Wednesday 30 December 2009

Gloom

I know there's a fair amount of melancholy on these pages but really, it's not too bad and most of it is all in the name of comedy anyway. No, really my default setting is 'life's not that brilliant but - ooh look over there at the pretty sunshine!' Not so much positive thinking, more enjoying the distractions as they come.

Work is not always brilliant but then again I only started out a year ago, so logically things must still be on an upward curve. As for la vie sentimentale, well, the only way is up really. I mean, it certainly can't get any worse. So the future at least has potential.

However when I'm back in the UK I'm beset with doom-mongering on all sides. This is not helped by the old copies of the Daily Express lying in headline-screaming piles all around my parents' house. There's something about the British press that is peculiarly, sensationally pessimistic.

The latest one is that within ten years the entire Thames valley will have flooded and London and much of Kent will be under water. Now I know this is a fairly standard 'effects of global warming' scenario, but surely if a submerged City were a mere ten years away the financial industry would already have started moving out of... oh wait a minute.

When I'm in Brussels or Kraków, my outlook is relatively (and I mean relatively) sunny, but when I come back to the UK, I suddenly become convinced that I have no chance of getting a pension or health insurance, I'll be living in a bedsit for the rest of my life and my dotage will be spent rocking spasmodically in a corner of the orange-painted EasyNursingHome or - worse still - my arthritic fingers piecing together components in a European-outsourced Chinese munitions factory.

If only it would stop raining.

Mid-holiday challenge: what's the worst apocalytic scenario you can find in a British tabloid today? Answers on a postcard (or in the comments box) please...

7 comments:

pinolona said...

go away. I do not need any of your products and neither do my readers. Leave us alone, Bathmat.

Anonymous said...

hey, your blog is really a great read! and it's good to see some warm comments about Krakow and Warsaw posted from Brux:) Pozdrowienia z brukselki, zostaje wierna czytelniczka! e.

pinolona said...

Thanks! Dziękuję bardzo i zyczę szczęśliwego nowego roku! :)

Anonymous said...

Do not trouble yourself about pensions; by the time you will need one, they will be so reduced that it will not matter one way or another.

Michael Dembinski said...

Life needs to be lived from one joyous moment to the next - and in acts of artistic creation.

You are a highly talented writer!

Laura said...

Ugh - the last I heard they had all decided global warming didn't exist after?

student SGH said...

not that gloomy actually, even lovely. It's best for mental health to learn to enjoy the small things - it doesn't have to be a sunny day, but a small sun ray or a proverbial silver lining that should cheer you up.

Pension? In Poland we have a mixed, public-private system, in which the public part is a Ponzi scheme sucking up money from state budget and the private one is expensive, inflexible and clumsily run - much due to lame legislation.

You should be grateful that you can hold your financial future in your own hands. I'd give a lot to swap the systems with you and be able to blame only myself for wrong decisions.

Reaction is a nice stuff, I suppose it's a new feature. But beware, too many "I don't get it"s may mean... I don't know what they would mean, make up something...