I need a holiday. It’s been a long year, what with finding a new flat and trying to sell a house and then accepting that the whole Brexit shambles meant the house wasn’t going to sell but I was moving anyway so talking tenants and then moving to a new town ... it has been a bit stressful and I need to flop about somewhere warm for a week or few to recover.
What is this ‘need’? I’m going to Nepal, where people ‘need’ to enough food to eat and homes to shelter them from monsoon rains. Last year I was in Malawi where ‘need’ drove men to fish in rivers full of hippos and crocodiles. Laotians ‘need’ decades of peace to recover from the trauma of years of unremitting bombing.
Here, in the relative affluence of the UK, there are thousands who rely on foodbanks because they don’t have enough money to pay for food. I know of one family caught in the delays to universal credit payments: illness has brought loss of employment and now lack of income has meant the mortgage isn’t paid and they may lose their house. (Where will they live then? Who knows ... they will need shelter from the winter cold as much as my Nepali friends need shelter from the monsoon rains.)
Yes, I have been hugely stressed this year and will no doubt be energised by some time away. But ‘need’? I must choose my words more carefully. For my misuse of the term is an insult to the millions across the world who struggle to meet their basic needs: enough to eat and a weather-proof roof over their heads.
