Hell's just some people

‘Hell is other people,’ wrote Sartre.

My own feeling is that in reality it’s only certain other people that are hell. And some of them one can adapt to.

For instance, crying babies in planes used to drive me crazy until I had my own children, at which point my attitude went through a complete reversal. Now, when I hear a child crying I just feel sorry for the parents. I know how embarrassed, upset and impotent they feel, as they struggle with an impossible task, quietening an unhappy child. Or an angry one.

I was reminded of that today when I heard a baby wailing in a flat next door to us. It didn’t last all that long, but while it was going on it was clear that the parents were completely unable to calm him. He wanted something, he wanted it now, they weren’t able – or perhaps willing - to supply it, and he was making his displeasure fully known. Not to just to them but, as in our case, to the neighbours too.

He knows he wants something and he knows he’s not getting it.
That annoys him. But at least he has the potential to learn

Still, the noise didn’t irritate me. I’ve been there, held a wailing child, wandered around in the moonlight with him on my shoulders at 2:00 in the morning. I know what it’s like and can’t work up any annoyance, just some fellow feeling and a trace of ‘thank God that’s not me any more’.

In any case, it’s easier to forgive noise from babies because they are creatures of pure potential. Who knows what they may turn into. And, above all, they could well learn self-control.

It’s far sadder when the noise is being made at the other end of life, when there’s so little less to hope for. Visiting my mother in hospital, where she’s struggling against a battery of conditions that tend to afflict a 93-year old, is pretty depressing and not just because of her state. On one visit, when I arrived in the ward I could hear a woman down the corridor shouting quite as loudly as the baby next door today.

‘Help me! Someone help me! I need help! I need it now!’

I was there for nearly two hours and the shouting never stopped. People in the nearby beds must have found it insufferable. She was surrounded by nursing staff who were, clearly, helping her, but her problem wasn’t physical, it went far deeper, to an area within her well beyond their reach. Like the child, she knew she needed something, and knew that no one was providing it, but had lost the capacity to comprehend that they could do nothing so that continuing to clamour was ultimately pointless.

What made things worse was that before I even left the four-bed bay where my mother was sleeping, the woman diagonally opposite her also started to cry out.

‘I need help. Now. Urgently. I need to see a doctor. Straight away. Bring me a phone. I’m going to phone a doctor. I need a doctor. Come now and get me a doctor. I need a doctor now.’

The litany went on and on. At one point she spotted me.

‘You there. Yes, you. The man sitting in the corner. Bring me a phone. I’ll phone for an ambulance. They’ll get me into hospital.’

‘Err…’ I replied, ‘you’re in hospital.’

Not useful, I know, but I’m not much good in these situations. But simple pragmatism? It clearly wasn’t going to put her off.

‘I need a doctor. Bring me a phone. I’m going to phone a doctor. I need a doctor. I need a doctor now.’

Then she decided to adopt a new tactic.

‘I’m getting out of bed now. I’m going to look for a doctor.’

She made ineffectual moves towards leaving her bed.

‘Now, Sylvia,’ said a nurse, ‘you stay in bed. You might fall down and hurt yourself.’

‘I need a doctor,’ replied Sylvia.

‘A doctor will come and see you. But the doctors are busy just now. They’re in the Emergency Department.’

‘Well, I’ll get up and fall down. Then they’ll have to see me.’

She may have been not entirely conscious, but I have to say, her logic was impeccable.

The sad thing about these older women was that, unlike the child, there was little hope of their getting better. Of developing new self-control. Like the child, they wanted gratification immediately, and they’re unlikely to learn what the child may, that there’s much to be said for deferring gratification. If only, to avoid immediate disappointment.

That makes their protests harder to bear than a baby’s. Though they’re still not the least bearable of all. Those are the wailing cries of entitlement that come from people who are technically adult and who have neither the excuse of the child who hasn’t yet learned, or the older person who’s losing the lesson.

One of the saddest aspect of the world today is just how many of such people are in positions of power. Supported, apparently, by growing movements, in nation after nation: nationalists in Italy or Hungary, backing Brexit in Britain, voting for Erdogan in Turkey, supporting Trump in the US.

Now those adult babies really are insufferable.

He wants gratification. He wants it now.
And there’s no prospect of his learning better.

Happy 2017

1861 was a lousy year for the United States.

It started with southern States tumbling over each other to get out of the Union. Then in April civil war broke out. That was followed in July by the inexplicable conversion of the major Union victory at the First Battle of Bull Run into a catastrophic Union defeat (though it should be said that the notions of ‘major’ and ‘catastrophic’ would have to be significantly revised later in the war).

It’s no surprise, then, that on 31 December diarist George Templeton Strong wrote:

Poor old 1861, just going. It has been a gloomy year of trouble and disaster. I should be glad of its departure were it not that 1862 is likely to be no better.

155 years on, I feel we can safely echo Strong’s words. Particularly as 1862 turned out not only to be no better than 1861 but was, in fact, considerably worse. A feat 2017 is likely to repeat with respect to 2016.

The year just ended was one where many people, tired of the consensus that has predominated since the Second World War, decided that building bridges was no longer the way to go and we should have some new walls instead.

In June, the British people voted to turn the Channel once more into a moat rather than a mere waterway. Those who knew the sixties and seventies will remember the troubled times in which a former imperial power struggled to find a new vocation. By joining what became the European Union, Britain seemed to find one: no longer merely a diminishing force in the world, it would be a major contributor to the emergence of the Continent as a world power.

In deciding to leave, it has chosen to go back to the time of its decline. Those were the days when Britain was regarded as the sick man of Europe, plagued by poor productivity and constant strikes, where only the wealthy could enjoy a good restaurant meal or a holiday abroad. The nation steadily sank through the economic league table, with Italy at one point celebrating il sorpasso, the moment when its economy overtook the UK’s.

The EU turned that around, but it also opened the doors to immigration from Continental Europe. Those arrivals continue to play a vital role across the British economy, in the health service, transport, farming and catering. Such, however, is today’s fear of the outsider that most voters preferred to give up on the benefits of EU membership in the hope of controlling immigration. Ironically, the hope is likely to prove vain. The loss of benefit, however, will be real.

The American vote, however, was far more significant than Britain’s. It’s sad, though constitutional, that the victor took nearly 3 million fewer votes than his adversary. Donald Trump’s lack of a popular mandate is, however, going to have no impact on the way he exercises power in a democracy.

He’s the wall-builder extraordinary. Not that the one he promised, along the Mexican border, is likely to be built. Even if it is, he’s already made clear that much of it will be fence. But that’s part of his style: he feels he can make any promise he wants, without being bound to deliver – presumably, he has convinced himself that his intentions are pure and, in our post-truth society, honouring his word matters less than getting into a position in which he can mould it as he feels it needs.

His principal concern seems to be to make a friend of Vladimir Putin and an enemy of China. Whatever he does with physical walls, he has a metaphorical one in mind which will include Russia on his side and China firmly on the outside.

Aleppo: handiwork of Trump's pal Putin and his mate Assad

Putin has shown himself to be a strongman and supporter of strongmen, such as Assad in Syria or his new-found friend in Turkey, Erdogan. It’s telling that Trump wants to be associated with that club, perhaps because he also rather likes the homophobic, patriarchal and autocratic views it represents. If so, the US is going to become a considerable less pleasant place to be if you’re gay or a woman (how long will abortion remain a right?) and a great deal more unpleasant for African Americans, Hispanics or Muslims.

Meanwhile, we’d better hope that his attitude towards China represents another promise he has no intention of keeping. If he sticks to the collision course he’s plotted so far, the Trump presidency risks being not just bad but terminal.

Oh, well. George Templeton Strong survived 1862. He got through the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination. He saw the US reunited and prospering. We too may need to keep our nerve and nurse our patience and wait for better days to emerge in the future.

It happened for Strong, so it could happen for us.

In the meantime – happy New Year!