Totally Redundant

Being poor is a little like having an earache over a Bank Holiday. All you can think about is the pain and how long it will be before a healing hand can be found to take away the anguish. So it is with poverty. You lie in bed and the refrain throbs on: ‘I’m poor. Oh God, I’m poor.’ If you wake wake up in the night for a pee — and the poor always do — the refrain knocks on again: ‘I’m poor. How long, oh Lord, am I going to be poor for?’ And you go back to sleep, exhausted by thoughts of poverty and the bloody alarm goes off and the chorus is picked up. It’s morning time again. ‘Another day and I’m still poor.’ Even in the evening it’s mourning time. I have no doubt that poverty spoils everything. It impinges on the imagination, spontaneity vanishes. All you can think about is the condition of being poor. Poverty can curdle the libido and corrode civilized thoughts. One’s sense of humour vanishes, to be replaced by a curry-spoiling sarcasm as one’s Mr Hyde emerges from the swamp of the subconscious. And you go to church and pray for a touch on the National Lottery. It has to be St Jude, of course, the patron saint of the hopeless cases. ‘Hey Jude, don’t let me down.’ and suddenly, the local priest, an oblate of Mary Immaculate intones a Beatitude: ‘Blessed are the poor….’ and you think, ‘Oh, bollocks to the poor.’ But follow this with a stifled apology: ‘Sorry, Jesus, but it’s not on.’