Wednesday 5 March 2014

Shades of Disappointment.

I’ve mentioned before that being an incurable optimist can be something of a curse. It means that you’re always terribly disappointed when something goes wrong, even though you tried hard to convince yourself in advance that it probably would.

It remains a fact nevertheless that, however bad things get, there’s always a grain of belief – sometimes buried so deep that it would take an unlikely alliance of Speke and Burton to find it, but it’s there – that one day the bad thing will go away and a good thing will replace it. It’s why I find it so disturbing when people die whilst still in the throes of adversity. To me, it means that the natural order has malfunctioned. Heaven has got it wrong. And if you can’t trust heaven to be infallible, what the hell can you trust?

*  *  *

I sat in a town centre yesterday, eating my King’s luncheon of a £1.10 bag of chips from a chip shop, courtesy of my lottery win. (Actually, they don’t come in bags any more; they’re served in one form of polystyrene container or another these days, but chips from a chip shop will always be a bag of chips to me.)

And while I was quietly so engaged, I watched the people passing by. In particular, I was searching their eyes to see whether I might spot a special pair – one which didn’t echo the hum of Mother Culture. No luck, I’m afraid.

4 comments:

Anthropomorphica said...

I think the culprit is too many tales that end "and they lived happily ever after" it's not always so, perhaps that is why the thought of reincarnation is so appealing.
I felt joy at the thought of chips and despair at the thought of the Mother Culture, think I'll focus on the chips, I can practically smell them from here.

JJ said...

We could talk about reincarnation deep into the night (or week.) It's a favourite topic of mine. And if you ever come this way, be advised that chips are 30% cheaper in Uttoxeter than they are in Ashbourne.

Anthropomorphica said...

Reincarnation and chips then, the grease helps the cogs to turn.

JJ said...

And one of the first things I learned as a kid was that tea tastes fabulous with chips.