First World

Last Monday, a few of us were getting together. One lady e-mailed to say that she wouldn't make it. She was having a new kitchen fitted and the company had delivered the wrong units, so she had to sort that out. 'It's annoying', she said, 'but after all, it's what they call a First World Problem'. Have you heard that expression before?

Walking all day carrying a sick child to hospital and then having to join the queue, that's a problem. Making the decision whether to stay in the community you know and love and where your work is, or getting out before the rebels or the government get to you, that's a problem. Children not going to school because they haven't got shoes, going hungry all day and still doing hard manual work, watching your family become dangerously ill because the sanitation is rubbish, living in a war zone, knowing that your survival depends on this year's crops and whether the rain comes, those are problems.

That doesn't mean there are no real problems in the first world. Far from it. If everything here was hunkydory Tony wouldn't have spent this morning helping the food bank, and there'd be no children having to go into care, and no crime, nobody ill and nobody afraid of having their home repossessed.

By defining it as a 'first world problem' my friend put her missing kitchen and cancelled evening out into proportion. I've got a few first world problems just now - how to fit a lot of appointments and commitments into a short time is a first world problem. So is choosing how to decorate the dining room, putting up blinds in the attic, arranging things for the ARCHIE'S WAR launch and wondering what to get Somebody for a present but I can't discuss that in case Somebody's reading. Not problems at all, really. Just inconveniences. Nuisances. Something that might become a bit of a story one day. Or even a blog.