Sunday 16th June

I live in two places, or rather I spend time in two places –  sometimes I’m not really sure where I live anywhere.  London and Walton-on-the-Naze.  Two entirely different places and yet only about 80 miles apart by road.  London is all rush and bustle, and peopled by bright young confident people, I see them in  the mornings in Pret, putting on their make-up, checking their e-mails, reading papers for meetings, putting on their brave faces for all the world to see.  In Walton people emerge from their homes like little country field-mice, unkempt and dressed awkwardly and shuffle along the high street to the Co-op for milk and papers.  So many are old and infirm and I wonder just how they manage to eke out their existence.  Many are overweight and wobble along between hospital appointments and visits from neighbours.  It is certainly a big difference from London with its bright young things all immaculately dressed and looking healthy and confident.

But look behind the veneer and here in London too there are the sick and overweight, those who have given up, those who have lost hope, those who just eke out an existence too.  I live in the shadow of Canary Wharf, whose towers dominate the skyline, but even here there is poverty, crumbling tower blocks, teenagers pushing prams with maybe their own, maybe their sister’s baby’s in. old guys with bad legs hobbling along, overweight women in crimplene trousers and dressing gowns calling into the newsagents for fags.

Why are so many of us ill, why are so many of us overweight, why have so many of us given up?    The state of the nation is quite depressed, even those bright young things are worried about the future, if they will ever afford the deposit for a mortgage, if their job is secure, if they will get another one if this one ends.  And one wonders about the future we are sending our children (my grandchildren) into.   This is the sorry state of the Nation at present.