Mini-story: Shortages

They hurt me first. It’s important to remember that. I’ve only retaliated. The first thing they took was probably our democracy. The non-binding referendum, and the manipulation, and the illegal spending. All of it. The hidden analyses and forecasts. Running down the clock. Lying to the people, then pretending to care about the result, then ignoring all of us to plunge headlong towards the precipice, and then over it. Then they took my European citizenship, which I’ve had from birth — or even before. In a stroke, a vast swathe of rights and privileges and protections torn from me. Gates closed, to keep me in. What they took was our freedom, and my country has been down that road before. Then they told us there would be temporary interruptions to the supply of various goods. The word they used was shortages, and they didn’t realise that it would gain a capital letter, and become embedded in our culture and psyche for at least a generation to come. It took a week and a half to start to…