Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas holiday
Never mind Scott Morrison the Aussie prime minister going on his holidays to Hawaii whilst vast tracts of the south-east of his country goes up in flames; Greta Thunberg ranting at the UN; or even the Extinction Rebellion crew trying to convince us that we must cut carbon emissions to some unfeasibly tiny level by 2025 (a project would basically require the banning of all UK citizens from cooking with gas or flying anywhere more than once a year, plus of course cause our economy to grind to a halt) – we all know that the biggest existential issue facing the human race (as it currently exist on this planet) is population control.
There are just far too many of us.
And never mind the Sunday colour supplement article I read a few years ago suggesting that – if you gave each person one square metre to occupy each – the entire population of the world could stand together on the Isle of Wight, as far as I am concerned, based solely on my experience of being out and about over the last ten days in the run-up to Christmas, far too many of them seem to be concentrated within a mile and a half of my gaff in south-west London.
At this point I should declare that I hate shopping. Well, not the shopping so much – otherwise I’d run short of supplies in a week – as (to hone it down a bit) other shoppers.
My routine is to get out there – go to wherever I need like an undercover SOE operative, pick up my target purchases (the location of which, over the years I have learned to within two metres distance, that is unless any supermarket I visit has re-jigged its bloody aisles) – and get home in the shortest time possible.
Yesterday afternoon was a nightmare.
I drove to my local supermarket chain store, where finding one of the two unoccupied parking spaces in a 500-car area was to participate in a frantic dodgem-style race with others bent upon a similar plight.
The next ordeal was to grab one of the remaining (not-yet-in-use) trolleys.
Thence inside the store, where not only where there several hundred others already pushing theirs around but – to a man (or woman) – doing so in a state where, to all intents and purposes, they had left their brains and common sense is a “brains and common sense” creche (minded by a member of security) by the front door and were ambling around, in and out of the aisles, like attendees at a Glastonbury-style Zombie Festival.
After an hour of horrendous traffic jams and individuals standing around in a state of semi-comatose stupefaction – and let me not flinch from admitting it – about 80% of them “oldies” of 55 and over, I finally managed to escape and wend my way home.
Roll on the 2nd of January, I say!
