Living in a Dystopia, by Elizabeth Kay
My strawberry pot. And I have flowers already! Hands up who thought a pandemic would be like this. None of us, I reckon. I’ve been reading dystopian novels ever since I was a teenager, and it was John Wyndham who wrote the most believable ones. The Midwich Cuckoos , in particular. Take a sleepy little English village, and turn it upside down by making every woman of childbearing age pregnant with an alien. Or The Day of the Triffids . It only takes two things to go really wrong for chaos to ensue. What I hadn’t anticipated was the attention paid to the economy, although perhaps I should. All those books were written before the advent of the internet, and worldwide stats became available at the touch of a key. Nor did I ever envisage a narcissistic American president who gave such stupid advice, because he only cared about himself and his image. I’ve been leaving writing this until the last minute, an...