[basil ransome-davies]

THE DAY OF DOOM
As an advertising copywriter Rufus had taken little interest in eschatology. It seemed inimical to the values of his profession, both far-off and negative. As an unemployed casualty of financial meltdown, he felt differently. His world was now needy and precarious, letting in spirituality through the cracks. He feared being called to account for his paid advocacy of smoking and unhealthy foods. Net-surfing, he discovered a poem, 'The Day of Doom', by a 17th-century puritan divine, Michael Wigglesworth. Milton it wasn't, but it deepened his anxiety. He grew obsessive. His nights were guiltily troubled by fantasies of the Inferno, as Wigglesworth's had been by adolescent wet dreams.
It was a strained, woeful time. But when a partial economic recovery offered him work again, lifting the cloud of Calvinist gloom, Rufus found that he had a novel approach, and a daring new slogan, for selling life assurance.