Hello there. I’m currently on ‘holiday’ in London – I have a flat in an exclusive area of the city (Peckham borders) that I rent out and my tenant’s away so I’m having a credit crunch city break.
But I arrived to find the current ill winds have gone beyond the banks and blown through my flat – it’s a crisis that threatens to bring down my entire system and leave me in my own personal Iceland. My boiler’s broken and I have no hot water or heating. I won’t be broken though and refuse to let myself become unclean. I summoned up my spirit and gathered all my saucepans together, gave them a rousing speech and prepared to boil enough water for a bath. With each trip from kitchen to bathroom carrying pans of boiling water and kettles full of limescale, I became stronger and more determined that I was going to have a hot soak. No faulty old boiler was going to stop me.
And as I scalded myself with the overflowing pans of steaming water I thought, ‘this is what it must have been like during the war.’ If any of my grandparents were alive today they’d say it was just like Dunkirk. But I know they’re looking down from above with pride at my resilience and I’m looking up to them saying ‘don’t’ worry its okay for you to look down, I’m not xxxxxxx. At least not for a few minutes.’
Spirit like this will get us through these dark days. Courage, togetherness, stiff upper lips and good honest British grit (without any nasty stuff like racism or Robert Kilroy Silk).
We’ve forgotten these important principles now all our children want to be Kerry Katona. Kerry is a living embodiment of the conspicuous consumption that’s got us in this mess. A few months ago we discover that she’s in a financial sesspool up to the neck hoping for another advertising contract from Iceland and now we’re in the sewage too. Thanks for tipping us over the edge, Kerry.
In the midst of the financial hullabaloo, I’ve read that several UK High Street stores are partially owned by Icelandic companies, one of them is, of course, Iceland. There’s something amusingly satisfying about knowing that, not having any idea of the origins of the store until I just looked it up on Wikipedia – it was a British firm and the Icelanders bought it out in 2005.
While everything goes tits up in Rekjavik and Iceland itself stands on the verge of collapse, Kerry must be hoping that the Iceland (store) marketing budget remains in tact. Ironically, as it is a budget store it might do okay. There’s also Icelandic investment money in Gordon Ramsey, so every cloud… and maybe it’ll put a stop to Bjork.
We should all resolve to stop running around throwing our money somewhere we hope might be safe and desperately wishing our property increases in value. If this crisis means I don’t have to engage in another tedious conversation about house prices, then maybe, just maybe it will all have been worth it. I bought my flat to live, love and have hot baths in (even if they are a logistical nightmare due to a knackered old boiler).
It is abundantly clear that none of us has any clue what we’re doing, least of all the bosses of the banks. They are fundamentally selfish and evil while we are fundamentally selfish and too busy to read the bleeding Financial Times.
I’m going to do nothing and hope that when we reach the primordial soup towards which we are inevitably heading, the fittest survivors need funny songs to cheer them up. Then, at last we, the comedy songwriters, shall take the place in society we truly deserve. We shall rise above Kerry, Gordon and Bjork and pimp our predictable rhyming couplets to the scary thugs who roam the Earth - me, Bill Bailey and Mitch Benn desperately strumming for survival. Bejesus
To all my grandparents in the stars above, please forgive me. Just remember that day I sorted myself a hot bath with nothing but saucepans, a cooker and a kettle.
Popularity: 46% [?]
October 8th, 2008 at 11:56 am
sand can be used to clean yourself get your body down to the seaside fill your rucksack with as much sand as you can carry ..
then take it to your london penthouse and fill the bath.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Cheers for the laughs mate. Just saw your link on the C Brooker column and glad I took a look.