Some days it feels like the country
has been left in the airing cupboard too long.
It’s all starch and mothballs and rules
written in handwriting no one under forty can read.

Every policy arrives pre‑creased,
smelling faintly of “back in my day,”
designed for people who bought houses
when houses still cost the price of a decent sofa.

We queue in rented hallways,
paying other people’s mortgages
with the enthusiasm of a nation
tipping its hat to a past it never lived.

The future keeps knocking,
but the door chain stays on.
“Not now,” the country mutters,
“we’re discussing the glory of the good old days.”

Meanwhile the young
learn to live in the gaps;
in the overdrafts,
in the zero‑hours,
in the long shadow of decisions
made by those who won’t live to feel them.

It’s a strange kind of inheritance:
a system that asks you to carry it,
but never lets you steer.

And still, somehow,
we keep walking forward,
hoping the country will one day
look up from its sepia scrapbook
and realise we’re here too;
not waiting to inherit the past,
but trying to build a future
that isn’t already spoken for.