Paranoia With a Side of Packed Lunch

I’m in the park. Minding my own business, lost in the pages of my book. Not good lost. Just lost in general. I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for so long I’m beginning to suspect the words are changing when I’m not looking. Every time I reach the end of the sentence, I realise I haven’t absorbed a single thing and have to start again. The plot has moved on. The characters have likely married, divorced, remarried, and started entirely new lives now. Meanwhile, I’m still trapped in paragraph three. Twenty times. At least twenty bloody times. And the reason is simple. There’s a man. Lingering. Hovering. Orbiting me like a suspiciously shirtless moon, drawn repeatedly into my gravitational field despite every visible sign saying PISS OFF. He keeps trying to act casual, but he’s about as subtle as a chainsaw in a library. Every few minutes he strolls past my bench, pretending to admire the scenery, despite the fact he’s already inspected the same patch of grass so often it feels like it’s in a commited relationship with him. He thinks I haven’t clocked it. But I have. Eyes like a hawk. I can spot a weirdo from a mile off. Especially one with bright pink hair and his shirt off. I recognise him. Bradley. He lives on my round. Nice enough. But permanently grubby. The sort of man who always looks as though he’s just crawled out from a vehicle’s undercarriage, even when he’s nowhere near one. He’s a “mechanic” — and I put that in inverted commas because I have a strong suspicion he’s entirely self-taught. The kind of mechanic whose qualifications appear to consist largely of confidence, access to spanners, and an unwavering belief that YouTube knows best. Old bangers litter his driveway. Half of them appear to be undergoing surgery. The other half look as though surgery was attempted, briefly abandoned, and later ruled a coroner’s matter. Every time I pass his house, he’s bent over an engine with his head buried somewhere important and his arse poking out of his joggers like a pair of bread buns attempting a jailbreak. I don’t know what he wants from me. But it’s unnerving. All I want is half an hour of peace. Just thirty precious minutes alone with my book. But no. Not a chance in hell. Because he’s spotted me spotting him. And suddenly I can see the exact moment hope blooms in his eyes. The look of a man who believes a conversation is about to happen. A dangerous misconception. Sure enough, he wanders over. “Mind if I sit?” he asks. Yup. Yes I do. Profoundly. With every fibre of my being. But what comes out is: “Sure. Take a pew.” The words betray me immediately. Bradley drops onto the bench with the enthusiasm of a man boarding a cruise ship after discovering he’s been upgraded to first class. “Reading anything interesting?” “I’m trying to.” My eyes drift back to the beginning of the paragraph. Again. “Nice day for it.” He reaches into his backpack and produces a packed lunch. Oh, for Christ’s sake. Here we effing go. What’s next? A charcuterie board? A bottle of wine? Shall we spend the afternoon discussing our hopes and dreams while watching the sunset together? “Hm.” I keep my response deliberately tiny. A conversational speed bump. Unfortunately Bradley appears to own a four-wheel drive. He rolls straight over it. A heavy sigh escapes him. The sigh of a man physically struggling to keep words inside his body. I can practically hear them. Scratching. Clawing. Climbing the inside of his throat in a frantic bid for freedom. Desperate for escape. Stay there, you bastards. Amanda doesn’t want to socialise today. Or ever. But especially today. For a few glorious seconds, silence settles between us. Then Bradley asks: “Did you vote Brexit?” No warm-up. No foreplay. Straight for the jugular. My shoulders tighten. My soul begins quietly packing its bags. I don’t do politics. Or bollotics, as I prefer to call it. Never have. “Honestly?” I laugh. “I can’t even remember now.” Which is partly true. I’m about as on the fence as they come. The fence feels safer. Less shouting. Bradley nods solemnly. Like I’ve just confirmed one of his deepest suspicions. “That’s exactly what they wanted.” Here we go. “What?” “The government.” Of course. Who else? “It was all planned.” I stare at my book. The same paragraph is waiting for me. Patiently. Like a neglected spouse. “Brexit?” I ask. “Brexit.” He leans forward, voice dropping. “It wasn’t about Europe.” “Wasn’t it?” “No.” “What was it about then?” “Control.” “Control of what?” Bradley pauses. “Everything.” There it is. The capital-T Theory. “They knew exactly what would happen. Prices go up. Food gets expensive. Wages stay the same. People struggle.” I nod vaguely. Not because I agree. More because it’s safer than making eye contact. “They want people desperate.” “Who does?” “The government.” Naturally. “They want us powerless. Unable to stand on our own two feet. If you can’t afford food, can’t afford housing, can’t afford anything, eventually you’ve got no choice but to rely on them.” He says this with the confidence of a man reading from secret documents. In reality, I suspect he’s getting intelligence briefings from a Facebook post written by somebody called PatriotKev1972, whose profile picture suggests he has built his worldview entirely in comment sections. Still. He carries on. “They create the problem.” “Hm.” “Then offer themselves as the solution.” “Hm.” “It’s how they get in your head.” “Hm.” At this point I could probably say “moo” and he wouldn’t notice. He’s fully committed now. The engine is running. And unlike the cars on his driveway, this one appears to work. Then he says the one word guaranteed to make me want to fold myself into the nearest pond and let nature reclaim me. “Covid.” Oh God. Not this. “It was all a farce,” he says. “Wasn’t real.” I wince. Because whatever anyone thinks now, I remember it. The roads emptying almost overnight. The masks. The daily numbers. The uncertainty. The strange feeling that nobody quite knew what tomorrow was going to look like. Fear hung in the air back then. You could feel it. In supermarkets. In waiting rooms. In conversations. Everywhere. And Bradley knows it. He points at me triumphantly. “Exactly.” I haven’t actually said anything. But that doesn’t stop him. “They wanted people scared.” “Who did?” “The government.” Of course. “They feed off fear.” I blink. “They what?” “Feed off it.” Like emotional vampires apparently. “The more frightened people are, the more control you’ve got over them.” His voice drops lower. “They tell you what’s dangerous. They tell you what’s safe. They tell you where you can go, what you can do, who you can see.” His eyes narrow. “And eventually people stop asking questions.” I look around the park. Children are playing football. A woman is walking a dachshund in a tiny raincoat. An elderly man is eating an ice cream despite the weather making that decision highly questionable. The world seems remarkably normal. Meanwhile, Bradley is describing a government so cartoonishly evil it ought to be stroking a white cat. “The vaccines?” he continues. “Poison.” “Poison?” “Slow-release.” “Right.” “Designed to weaken us over time.” “When do they activate?” He pauses. Thinking hard. “Depends.” “On?” “The dosage.” Naturally. Scientific. I nod. Because what else can you do? Arguing would take energy. Energy requires hope. And hope left about twenty minutes ago. So I let him continue. The theories become bigger. The evidence becomes smaller. The confidence somehow doubles. And eventually I reach my limit. I close my book with the exhausted resignation of somebody finally accepting reality. The reality being that I am not going to read a single page today. Peace, it seems, is also a conspiracy. I place the book on my lap and turn towards him. “Alright then, Bradley.” His face lights up. “Yeah?” “Tell me everything.” For the next hour, he does. The government. The media. The economy. The hidden agenda behind practically everything since the invention of sliced bread. Every answer creates three more questions. Every theory branches into another. And somehow every road leads back to the government. By the time he’s finished, I feel as though I’ve accidentally completed a three-year degree in Advanced Nonsense, with a minor in Absolute Bollocks. When the sun finally begins to sink behind the trees, Bradley gathers his things. “Good chat,” he says. “Good chat.” He gives me a small wave and heads off across the park. I sit there for a while afterwards. Enjoying the silence. Or perhaps recovering from it. Eventually I pick up my book again. The same paragraph. The same sentence. The same words. Yet somehow they don’t feel quite the same. Bradley’s voice still echoes around my head. The government. The fear. The control. The hidden agenda. All nonsense, obviously. Mostly. Probably. I glance across the park. The bench beside me is empty. The path is empty too. I realise I never actually saw Bradley leave. Strange. I must have. I was sitting right here. Wasn’t I? I look down at the space beside me. No packed-lunch wrapper. No drink bottle. No crumbs. Nothing. The bench is spotless. As though nobody had been sitting there at all. A shiver creeps up my spine. Then I laugh at myself. Because that’s ridiculous. Of course he was there. We talked for hours. Didn’t we? I look back at the book. At the paragraph I’ve spent all afternoon trying to read. And for the first time, I can’t remember a single thing Bradley actually said. Not one theory. Not one argument. Not one detail. Just the feeling of listening. Of nodding. Of being slowly buried beneath somebody else’s certainty. The feeling of being watched. The feeling that somebody was sitting beside me. And suddenly I’m no longer sure which one of us spent the afternoon spreading paranoia. Maybe Bradley got into my head after all. Maybe that’s what happens when you spend an entire afternoon breathing in secondhand paranoia. Or maybe that’s exactly what he’d want me to think. I look down at the book again. The same paragraph. The same sentence. The same words. And suddenly I can’t shake the feeling they’ve changed.