Possible Queues Ahead

What surprises me the most is how really, really cold, absolutely freezing in fact, it is down here. Everyone knows that it’s supposed to be hot. Unbearbly hot.

I’m not a fool and was well aware of the likelihood that this would be my final destination. I packed appropriately and, being a cold blooded being, I was actually looking forward to feeling comfortably warm for a change. But now I find that in fact what I need, and haven’t got, is a thick winter coat and a scarf.

Looking around me it’s clear there are more surprises each of which make me shudder. Without going into detail it’s seems that being in hell is indeed an individual experience. Tailored to the hates and fears of each individual inhabitant it’s Room 101 on a larger scale.

I see others I know for bad (or maybe not so bad depending on your perspective) behaviour grows and festers and it’s rare for infected apples to remain in the singular. Everyone I see is experiencing their own specific underworld which I can observe but not participate in should it result in a more favourable experience for me. There are overlaps of course. I don’t regret my life. It was fun whilst it lasted but already I can tell that the eternal reflection I have just begun will become wearisome soon enough. That and the braying.

I spent my political life as a brayer. After all shouting down the opposition is what it’s all about - for who cares that austerity continues to more negatively impact on the lives of those already most disadvantaged; who cares if one’s party has failed every debt and deficit target it has set itself; who cares that there are four million people on the NHS waiting list and that overworked healthcare professionals are preparing themselves for more crisis to come; who cares that real wages are lower now than they were in 2010; who cares about no commitment to sprinklers in high rise tower blocks; who cares …  - as long as one slings as many insults as possible at those across the dispatch box that’s all that matters.

Yet, maybe not.

For now it seems I’m stuck, not in a pleasantly warm inferno, but rather in a fridge like pit surrounded by brayers to which I am unable to respond. My head hurts already.  But, what the hell, if you’ll pardon the pun, for at least I’ve got a whole heap of money that I squirrelled away in a paradise tax haven. Ohh….