No Rest for the Weary

There is no peace in this city. There is always another train, another jet, another car, another child screaming, another drunk shouting. A door slamming, a bus braking, my elevator jangling into life. There is always a police siren screaming down the road, usually accompanied by a helicopter overhead. I feel like I’m living in the midst of some hellish carnival, avoiding eye contact at all costs with the other 7.5 million participants. Which brings us to the eye in the sky, the omnipresent CCTV cameras which record our daily strife. From the moment I leave my apartment until the time I get back home, I am on camera. There is a camera in the hallway, in the elevator, in the foyer, and pointed at the outside door of my building. There are cameras on every street and in every bus, train and tube. There are cameras in the kitchen I work in, capturing the action. There are even cameras in the pubs we frequent after work. Does anyone actually watch the footage, fascinating and thought-provoking though it may be? I can’t help but feel that everything I do is on file somewhere, in the bowels of some converted warehouse where the footage is screened to a focus group trying to determine what kind of toilet paper I buy, and why, and how frequently? Not only is this monitoring unnecessary, it’s downright intrusive.  One camera leads to a hundred, because to have only one is not enough.  You need total coverage.  One nation under CCTV.