Excerpt from an amazing post at K-punk. Read the whole thing.
Six years ago:
In the office of the occupational therapist.
You are being asked to prove that you are mentally fit.
Because - as the Human Resources manager kindly pointed out - you have suffered from stress in the past. (The thought flashes through your mind - not that they cared when you were suffering.) But now people are concerned.
The anger that you’ve been showing towards management can only be a sign that you are unwell. A little unbalanced.
Don’t worry. No-one is attacking you. We’re all here to help.
You say to the occupational therapist:
If I say management is conspiring against me will that prove I am mad?
Now:
Stepping over the vomit, you remember too late: only a fool would go out into a provincial English town centre late in the evening. It’s night of the living dead out here.
Screams that sound like they come from the Dante-damned. And that’s just from the people who are enjoying themselves.
The lurching zombie threat of violence simmering.
Try not to catch anyone’s eye.
When you go by Accident and Emergency, you see all the walking wounded, and some who are not walking. All the casualties of the UK’s many happy hours.
You remember a doctor saying that twenty years ago, the night shift was so boring that the medics would engage in wheelchair races with one another. Not any more. Not with all the knives, gun crime, fights, alcohol-related accidents, stomach pumps…
And all the superbugs breeding in the wards….
You reach home, switch on the TV. Emollient patrician voices crying crocodile tears. Public services to be massively cut back. 30%, 40%.
A new age of austerity.
Aristocrats and millionaires telling us: we’ve all got to do our bit.
We’re all in this together.
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