Friday 22 February 2019
What does it all mean?
I don’t really know and, like many people, I don’t really care.
The triggering of “Article
50” two years ago, setting in motion the UK’s divorce from the European Union,
roughly coincided with my diagnosis of Parkinson’s. My mind was, understandably,
preoccupied with things other than politics at that time.
But curiously I’ve
lived in something of a news vacuum ever since.
Clara often says to
me, “did you hear about blah blah blah today?” and I respond with a blank look.
Sometimes I listen to the radio in the mornings but I zone out of most of it,
don’t read the papers and don’t check much news online, other than
business-related stuff that I need to know for work. The time I would have spent
taking in the daily news is now diverted to reading research papers, posting on
forums and writing this blog.
Having my condition
means that current affairs, yesterday’s football results and who got voted off Strictly don’t actually matter any
longer.
Except that they do matter.
Having an awareness of
what’s going on in the Six Nations rugby, or the Champion’s League, or Love Island is something to talk about
at work the next day. These are shared experiences that, however transient,
bind us together.
To chat about stuff, to
gossip, to have an opinion on the trivia du jour is to be human. And, in this, I
have lost my way over the past two years.
I suspect Brexit will rumble
on for a while yet. Which gives me plenty of opportunity to re-engage in the daily
chat. Along with Formula 1, the latest Netflix originals, and the big cat stories
that Clara sometimes emails to me. And perhaps these things will give me an
edge in the long psychological battle with Parkinson’s Disease…
