self-imposed isolation


It seems the world has finally slipped into the inevitable insanity that has threatened for such a long time. This week has been dominated by a mass panic in England for petrol. There was a threat of a strike... a threat... and the nation raced out and queued at petrol stations until all stocks were exhausted. Police had to rush out and close some petrol stations as the queues for these was so long that traffic in towns was backing up due to roads being blocked.

The crisis rages on but I am fortunate enough to be able to walk to the local supermarket. I have just done so. I was sure it would be empty seeing as the nation is out of petrol and we have just slipped back into recession according to this week’s reports. I was very wrong. The store was crawling with humans. It reminded me of moments during the time that I lived in Africa when I would see sugar spilt on the floor and this would be covered in ants – ants upon ants – crawling over each other to get to the sugar. I started to wonder if I had slipped into hibernation and had slept through to Christmas or if, perhaps, I had missed some news story that all items in England were in short supply. I raced around in a dizzy dream-like state, grabbed the essentials, and left as soon as I possibly could.

Getting back home is the only time I feel relatively sane. At least, normally I feel sane when I get home. Today is not one of those occasions. Recently I bumped into my neighbours – this is not difficult for me to do as they don’t work and they are always hanging around outside of my house waiting for an opportunity to speak to me – and they told me that there would be building work done on their house to convert their loft into a room for their new born baby. They felt it necessary to tell me how this would ‘buy them five years’ and how it would ‘add to the value of the property’ and how the house market was at this moment in time and how all the areas are to live in and what it costs to do this and that and I simply stopped listening. However, I did hear them when they said that the building works would only take place in working hours from Monday to Friday. It is Saturday today and the time is currently 1:23pm. There has been drilling, sawing, banging, scraping and general chaos coming from the builders next door since 08:45am. Have I become completely dazed? Has the world’s insanity seeped into me? Perhaps it is Thursday and it is Christmas time?

If it wasn’t for punk rock, Morrissey, The Smiths, along with writers such as Charles Bukowski, I would be completely lost. I would fear I was alone on a planet where life is only about meaningless conversations; strangers getting married and having children and buying houses; panic based on reports from a corporate controlled media and so on and so forth. I’ve read books such as The Grapes of Wrath and that is ‘recession’ in the true sense of the word. When I see the BBC news reporting that we are in a recession and then I stand for fifteen minutes in a queue at a cash machine I am not able to equate the two versions of the same state.

Thank goodness for books, music, devices that allow us to write, alcohol and all the other things that make my life pleasant and solitary. 

PS. as a matter of interest, after naming this entry, i performed a search on 'self-imposed isolation'
Needless to say... it is claimed that it is a 'by-product of mental illness.' 
Who defines mental illness? Is mental illness being at home with books and music or is it sitting in one's car with hundreds of other people waiting to buy petrol?


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