Why work is no longer working

It is often said that Rishi Sunak has no idea what it is like to survive on a low income but this failing is hardly confined to the über-rich: in reality, few people above median income really know what it’s like to be skint. People may think back to leaner years but, even then, if a few relatives or good friends had some cash to spare, it’s not the same. ‘But you’ll never get it right/ ’ Cause when you’re laid in bed at night/ Watching roaches climb the wall/ If you called your dad he could stop it all,’ as Jarvis Cocker has it.

There are many other predicaments we cannot really recreate in the imagination. Addiction – to gambling, say – is largely incomprehensible to most non-addicts. Depression and many physical ailments, too: until you suffer bad back pain, say, you cannot fully conceive of the unpleasantness.

Knowing this, while I was suffering from a bout of sciatica, and having already reached a point in my life where I can’t read the instructions on ready meals without a microscope, I decided to use the month for which the pain persisted as a simulation of what life might be like ten years hence, and to make note of the many indignities and inconveniences heaped on the elderly by the fact that an ageing population lives in a world mostly designed by young people.