Seven billion people…

…is a lot of people. That’s more than the number of biscuits I’ve eaten in my lifetime, which is fair few by anyone’s standards.

According to the United Nations, 31 October – which is one week today – will be the day when the global population hits seven billion, for the first time ever. Sounds a lot doesn’t it? But when you think that their predictions go even further, and that by 2050 we could be looking at 10 billion+, well, suddenly seven billion seems a bit paltry, positively roomy.

I wonder what the world will be like in 2050?

To be honest, it seems weird enough to me as it is. Do you get that thing where you’re standing somewhere, quite innocently, and suddenly everything around you seems completely ridiculous? Where you think to yourself ‘if someone from another planet landed now and saw us all doing this they’d think we were bonkers’?

I get it quite a lot. Sometimes it’s quite funny, sometimes it’s a tad disturbing, and I have to push the thought to the back of my mind and think about something comforting like Jaffa Cakes or Country House Rescue. There are recurring situations where I experience it most:

Shopping centres – or shopping generally. Basically, we’re saying that life consists of tiring yourself out five days a week in a job that you find mildly distracting at best, in order to earn almost (but never quite enough) money to spend your two days off inside a large echoey warehouse, split into boxes, each containing an array of things you don’t need, the production of which will contribute ultimately to your downfall as a species.

Class – I read a book recently called Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde. It is about a society in which your social status is determined purely by the range of your colour vision. You’re born into a certain colour, and there is very little you can do to improve your position. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? A societal hierarchy based purely on chance, on the family you happen to be born into? Er…hello!!?

Cleaning – talk about pointless. ‘So what did you do today?’ asks ManfromMars.

‘Oh, you know,’ mutters BoredHousewife, ‘I sucked the dust and fluff off the stairs with a specially designed, stupidly heavy and cumbersome machine. I’ll have to do it again in a couple of weeks.’ Excellent. How fulfilling.

Commuting – Thousands of people get into hugely expensive and dangerous metal boxes, pay hundreds of pounds to fuel them with what is a very limited global oil supply, and spend hours going to and from a job they find mildly distracting at best. (See above). Oh and hundreds of people die in them every year. And they can’t even hover or anything cool like that. Bonkers.

It can’t be just me thinking these things. What day to day events strike you as absurd?