Saving Blighty

Oh how they all peer into their popular literature. What joy!
The consequences of carefully targeted marketing cling from our beautiful, otherwise naked, bodies: Humanity and proximity. A crowd, seated; with discipline. The owners of the world accept identical chairs, set in debasing rows along a cheap carpet, lazily patterned. The motor of the planet placidly flicks through the veneered pages of some frivolous publication or quietly races to the spannung of identically written best-sellers. And from the midst of this waiting-area (yes, a place where people gather to wait) punters are crudely exposed as they peruse about the shops and other “commercial enterprises” which asseige the seated multitude from all sides. Carefully they sift through objects which are familiar, to them known. They pause in reflection: “Will this live up to the expectation which has just pervaded me? Or will I have to subsequently delude myself, amplifying my gratification to avoid embracing the delusion I have brought upon my person, the subtle deception I have failed to recognise? Is it instead possible that the satisfaction I am seeking lies beneath a more subtly evocative packaging a more pervasively cool catchphrase?”
Such difficulties challenge the psyche of unsuspecting Ryanair passengers. In what perilous uncertainty do the lascivious calls of chocolate, ceramic and tobacco place the unprepared, uninitiated mass. How (how indeed!) are they expected to elicit in favour of which product and relative philanthropic ltd to surrender their cash? And if they are daring enough to run the risk of not buying anything at all, or have already bought something, what are they to do with themselves. What is it with all this waiting and all this spare time? The gaping wound of all these endless minutes, a treacherous canyon calling mermaid-like to the mindless herd peering over its edge.
The hope of salvation is as remote as are slow the hands creeping inefficiently around the clock face, incapable of guaranteeing the appropriate levels of health and safety. The people are surrendered to an extremely dangerous state of idle uncertainty; how can this be allowed? Where are the guidelines, the codes of conduct, the terms and conditions?
This is a sea of anxious unrest, what is the honest, law-abiding British citizen to do with himself? With his time!? This is a legislative chasm, an inhospitable desert of possibility where only the arid seed of anarchy can sprout. Will they do nothing!?
What if, unknowing, this magnificent extract of English populance is acting incorrectly or, worse, inappropriately? What then? Are they going to take that chance?
Surely they must understand the dangers it entails especially with all these uncontrollably passionate Italians about, what with their hazardous flailing arms, their unrestrained proxemic code. They could have somebody’s eye out.
And still they do nothing! Will Authority not make its voice heard!? Are we to be forced to interact, conversate, scorching one another through heated debate, or white hot-effusions of unexpected affection, hacking ourselves to death with unwarranted, unnecessary hand and arm movement!?
Oh my God, we’re going to be gesticulated to death!!!

In a last, desperate lunge for survival, the brave Britons raise they’re eyes to the screen, panick-stricken, their hearts beating, their pulses racing: “Rome Ciampino….16:15….wait in lounge”.



Thank you God. Come talk to me now, Mr. Tortellini, if you dare! Ha! Mr. Mandolini you can keep your superlatives and hyperbole to yourself, you know you aren’t authorised. I can just sit here quietly minding my own business and there’s not a thing you can do about it.

Phew, that was a close one. Thank you tidy, orderly computer screen. I mean thank you Ministry of What I Should Do. Thank you for saving me from the abyss. Please….no, please…no, I insist take more hours of my labour. Yes sir, I will work longer hours; I want to. And this time don’t dither about with tasks which are merely dull and dispiriting, make it really debasing, genuinely de-humanising because clearly, I don’t know what’s best for me.

Redundant signs and rules of Britain, we salute you!