The Nurse sometimes gets fed up with everything on the TV news being so intense. So she’s dreamed up three things to do to lighten up even the most serious piece of TV news reporting: 

1. If a pompous politician is getting on your nerves, imagine him or her naked except for socks and sandals. A neat trick which makes it completely impossible to take them seriously from then onwards.
2. When someone being inteviewed is driving you mad with fury, exasperation or disgust, squint at them through one eye until you’ve got them in centre view. Then squash their head between your index finger and thumb until, in your imagination, it pops. Mmmmm, that’s much better…
3.  Put a fish tank next to your TV. The Nurse has an aquarium full of guppies and neons, a gift from a grateful Prison Guard. Whenever the telly gets too depressing or annoying she swivels her eyes to the right and drifts off into fish-world instead. Nice.

“I wear this expression when I’m not sure whether to be excited or scared…” 

We’re being fed news through a screen of total hysterica

The Nurse is well acquainted with rose-tinted glasses. She needs to be, locked up in here with water dripping down the walls and all those nutters groaning and banging in nearby cells. But she’s getting riled up about the hysteria-tinted glasses that the news is filtered through.

The Nurse has access to an array of media, even locked in this shithole. A wind-up radio and laptop secreted about her person (don’t even ask)  keep her abreast of current affairs. But if she believed everything she read and heard, she’d think the world was coming to an end. The media tell us that recession’s looming, that we’re on the very cusp of economic disaster, that the world’s about to end.    

The Nurse also has numerous outside contacts and a lively social e-life. One of her customers sent her a survey the other day that said that more than 65% of businesses felt optimistic about the future and were not suffering unduly from a slow-down. Her contacts are flourishing, expanding, taking on staff and planning for a successful future. Everyone seems pretty cheery. 

So who’s right? Are we - as the media insist - at the mercy of the four hoursemen of the apocalypse, doomed to recession, poverty and repossession? Or are we actually managing very nicely, if a bit baffled by all the hysteria?

The problem is that we only have one way to get the news… via the media. To a certain extent the internet allows the people to make the news, but there’s so much noise that it’s difficult to discern the true pattern of things, unbiased and un-spun. 

The Nurse amuses herself by reflecting that the media probably don’t broadcast and write the truth because the truth is often pretty dull. CANNABIS PSYCHO NUTTER RISK’ is sooo much more exciting than ’EXPERTS SAY THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF INCREASED PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLNESS DUE TO CANNABIS. IN FACT MENTAL ILLNESS STATISTICS ARE UNCHANGED AND MOST PEOPLE JUST GET REALLY, REALLY STONED.’

And ’CREDIT CRUNCH A BIT OF A NUISANCE BUT MOST PEOPLE AND BUSINESSES ARE BASICALLY OKAY AND HAVING A NICE TIME’ probably won’t sell as many papers as ‘RECESSION BITES… HOLD ON TO YOUR KNACKERS’.            

It’s a mad world.