bleak

Last night, I cycled to the station to get a train into the big city for a night out. I got to the station a good five minutes early. The train never arrived. In fact, after about twenty minutes, nothing had gone through at all. This, I know, is not a good sign. The most likely explanation - engineering, that all purpose railway label for SNAFU. ‘Security’ is becoming an equivalent in everyday life here in the UK, as it was in the North of Ireland twenty years ago, as ‘Insurance’ is in the States. The label for ‘circumstances beyond our control imposed by the Authority.’

So far so normal, there is no special timetable up for the replacement bus service, which will probably not take my bike anyway. After an hour and a half, a number of things happen. Two busses arrive, none of them going the right way. A group of walkers arrive from a minibus, and a bloke and his two kids turn up. The walkers are venture scout types, lead by a Striking Blonde who makes a point of subtly getting the names of everyone she doesn’t know, and orders all the information to hand and prioritises her options for action. I like her despite myself. The bloke is one of those old Scally types who tries to be everyone's mate, laughs at all his own jokes, chain smokes and looks like a shaved weasel. His kids complain how it’s ‘mental’ that the local pub has started letting gay people in. I keep an eye on me bike.

To cut a long story with no narrative short, a bus does show, but it’s too late for me, and I’ve sort of got hacked off enough to bail anyway, so I go home, drink wine and play yahtzee in French with the Neighbour. That’s what passes for fun round here. Striking Blonde has spent ten minutes on her mobile, getting names and details, making mental notes on who to complain about, and to whom. She gets the ages of Scally’s kids, to attempt to speed the bus situation up. Scally considers going down the pub, and getting the last bus to a village down the road where he has a mate.

The key things here are ,however, only just being got round to. Firstly, my two years in public transport have been a complete waste of time, and continue to be. I doubt if the nine people who shared the damp hour in the station car park will be trusting the railway again in a hurry to get them home. And secondly, public perception of climate change is woefully behind the truth, as illustrated when Scally commented “Well, look on the bright side, if it wasn’t for that global warming, we’d all be dying of hypothermia.” The point being, we have, it seems, about 9 years.

9 years to develop the infrastructure and lifestyles that let us - not some future, perfect generation, but us, here and now us - live a life we feel happy with in a way that lets everyone else in this world who wants to , which will be the vast majority, live to the same standard. And my public transport job, where it takes six months to get two bus stops that hardly anyone uses fitted with solar lighting while, in that six months, thousands upon thousands of cars have passed those bus stops, is not going to do that, not in nine years, not in ninety years. And while most of the population are thinking, through no direct fault of their own, the way Scally was, they aren’t going to make the changes themselves. Not In a million years.

We’re fucked, plain and simple. Change is, now, one way or another, unavoidable. And we aren't going to get of our collective arse and meet it head on, we’re going to sit about until it smacks us in the face, then cast around for somebody to blame. Anyone but us. The great festival of scapegoating that will mark our civilisation’s descent into oblivion will consume the weak and the difficult, but not I suspect the rich and greedy. They have friends and structures, police and guns, prisons and extraordinary rendition. They will cling on to their comforts and hug them close as the end slowly laps at all our feet. While we fight for the dwindling scraps on the ever shrinking land, in our Resettlement Camps and Controlled Areas, under Special Provisions and Temporary Measures, and whatever other labels the Authority can think of for “stay in your box and do as you fucking told, or else.” Scally will cop it first, as he’s to old for the army, and too dodgy for the police, but Striking Blonde will not be far behind, unless her dad owns half of Cheshire and she is actually a Captain in signals. In which case, I’m glad she only got my first name.

Not that it matters much about the order. The rich and greedy will go too, deprived of the labour to provide them with the fruits of surplus value, and the resources to feed their appetites. You can’t buy your way out of a mass extinction event. Some of us will cling on and make do out on the bleeding edge of getting by, as will those with even less in more unfortunate parts of the world, they’ve had more practice. But it’s going to be messy, and it’s going to be soon. Not some future, cursed generation, but us, here and now us. Here I am facing the Last Days of Rome, and I am wasting my time.