The Truth Will Out

To a certain extent, I’ve retreated into my own little bubble over the past couple of years. During the summer, over a few beers in a holiday home in a remote spot on a peninsula in north-west Ireland, my brother-in-law and I were watching the news. A dispute was taking place between Georgia and Russia. My brother-in-law expressed concern. Somewhat provocatively, I said that I didn’t give a shit.
Naturally, I was immediately asked to justify myself. I said that I’d grown tired of being a news junkie, of being ground down by the relentless negativity of the media and the resulting anxiety that it causes about issues over which I have absolutely no influence. I likened this dispute to keeping abreast of a stressful marital dispute between a couple living three streets away who I’ve never met.
Over the past few years, my life has been focused on five areas: spending time with my family and friends, exploring my creativity, earning an income, paying attention to physical and mental well-being and keeping our domestic affairs running more smoothly than they have previously. My internal frame of reference in most areas has shrunk to a small geographic area covering London and Kent.
“Doesn’t that just make you one of those insular, Little England, fog-cuts-off-continent Tories that you’re always banging on about?” he asked. Fair point, I admitted, but inaccurate. It’s more about scope of action and ability to be involved. Take music, for example. I tend to prefer marginal artists these days. If I focus on bands from the south-east of England, I’m more likely to be able to go to their gigs.
The honest truth is that there is a certain amount of escapism involved. I’ve felt out of sync with much of the world – or at least, the part of it that I live in – for most of my adult life. I’ve toyed half-heartedly with many of the things that seemed to dominate people’s attention over the last couple of decades. For a while I even convinced myself that I could enjoy a life of designer labels and property improvement.
The truth will out, in the end. I built a house of cards that tumbled down spectacularly. I’ve learned over the past few years that I am not who I thought I was, or who I thought I wanted to be. I’m a starry-eyed dreamer who can spend literally hours staring out of the window. I’m motivated by ideas and concepts, by relationships and connections, by the essence of things rather than their surface sheen.
The past few years have been about creating an environment around myself in which to float aimlessly, allowing direction to reveal itself slowly rather than panicking about its lack and forcing myself down a road to nowhere. A smaller bubble-world has suited that purpose and, putting it bluntly, the larger world outside could go to hell. And, interestingly, it seems to be doing precisely that.
My curiosity is roused. I’m reading newspapers again. Fascinating things are happening. House prices plummet. The questionable business models of investment banks are failing. The obsessive and misguided “target culture” in education is scaled back in favour of genuine achievement. Privately owned commercial organisations are being taken into public ownership. Labour is finally working.
When I hit my mid-teens in the early 1980s, the world seemed a fascinating – if somewhat scary – place. As the decade progressed into a frothy maelstrom of wine bars and padded shoulders, I felt less and less in common with it. In my UK-based context, one of the main reasons for that was undoubtedly the self-centred, market-driven, no-such-thing-as-society ethos of Thatcherism.
Its legacy has been remarkably persistent, but the one thing I’ve learned over the years about the passing of time is that whoever came up with the grandfather clock got it absolutely right. The pendulum swings in one direction, pauses in mid-flight for a split second and then returns inexorably the other way. I was worried for a while that the laws of reality had been catastrophically re-written, but no.
The Thatcher’s roof is on fire. The straw is dry, the rage is strong and there is no rain in sight. She wanted us all to be consumers, so now we are flame. Somewhere in one of the rooms below, a small piece of metal hurtles towards its next tick. I’m standing outside, eyes re-opened, basking in the warm glow, my world getting bigger by the second, slowly feeling less like an alien in my own country.