Apparently, the world is ending very soon, probably within the next couple of years. This is good news if you’ve still got student loans to pay off, but not so good if you’ve already put down the deposit for a big family holiday in 2026.
Then again, the world has been ending for a while now. For example, I was but a mere slip of a ten-year-old girl when Raymond Briggs’ terrifying graphic novel about nuclear war was published, telling the story of an elderly couple diligently and naively following the government’s comically inadequate advice on what to do in the event of a nuclear bomb going off. When the Wind Blows plunged us into a nightmare world of peeling skin, suppurating sores, and scenes of heartbreaking despair as Jim looks out upon a barren nuclear winter, and tries to tell a dying Hilda that everything will be alright.
People talk about the trauma of reading Stephen King and watching The Omen as impressionable children, but few truly appreciate the depths of horror that was burned into our eyeballs by this ghastly dystopia. (And let me tell you, the author’s previous book, Fungus the Bogeyman, did nothing to prepare me.) It’s no wonder that everyone in my generation has an anxiety disorder.
I spent the first two decades of my life being terrified of nuclear war, but when at last it didn’t happen, I gave up worrying about the end of the world altogether. I decided it wasn’t my problem anymore. All I really ask for in the event of global destruction is a four-minute warning. That gives me enough time to make and eat a mug cake, so at least I’ll die doing something I love.
I’m not alone. Nowadays, it seems no one is too bothered about being wiped out in a mushroom cloud of death that will destroy all life on earth for several thousand years. But appparently we are very worried indeed about people going on cheap holidays and putting petrol in their cars.
I mean, not me, personally. I don’t give a fuck about any of that. I survived the nuclear disaster scares of the eighties, so I don’t think a few posho students crying about turtles can possibly have any effect on me now. Also, at least ten percent of the time I put things that could be recycled into the general waste bin, so I’m a climate emergency all by myself. Don’t bother me with your dessicated ozone layer chat. I’m too busy spraying a load of deodorant under my arms so I don’t smell like a member of Greenpeace.
I suspect that some people are actually quite keen on the end of the world. A man with long stringy hair once asked me whether I’d want to press a button that would trigger the annihilation of all humankind. Just to be clear, he didn’t have such a button. It was a hypothetical question. Even so, I said no. He was a little surprised, and claimed he himself would have no hesitation in eradicating human life from the face of the planet. He said he’d do it gleefully, and got a bit upset when I hinted that this made him sound mildly psychopathic.
Now I realise that he’s exactly the kind of unserious, misanthropic wankpuffin who would glue himself to the motorway, throw paint at a Van Gogh, or vandalise Stonehenge.
Stonehenge, man.
I went to Stonehenge for the first time last year. Walking through the woods and across the fields to the stones, I reflected upon how I was one of millions of humans to have trodden this path over thousands of years. I was part of something bigger than just a tourist attraction. This was a pilgrimage to a holy place. It was momentous. In my mind, I wanged on for a bit about the meaning of life. I wiped a tear from my eye. I hoped that there would be a reasonably priced souvenir available in the gift shop to commemorate this sacred occasion. (And maybe some cake, for the journey home.)
Until a few decades ago, people were routinely allowed to walk up to the stones, touch them, lick them, sit with their backs resting against them, get whacked out on magic mushrooms and sing songs to them, take their clothes off and dance around them in the moonlight, and all sorts of other faux-pagan shenanigans. But then some inadequately-drugged-out wankers in the seventies decided it would be a good idea to draw cartoon willies on the stones and eventually English Heritage had to cordon the stones off with a low rope that honestly pretty much anyone could step over if they wanted to. But we’re English, so we don’t really do that. When it comes to rebellion, we’re more into buying an eight-quid sandwich in the cafe and cracking a joke to the girl on the till about taking out a second mortgage to pay for it.
But for the Stonehenge vandals, this relaxed approach only made the stones an easy target. I expect they had no idea that they were endangering the ancient lichen that lives on the rocks, because, despite styling themselves environmentalists, they almost certainly didn’t know it was there. And of course they didn’t care that they were desecrating a sacred ancestral monument. Why would they? It’s not like it’s anything important, like Greta Thunberg’s vegan leather shoe or something.
I wonder what our ancestors would have done with this kind of person, back in the day. I like to think that a mob would have run them down, torn them limb from limb, and offered up their remains to the crows.
Speaking of crows, I encountered an opportunistic one at Stonehenge. It sat beside me, shared my sandwiches, and hung out by my shoulder, making me look like a fat magician on her lunch break. Tourists wandered by and snapped photos of us together. One woman actually climbed onto my lap to have her photo taken with me and Esmerelda, which is what I secretly named the crow. The woman did not ask my permission to sit on my lap, but since she was very small and foreign I decided it wasn’t worth making a fuss over. I did not charge money for any of this, and neither did Esmerelda, but we exchanged a look which I like to think communicated our shared bemusement.
People are funny. Most of them are alright, but we always notice the ones who are a bit wrong. And if we don’t, they’re always ready to do something horrific to draw attention to themselves, like spray painting some ancient stone temples.
Of course, Stonehenge is highly unlikely to mean the same thing to me as it meant to people five thousand years ago. To them, it probably meant the Great Alien Gods had finally got off their arses and made them a proper clock to count down to the end of the world. If only we could read the signs they left us, they would probably say something like, “watch out for the wankpuffins with orange paint, as they foretell the time of endings.”
Also, “that gift shop cake is not worth a tenner, you gullible bitch.”
Me and Esmerelda. Neither of us could care less about the end of the world, especially if there’s no cake involved.
The wankpuffins 😂. They have completely lost their audience.
I like to think they were just re-enacting that time in the long distant past, when druids graffitied it with the message “ people called ‘Romanes’ they go the house”