Pop Up

We live in a pop-up world. Pop-up restaurants, pop-up shops, pop-up furniture, pop-up houses, pop-up jobs, pop-up lives. We all have our fleeting moment to shine, before the page starts to turn and we fold, ready for the next generation to pop-up in our place.

But what if we don’t shine? At some point, even the most influential people in history like Caesar, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Einstein will be completely forgotten.  What chance have I got? I doubt I’d ever make as much of an impact on society as, say, Jedward. My time’s running out and I’m staring on slack-jawed, like a medieval serf transported to the modern day and asked to pilot a fighter jet.

Things are changing too fast for me to keep up. Things are grittier, more impersonal. I wanted to get back to the things I enjoyed as a kid, but even my favourite kids shows have been updated to reflect our brave new harsher world: Postman Pat’s on a zero-hours contract with Deliveroo, Fireman Sam’s striking about unsafe public-service cutbacks, Bob the Builder’s workforce has left post Brexit, and Ranger Smith stands on a double bearskin rug, holding a shotgun and shouting “Picnic time’s over mot***f***ers”

The government talks of compassion, but the sound doesn’t fit the action, like if Joe Pasquale was asked to narrate a Holocaust documentary. We deny help to people because they’re not young enough, not old enough, not disabled enough, not British enough, not worthy enough. So. What are we going to do about it? Let’s just turn the page ourselves.