Yeah, I’m listening to the stranglers again, 1977 was a fucked up year, Rattus Norvegicus was a product of that, and while there are those who weren’t in the UK at the end of the brief punk era and have grooved to this shit since, there is always as special unspoken camaraderie with those who were… 
… I was wandering down the street in a coastal town nearby in what passed for summer a few months ago, the usual crap, some dweeb in a citroen saxo in the traffic treating us all to his selection of drum n bass masterpieces, then the traffic stalled so he turned the volume right down, I’m thinking “cocksucker”, then hear the opening bars of “Sometimes” blasting out from an old silvery blue Maserati Bi-turbo that looks like it is mainly rust, yeah, the guy behind the wheel is a freak, we grin at each other and he whacks it up, I look up and down the street and see three other freaks, heads nodding to the riff as they walk, we see each other and give that grin of recognition and camaraderie, despite the fact that on the outside, to everyone else on the street we are all middle aged or older, straights, Grecian 2000 and a shit job, we recognise each other, it’s that freak sense thing that hollywierd often tries to capture in a film and always fails at.
But then again, I’m sure the same could be said for Sarajevo, or anywhere else or anyplace else in time and space, and the four other freaks and me would all have thought the same thing, 1977, doesn’t seem like 35 years ago babe, seems like 35 weeks.
Course, ’77 was 2/3 years after ’74/5, when things really did get shitty in the UK economy, and no fucker had any money, and when things like punk (not that the Stranglers were ever a punk band) found the right conditions to grow.
My current favourite fuck was born in ’79, so it’s all just fucking noise to her, and all the lessons we learned then about the economy and politicians are as real to her as anything Disney has done.
So people like her look at the high streets in 2012/13 and think wow, nobody is spending any money, nobody has any money, times are tough, and lyrics like “it’s only the children of the fucking wealthy who tend to be good looking” mean nothing to someone who has known nothing but being able to afford nice clothes and make-up and lotions and potions and visits to the hairdresser all her life.
In some ways she is not wrong, the retail experience, despite all the MSM media trying to hype it up, has collapsed in the high street, as my mother says, nobody is spending cash, nobody, not even for smaller amounts, and yet she is also very, very, very fucking wrong, because the new normal for “poor” is in fact staggeringly rich.
Many people, such as my bro, lived through the mid ’70’s and were poor, but they have never looked back since, and frankly they have forgotten they were born… oh sure, you can talk to them and they will go all oh yes I remember we used to do this, but it is a different life and not one they can apply to the present or future.
My current favourite fuck is in fact better placed than many, she could survive an economic downturn (by this I mean one STARTING now, where it goes downhill from today) but sadly she won’t, because her weekly food bill will remain less than her weekly cosmetics and potions and lotions bill, because you see the potions and lotions and cosmetics are all essentials, and this is by any standards a sensible and modest girl who often says “I’m not paying that, it’s ridiculous” for something in ways that agree with me 100%
Plus, she is insulated from other day to day expenses by way of having such things as the company car with the company fuel card, and claiming lunches on expenses.
She looks at me blankly and with incomprehension when I try to explain that the £150,000 mortgage she owes on her house, a thing that itself requires ongoing maintenance and expenditure and work, does not represent an asset, in fact the ONLY THING about her house that is absolutely certain is the £150k debt attached to her.
Long gone and forgotten maladies such as scurvy and tuberculosis are back, and on the rise, not because there is any valid medical or social reason, but because a Bacardi breezer is more important than a bag of lemons, and because conserving centrally heated warmth is more important than opening the window and plugging in an electric blanket….not just more important, but the latter options have passed beyond the ken of the average person in the street.
I know one fuckbuddy who has basically been as weak as a kitten for the past two weeks, all you hear is some shit about winter vomiting bugs and norovirus… you hear nothing whatsoever about being as weak as a kitten for two weeks is FUCKING SERIOUS, how the fuck do you think the flu pandemic at the beginning of the last century killed people…. you get run down you get weakened and suddenly 99 other things that previously you could have shrugged off without noticing get a foothold.
The fucking shits is still fatal in many parts of the world, because it really doesn’t take that long to run the body down to the point where it cannot maintain itself, much less heal itself, much less fight off anything new…
When ___I___ got it a couple of weeks ago it was fucking “man flu” and I was a wimp, but I went out and bought a bunch if lemons to make hot lemon and sugar, I bought grapefruit for breakfast, I bought a fresh pineapple, and I bought an inhaler / decongestant spray, and I kept the heating off at daytime and nights were spent with an open window next to the bed and the electric blanket on, 72 hours later I had progressed through all the symptoms and was right as rain…. now THEY have it, it is no longer man flu, and they have basically been indolent for 10 days / 2 weeks, and made no lifestyle or dietary changes to reflect their state of health… latest prognosis is they have no energy at all and could sleep all day…. quelle motherfucking surprise…
Maybe it is partly my thin blood from growing up in warmer climes, maybe it is the biker in me, but days of 10 degrees celcius and less and I have my nice warm woollen socks on, three layers on top (vest / tee shirt, shirt / sweatshirt, pullover . cardigan) and when I go out it is scarf and wolly hat (well I don’t have much fuckin’ hair left anyway) meanwhile everyone else, including the fuckbuddy mentioned above, is wearing fashionable clothes and is cold all the fucking time…. that or some twat from oop north walking around in knee length shorts and a tee shirt muttering about southern fairies….
We, as a nation, are NOT FUCKING PREPARED for an economic downturn or a flu pandemic or a major war, and these are PRECISELY the conditions REQUIRED for a society to be unable to avert such things, nobody is going to head these things off at the pass, any more than my fuckbuddy could avoid a little thing like “man flu” effectively making her bedridden during the holidays… so she will go back to work in the new year in a worse state than she was when she quit for the holidays… and the beat goes on.
