There was no more petrol, which led to some very unpleasant scenes, both on the roads and elsewhere. People had certainly been guilty of selfishness before, but the stoppage of petrol made a lot of people act extremely thoughtlessly.
In addition to our frequent and increasing daily troubles, the always-awkward-to-reach call-centre employees whomwe relied upon for many things were frequently completely absent, and when the telephone systems did actually work we were usually rebuffed by recorded voices that enticed us through several options before becoming silent.
One evening the television had nothing to show us.
And then, almost suddenly, it was no longer possible to buy newspapers, or indeed many sundries including soap, dish-washing tablets, razors, light bulbs, vacuum-cleaner bags or toilet paper, as the family who had owned the shop had gone. We tried to find other shops, but the families who owned them had gone too.
We now had to think about the how of getting, rather than the how much to get. This was a strain. It occurred to me, not infrequently, that our civilisation had, of late, begun to make the simplest things extremely tortuous. We had perfected what now seemed a psychotic level of complexity around simple human activities like eating, keeping clean, and moving from one place to another.
Our supply of electricity became erratic. At the end of a day filled with minor panics of one sort or another it was apparent that there was no more of it at all.
That was where our real problems started.
Looking back, I can see that they began long before that. Our problems began a long, long time ago, when they were invisible, and continued during their gradual appearance.
The problems grew and were nurtured by our casual indifference, our sneers, and the ignorant manner in which we chose to live. Our gestating problems were the dark, inevitable spectre that accompanied us to the cashpoint, into work, to the supermarket, and into our gritty, tortured beds.
And after the end of the electricity, the shadows conspired against us.
The dark corners began to scare us more than the coming disaster. The disaster was imminent; that was clear from the disappearance of many things that we had assumed to be vital to our being. But the threat from the shifting shadows in our house was worse, far worse.
We began, almost imperceptibly, to panic.
However much we reassured ourselves that we were safe, that the disaster would flow over us, that we had stockpiled, that we were defended and guarded against every eventuality, the insistent shadows illuminated our vulnerability.
When night came, we fell to a brooding quietude, eyeing each other with suspicion, inventing justifications for our dark feelings.
We cloaked our hidden desires; we conspired with the shadows.
Nothing seemed to be happening.
*
The television, I realised, had been a sort of terminal that connected me to a wider understanding of events. And without newspapers it was impossible not to write my own internal headlines during my sleepless nights. Worry became constant; worry and enforced exile from everything I was accustomed to.
I had never envisaged a sort of loneliness that did not involve people. But in fact it was the lack of small items that I had previously taken for granted that made me lonely. I missed tea, toothpaste, remote controls, coffee, ballpoint pens, margarine, AA batteries, and easy credit in high-street stores. I missed my favourite magazines.
And the dead silence that encloaked the telephone and the television made me lonely. And the hollow look in the eyes of the people – oh …
After the end of electricity, the nights lengthened.
We had to wait in the dark, listening.
Life had quickly become intolerable for some of us.
It wasn’t that I found my existence more tolerable than theirs; only that I felt that I had a sort of fortitude, a sort of – wisdom.
Nobody was
In addition to our frequent and increasing daily troubles, the always-awkward-to-reach call-centre employees whomwe relied upon for many things were frequently completely absent, and when the telephone systems did actually work we were usually rebuffed by recorded voices that enticed us through several options before becoming silent.
One evening the television had nothing to show us.
And then, almost suddenly, it was no longer possible to buy newspapers, or indeed many sundries including soap, dish-washing tablets, razors, light bulbs, vacuum-cleaner bags or toilet paper, as the family who had owned the shop had gone. We tried to find other shops, but the families who owned them had gone too.
We now had to think about the how of getting, rather than the how much to get. This was a strain. It occurred to me, not infrequently, that our civilisation had, of late, begun to make the simplest things extremely tortuous. We had perfected what now seemed a psychotic level of complexity around simple human activities like eating, keeping clean, and moving from one place to another.
Our supply of electricity became erratic. At the end of a day filled with minor panics of one sort or another it was apparent that there was no more of it at all.
That was where our real problems started.
Looking back, I can see that they began long before that. Our problems began a long, long time ago, when they were invisible, and continued during their gradual appearance.
The problems grew and were nurtured by our casual indifference, our sneers, and the ignorant manner in which we chose to live. Our gestating problems were the dark, inevitable spectre that accompanied us to the cashpoint, into work, to the supermarket, and into our gritty, tortured beds.
And after the end of the electricity, the shadows conspired against us.
The dark corners began to scare us more than the coming disaster. The disaster was imminent; that was clear from the disappearance of many things that we had assumed to be vital to our being. But the threat from the shifting shadows in our house was worse, far worse.
We began, almost imperceptibly, to panic.
However much we reassured ourselves that we were safe, that the disaster would flow over us, that we had stockpiled, that we were defended and guarded against every eventuality, the insistent shadows illuminated our vulnerability.
When night came, we fell to a brooding quietude, eyeing each other with suspicion, inventing justifications for our dark feelings.
We cloaked our hidden desires; we conspired with the shadows.
Nothing seemed to be happening.
*
The television, I realised, had been a sort of terminal that connected me to a wider understanding of events. And without newspapers it was impossible not to write my own internal headlines during my sleepless nights. Worry became constant; worry and enforced exile from everything I was accustomed to.
I had never envisaged a sort of loneliness that did not involve people. But in fact it was the lack of small items that I had previously taken for granted that made me lonely. I missed tea, toothpaste, remote controls, coffee, ballpoint pens, margarine, AA batteries, and easy credit in high-street stores. I missed my favourite magazines.
And the dead silence that encloaked the telephone and the television made me lonely. And the hollow look in the eyes of the people – oh …
After the end of electricity, the nights lengthened.
We had to wait in the dark, listening.
Life had quickly become intolerable for some of us.
It wasn’t that I found my existence more tolerable than theirs; only that I felt that I had a sort of fortitude, a sort of – wisdom.
Nobody was
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