Fay's Way

Fay Weldon is on great form in the Telegraph, plugging her new novel Chalcot Crescent which is set in the near future when "power cuts are frequent, and everyone lives off rations of National Meat Loaf (which seems to be laced with hallucinogenic drugs)." Interviewer Bryony Gordon thinks it "a bit bleak". Fay hits back:

“Well, I don’t suppose it’s really all that bleaker than things are now. We just don’t notice it. All we know is all we’re told, and all we’re told is what they want us to know.” What does she think of the state of the country right now? She laughs for a long time. “Well it’s shit, isn’t it? We have come to depend upon the most extraordinary construct of employment where we create artificial jobs such as community support officers just to keep employment up. It’s all got to fall like a pack of cards.”

And here she is on party politics:

We are seeing now how little power politics actually has. Parliament has sort of evaporated. It’s a committee not of politicians but sociologists and psychoanalysts. They just benignly watch us, micromanage us, and nobody ever asks any questions. You’re not allowed to eat ham, or salt. I smoked and drank all the way through all four of my pregnancies, and nobody said it was bad. They all came out perfectly healthy and heavy. It’s absurd! They want to go on putting an extra year on your life, but what for? I don’t want to be kept alive.

What a wise woman.