I remember a few years ago being suddenly obliged to move into temporary accomodation, bundled out of the comfortable flat I’d been living in by a reversal of fortune and ending up in a rundown, unpleasant part of town, maybe even a dangerous part of town depending on your experience of topology. At the time, in the winter outside the council block waiting for  key, I registered how little anxiety I was feeling and how that must be the deadening of the feelings that comes with ageing.

I remember vividly how painful it was to get up early and go to work in the cold, how alien the outside world felt, how unfriendly was the world of work. Now I hardly feel that at all. I have either accomodated myself to the work or my life has just got easier.

And yet tonight I could not take the anxiety of the Real Madrid v Man Utd match. I left the pub fifteen minutes in and couldn’t even bear the radio. That’s about the deepest anxiety I have at the moment.

The real unpleasantnesses fade, the false ones grow. I must be doing something wrong.

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