i used to hate the phrase ‘getting there’. i have encountered many utterers of it. particularly when i was younger, in my first few, low paid, jobs. someone would say, ‘howzitgoin?’ and the response would come back, ‘aye, getting there.’

i suppose as an autistic person it struck two problems for me. the first, it is not well enough specified. how far along the road to where, are we? and, the second, much more significant, problem: it is unoriginal. everyone seems to say it.

then i was in the pub one time with my dad. i suppose he wasn’t long retired. and he say a guy, let’s call him jimmy, who he used to work in the yard with. ‘alright jimmmy,’ he said.

‘alright bill, howzitgoin?’

‘ah well, getting there,’ he said.

so that made me a bit more sympathetic. and then i lived another twenty years, and now i understand a bit better: ‘getting there,’ is the essence of the human condition. it’s a lazy protest against the monotony of existence. it is a blasphemous prayer. we ask god to release us from the drabness of life.

it is necessary that life weighs us down. that as a species we in a doom loop of futile repetition. it has to be good enough that we want to do it, but bad enough that we don’t really mind that we will be leaving one day.

regarding the snake eating its tail – that’s called an ouroboros. my friend i. has a tattoo of one thinking ‘i’ve had better’