Cold Beer and Hot Politics.

Trigger Warning: Mention of Suicide. Suicide Ideation.

Chapter 2

The noise of the Teasmaid woke John from his slumber. With bleary eyes he glanced at the alarm clock's angry red numbers: 6:15 am. Time to prepare for another empty day.

John dragged himself from the sagging mattress, nearly stumbling over an old cricket bat propped in the corner of his bedroom. A relic from his youth, when he was young and life was full of folly, wonder and idleness. He shuffled into the kitchen and prepared a cup of overly-steeped tea and a slice of light brown toast, after turning on the dim lights. Slumping at the small table with his breakfast, John surveyed the depressing surroundings.

The stale air hung heavy with the odours of cleaning products and old books stacked waist-high against the walls. The synthetic lace curtains, grimy from years of London soot, barely masked the dreary view of a concrete carpark and boring office buildings. Everything was precisely in its place, meticulously cleaned and organised, yet somehow it all felt...off. Lifeless. Like a stage set construction of cosy domesticity. John realised he felt no connection to any of it, not even to his own possessions. They were just inanimate objects he had accumulated over five empty decades of existence.

At 7 am, John finished his breakfast and went to shower and shave - the only self-care concessions of his otherwise regimented routine. Donning an ironed shirt and black trousers, he added uniformity to his outward appearance as well. At 7:45, he departed the flat for the two-stop tube ride that delivered him to the ugly concrete office building where he had worked for twenty-two years.

John's duties were straightforward: process data entries into the firm's accounting system, answer the phone with basic information when required. He interacted with no one, save for receiving instructions from the floor supervisor. At precisely noon, he took thirty minutes for lunch in the dingy employee breakroom, chewing joylessly on a sandwich. Then back to his grey cubicle to enter more data until the clock struck 6 pm. He reversed his morning commute, arriving home again by 7.

The evening followed a similarly programmed schedule - dinner, dishes, shower, bed by 11 pm after listening to the radio. The drugs would soon close another waking day. Only in his oblivion did John's existence hold any vibrancy. Most nights he dreamed of his village boyhood, cycling the countryside lanes under endless blue skies or watching cricket matches on the green surrounded by friends. The dreams were so tangible John would awake disappointed to find himself still trapped in his monochrome reality.

But the dreams were a comfort too, reassuring him that such richness and community had existed somewhere, some time in England's past. His nation, like John himself, had once had purpose, moral fibre, a lust for life. Though the present was defined by decay and unending drizzle, hope flickered in the embers of memory. John clung to this hope; it was all that kept him from ending his miserable charade of an existence. Oblivion via Nytol was temporary. Oblivion via the rope in his wardrobe could be made permanent. But hope lived on in his dreams. Hope for England, hope for himself.