2009: Putting the glee into gloom (From Times Series)

2009: Putting the glee into gloom

5:44pm Wednesday 7th January 2009

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So I’ve been given the task of doing the first 2009 blog for the Times Series. Brilliant. Not only do I get to feel the weight of our various national and global crises on my shoulders - no money, no sun, no peace, no God (according to 800 Exmouth buses) - but I also have to inflict my inner-gloom and despair onto everyone else.

It’s one thing hating the world, but it’s really rubbish when the world starts hating you back.

On the up side, suicides are down. Experts (who becomes a suicide “expert”? Do you have to be less or more depressed than your subjects to claim authority over them?) say it is because miserable people feel better when everyone else is suffering too as it enables them to empathise with society. Either that, or people are just too depressed to bother dragging themselves from the sofa to whip up a feast of paroxetine and vodka between re-runs of Whose Line is it Anyway. Which, all things considered, seems more likely.

I mean, let’s look at the facts. We’ve got economic meltdown, we’ve got stabbings, we’ve got polar icecaps holidaying on the south coast, we’ve got immune systems bugle-sticking with germs the size of polar icecaps. We’ve got houses no-one will buy and people no-one can house. We’ve got a pound worth less than a Middle-Eastern cease-fire pact and Woolworths worth less than a pound. It’s a world gone mad.

At the moment the only person enjoying themself - if happiness correlates with breast exposure, and we all know it does - is Amy Winehouse, whose good humour seems to be inversely proportional to that of the rest of the nation. Maybe Gordon Brown needs to stop worrying about the economy and just set up a reconciliation between her and her dodgy ex-con ex, and suddenly houses would start selling, Woollies shares would rocket and wads of cash would start falling from the sky.

The weird thing is, though, that amid this swirling abyss of cataclysmic despair I don’t actually feel too bad. I am suffering from a completely irrational sense of new year optimism. Everything in the world says I should be tearing out my hair and ripping my fingernails from my fingertips, and probably fashioning both into an affordable weatherproof shelter for the winter after my home was cruelly credit-crunched out of my reach - but I don’t.

It’s as if everything has become so bad, so gut-wrenchingly, Hollywood-disaster-movie depressing, that it’s just not worth worrying about anymore.

In Barnet, we may have the prospect of a euphemistic “efficiency” rampage involving millions of pounds worth of budget cuts; we may have regeneration projects becoming increasingly delayed and frayed at the edges as developers struggle to stay afloat; we may have road accidents coming from our ears as A-roads are converted to bobsleigh tracks; we may have a rudderless football team with a baker’s dozen of disappointment on its score sheet.... But, come on, look on the bright side! At least things aren’t boring.

Or, if that doesn't cheer you up, look at it this way. At least while the cold weather continues, Barnet councillor and assembly member Brian Coleman is marginally less likely to make good on his threat to “happily walk naked down Ballards Lane” if the 2012 Games come in at under £9.3billion.

And that, you have to admit, is worth a lifetime of global catastrophe.

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