Sunday 15 July 2012

Planet of the Snails



I couldn't resist posting an extract from the latest incisive article by that magnificent columnist Charlie Brooker in The Guardian:
Apologies for swearing in an opening sentence, but have you seen the shitbastard sky we've been having lately? In case you don't recognise it at first glance, it's that bruise-coloured ceiling of floating misery that has been remorselessly flinging cold water over everyone and everything in the nation for weeks now. There's moss growing on the inside of clouds up there. The British summer has long been a work of bleak fiction but this year it morphed into full-blown dystopian satire.

Oh, there are flashes of blue here and there, but they function much like the speedboat prize at the end of a vintage episode of Bullseye: nothing but a cruel reminder of what you could have won. So the weather turns nice for 25 minutes in the late afternoon. You put your sunglasses on and step outside. But by the time you reach the end of the street, the winds are howling, the heavens are weeping, and it's frosted piss city all round.

On and on it goes. It's got to the point where pulling back the curtains each morning feels like waking up in jail. No, worse: like waking up inside a monochrome Czechoslovakian cartoon about waking up in jail. The outdoor world is illuminated by a weak, grey, diseased form of light that has fatally exhausted itself crawling through the gloomy stratospheric miasma before perishing feebly on your retinas. Everything is a water feature. We're on the Planet of the Snails. Cameron's Britain.
Utter genius.

2 comments:

  1. Isn't he?
    President Brooker has a good ring to it, don't you think?
    We're all about the Charlie-love over here xxx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can't wait for the return of "Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe" - one of the best things on TV at one stage... Jx

      Delete

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