A Chimney Sweep's Story

Yes, I've been lost in the flue for ten days, or so. Or as we call it these days, influenza. But there's been just as much Sooty and Sweep as ever, with the hand of Harry appropriately inserted.

So, being condemned to watching more Bonkers breakfast TV than usual, the pantomime lunacies have seemed even more exaggerated than before. Shed loads of people wearing short sleeves, shorter skirts and light weight business suits have sat there every morning investigating the iniquities of energy poverty elsewhere in the country, without the slightest embarrassment that they themselves are sweating in an overheated studio. 

To be fair to them, however, half the sufferers interviewed at home also seem to think wearing t-shirts in a cold snap is rational too. 

In general, the endless catalogue of miserable stories does make me wonder (quite seriously) whether these programmes are having a significant impact on the nation's collective mental health. It's a form of unrelenting masochism, where the world is represented as a dystopia of death, illness, crime, economic problems, racial tension and war. Only the hysterical sports presenters and booming weather forecasters occasionally threaten the monotony of this purgatory.

At least the weather is good and we've won the World Cup (sic)....

On the home front, our DIY neighbour is just starting his fifth year of modernising his home. There is still no heating system and he wanders about rolled in a duvet. On the other side, the 30 year old unemployables are spending their nights screaming obscenities at their game machines. Outside, a man spends five minutes every night, shouting his mouth off while his barking dog defecates in our gateway. He is such a crazy mixture of unintelligible Geordie phrases, four letter expletives, and ingrate animalism that I can barely believe I am still in the 21st century.

This country is in a mess.

Try not to think about it....

Or even better, start to.