As I wake up to the pound crashing, my definition of the worst thing that could happen just gets wider
Monday is Mr Z’s birthday, and before I had even spread happy wishes upon it, I was catastrophising about the sterling crisis. He said to look on the bright side: at least our livelihoods didn’t rely on the import of hops, and I pointed out that all our favourite businesses’ did. I said, “Now we’ll never go to the US while the kids are still kids,” and he said, “Maybe as refugees?”
His birthday always falls in the middle of the Labour conference, so usually the worst thing that happens during it is some disappointing internal shenanigan. Years and years of thinking you’ve hit political rock bottom, because Tony Blair has ignored the compositing meeting on railway renationalisation or Ed Miliband tried to coin a phrase and it didn’t fly, then wham: you’re pushing 50, it’s 7am and you’re watching a graph of the pound falling against the Turkish lira in real time. “Not to worry,” says your optimistic, 20th-century soul. “Realistically, when would we next have gone to Turkey anyway?”
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
