The Cutprice Guignol

I have hear many people wishing to return to ‘normal’. It makes me sad because I want to say this – please understand that your ‘normal’ never existed. It is a construction which has been used to seperate and bestow upon a privileged few a life of (relative) luxury, comfort and on-demand services, whilst resigning the majority to a standard of ‘normal’ far inferior to what you would consider adequate for yourself.

Think about this – how many times recently have you heard someone criticise Chinese eating habits as being ‘not normal’? Yet no one bats an eye (accidental pun but I stand tall) at the miserable life (42 days on average) of a battery farm chick because we consider that ‘normal’. Have you ever heard someone describe Africa (the whole continent) as being ‘incapable’ of achieving normality? Yet most Westerners don’t think it abnormal to homogenise millions of independent…