MY JOURNEY FROM THE SUPER RICH TO THE DESPERATE POOR IN A FEW HOURS AND A HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES

I pick up the phone to the sound of sobbing. It happens a lot. These days. In these seemingly endless hard times. And I do my best to adjust the tone of my voice to the right place. No syrup. Just normal. It's OK. It's fine. Seriously. Don't worry.

And I pick up a pen and start to scribble down the details of a stranger's despair. A name. An address in a small village where hope and optimism moved out many years ago. A family of four. A father recently hospitalised. A mother even more recently hospitalised. An oldest son layed off after the Christmas rush.

Not not a penny to their name. A lousy seven pence on the meter and cupboards as empty as the promises of a London politician.

No wonder she's sobbing. I'd be sobbing too. Who wouldn't?

Can we help? Yes, we can help. I assure her I'll be round the next day. The sticking plaster man. Which of course takes the sobbing to a whole new level.

And once the phone is back down on the table, two familiar words hop into my head.

Quiet Desperation.

Penned by Henry David Thoreau in the depths of a Dickensian world.

'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country...'

Morphed by Pink Floyd to reflect the crashing Seventies.

'Hanging on in Quiet Deseperation is the English way. The time is gone. The song is over. Thought I'd something more to say...."

And then nabbed by yours truly for a black comedy nobody much has ever read.

Two simple words: joined. Put together to paint a picture for the ages. Winners and losers. And the losers are put so far down there seems no point in trying to find a way to get back up again.

They make calls to food banks. They sob down the phone.

The next day, my SatNav finds the place easily enough. A grey village on a grey day. A place where yesterday is all there is left. Tomorrow doesn't bare thinking about.

My knock on the door is answered pretty much straight away. And she's sobbing within a matter of seconds.

The immensity of her despair. A morning colder than it really should be in May. A thin wind straight out of the north slithers between the pebble dash walls.

Her leg is swathed in bandages. The word to identify the problem is way too long and medical for me to remember. It needs the dressing changing every three days or so. Which means yet another Catch 22. Without a change of dressing, the problem will only get worse. But a trained nusrse is required to change the dressing and the trained nurse is three miles away. And three miles worth of bus fare might as well be a return ticket to Tokyo. Out of reach. Out of the question.

So she walks. Three miles there and three miles back. And when she gets to the surgery, they tell her she really shouldn't walk three miles because walkng three miles will only make it worse. Stop it healing.

And she cannot afford to be put back in the hospital. Because her husband is in a mess. Not coping well. Not coping at all. Recently ill to the gates of death. Told not to work, but ignoring the advice. Saying living life without work isn't a thing he wants any part of. He dissappeared for a few days a few weeks ago. She called the police and told them she was frightened he was putting his words into action.

They found him. Broken. Apologetic. Ashamed.

Quiet Desperation.

In theory he has a job now. One of those 2019 theoretical jobs. The dreaded agency work. Waiting on a text to tell him he has a shift's worth of work. Nothing for three weeks now. A blank screen. Zero hours made flesh.

Quiet Desperation.

Nine grand's worth of debt and more and more brown envelopes with every passing day. And 7p on the meter. And cupboards bare. And not a cat in hell's chance of anything getting any better. Mired. Stuck. Living out a life which is getting a little bit worse each day.

Quiet Desperation.

The bottom of the pile. An still the north wind whistles through the pebble dash.

I unload a week's worth of food for a family of four. Her shy fifteen year old son carries it inside. I get a couple of week's worth of electric onto the meter and she pretty much breaks down completely.

Relieved. Humiliated. Ashamed. Beaten. Grateful. A whole bunch of things all wrapped up together. She reaches out and hugs me. A stranger in a red van who has turned up with the basics of life. Enough for another week. Enough for body and soul to be kept togther.

For another week.

I climb into my van feeling a familiar low. The joys of being a sticking plaster man. The phone number of last resort. Well. Not quite. Second last. Samariatans are the next stop down the line from us.

And as I feed myself back onto the main road to Dumfries, my mind wanders back a few hours to the jumping, howling jubilation of Anfield. A miracle under the gleaming lights. 53,000 of us screaming out our defiance. And a few yards away from me on the shining emerald green carpet were twenty two young men writing a chapter of folklore. Eleven in the red shirts of Liverpool. Eleven in the yellow shirts of Barcelona. Wrapped in a YouTube drama for the ages. Ninety minutes of crazy. An impossible dream made real.

But now I see things in a different light. Now I start to ad up the collective salaries of the twenty two young men who had locked horns in front of a watching world. Maybe £200 million a year? Maybe more?

The super rich. Living dream lives light years out of the reach of those of us who howled them on.

Just a few hours and a hundred and fifty miles or so. The super rich and the super poor. Fantasy drama to quiet desperation. A cauldren of bouncing sound to the low whistle of a cruel north wind. The sparkling palace of Anfield on the greatest European night of all to the grey despair of an unnoticed village in the south west corner of Scotland.

Hundreds of millions of pounds to 7p on the meter.

The very top to the very bottom. Dreamland to Quiet Desperation in a handful of hours and a hundred and fifty miles.

And for the sticking plaster man, tomorrow will be yet another day.

More sobbing on the phone.

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'QUIET DESPERATION'