According to a rather scientific calculator, I’ve just twenty-one years left on earth.
Not to be morbid, (or optimistic, depending upon your disposition) but it’s worth knowing you’ll pass away the day before your birthday if only to save loved ones money on gifts.
Sadly, this still generous life expectancy dwarfs that of other nations we patronise as ‘developing’ countries. Modern Britain could be mistaken for such a nation. Nothing works and crucially, we no longer expect those nothings to work—the distinguishing characteristic of the banana republic.
It’s not all bad news. Like other failed states, we could emblazon a spiffy AK-47 on our flag, and prefix, ‘People’s Democratic Republic of,’ to our tired old name in a desperate little rebellion against reality.
Anyway, I was searching for a compelling cult or a heroin-like but less frowned-upon drug, or failing those, a reason to submerge into the ranks of the sapless and ‘do Dry January,’ when I stumbled across the death calculator.
You fill out a few questions and up pops your special little date. Usually, I game these things to my desired outcome. Obvious are the answers which yield the delusional result. Not this time. With the honesty of a scalpel, I admitted to smoking, to drinking, to a penchant for argument, debate, and to pessimism. Essentially, I admitted to being French.
‘When will I die?’ has plagued man since the beginning. Me? In 2044. The day before my fifty-sixth birthday.
As if the train strikes, the postal strikes, the unelected government, the final collapse of the NHS, and the dissolution of a country governed by and for yuppies weren’t edifying enough, many modern Brits are resolving to witness this chapter with cold sober eyes.
January is now the month of abstinence, temperance, and anti-indulgence. In Great Britain, goosestepping columns of bores purge and purify and perfect themselves.
Dry January offers those so inclined the impassable chance to record and recite their very public sacrifice. Invariably, this sacrifice litters every other sentence. The reflexive line cuts through all other conversation: ‘I have just as much fun without drinking!’
You’re inclined to humour such neurotic self-deception for this is the month of studied performative suffering. Others go vegan. Not to be exceeded in their immiseration, the elite ascetics amongst us go both vegan and booze-free. What’s a little wilful malnourishment amongst friends?
If you have to repeatedly tell yourself something, that something is probably not true.
Like all modern movements, Dry January wouldn’t exist without social media’s bottomless brunch of dopamine.
Few would sacrifice without the reward purloined from their very public indulgence. But what’s dressed as virtue is actually vice.
Sacrificing ten pounds by handing the note over to a homeless person is an act of humility. Doing so whilst holding a video camera in your other hand is an act of vanity. What humility lashes together, vanity rips apart.
But this is the age of reality TV. Since the 1980s, the economy has resembled a game show, and our culture resembles a talk show. Witness our celebrations of melanin and genitalia for the results.
I stopped listening to Joe Rogan after wearying with the incessant faux wonder of whether advanced civilisations are somewhere, out there.
Reader, there is an advanced civilisation out there. This civilisation lives right under our noses. Well, to be precise, nine miles from Dover.
This week, it emerged that the French now live six and a half years longer than Americans. Despite smoking three times as much, drinking much more, and eating more saturated fat, the French live for an average of 83 years.
Don’t worry. The French too trigger British insecurities. Our Daily Telegraph runs at least one piece a week bewailing the lazy, insolent French. ‘The French have got even lazier,’ proclaimed a recent headline.
The Daily Mail, which I remain convinced is a joke played solely upon myself, took the indolent French to task.
In that hackneyed matey argot of a middle-class bloke trying to impress the builders he’s hired for the attic conversion, the Mail scoffed: “France has not, in modern history, had a reputation for being the hardest-working nation…”
Shockingly, forty-one percent of French people said leisure time is important. In their unspeakable savagery, two-thirds of the French said they’d be happier earning less for working fewer hours.
Insecure Brits love this kind of thing. Thankfully for them, neither the Telegraph nor the Mail revealed that the French work fewer hours than the Brits, and in those fewer hours produce one-third more than the Brits. Those lazy bastards, then, are at least prodigious in their laziness.
Compared to Great Britain, The French work less and produce more. They’ve much higher living standards. They’re much slimmer, whilst smoking and drinking much more. The savage indolent striking whinging French read twice as many books.
The French work thirty-five hours per week, enjoy long vinous lunches, generous holidays, and are some of the most productive workers on earth. No wonder our newspapers don’t like them.
If there ever were an advanced civilisation, this is it.
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