The Meerkat Muse: 11th of March, 2026

Welcome to March, and welcome back to the Meerkat Muse! How have things been?

Lengthy Days

March was always going to bring a tiring and trying experience in so many ways, but I got an early taste of that at the tail end of February, with a lone-trading day that funnily enough, was at the end of the last Muse. It was not too bad, for there’s always stuff to do, but typically lone-trading days will lurch from deathly dull to frustratingly frantic, and what didn’t help is that I inexplicably felt run-down. I wasn’t ill as such, but I certainly was not one hundred percent!

As is now rather normal for my lone-trading experiences, when stuff happened it happened all at once. Customers coming in, with others calling, and then missing calls from still other customers whilst serving people. It is one of the surest rules of retail that when people want something, they’ll all want it at the same bloody time!

Still, all in all, I actually don’t mind lone-trading. Sometimes I actually rather enjoy it. This meerkat can have a a tendency to prefer solitude to small-talk. This is not to say that I don’t get on with my colleagues, because I do, and I consider them friends, but there are times when my own company is enough. Consequently learning that we’d effectively have a chaperone from another showroom was disgruntling. I get it, it’s not really ideal to have a lot of lone-trading, especially from a health-and-safety point of view, but we don’t need a chaperone!

There’s no telling what will come of the showroom in these circumstances. The assigned cover is a manager from another store, and who knows what ideas and strategies they’ll aim to impose, or how they’ll gel with the team. If you ask me it’s not needed. How would it play out?

Seismic Shifts

For as long as I can remember, UK politics has been dominated by two political entities, the Conservatives and Labour. That landscape is changing, and in the wake of the recent by-election in Gorton and Denton, it could be one of the biggest shakeups to hit UK politics in a long time.

To a degree, things were already changing at the last general election. Whilst they only ended up with a handful of seats, Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform party got a lot of votes, and thanks to disproportionate media coverage ever since, they’ve been in the headlines virtually non-stop for over a year. This has led to a surge in polls for them. However, a strong social media presence and a policy of engaging with prospective voters, combined with a Labour government that seems determined to out-reform Reform, has led to a huge rise in popularity for the Greens.

It seems that the Tories are a spent force. Officially they remain the Opposition, but predictions would suggest the party that oversaw a miserable 14 years in government from 2010 to 2014 is going to get slaughtered at the next generation election. The Liberal Democrats likewise seem to be spent, if this by-election is anything to go by. Reform are gaining the right-wing vote, the Greens are gaining the left-wing vote, and the two traditional powerhouses of UK politics, Labour and the Tories, along with the occasional third-wheel Lib Dems, are sinking into obscurity.

The Gorton and Denton by-election represented a fascinating litmus test of the landscape. It’s a seat Labour had held for 52 years, but at the end of a campaign that saw Labour dishonestly represent the battle as a two-horse race between themselves and Reform, it was in fact the Greens who won, and not merely won, but dominated. The Greens and their candidate, Hannah Spencer (a local woman who has worked as a plumber) won 41% of the votes, with Reform claiming 29% and Labour pushed down to third, on 26%. Of the Tories and the Lib Dems there was virtually no sign, with 2% each.

A by-election does not usually define voting patterns for a general election, and anything might happen in the next few years, but if this pattern did play out on a national level, it would be a huge majority for the Greens. It would be one of the largest majorities in Parliamentary history.

The reality will be somewhat different. There are regions of the country where the Greens’ message will resonate quite well, and there are areas where Reform will prey upon fears to great effect. What does seem increasingly likely is that the old guard are being kicked to the kerb. The recent shambolic failures of the last Tory government are fresh in the memory, and if Labour continue to try and straddle an awkward line between themselves and Reform, they will continue to bleed voters to the Greens. It all adds up to a new dawn in British politics.

Prolonged Bruises

In the wake of my blood test last month, I came up in a bruise. This is entirely normal, but what I didn’t expect was for that bruise to persist for as long as it did. Half of it faded fairly quickly, but this element? It loitered for longer than I thought.

Rare Treats

It is unusual to get a Saturday off, but some last-minute alterations to the rota meant the potential for a lie-in! I say ‘potential’, because with a cat, there’s always the prospect of a rude awakening in the small hours of the morning!

Round and Round and Round

As is by now the unfortunate norm, I regularly get emails from people asking about my books. You may think that I would welcome queries, but these are not genuine displays of interest. They’ll start out with a question, or perhaps they’ll offer to leave a review, but it’s all geared up to trying to sell some kind of promotional or marketing service. The latest experience involved someone saying they couldn’t leave a review on Amazon for my book (which is peculiar in itself), so they were asking about Goodreads. What they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me was: which book? I have two published works, which one did they want to leave a review for? I knew they were aiming to take me for a ride, so I got in there first. With each non-answer from them, I repeated my question.

Eventually, they emailed me again from scratch, so to speak, and I simply deleted their email without responding.

Might there be legitimate businesses out there to help with spreading the word about books? Most certainly. Do they use these faux campaigns? Do they use AI to regurgitate a book’s blurb back to the author, in order to pretend they’ve read it? I doubt it. They certainly don’t masquerade as established authors (another regular occurence). If you are a would-be scammer, aiming to send me an email, DM or some other message attempting to sell me the world, please don’t waste your time or mine. I have heard it all, and I will not fall for it.

Obvious Distractions

With the Epstein story refusing to disappear and partisan enquiries grilling all but Trump, the tangerine tyrant has buddied up to Israel and launched a fresh series of attacks on Iran. In retaliation, Iran has lashed out at the U.A.E, Kuwait and Qatar, countries known to provide the USA with regional support. What we have here is a classic bid to distract from domestic problems, yet all Trump has done is create a new set of issues.

It will never cease to baffle me that so many conservatives place so much blind trust in Trump. They believed him when he claimed he wouldn’t start wars, yet he has proven to be every bit the warmonger he accused his opponents of being, and it could not be clearer that he is doing so to divert criticism away from his floundering domestic policies, and his association with Epstein. Triggering a serious regional conflict that will cost countless lives, and also inflate the price of oil, is not the grand flex Trump thinks it is.

Is the Iranian regime a cruel one? Yes. Should it go? Absolutely. What does history tell us about regime change forced from without, as opposed to rising from within? It doesn’t normally go well.

Dizzy Days

A couple of weeks back, I felt run-down, but I ended up feeling more than run-down, with an inexplicable spell of dizziness and disorientation that began in earnest on Friday, whilst at work. It carried on through Saturday, albeit having a lie-in helped. I wondered if stress was an element behind it all, what with the impending arrival of an unknown element with a covering manager, and therefore a degree of uncertainty throughout March.

I certainly wound up having some unusual dreams that night, though whether in direct relation to this woozy feeling, I have no idea. One dream was work-related, with the ‘new’ manager getting grumpy about washing-up water being spilled, and threatening disciplinary action if it happened again. I would like to think this sort of attitude is highly unlikely!

The next dream was even weirder. Once upon a time my wife and I watched Criminal Minds, a show about the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit. In a dream inspired by this show, a Spider-Man game, and possibly the new Resident Evil game, I joined an FBI agent and a femme fatale to search the address of a suspect standing trial for an undisclosed crime. We found pills, cash and hidden cameras, but I can’t recall if this was what we were looking for. It was a dream that sort of came out of nowhere.

My ambition had been to do a bit of writing on Saturday, but my frazzled brain wasn’t up to doing much of that, and it was back to work on Sunday. My new hope was that a decent night’s sleep on Saturday would see me at least a bit more alert come Sunday. I had appointments with customers and other things to do, and wanted to feel a bit better for those events. Indeed, with a mid-week sale change on the agenda, and with needing to make a good impression on the covering manager, the timing of this ropey spell was as poor as it could have been.

As it turned out, the guy that will in theory help cover was as dubious as to its necessity as we at the store were. He has his own showroom to run, and little-to-no certainty as to why he’s been asked to cover. He seemed pleasant enough, and I felt I could certainly work with him, but it remained to be seen if that would actually happen all that often.

Looking Ahead

Life has a tendency to throw curveballs, and this certainly happened the other week, for reasons I am not remotely ready to talk about. Suffice to say, it got me thinking about family experiences, and about making sure we can have those experiences. Money is always a factor in decisions, but it is far from the most important thing in life. Family is the most important thing in life.

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now. As I write this, some stuff needs to happen and it needs to happen soon, so my loved ones and I can have clarity. I can’t say more at this moment, except to say that enrichment is my focus.

Seeking Solace

Right now, life is all about brave faces. I have friends who are going through some immensely difficult challenges, and facing it with courage and conviction. I can relate, now more than ever. For the sake of my loved ones I feel the need to be strong, and to carry on with the routine. Regular life doesn’t stop for anyone, so it’s a case of going to work and cracking on with the daily duties.

To that end I’ve also been working on my stories. I’ve cracked 10,000 words on the next part of my multiverse saga, and that’s been something of a focal point to keep me distracted and busy. I need to do more work on the story with my brother-in-law, but at the mo I can’t immerse myself into that world in quite the same way.

Cowardly Attacks

The website of my good friend Bruce Gerencser was taken down the other day, thanks to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Given Bruce’s outspoken criticism of Evangelicals and IFB Christians, it is not hard to imagine that someone from within that group decided to try and take him down. As ever, instead of a reasoned approach, or merely living and let live, some radical coward decided to try and silence the opposition. This is religious fanatacism 1-0-1. Unable to provide a coherent argument, or to simply walk away, this coward aimed to deny Bruce his voice. It speaks to fear, and such acts betray a lack of confidence in their faith.

Fear is so often the enemy of love. Fear can be paralysing, and sometimes, fear can actually be a motivator, but sometimes, fear is crippling. The wrong kind of fear, and how we handle it, can set us back in life. When we become afraid to let others speak, and worse, we resort to cowardly attacks to silence them, we have succumbed to the worst kind of fear.

There is a trend with the religious right to cry about alleged censorship, and then indulge in its practice at nearly every available turn. What they consistently fail to understand is that if they were really being persecuted to the degree that they whine about, they wouldn’t be able to do any whining. They would not have websites from which to bleat. They would not have social media accounts. There would be no platform from which they could have their meltdowns. Instead they create false flags whilst utilising snide and cowardly means to silence those they disagree with.

Family Nights

In the midst of some crazy stuff going on, and following a particularly lonely day of lone-trading at work (I literally saw one set of customers all day), the following day – aimed at celebrating my wife’s birthday – was an important chance to unwind a little, and have a moment to appreciate our little family unit. It was also an occasion to indulge, with an unlimited salad bar, a very good chicken burger and an apple pie ice cream sundae all going down very nicely. In fact, it may be fair to say that I had to be rolled out of the restaurant.

An apple pie sundae with mini apple pies was something of a novelty, and it was extremely good! Afterward there wasn’t much more to do other than sit around and digest everything, something of a mission in itself.

I have much need of these moments, especially right now.

I feel kinda meh. I want to switch off my emotions. I’m not at all certain if they matter much as it is.

Flag-Shaggers

With apologies for the crude title, I cannot think of any other way of describing this. The road I walk along to work every morning has now had every lampost adorned with either a Union Jack or St. George’s Cross. This gesture is strictly performative, and it’s performed by the ‘take our country back!’ crowd, except no one is sure what we’re supposed to be taking back, nor who we’re taking it back from.

There’s a lot of chest-thumping from the flag-shaggers worshippers. They’re also usually of a certain type. You can probably guess what that means, but in case there’s any uncertainty, they’re normally white men, sometimes accompanied by white women, who brandish the flags as though they are cloaks, to ward off whatever is the evil flavour of the month. These people proudly crow about patriotism, yet they’ll show no meaningful interest in activities to actually help this country. All they offer are empty platitudes and loud acts of defiance against an ‘enemy’ they cannot even define.

Well, I tell a lie. These flag-worshippers can define their ‘enemy’. It’s anyone who doesn’t embrace British culture, except British ‘culture’ is a multi-pronged article, and patriotism should not be defined by waving a flag, but by service to one’s community. People of all creeds work hard to ensure safe, prosperous communities. People of all creeds serve in the police force, the fire service, and the medical service, as well as the military. People of various backgrounds run shops and community centres that provide places for friends and family to gather. All of that is far more meaningful than sticking a flag to a lampost.

Bad Nights

I don’t know why, but Monday night was bad. Try as I might, I could not settle, and I wasn’t aided by my wife and daughter both making trips to the loo during the night (though in fairness, this doesn’t usually perturb me). I found myself briefly nodding off here and there, and snatching at fragmented dreams, only to wake up again. Whether it’s relevant, I went to bed with something of a headache, and woke up with it. There was no rest for the wicked, for I had work, and so I dragged myself into the showroom for what promised to be a quiet morning on my own.

What I ended up with was a bit of drama. The guy covering us was checking in with his own store in the morning (let’s call this store B), and then heading our way in the afternoon, or so I thought. I had a phone call from another store (store C), who had a colleague due to cover at B for a few weeks, whilst B’s manager covered us. There may be some crossed wires here, but according to store C, B’s manager had reasoned that we were too quiet and he wanted to be back at his store. Cue the colleague from store C possibly covering us.

I had no skin in the game, so to speak. As mentioned earlier in this Muse, I am dubious about the need for constant cover as it is. Having it on occasion is absolutely useful, but we are a quiet showroom. If you’re a greedy salesperson you will not be thrilled to be here. Still, if the company wills it, we’ll accept whatever cover is handed to us, and whomever is required to cover would presumably obey those orders. If a bunch of politics erupts, my only wish is for it not to engulf me and mine. I don’t need that, especially right now.

Thus ends another Meerkat Muse. Until next time!

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