Paul Kirkley: Did we forget to enjoy the peace?
Watching the terrible scenes unfolding in Ukraine, and feeling the chill of a new Cold War – complete with the return of every ’80s school kid’s favourite night terror, the threat of nuclear annihilation – I keep coming back to the same question: Did we forget to enjoy the peace?
Because, for most Europeans, the last 30 years really have been a time of extraordinary peace and prosperity. Granted, it’s not one that everyone has got to share in – names like Srebrenica and Beslan still stain the history books while, in Britain, widening inequality has created a growing underclass. But for the majority of us fortunate enough to be born in the western world, this has been, in the words of Barack Obama, the best time in human history to be alive.
And what did we do with this peace dividend? Did we take time to reflect on the lessons of history? Did we put our energies into ensuring the dark days would never return? No. Instead, a grim coalition of populist politicians, newspaper editors and pot-stirring ‘commentators’ encouraged us to think that everything was terrible, that we’d never had it so bad, that the world was going to hell in a handcart and that our very way of life was under threat.
In the absence of real enemies, they found new bogeymen – be it the EU, the BBC or even the National Trust – to keep people’s anger on the boil. They trumped up culture wars over everything from the phony ‘war on Christmas’ to the attack on our human rights that is fortnightly bin collections – all in an effort to increase our simmering discontent and make us all yearn for some lost, golden panacea that never actually existed.
Instead of working to build things, human wrecking balls like Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings just wanted to tear things down, and millions cheered them on, because they’d simply had enough. Though of what, they could never quite articulate.
So when a madman like Putin comes along and poses a threat to our very existence, it does rather put it all in perspective. I hope, then, that it will make some people reflect on the fact they could have been making hay while the sun shines, instead of constantly trying to set fire to the hayrick. Because however awful you might have convinced yourself everything is, I’m pretty sure you’ll miss it when it’s gone.
I had an operation at Addenbrooke’s recently (nothing major – it only required a local anaesthetic, so no need to send flowers) and the care was, as you might expect, exceptional. It was also, as operations go, hilarious – the surgeon and his theatre team were so friendly and funny, as I left I felt moved to say: “Thank you, that was the most enjoyable medical procedure I’ve ever had.” (I was going to do the old “you had me in stitches” line, but thought better of it.)
The surgeon also let me choose the soundtrack for the operation, which is a small but incredibly thoughtful touch. I was tempted to ask for the new Marillion album, but lost my nerve and went for The Cure instead. “Which album?” he asked. “Oh, just the hits will be fine,” I said, thinking the team might enjoy the perkier end of their oeuvre – Love Cats, Friday I’m In Love, that sort of thing.
For some reason, though, he couldn’t find that, so we just went with my favourite Cure opus, Disintegration – which is how my operation came to be conducted against an unforgiving sonic barrage of Robert Smith’s howling existential despair. (For the uninitiated, it’s a record which starts with the words “I think it’s dark and it looks like rain, you said, and the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world, you said, and it’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead” – and gets steadily bleaker from there.) So apologies to all in attendance for that – and thanks for seeing the funny side.
Is it too soon to start getting nostalgic about the old, traffic-snarled A14? I only ask because, welcome as the recent upgrade is, the problem with shiny new roads is they tend not to be connected to many crumbly old roads.
So if – to take a purely hypothetical example – you were the sort of idiot who, in a moment of distraction, took the wrong slip road at the Cambridge Services junction, and found yourself accidentally heading west along the A14 instead of east, then you might find yourself having to drive all the way to the A1, and then a little way up the A1, and back again – a round trip of some 22 miles – before getting back to where you started. And imagine being the sort of – again, purely hypothetical – idiot who would do this with a giant bag of frozen sweetcorn in the boot. (At least, it was frozen when I… I mean the hypothetical idiot, started.) And imagine doing it during an energy crisis, when fuel is, like, six hundred pounds a litre. Imagine being that sort of idiot. Imagine.
Finally, congratulations to the Cambridge Independent on reaching its milestone 300th edition last week. I remember when the idea was first floated, six years or so ago, a lot of people said it was madness to be launching a new local newspaper, in an age when everyone else was busy closing them down. What next, they must have thought – betting your shirt on a boom in fax machines and Betamax video tapes?
The fact that the Cindy (as we like to call it) continues to thrive is not only testament to the dedicated and talented team who produce it, but also to the intelligent, discerning and, if I may say, uncommonly attractive people who read it. Because a local newspaper is only as strong as the community it serves, and it takes a special sort of place, in my opinion, to resist the lure of lazy clickbait, and demand something a bit more refined, grown-up and… well, better. Cambridge is that place, and the Cambridge Independent is the newspaper the city deserves. Though bear in mind I am literally being paid to say this.
Paul Kirkley was named Columnist of the Year at the 2021 UK Regional Press Awards. Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.
