For some days, the news cycle stretched to 24 hours. Things kept happening through the night. Stepping away for a moment meant missing something. But at some point, exhaustion must have stepped in. Nothing happens overnight now.
The days, however, are still moving rapidly. A joke goes around, ‘it’s the most astonishing day in British politics since yesterday.’ An American newspaper responds to speculation about the country breaking up with a portmanteau for a new country made up of just England and Wales: ‘Wangland’. It seems apt. Perhaps citizens could be called ‘wangkers’.
On Wednesday, a piece of music I’ve written is in a concert at a conference. I go despite not having signed up. The piece crashes, but it’s not my fault. One of the performers is stressed by it and tells me later that he was unable to regain his composure. The music is the kind of fast, chaotic, noisy music I usually like and it’s very well played, but I have trouble concentrating on it. The non-stressed performer is pleased by how everything went. Some people have taken good pictures of her playing and she wants to post them to facebook. She looks at everything else going by and feels guilty. ‘How can I post about my good concert when the world is burning?’
We go to the pub. I’ve been trying to cease drinking entirely, but I order a pint anyway. It’s not very good. I bicycle for half an hour to meet my wife in Brighton. We go to the Vegetarian Shoes shop. I had been planning to get new trainers, but I also get steel capped boots. I say I may need them. My wife thinks I am being silly. I don’t know.
One of the PM candidates is a long-standing opponent of both immigration and human rights. I feel like a time may be coming shortly where I have very little to lose. I can’t tell if I’m being overly dramatic. Things are starting to feel quotidian again, as if Real Life has returned, but of course it hasn’t. I don’t have permanent residency in this country.
My wife and I go to the beach to stare out across the water towards France, but neither of us is able to put our phones down. My wife is instagramming the weather and I hit update on Twitter over and over. She seems unconcerned. I find her optimism unnerving in it’s rootlessness.
A decade ago, the day I learned my mother was dying, I assured her things would be ‘OK’. I felt it strongly as I said it, despite being unable to know what I meant. When I’m feeling uncharitable towards myself, I think I must have meant that things would be ok for me. She would die, but I would carry on. Now I wonder if it was the certainty that I found so reassuring.
