turkey dinner and family arguments. Now we have King Charles III as our monarch - a man who talks to plants, sells overpriced biscuits and thinks there is such a thing as 'left-over wine', which can be used to fuel a car. From now on, he’ll stutter and mumble on our TV screens every Christmas Day, and his face will be on the money – although with his ears and nose it’s hard to see how they’ll get it to fit, whichever way he faces.

As winter approaches, rocketing inflation means many will be unable to eat regularly or heat their homes, and even those who can afford to keep the lights on will be unable to because of power cuts. As we huddle together over a candle, surviving on food bank handouts, we must tell ourselves that surely this is just a fever dream, and we’ll wake up soon. Everything will be alright. This is Britain, after all.

Alone Autumn Background - Free photo on Pixabay

Putin to keep Nordic Stream 1 on the back burner

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'No state funeral for Mikhail Gorbachev' say those who owe their existence to him

Like a bear betwixt new fish and old honey, the Kremlin is torn between decrying the fall of the Soviet Union and the since besmirched reality that without his extraordinary intervention, Russia would not exist.

Satisfied that the opening paragraph somehow demonises Russia in a way which means the rest of these words will continue to do so, lazy decadent Westerners have elected to read no further. But those whose hearts lie in comradeship and whose minds are driven by reason will know that without Mikhail Gorbachev, the rise of warmongering Generals in East and West, multiplied by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, would have led to mutually assured destruction as surely as a Mk 1 Lada would start on a frozen Ural morning.

Whether by the choice of irrational men with no vision for a third way, or the unintentional error of the infinitely fallible, America would not exist either. Therefore Americans owe their lives not to the oddly heroic gunslinger Ronald Reagan, but to a mind wise enough to think for them both.

And what of the yapping British lapdog, so delusional as to still believe that its 'greatness' would have somehow overcome the annihilation of the fragile biosphere in which it barely survives alongside all others? Margaret Thatcher said of Gorbachev, 'We can do business together.' Vacuous rhetoric with no tangible meaning further than a preparedness to go to the toilet beside him, perhaps?

Even the humble satirist must recognise that without the actions of one extraordinary human, this life would be nought but dust long blown away, these words never to materialise.

Thank you, Mikhail. For everything. Except these unworthy lines.

Image: Pixabay/4536207