26 February 2025

I am haunted by a new, very specific fear

Beware the Waitrose car park.

Another cheery week. For one thing, it’s still cold. Which means that unless I fire up the radiators, I have to stay in bed, at least until six in the evening, when legends say the charges go down (whether this is true or not I dare not look up). Sometimes I envy you lot who have to work in offices, which are toasty because someone else is paying for the heating. Then again, to get to an office you have to get out of bed. So I’ll stick with my arrangement. But really, this weather is beginning to get me down. It seems to have been like this for years. I gather that it’s going to be a lot warmer by the time you read this, but right now I am at the end of my tether.

Things are not helped by what seems to be an infection in my upper jaw which adds to the whole Victorian hardship vibe that seems to be the dominant mode at the moment. I am not sure whether it’s a doctor thing or a dentist thing so for the moment I have decided to do nothing, just take painkillers until it all goes away, one way or the other. The thought of looking for a dentist does not exactly improve the mood.

And then there’s the news. Oh God, the news. A relentless stream of poisonous slurry coming from the United States of America aimed right in our faces. It becomes impossible to shut out and thinking about it doesn’t really help. The amazing thing is that there are people who think this is fine. I got into an argument online with someone who praised JD Vance’s speech at Munich. Until then she had mainly confined herself to her pet subjects of veganism and running, about which she could bore for Britain but which are not offensive in themselves. I never imagined that there was a path from healthy and ethical living to cheering on the rise of totalitarianism, but there you go, every day’s a school day.

Apart from the pain and the cold, I have developed a highly specific fear: that when walking through the supermarket car park en route to doing my shopping, I will be mown down by a car which is being chased, at speed, by the police, for some reason. The car will have nipped into the car park because the driver knows it can be used as a rat run to avoid the lights on the corner of Western Road. How this anxiety came about I have no idea. I had a friend who once said that he had a fear that a man with an axe would pop out from an alleyway and split his head open. When I said that the idea had never occurred to me he could hardly believe it. “Isn’t everyone frightened of this?” he asked, baffled.

He’s dead now – not because a man with an axe etc. I miss him terribly but at least he did not live to see the current spectacle. There is something to be said for the sweet release of death. I saw an article about a vegan restaurant in the Guardian and the headline contained the phrase, from the proprietor: “Butter is a perception.” I’m glad my father didn’t live to see a) Brexit, b) the rise of Trump, and c) that headline. I wonder what the founder of the restaurant thinks about Ukraine.

So as you can see, my thoughts have been tending towards the morbid. I was invited to the funeral of an ex-colleague last week but I didn’t go because there was a significant risk that the newly ennobled Toby Young would be there and I really didn’t want to see him in ermine or clanking around in a suit of armour or whatever it is life peers wear to this kind of occasion. I will say no more about my noble Lord Young because I tried that a few weeks ago and the legal department of this magazine had a panic attack and I had to rewrite the entire piece, which I think is only the second time that has happened in this column’s history. Another sign, as if one were needed, that society is unravelling.

I have been trying to turn my life around this year, but all I have done that is any good is regularly buy a bag of Waitrose easy peelers. From what I’d been led to believe, a regular dose of citrus would be just the ticket to a healthy life but look at me – beset by infirmities and a mountain of tangerine peelings.

My only consolation is that everyone else who has been paying attention is also feeling miserable and anxious. I do have one friend who is highly optimistic about the future, but her grounds for feeling so – a clairvoyant friend “who is almost always right” says that 2025 will be a year of peace – do not strike me as convincing. She is also a firm believer in astrology; I think I’ve mentioned her before. Completely bonkers.

It’s odd; last week I was in a much better mood. A friend – that very same friend, in fact – asked what I had to be grateful for in my life and the list I reeled off was surprisingly long. You know, relatively good health, a roof over my head, etc, etc. Maybe, like butter, it is all in the perception.

[See also: Why we’re stuck in Ancient Rome]