Boots with the fur? No, that’s just mould

It’s as if we’ve all been overcome with a bad case of survivor’s guilt. If we are not actually standing waist-deep in mud, we believe we should count our blessings.

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The most recent example is petrol prices. On the radio this week, people were ringing in to note how crushingly expensive it’s become to fill a tank. Truck drivers, in particular, are losing money with every job.

On the text line, one listener remonstrated: “Sydneysiders whinge about petrol prices, while people in Ukraine die under Russian fire.”

I understand the point: the Russian invasion of Ukraine has produced two things: a lift in international petrol prices and the murder of thousands of innocent Ukrainians. The second, obviously, is incalculably more important than the first.

But, on planet Earth, there’s always someone worse off than yourself. Apply a strict hierarchy of suffering, and hardly any one of us would be able to nurse a single grievance.

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I’ve always disliked that finger-wagging phrase, “First world problem”, often followed by some bristling exclamation marks: “First world problem!!!” I live in what some call “the first world”, so what other problems am I meant to have?

The Australia in which I live – while a comparatively privileged place – happens to also include do-nothing governments, rapacious corporations and – yes – cafés who don’t know how to froth milk.

All this is a long way short of being shot dead, a point Scott Morrison tried to make when he asked protesting Australian women to take comfort from the fact they were not regularly machine-gunned to the ground.

Morrison, of course, received few plaudits for his request for Aussie women to put on a happy face, a request which was later repeated by his wife in a slightly different form in relation to Grace Tame.

At some level, most of us understand that things must be judged against the expectation of the life we normally live. It’s not “be shot or declare yourself happy”.

We cannot triage our every problem, checking to see if it measures up against that of someone else. Complaining, after all, has a point: in some cases, it’s a mechanism for demanding change. And, if not, it’s at least a way of letting off steam – an extra serve of which might help my local café in learning how to froth milk.

Or to put it another way: in every life, some rain must fall.

And so, I’m insisting on my right to complain a little about my experiences during the last two weeks. They include a half-day using a high-pressure hose to clean mould off the side of the house only to find that the plastic hose fitting kept coming loose at least once every hour.

Frustrating.

And then having to mow the lawn so many times that I ran out of petrol and had to go to the local service station to fill up my five-litre can of petrol.

Once I arrived, it was like a body blow. I mean, have you seen the price of fuel?

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