It has been a strange weekend. The weather as usual has been awful. Spirits have been low all around and most people are in awe of the events unfolding around us, mainly the credit crunch and now the news that Russia has invaded Georgia. Most of this has not been overshadowed by the Olympics in China which to be honest has not held my attention. Graphics in instead of real fireworks and a young girl who mimed to some one else’s voice because the originator of the voice was not deemed photogenic enough. Yes it is a shambles and would have been a master piece of PRif they had not been caught out!
Anyway Bean Counter and I decide to take Rhonda out for a spin on Sunday evening and watch the sun go down on the local shore line. This would have been a triumph if it had not been for the low lying cloud that hid any rays of sunshine that might have been in the offing. Anyway I bumped into a friend or at least some I have known for 20 years or more and they told me they are going away to Spain. Yet again it seems as though every one else but me is moving away. I wished them well and I sincerely hope that they make it. As for me well I am stuck here for another year at least or until the credit crunch is over.
It is strange but the crunch that started in America by people that I have never met and will never know has affected my life so much. Roll forward 24 hours and I am the house belonging to Little Miss Sunshine and for some strange reason I am watching a soap opera that normally I would never have given the time of day to. However this particular episode involves some one who was in the very first episode some 40 odd years ago. The guy is now in his seventies and is trying to write a book that encapsulates his life and all of his triumphs but mainly failures. He is stuck in the same house and the same road that he grew up in and has never managed to escape from it all.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in this if you are happy to die where you were born but he is not and I somehow felt a lot of empathy for this character. What if this happens to me? It appears that every one I know is leaving for sunnier climes and happier shores. The list is too long to even mention but here I am still in the same house I grew up in. In the grand scheme of things I am not struggling for food or shelter, I do not have to worry about famine or war and I live on a lot more than a dollar a day that many people in the third world, have to live on.
However something is amiss and I doubt that I will ever find out what it is. I only know that I do not want to be here but I don’t know where I want to be or what I want to do when I get there. The credit crunch, started by people I do not know, in a country I do not live in has affected me and all the plans I ever had. It is so frustrating to be bound by circumstances beyond your control. If I was massively in debt and had wasted opportunities then yes I could say that what ever fate befell me, it was my own fault. But this is not the case, I have stuck by the rules of the system in the belief that eventually I would be better off for having done so. In reality I am no better off than some one who has never worked and has claimed benefits through out their lives. They have nothing to lose and I do and I have. The state will pick them up dust them down and ensure that they do not lose out. The state cares nothing for me and millions like me, we are merely tax payers or cash cows to be milked until we have no further use and then discarded and castigated for daring to complain and voice our opinions.
My friends who have managed to escape agree with me and that is why they will never come back to the UK and most of those I know, if they have not made arrangements to escape are planning to. Still living on more than a dollar a day, knowing the water is safe to drink and that tanks will not appear over the horizon any minute now must be a blessing and for that I should be grateful.