UTTER MAYHEM AT THE TOP AND EVER WIDENING CRACKS AT THE BOTTOM. BRITAIN 2019 AS SEEN FROM A SCOTTISH FOODBANK

It's Thursday. Groundhog Thursday. And it's raining. Groundhog raining. The usual routine. Thirty three miles up the road to Kirkconnel library with ten food parcels. Thirty three miles back down the road with seventy packets of sliced ham care of Brown Brothers.

Should I repeat the plug? Yeah. I should repeat the plug.

Thirty three miles back down the road with seventy packets of sliced ham care of Brown Brothers.

Headphones on and into the splashing traffic. A line up of podcasts fixated on the all consuming Westminster mayhem. Am all I consumed? Sure I'm all consumed. Carol says I'm obsessed. Maybe she's right. She generally is.

How do I feel about the Brexit mayhem on a wet Thursday morning on the A76? The usual. Conflicted. Worried sick for my family south of the border whilst at the same time cheering every twist and turn as the mayhem brings an independent Scotland closer with every passing day.

Pundits in my ears tell me for the umpteenth time this is the greatest crisis since Suez. And within a decade of that particular stromash, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Kenya, Uganda, Barbados and many other colonies had thrown off the shackles of London rule. When Westminster goes into full on chaos and mayhem mode, it tends to lose its grip on its pesky colonies. So maybe the time is finally ripe for us to join the Independence club. So like I said: conflicted.

Tory voices in my ears. Telling me that black is white. Telling me fairytales. Selling me unicorns and snake oil. Voices formed by £20,000 a term public schools. Best economy ever. More people in work than any time in the absolute whole of history. A great, great country. Every sentence drips with the memories of Agincourt and Waterloo and the Blitz. All those glory days when Johnny Foreigner thought he was hard enough to come and have a go. Well, we'll bloody well show all those sausage eaters and garlic munchers. We'll head down into the tube stations and sing 'knees up Mother Brown', so will will. Oh yes we bloody well will. And the more you bomb us flat, the more we'll bloody well sing, so we bloody will.

On and on. Great, great country. No surrender. Bastard collaborators. Tar and feather the lot of 'em. Too bloody right. Good riddance to bad rubbish is what they say. If only they had their own version of Siberia. Ken Clarke in a Gulag? Now what's not to like about that?

Time to take off the headphones and cart my ten parcels into the library. How are things? Same old same old. Except it's not same. Not even close. Once up on a time. Well two years ago. Whatever. Two years ago, ten of our emergency food parcels would keep the good folk of Kirkconnel going for two months. Now? Now its a weekly delivery. Forty food parcels each and every month for a small village of 2000 people. As in 500 food parcels per annum heading up the A76 to a small village of 2000 people. 25% by my maths which are not great by any means but they are easily good enough for this particular sum.

A great, great country? Not so much in places like Kirkconnel where once upon a time there was a coal mine.

There is a message for me from one of the two thousand inhabitants of the village. A mother with two unemployed grown up dependants. A household of three people and one bread winner. Universal credit has thrown some merciless rules down onto the table. If there is a job on offer within a 90 minute commute, you have make an online application. Duty bound. No ifs, no buts. Apply or be sanctioned. End of. And remember, Big Brother is watching. Always.

There was a job. A 27 hour a week job spread over 5 days. In Lanark. OK. Let's check it out. In the spirit of the climate crisis, the train is supposed to be the way to go. Trainline. Ooops. £31 a day for an anytime return. £155 a week. Out of an after tax pay packet of £200 and change.

OK. So not the train.

The car then. A seventy mile a mile round trip over the hills and the single track roads. Two hours a day on roads picking their way through postcard Scottish vistas. Great for a set for Rob Roy. No so great for a daily commute. Too many low gears to find the 55 mpg fuel consumption sweet spot. 300 miles a week and change. If our client in Kirkconnel were a civil servant filling out an expenses clain for travel costs, she would probably be due 50p a mile. £150 a week. But she isn't of course. Instead she has to find the money to put fuel in the tank.

I don't know what car she drives. They didn't say. For ease of maths let's say she gets 30 to the gallon on those single track roads over the Rob Roy hills. Ten gallons. 45 litres. £1.30 a litre.

Sixty quid.

Out of £200 and change.

Leaving £140. For rent and power and Council Tax and food for three. And all those other bits and pieces which make up life's neccessities. And no doubt some credit card minimum payments. Maybe a Christmas Club. Maybe a dog to feed.

Whatever. Too much for £140 a week to deal with. So the maths don't work out whichever way she cuts it. But the DWP aren't interested in the maths. All they are interested in is the small print and the small print says she has to take any job to be found within ninety minute commute. And keep it. Or get sanctioned.

I guess you could call it work to go backwards or else. Because we're a great, great country. The absolute best. And when Johnny Foreigner bombs us flat, we take to the bowels of the earth to sing 'Knees up Mother Brown'.

So how do you make the maths work when the maths don't work? You head into your local library for emergency food parcels, so you do. And the money you save on the weekly shop is enough to make the incomings capable of dealing with the outcomings.

Just.

And the food parcels enable you to spend two hours a day commuting over those Rob Roy hills to twenty seven hours a week's worth of keeping your head above water.

Just.

In our great, great country.

I drive back down the road with more Westminster mayhem in may ears all the way.

Back to base. Back to First Base. A couple are at the desk. Nervous to find themselves in a food bank. They are newly weds. Just through the hoop. And their wedding cake has proved to be to big for the guests to deal with. So they have portioned up and cling filmed what is left and brought it to us. Will we be able to give it out? Sure we will. And thanks for thinking of us. And thanks for your straight forward human decency.

And all the while a familiar figure waits his turn with a wry smile and a thousand mile stare wrapped across a face which has lived outdoors for getting on for twenty years. Our very own tent guy. He has given up on doing indoors. He has stepped away from all the mayhem and chosen his own path. Have tent, will travel. Ireland, the Highlands, Dumfries and Galloway. Any wilderness will do. Rain shine or snow. None of it makes any difference to our tent guy.

What made him head for the hills? No idea. I've never asked and he's never told me. Maybe he saw the widening cracks. Maybe he saw he was about to fall right on through. Maybe he worked out the best way to avoid the cracks in the system is to get right out of the system. Check out. Walk away. Choose morning mist and the sound of the rain in the trees and the sight of the buzzards above. Gliding and soaring. Far from the madding crowd. Far from the cracks.

A few months back, he told me all about the generator he had picked up on the cheap. It was a game changer. It meant the chance to use his Playstation in the tent. Now the generator is surplus to requirements. Too much noise. Too much 2019. Somehow he's found a way for his generator to start a journey which will take it all the way from the woods above New Abbey to a village in India where candlelight is the only light to be had.

And then my phone rings and Wilma from Kirkconnel library is apologetic. Of the ten food parcels I dropped off a couple of hours earlier only three are left. Any chance of a re-order? Sure. Nae bother. I'll be with you in the morning.

And so I am. Another wet morning in our great, great country. Mayhem at the top.

And ever widening cracks at the bottom.

“Knees up Mother Brown..... Knees up Mother Brown.......”

If you are minded to help First Base out as we help out 500 people a month with some food, our online fundraising page can be found by following the link below.

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