Livin’ the dream... whatever the news

THERE’S a cheerful delivery driver who comes to our place – most of them simply leave the parcels outside the porch, take a phone-photo to prove the item has been delivered, and leave – but this guy opens the door and shouts a jolly greeting. If you’re nearby to reciprocate, he smiles and gives some sort of upbeat response.

“Livin’ the dream” is what he just said to me, before emphasising it with a sigh. “Livin’ the bloomin’ dream, mate…”

Then he trotted back to his Mercedes Sprinter and, with a roar and scrunch of tyres, was off to deliver another 120 parcels around diverse and lonely corners of the West Country.

I thought ‘how wonderful’, living the dream indeed. Somehow it seemed the perfect comment for these strange times. Cheerful, yet laced with irony. Unanswerable, yet somehow questioning the very meaning of life.

It reminded me of an old war movie in which a troop of much-battered Tommies were told they’d have to go “over the top” again – and one of them (maybe Stanley Holloway) muttered “bloomin’ marvellous!”.

There’s a very British form of sarcasm. One that is sprinkled over a statement like a person applies vinegar to chips. Lightly, not heavily, creating an enlivening edge rather than swamping the flavour. Delivered with that quintessential dryness, which is the hallmark of our national humour.

Those delivery guys have impossibly large numbers of drops to make on their rounds here in the countryside where one address can be miles from the next. So the job is hardly “living the dream”, in anyone’s currency.

But some people are just born cheerful. My grandfather was like that. The more wretched things became, the lighter the spring in his step and the broader his grin. I recall him going about his postal rounds during the winter of 1962/3 as though the six-foot snow drifts were banks of flowers encountered on a summer’s day. He had to do the rounds on foot and his bag was twice its normal weight because of the grocery delivery service he kindly ran for old folk stuck in their homes. But the indefatigable countryman was happy-as-a-sand-boy, whatever the weather.

We could do with a bit of his attitude now. Every time I turn on the news, all I get is grief, guilt, horror and woe.

There are a great many problems flying around at the moment and they worry and disturb me just like everyone else. And of course news programmes should report the horrors. Such as the uncovering of mass graves in Libya and the government violence in Myanmar. We should also be told about systemic racism so that we can do something about it. Same goes for a worrying trend which sees some young men watching internet porn and treating women like dirt.

If I were to simply list major problems and horrors making headlines at present, I could fill this column without even mentioning Covid and its ramifications.

My concern is related to “compassion fatigue” – a syndrome described as “emotional and physical exhaustion – leading to a diminished ability to empathise or feel compassion for others”.

In the same way in which some people are born cheerful, there are others who are made to be hugely kind and understanding. They’re the ones who end up being priests, social workers, nurses and the like. But the majority of us lurk somewhere in between. We get happy, we get sad, we feel concern and we want to help or do the right thing. But we also get fed up.

I have a feeling we have reached a time when that is beginning to happen en-masse. Sick of lockdown, we are also weary of the blame and grief doled out by the media. A young person told me this week: “We don’t watch the TV news anymore. Just too depressing.” She reckoned most younger people felt the same way. Which, to a journalist, is concerning

– because terrible things can happen if the masses aren’t keeping an eye on the folk who run things, or all the other greasy-pole merchants busy lining their own nests.

Of course, editors cannot cut back on bad or depressing news. But I do wonder if some – like those working for BBC Radio Four – could slightly reduce the guilt-making harangue that goes on 24/7. If you’re a person of my background, for example – white, middle-aged male – you are nowadays made to feel bad and/or guilty about just about everything that’s ever happened.

Maybe that’s right and proper. Maybe not. The danger is vast numbers could simply turn off the news to save themselves a brow-beating, and so be in the dark when it comes to really important issues. Or, worse, some might turn to a more rabid form of rightwing media which sets out to be divisive and stir hatred.

All of which prompts me to copy the van driver sprinkling vinegar over this soggy pile of chips. Living the dream is what I’ll be trying to do this bank holiday weekend. Livin’ the bloomin’ dream, mate…

A young person told me: ‘We don’t watch the news anymore. It’s just too depressing’