As a fan of a theological question (at a basic level), posers such as ‘what would hell look like?’ often get me thinking to unhappier times.

There are many personal hells we all endure: One annual event that used to fit the category, as a teacher, was the first day back after an elongated summer holiday and the pre-requisite training day. They used to commence with fully grown adults sitting around, tanned and extremely irritable, on children’s wooden benches as a senior leader plays some uplifting music at full volume to get everyone ‘hyped’. If this isn’t taking effect, as it never does, the leader then, in true David Brent style, proceeds to add in some bizarre side swaying dance and an out of tune handclap before proceedings truly get underway with the line ‘I know were all glad to be back!’ The truth is all anyone is thinking is yesterday/ this time last week/ last month I was on a beach/snogging a Greek waiter or drinking shots through my left eyeball.

The theatre is a personal ‘hell.’ Spending three hours in a tightly confined space as a teenager with a clipboard and a spotlight barks orders out whilst surrounded by tennis toffs who force a laugh in a play whose gags wouldn’t look out of place on Mrs Brown's Boys, is not my idea of fun.

Maybe your idea of hell is an Ed Sheeran or Chris De Burgh concert? Sheeran has some merit, I guess, but his unique brand of throwaway bubble-gum pop, blatantly out of place at events such as Glastonbury, which he headlined, are some folk’s bags, but not mine. The songs all sound the same, he frequents impersonal, rule-obsessed stadia, such as Wembley, where having mortgaged the house to secure a ticket, you are then bled dry by the vendors who are squeezed even drier by stadium management as you wish you hadn’t spent the afternoon on such folly and had saved yourself 500 quid and watched the concert a week later on Sky Arts instead…

Yes, hell is a personal thing, yet inevitably involves other people. Being forced to sit next to a dullaton at a wedding is a short-lived forced marriage, as you feign interest on the history of stop cocks and valve joints before hastily inventing a bladder problem and hiding in trap two during the first dance.

Crowds are another personal hell that come with age. The excitement of my teenage daughter when she gets wind that I am going into London or anywhere near is palpable as she talks me into taking her, and a friend, as we are somehow magnetised toward the most inhumane of environments for one who is at peace with his own space: Oxford Street. The shop staff are aggressive, but fellow pedestrians more so, and it seems to be the only place on planet earth where the invasion of personal space and ABH are embraced as part and parcel of living in a big city.

Supermarkets have also become a personal hell due to bosses’ greed. Gone is the personal service we pay for, and in its place are the staid, irksome, and unworkable self-service checkouts I am loath to use. Generally though, due to ‘staff shortages’ (in English: penny pinching as they aren’t employing enough people), you are forced to queue for an hour to be served or go DIY. Watched like a hawk as if you are a master criminal before begging for a carrier bag, you call the attendant over every second item as the machines are quite simply not fit for purpose. The welcoming warmth, heat and light at the supermarket entrance are counteracted by their behaviour and leave me raging by the time I get back to the car after the second carrier bag has died a premature death.

Yes, granted, all first world problems, and we all have our own personal hells, but we wonder why we have lost the ability to socialise and relax with others as we still blame the go to of ‘covid’ for every woe. The truth of the matter however is that hell is generally man-made, and most issues that make folk unhappy are ultimately easy fixes.

As for me, I am making changes of my own and have decided to order food online which I will do just as soon as I can get the internet back up and get rid of the grinning salesman about to make his way up my drive, as hell cometh home, from which there really is no escape…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher