When I was a little boy, in the age of doom-laden public information films and pamphlets ("Protect and Survive" anyone ??) I was constantly worried about myself and my family being killed by a nuclear bomb. The thought of having to perform air raid drills and hiding in underground shelters were an almost daily part of my young life.
[Remove all pens, pencils and sharp objects from your breast pocket, take off your glasses, look away from the window, find a buddy and hold hands, no talking, walk quickly to the basement, get on your knees, place your head against the wall, wait for the all-clear signal and hope that the teacher forgets about the maths test that you didn't study for ... ]
But like so many awful things, you got used to it. The fear of instant annihilation was just always there, lurking in the background. Until it wasn't. Somehow, over time, the inevitability of the mushroom cloud simply went away. Wise and prudent men in our country and others, found a better way to exercise their hatred and fear of each others social and economic system.
Until now.
Now the wise and prudent men are no more, and the unthinkable is back on the table. Death and suffering on an unimaginable scale is once again an option. The low drumbeat of existential dread has returned, and I find myself thinking odd thoughts, like: "I hope someone reminds Donald Trump that he can't play golf in a Hazmat suit."
When I was a little boy the Russians were coming. At least once a week. I actually thought learning to speak Russian because when they got here, I wanted to know how to say, "Don't shoot !!" (не стрелять! if you really want to know, don't say this blog doesn't know how to disseminate important information ... ).
And now, more than half a century later, after their dumbass system of government imploded, the friggin' Russians are still coming. How is that possible? How are we still being tormented by a nation that thinks borscht is a good idea? By the people who somehow managed to contribute less to rock music than the French and have still never managed to make a decent motor car until the Germans, of all people, bought out Skoda.
I mean, sure, kudos on vodka, but how is it that these people are still making us miserable? And more importantly, why? Is world domination still a thing? And if it is, let's say they succeed. What then? The future supreme rulers of planet Earth are gonna rock the casbah with balalaikas? Forgive me, but in the words of their favourite son, Orange Julius, that is "sad."
I don't know about you, but I've been spending most of my free time in the land of Not Yet. If you're unfamiliar with it, Not Yet is a happy place where all the bad things that seem likely to occur have not happened ... yet. I like to think of it as a shimmering, shivering soap bubble whose fragile beauty is only made greater by the knowledge that it will soon burst, making way for the dark realm of You Gotta Be Kidding Me.
But not now.
Not Yet.
And yes, I would love to say Not Ever, but that place doesn't exist. Sometimes I feel like I'm standing on a dock watching Western culture drift away from me like a massive boat. As I imagine it, the people on the deck are not waving goodbye. They're looking away, toward the horizon. The future.
And the boat is accelerating. I don't bring this up to generate sympathy. No one threw me overboard. Disembarking was a conscious choice. And so is returning. With a little effort I can take a skiff out to sea and scramble up that gangplank anytime I want.
There is an almost perpetual gap between my expectations as to how things should be and the way things actually are. This space, or divide, causes me a considerable amount of discomfort, which I try to alleviate through the use of repetitive thoughts, as well as spoken and written words.
This activity is called "complaining." The fact that it rarely accomplishes anything, other than exacerbate my irritation, does not keep me from engaging in it. Furthermore, it appears that buried deep within my psyche is the firmly held conviction that complaining is therapeutic - even though experience shows again and again that it's not. In other words, I have a false belief that appears to be immutable, which drives me to take an action that only makes matters worse ... and I like it.
My only consolation is the knowledge that I come from a long line of complainers. One of my fondest childhood memories is looking up at the adult relatives gathered around the kitchen table, the men smoking, the women smoking, everyone eating smoked fish, and all of them talking over each other, loudly bitching and moaning about pretty much everything.
I remember that a rant would often end with the resigned, self-deprecating, seemingly rhetorical question, "Oh, well, who am I to complain?" Well, these many years later, it turns out it's not rhetorical.
And I now know the answer. This is my birth right.
I'm British, who am I if I don't complain?