Folk Wisdom

Then there are the times when even your favourite screwdriver, or your special spanner, seems not enough to lift the spirits beyond the dull low plateau they seem to have ensconced themselves. All through this late drear winter where all the news has seemed to be bad and the only light at the end of the tunnel has turned out to be some lacklustre fucker with a knackered torch.

Still, no doubt ‘they’ whoever the fuck they are, have some apposite – and quite possibly, pithy – aphorism, saying, wise words or something else along the lines of ‘it will be all right in the end’. Something no doubt misheard and misquoted from some late medieval rural situation, or some of the usual mangled incoherence from some holy book or other, which make the instructions for a self-assembly wardrobe seem logical, coherent and relevant.

That is the trouble with trying to enjoy a good dose of healthy misery and a vigorous wallow in self-pity, some bugger with some ‘humorous’ bit of folk wisdom will always come along and try to ‘cheer you up’. Usually, just when the last thing you want is to be cheered up. Sometimes seeing that the world is fucked, that the human race is fucked, that we ourselves personally are fucked, is the best part of the day. There is nothing quite as heartening, and likely to cheer anyone up, than seeing that everything has turned to shit and there is bugger all anyone can do about it.

After all, it can hardly get worse, can it? And that is something to cheer yourself up with.