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LAST BUS FROM HAREWOOD ROAD
Alan Dent
Grey again. Pick up the gamp. Where’s that from? Lawrence. Short story?
Can’t recall. Woman. Assignation. Used to know them all. Seventy odd. Three
vols. Where? Not now. Miss the 44. In the corner where I left it. Puddle.
Took a soaking yesterday. Where? The old school? Boots muddy. Maybe the
river. Soled and heeled. Healed. Souled and healed. I say I say I say I’ve
had my old boots souled and healed. Who did it? Rev Buttonup and Dr
Pissinthat. Good job he does the gay cobbler. Is he? Who cares. Uppers last
another winter? Ten years. That long? Yes. Exquisite. Spring sale.
Sixty quid from one hundred and twenty. Snapped ‘em. Fur lined. Worn away
now. Never let in a drop. Get another pair. Don’t make ‘em. Fashion. Always
true to you darling. Nice irony that. Odd that pricking in the toe. The
quack? Pass off. Better have it looked at. Let it go, leg gone. Bloke across
the road. Gets about though. Years limping. Fags. Drives. Prosthesis.
Uxbridge English Dictionary. Dissertation written in a brothel. All the
same, chain saw above the knee. Make an appointment. Worse through the
window than when you’re out in it. What did that quack on the radio say?
Ions. What’s an ion? Ask old Thompson next time we have a drink. Chemistry.
Never did it. Bad those days. Science. Music. Ignorance. Factory and office
fodder. No need to educate. Old Stan. Kids knew he could play. School did
nothing. No O Level. All over the world. Not much lucre in it. Folkie.
Supposed to be good for you. Breathe in ions. Put the gamp up? Not worth it.
Mizzle. Legs feel good today. Ate something? Slept well? Mystery. Back eased
up too. Crippling yesterday. Fishwick nature reserve. Ash dieback. Logs.
Weight of ‘em. Makes you think. Tree down on the steps from Frenchwood
Knoll. A high wind in Preston. Who wrote it? Hughes. Never read it. One of
those titles. Hundreds. Lined up in the grey matter. Too late now. Poets in
their youth. Know the cynicism, never begin. A racket like any other. Young
hopeful I was. Night school that way. Fishwick primary. History. Social and
economic 1700-1964. Something like. What was his name? Tall gangly chap.
Perched on the desk when he returned the mocks. DO A LEVEL in red. Walking
home revising the dates. Blind Jack of Knaresborough. Never been there.
Stan’s fiddle player lives there. Wrist still a bit dodgy. Arse over tit all
right. Knew those flagstones. Algae. Is that is? Like on our patio. Wet.
Feet go from under you. Flat on my back. Still kept my head from hitting.
Bugger. Another ten years wouldn’t get up. Take a few weeks. Age. What’s the
explanation? Everything wears out. Tribology. Etymology? Greek I shouldn’t
wonder. Ology. Knowledge of. Study of. Never learnt it. Not even all the
grammars. Preston. Park School I suppose. Cath Coll? Lark Hill? Winckley
Square? Latin. Not Greek. No one I knew. The Boltons. Joe. The wife. O Level
Latin. No Greek. All Greek to her. David Watson. Greats. What’s that? Look
it up. Different from Classics? Diplomatic corps. Ambassador here and there.
Serving the State. No job for a respectable anarchist. Damn. There’s the 35.
61 due? Twenty minutes at the stop. Young lass in the Parkside. Nice shape
on her. Friendly. Look in her eye. How old? Twenty-five? Hard to tell. All
look young. High court judges like teenagers. Forty-seven years younger.
Some gap. Happens. Not so much the other way. Bob Barnes’s mum. What did he
tell me? Good-looking lad. Fourteen was I? Something like that.
Uncomfortable. Tom Edge’s sister. His looks and your cheek you can’t fail?
Is that what she said? Not pleasant to be made self-conscious. Twelve or so
when I first twigged. Maggie. Couldn’t contain herself. Overwhelmed. Little
boy. Bike and ball. Regret that? Maybe. Should’ve started earlier. No doubt.
Religion. Not before marriage. Morning hard-ons at thirteen. Marriage? Ten
years to wait. Diligent wanking. All nonsense. Condoms hard to get.
Forbidding parents. Teachers. Vicars. All hypocrisy. At it like rabbits.
Years of misery and frustration. Who? Janice. What was her name? Lower
stream. Felt a bit ignoble. Too fastidious. Maybe. Anyway all saved up for
girls who rebuffed. You only want me because you can’t have me. Cruel. Say
that? No need. Power. Romantic love. All the songs. Insincere money-making
pap. Should’ve been at it at fourteen. Age limit. Statutory rape. Boy and
girl who’s bothered? Vicars. Priests. Windbag politicos. Uptight parents.
The rebellion of a cod-piece. Where’s that? Measure for Measure? Lucio’s
condemned. Aye, but to die and go we know not where. A Level. Good year.
Happy year. Oh, les beaux jours. Which stop? No one there for the 31. Best
go to the nearest. Three already. Might be lucky. Mr so-and-so ( names are
arbitrary and therefore unimportant) arrived at four lane ends as he did
most mornings, and pressing the button waited by the crushed crash barrier
for the green man as a cocker spaniel held by a blonde women of forty who
he’d seen now and again, sniffed at his left ankle and he looked down and
speaking kindly said, “Hello there, boy. You all right?” Crushed crash. Yes.
Green man. Cocker spaniel. Blonde woman. All cement to stop the sentence
falling apart. Who cares? Who reads for anything but the story or sensation?
Oh-ah lit. Waterstones full of it. Most books unnecessary. Ninety percent.
More. Ninety nine. Maybe ninety-five. Origin of Species. Theory of
Relativity. Indispensable. Changed the world. Jane Austen. Shakespeare.
Aeschylus. Who reads him? Excuse me, could I ask you a couple of questions?
Does the name Aeschylus mean anything to you? Probably think he’s a Greek
full-back. Media. Education system. Spread of stupefaction. Helps the rich.
Keep the masses stupefied. Can’t tell a good book from a bad, can’t tell a
good policy from tripe. Very clever. Popular culture all part of the
propaganda. Britain’s got talent. Some deluded fool trying to sing.
Distraction. Never stops. Very clever. The bastards. There’s
what’s-her-name? Annette? Amanda. The well-loved. Like Mrs Thomas. My
husband doesn’t work. Thought she meant unemployed. Who was it told me he
was a quack? Shock. Telling me that. Day we went to the pub at lunch. Shook
her hair free. Back ten minutes late. Lift one night. After a parents’
evening? Very kind, you’re an angel. Face she made. Marriage as dead as a
stagnant pond. Why didn’t she get out? Kids. Money. What a life. Decades of
it. Sliding into bed with a man you despise. Met up one Saturday. Pair of
them. Coffee and a chat. Odd. Nice hair she had. Auburn. Shone when the
light caught it. Nice breasts
and backside. Nice waist that day in room 29 I put my hand there when she
leaned. Is it Amanda? Better not try
it. One dog. What’s happened to the other? Lights in my favour. Nip across.
Watch yourself. Brick wall wouldn’t stop some. Hello, how are you?
Fine. Where you off? Oh, just walking. Keep me this
side of the grave. Where’s the other? Died. Oh, no.
Yes, he was eight. Very slow. We’re a bit quicker now. But he had
a good life. A good life. Not a dog’s life. Make a joke of it? Maybe
not. People lose a dog, like the death of their mother. How long? Thirteen
years? Yes, coming up. Did my best for her in her last days. Life she had.
Poverty. No education. Expected to do the women’s stuff. Times they were.
Seventeen when the war broke out. Imagine it. Easy time I had of it.
Knocking round the pubs at that age. Exchange. Jolly Farmer.
Boar’s Head (Whore’s Bed the toilet humour had it). Fleece.
Black Bull. Farmer’s Arms. Red Lion. Sitting at the bar
in Pierrepoint’s place. Black Horse across the road. Nice memory
that. Bus stop. Kath and Sally. Humour they had. Fifteen. Nothing like
youth. Fifty-nine years. Like yesterday. Brown eyes on her. Fell for her
like a brainless idiot. Ah well, that’s what matters. Better get
to the stop. Here’s the 61. Early enough. Go all the way to the station.
Jump on the number 1 and do Midgery. Might see a deer. Fox last week.
Looking over the gate at the horse. Warning this horse may bite. Feed
only apples and carrots. Out of nowhere running into the bushes. Better
than standing in a classroom facing nasty kids. Can’t say that. Kids never
wrong. What was it he said, that sycophantic little runt Spencer? It’s
just the way they present. Kissing the arse of OFSTED. Dim-witted little
greasy-pole climber. Major. Attack on the public sector. Hated comps. Of
course. The masses mustn’t get educated. Likes of me, from the backstreets
getting into unis, becoming teachers. Couldn’t stand it. Bad for the rich.
Tell the public comps are failing. Pass it off as raising standards. Tush.
Standards my arse. Destroy the system. Turn teachers into supervised
operatives. Bore the kids to a paste. Push academies. No democratic control.
Conduit to put tax-payers money in private pockets. Dismal business. Public
fell for it. Propaganda. Tell the buggers anything. No sense of
responsibility the media. Hysteria and moralism. This is better. Fresh air.
Use the legs. Get among the trees. Spot a kestrel. Years I spent in that
classroom. Still, pension keeps the wolf away. Wetherspoons. Wonder if he’s
there. Table by the window. Aye. On his own. Bloody life. Lonely old bugger.
Hair like that. Sixties kid no doubt. My age? Every day. Slow pint. Bloody
society. Aye, aye. There he is. Like a statue. Ten a.m.. Probably makes a
pint last till twelve. Cheap stuff. Tim Martin. Buys old beer, so they say.
Runs good pubs but talks rubbish. Why wouldn’t a business bloke? What do
they know? How to make brass. Blinkers. Like a horse in a gin. Lawrence
again. Never seen a horse in one. Round and roun., Eyes shrouded. Cruel. Use
we make of animals. What does a horse know? Round and round. Does it care?
Sure to be some change in its physiology, Heart-rate. Stress. What is
horse-happiness? Least we can do is be kind to the poor beasts. Rabbit the
kids had. Only one to feed it. Gathering clumps of dandelion leaves out on
the bike. Sitting in the garden with it nestled at my feet. Cupboard love.
Still, prototype of affection. Liked to be on my lap. Stroked. Excited when
I appeared. What’s going on in a rabbit’s brain? Something like what goes on
in a man’s at the sight of his lover or his kids? We know so little. What to
rely on? Experience. Good guide? Morality in it? Do no harm. About the best
we can manage. Hippocrates. When did he live? Look it up. Might make it for
the 10.05. Don’t forget the gamp. Might not need it but if you don’t have
it. Lucky. Two minutes late. Driver having a drink and a piss. No notice
today: we apologise for the cancellation of the following services due to
lack of drivers…Poles gone home. Two young women. Those stern faces.
Dzickuje. Look she gave me. Didn’t smile. In their genes? Can’t be. Social
conditions? Climate? Catholicism? Communism? Who can tease it out? Waiter I
knew. Tomas? Yes. Willis’s. When I went in there every day. Escape
the madness. Asylum. People think of nutcases. Shelter. Safety. What’s the
etymology? Look it up. Sister he had? Lovely. Blonde. Kind smile. Like a
June day breaking with a clear blue sky. What was her name? Slender as a
willow. No, that’s a cliché. Slender as…hope. Maybe. Went home and married.
Met him in Lytham. Restaurant. Portofino? Two kids she’d had. Lovely. Some
lucky husband. Five feet seven of happiness. Easy to say but once the
entanglement begins. Can’t believe she had a nasty fibre in her. Sweet as
a….ripe cherry. No, too physical. Intimacy and happiness. People no one pays
attention to who live lovely lives in a little circle of their own making
while the lunatics go chasing lucre, fame and power. Like Kath. Astonishing
sexual response. Who’d know? Something about her appealed to me. What was it
I read? Thicker lips better orgasms. Folk wisdom. Cod science. Maybe
something in it. Should’ve stayed with her? Who knows? What put me off?
“Come here” and grabbing my elbow. Coming out of Block nine. Going down for
the number 40. Something controlling about that. Irrational reaction or
astute? Usually right in those ways. First impressions. What goes on? Mirror
neurons? That Ramachandran stuff. Something in it. Parkinson’s he has.
Irony. Mind readers we are. Some bound to be better than others.Like
everything. Maths. Music. Tennis. Small differences. Used to think I knew
her better than she knew herself. Huh. Arrogant young prig. Times I stood
here. Eight in the morning. Mary Bryant. Thighs she had. Perfectly formed.
Blonde hair down to her backside. Brushed like Flaubert’s prose. Wore it
inside her black leather in winter. Little snob. Knew her first as a kid.
Commercial travellers’ socials. Good events. People. Games. Music.
Dad liked that stuff.
Mum preferred the hymns and an edifying sermon. Odd. Even that age I could
see her character in her demeanour. Fifteen years later she called Pele a
coon. Penwortham for you. Suburban supremacism. Three-bedroom bungalow a car
and fridge and you’re a superior species. The human mind. What a piece of
work is man. Depressing. Canvassing. Out there four to one Tory. Council
houses in Ribbleton four to one Labour. How a bit of property can turn
people’s minds. What’s going on? Some essential need. In the dark. In our
genes to be comfortable with our sense of self. Something like that. Then
conditions impose. Throw a few crumbs in the gutter and make people fight
for them and they’re beasts. Ensure needs are met and they’re benign.
Utopians had that. No room for frustration. Organise things so satisfaction
is easy. Satisfaction of what? Our nature. Who knows what that is? Must be
possible. Simple examples. Everyone’s got enough to eat who’s going to raid
the potato field? Always some bastard looking for advantage. Conversation.
Leslie Brothers. Basis of society. Flannery and Marcus. Capacity to take
people down a peg or two. Lose that and the opportunistic impulses can break
free. When? Who knows? Twelve thousand years. Agriculture. Seemed a good
idea at the time. Leaving paradise. Chasing monkeys round the jungle for
dinner. Tendentious view. Must have been easy to find good places. Fish.
Berries. Nuts. Nature’s bounty. Small game. Idyll. Never was paradise but
territories of thousands of square miles and small tribes. No paracetamol.
Herbal remedies. Willow bark. Is that it? Aspirin? Ask old Thompson. At
least the buses are hybrid or electric. This one? Hybrid. Prison van. Little
windows. High up. Stop the prisoners looking out or the public looking in?
Black maria in the old days. Claustrophobic. Couldn’t abide it. Have to play
Tom Sawyer. “Oh, don’t put me in wide open spaces. I’m agoraphobic. Lock me
in a little cell.” Might take me to the moors . Have to take into account?
Doubt it. Criminal, you lose your humanity. Wonder what? Burglary? Non
payment of fines? Cost to put ‘em away. Waste of money. Keep the Daily Mail
readers feeling superior. Better to give the buggers the money and tell’em
to keep out of trouble. Money
we waste. Irrational system. Rational thought. Enlightenment. Diderot.
D’Alembert. Voltaire. Montesquieu. Who else? Names escape me. Fifty odd
years. Scottish lot. Hume and Smith. Francis what’s-his-name? Smith’s
teacher. First to lecture in English rather than Latin. Tosh that. Keep the
masses ignorant. Language they don’t know. Same when I applied. Latin O
level to study English. Lucky the new places had been set up. More modern
outlook. Not many. Welsh didn’t insist. Nearly ended up at Bangor. Better
off at Lancaster. What was it? Knew a drummer with the same handle.
Hutchinson? Yes. The drummer. Hutcheson. That’s him. System of moral
philosophy. Hume and Smith picked it up. Theory of Moral Sentiments. How
selfish soever man may be supposed..How does it go? There are evidently some
principles in his nature… That’s it. Given. Moral creatures by endowment.
How to prove it? Runaway train stuff. How to account for cultural
alterations. Delusion that. What alterations? Superficial. Like language.
Can’t be universal because we say tree and they say arbre. Bollocks. Hitler.
Innate moral sense. Even psychopaths pretend to be moral. Columbus
slaughtered savages. Pretext. All do it. Little things. Getting what we want
and passing it off as principle. Can’t escape. Reason too weak. Must be
nature endowed. Scuppers the Enlightenment? Don’t think so? Weak but not
ineffectual. Tells us morality must be given. Not the form but the
principle. Madness though. Have to assume a functioning mind. Like
physiology. Two legs. Amputation subtracts from nature. Must read it again.
Time. Reread everything? Couldn’t. Five and a half decades. How many?
Thousands. Have to select. Loss. So much forgotten. Lawrence. Knew it all
when I went to uni. Can’t put up with some of it now. Short stories okay.
Odour. Got me started. O Level. Mr Pimblett. Strange gulping sound he made.
Every few seconds. Nervous? No idea. Nice enough bloke. Conrad too. Secret
Sharer. Forster. Machine Stops. Aye. Only me not on a phone. Look over her
shoulder. What’s she at? Shouldn’t. Privacy. Quick look. Clothes. Well. Fine
use of resources. Everybody in their little universe. Connected. Tush.
Isolated. Have to get one sooner later. Things you can’t do. Required field.
Won’t take a landline. Marvellous. Forced to buy one and pay the contract.
Freedom. Making some greedy bastard richer by the day. That’s freedom. They
get richer by the day we get boarded up shops and fuel bills. Everybody
knows. Propaganda. Slick. Pop culture. Entertained to death. Who wrote that?
Read it? Maybe.Just about it. The Plug-in Drug. That one? Look it up. Neil
Postman. Death of Childhood. Some insights. Electronic media. Pinker takes
him to task. Where? Language Instinct? Don’t agree. Must be some damage from
all this screen obsession. Grandson in his room ranting. Never played in the
woods. Rope swings. Long hours away from approbation. Great loss. Overgrown.
Go there. To myself. Not a kid in sight. My day, wick on a Saturday morning,
school hols. Bare mud where we ran with the rope. Head smashed open. Stone.
Running through the bushes. Rob winged it. Meant to hit me? Maybe. Doubt it.
Give me a scare. Came with me. Home. Blood pouring. Wind-jammer never
cleaned. Mum ran to Mr Fernando for the taxi. In the back with a towel on my
bonce. Seven stitches. Hurt like hell. Still feel the scar. Boomerang. Good
job not bald. No matter now. One or two interested though. Old git like me.
Hair I think. Silver but thick. Good genes or some such theory. Skinny.
Youthful signs on an old man. Looks not entirely shot at. Eyes. Women like
that. So they say. Men think they want muscles and big dicks. Fools. Women
obsessed with their hair. Control. Can’t do much about your legs. Jaw-line.
Nose jobs I suppose. Change bits. Hair easy to alter. Colour. Style. Kath.
Always at it. Fine hair she had. Surprise when I first touched it. When was
that? ’67? April? May? Cusp of the exam season. Oh, the joys of youth. How
the adults loved us. Whacking our arses and driving us like mules. Thought I
could defy. The system. Say it now? Don’t hear it. Bourgeois. Term of abuse.
What did we mean? Middle-class and narrow-minded. Cocoa and the epilogue.
Church and wash the car on Sunday. Thought we were going to overturn all
that. Never imagined. Twelve years later. Kids I knew played at rebellion.
Isle of Wight. Dylan. Free love and dope. Next you know, smart suit and a
corporate salary. Few of us who meant it got screwed all right. Parental
pressure. Get on. Money. Status. All the old lies. Mother not like that.
Hated it. Belief in nature. Like Hume. Never heard of him of course.
Rational irrational. Natural is good but sex another matter. Erred herself.
End of the war. Dad back. Six years. Hellish. Seventeen when he was sent.
What was I doing his age? Sitting next to Joe every morning. Fags he went
through. Sleeves rolled up like for cricket. Energy he had. Life flowed
through him. Backstreet lad. Went to the Cath Coll. Bright enough.
Background hemmed him. Booze. Horses. Girls. Four years older. Big
difference at sixteen. Liked his attitude. Life asserting itself in poor
conditions. Dad worked in a shoe factory. Mother in the Catholic mafia. Pat.
Nice girl. Wouldn’t have sex with her. Catholic bollocks. Chasing skirt but
keeping her pristine. Culture against man. Where is that? Bookshelf in the
back room. Somewhere. Read it when? Thirty years back? No. Pre the Grantham
mad woman. Bumped into him a few years back. Lane Ends. Story he told me.
Raid on the depot he managed. Frozen food. Shotgun to his head. Irony. Great
train robbers. Thought ‘em geniuses. Greedy bastards. Short-circuited
capitalism. Done every day. Kill for money. Been at it for centuries. Some
excuse or other. Fun I had. Never took it seriously. Who could? Business.
Crack I liked. The stock-clerks. Pub at lunch. Joe’s twenty-first. Kind
that. Inviting me , a spotty pillock in a suit. Wedding too. Thirteen and
seven pence all his worldly goods. Mary Bryant walking through the office.
Mini-skirt. Mules. Overwrought I was. Violin string. No. Dull cliché. What’s
tight to snapping? Fat man’s belt. Anyway, days I watched her. Asked her one
evening. Reception. Dark. Must’ ve been winter. Washing her hair. Time she
gave me a lift. Said she’d forgotten something. Back to the depot. Parked
outside. No one here, I said. No, but we are, she said. Wrong setting. In
the car. Fumbling. Back seat. Trousers round my ankles. Wanted the sweet
preparation. Charm of a warm pub. Few pints. Nice walk home. Missed a
chance? Wouldn’t have worked. Racist. Not literary. Like the wife. Still,
got A level. Knows who Jane Austen is at least. Card I sent to Joe from
Newquay. Parody of the old bloke who filled the vans’ tanks. Alf? Maybe.
Woman he had. Doris? Something like. Dear Joe, Me and Doris are having a
fine time here in our plastic macs eating chips on the prom…Cheap stuff.
Made him laugh. Writing my secret. Poems coming together. No idea about
publishing. Patten. Notes To The Hurrying Man. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Banged mine off to mags. Not a thing. No contacts. Thought it was all
honest. Write a good poem, someone’ll publish it. Bah. Duffy. Rubbing up
Henri to get on the ladder. How it always works. Naïve little fool. Naïve
old fool. Aye, but cynical at least. Mitchell. Public school Oxford
contacts. Right stable. Modesty doesn’t pay. Keep your bloody success. I’m
not kissing anybody’s arse. Still, mum was right in her odd way. Enough
courage to say no to the system. Confused. Aye. Nature is good. What about a
virus? God and the devil. All that crap in her head before she could read.
Bastards. Church helping the rich. Frighten the poor to death. God and
capital my sworn enemies. Social side of church though. Helped her a lot in
her lonely old years. What could I do? Mind sliding into incoherence.
Dissonance. Call it that now. Impossible conflicts. Tell people to live how
no one can. Drive ‘em mad. Bastards. Me too. My teenage years. Youth club.
Youth clubs without god. What’s wrong with that? Who needs god for table
tennis and eye contact? Ideas we had then. We? Me. Aways thought shared.
Damn fool. Outsider. Accounts for that? Genes? Family? Neither one nor the
other. Impossible to untangle. What was it they’ve discovered? Oh, yes. MS.
Five thousand years ago. People moving westward. What were they called?
Forget. Cells giving up? Names slip away. What’s in a name? What causes
ageing anyway? Telomeres. Shorten. Something like that. Cell ends up dying.
Right now. On this bus. Biology trying to wipe me out. What good am I? Three
score years and ten. Passed my sell by date. Amlodipine. Ramipril. Dead
years ago else. Keep us alive, they can. Too long? Dave’s dad. A hundred and
one this month. Nice bloke. Good man. Not like my dad. Backstreet kid.
Poverty. Abuse. Dipsomania. Chance he had? Odd couple my parents. Still,
Dave’s dad pushy. Took the valves out of the box at O Level time.
Responsible? Mum avoided that stuff. Let kids be kids. Have her to thank.
Find your own way. Aye. Other hand no encouragement. Show your
grandad when I came home with the report. First in French. 96%. No idea.
Out of her circle. Scared her to death. World outside the home. Perilous.
Right about that. Employment. Moral outrage. Love thrives in little corners.
No morality in the system. Humanity taken a wrong turn. Where did I write
that? Review of Fred’s stuff? Maybe. Anyway, MS. Genes they had.
Super-charged immune system. Kept them safe. Contact with animals, wild
animals. Genes still around but social conditions changed. System turns
against itself. Something like that. Selection a complex process. Not that
Dawkins stuff. Made a fortune peddling tosh about Darwin. Elephant a
cumbersome apparatus for passing on elephant DNA. Bollocks. It ain’t
necessarily so. Lewontin. Got that somewhere. Back room? Hardback. Reread.
What does he say? Differences biological distinctions cultural. Aye. That’s
astute. Driver at LFD. Frozen foods. Scottish name. McDonald? Troubled.
Always a fag in his fingers when he came up to the office. Fat Pakis I’ve
seen today. Doing nothing. Layabouts. Give ‘em dole and
council houses. That stuff. No arguing with it. Wants to be irrational.
Skin colour. Eye colour. What’s the odds? Biological difference. Means
nothing. Shared DNA. Knew nothing about it then. Genetics. Mendel and the
peas. Knew that. About it. Bundle of resentments and fears projected onto to
folk with black skins. In the genes? No. Never is. Genes and what happens
culturally. Always. Prove it? Prove you’re in love. Things that matter go
beyond proof. Why should we understand? Brains to help us survive. Nothing
perfect. Language? Aye. Optimal. Chomsky thinks. Odd biology can produce
that. Makes you laugh. Can’t even explain language. All the assertions you
hear. Read. Politicos in the media bloated with rightness. Know nothing.
Radical doubt. Rational. Like that. Doubt is the product of a rational mind.
Dragged into the political fight. Have to assert this and that. Stick to the
evidence. Aye. That’s secure. None of those wild claims. Can’t stay out.
Palestine. Have to persuade. Rhetorical anxiety to persuade. Who was that?
Someone about Sartre. Murdoch? Aye, maybe. Lancaster. Sartre. Windbag Orwell
called him. Quite right. Grim area this. Skeffie. Times we got off the bus
and hoofed it down to Deepdale. Live here. Front door on the pavement.
Traffic day and night. Thousands of
folk. Just hanging on. Bring your kids up here. Cruel. Deliberate of course.
Make people feel they’ve hardly a right to live. Die off early. Tories love
it. Kill off the poor. Proves their superiority. Labour no better. Blair
slaughtering kids in Iraq. WMD. Bollocks. Lying little git. Starmer
supporting Israel. Murderous bastard. Not politics. Humanity. 76% percent.
Aye. The will of the people. Planes to Rwanda the people’s will. Ceasefire.
Bugger that. People’s will if it suits the rich. Thought we’d sweep
all that aside. Sixties. ’64. ’66. Unions. Tanks off my lawn Hughie. In and
out of Downing Street. Beer and sandwiches. We are the masters now. Heath
late night sessions with the unions. Small step to workers’ control. Two
wins in ’74. Fundamental shift of wealth and power. What happened?
Callaghan. Tory poster in late ’78. Everyone ready. TV appearance. Hanging
onto power. Idiot. Winter of discontent. Shakespeare traduced to support the
rich. Should’ve asked for a majority. Promised to finish the job. Too late.
Healey stomping. Laws of arithmetic. Bowing to the IMF. Finance capital
screwing the common folk. Tush. Vision? Courage? Imagination? Propaganda
shoved down people’s throats. Evil system. Clever people work the tabloids.
Know they’re lying. Do they? Aye. One hand believe it. On the other lie
without compunction. Rhetoric for the masses. Free market? Bollocks. State
support of property. State starts looking after the rest, it’s tyranny.
Truss. Believed her own propaganda. Corporates cut her off at the knees.
State has to be on their side. Investors they say. Can’t call a greedy
bastard a greedy bastard. Railway workers on strike. Holding the country to
ransom. Saying that back in the sixties. Change the record. Never enough
power. Never enough submission. Big business has the country by the balls.
Never read that in the Daily Mail. Princess Mathilda has the whooping
cough. Who’s that? Thoreau? Aye. Think so. All that time ago. Insight not
lacking. Organisation. That it? People always make the best of their
circumstances. Can’t blame ‘em. Get the best job. Earn a bit. Nice house.
Holidays. Two cars. Who’s going to turn it down to fight the system? Get it
in the neck. Conformism the qualification for advancement. System knows its
own. Me. Spot it a mile off. Free thinker. Me and Coops. Cochrane. Dick
walked the kids called him. Not prefects. Kids with muscle where their
brains should be. Sporty types. Wits like us. Had it. Humiliation. Meant to
be. Grown man putting down kids of fifteen. Sick. Mind you, Waterhouse. He
liked us. Sense o’humour. Bit of a laugh. What was it? Emptying dustbins
is more socially useful than breaking land speed records. Aye.
Donald Campbell. All that bollocks. Serves the system. Everything’s a
competition. There’s the rub though. Benn. Public school. Oxford. Millions
in the bank. Parliamentary career. Bloke on the shop floor. Woman cleaning
offices. Mum school cleaning and dinners. Stick you’re neck out you’re on
the dole and broke. Benn, all that an audience with later on.
Cashing in. Books. CDs. Easy to be radical when you’ve little to risk. Start
off radical you don’t get your nose in. Mainstream he was. Dad an MP.
Question is, organising the folk at the bottom. Isolated. Poor. Little
education. Mum. Did her bit. NUPE. Never went to meetings. On strike a
couple o’ times. Aye. That’s their trick. Atomise folk. Feel you’re the only
one thinks like you do. Fear. Me when Johnson denied me an interview. You
have neither been given nor have you assumed responsibility.
Bastard. Lied like Netanyahu. Union? Useless. Appointments and promotions.
Don’t get involved. Pusillanimous. Let ‘em get away with it. Accept
careerism. Bosses’ game. Aye. Can’t expect folk to give up their chances.
Little house. Family. Revolutionaries calling them to the barricades. Oh
aye. Jack Dromey. Let down the Grunwick women. Into parliament. Teamed up
with Harriet. Sent their kids to selective schools. Marvellous. Worked up
the pickets but no strategy. Usual vulgar Marxist tosh. Walk away when it
all fails. Get a nice career. The women get stuffed. Should’ve been done?
Impossible. Boss ignoring Scarman. Law and order. Oh aye. When it’s locking
up kids with no futures. Bosses? What was his name? Ward ? Think so. Greedy,
nasty little bastard. State on his side. TUC cowardly as ever. Callaghan?
Hopeless. Williams on the picket line. Once. Changed her tune. Gang of four.
Opportunistic, perfidious gits. Much damage as possible. Vote for Foot and
bugger off. Labour should’ve got behind it. TUC. Whole Labour movement.
Matter of principle. That’s how the right did it. What was it? National
Association for Freedom? Licence for the rich. Aye. Call it that. National
Association for Screwing the Poor. Representation. Works so far. Recall.
Instant. Otherwise you set ‘em free to rule over you. Whole of the problem.
Power lies with the governed. Hume. Nearly there. Next roundabout? Times
I’ve done this, still never sure. Aye. Ring the bell, driver get tetchy
else. Thank you. Must be decent that. Folk thanking you all day. Some
churlish types. Grumps. Kids once over. Few of ‘em. Thanks, sir.
Leaving the room. Nice enough. Never wanted thanks. Liked a bit of crack.
Early days. 2W. Bright lot. Laughs we had. Longman’s. Beeping tape.
Marie-France est dans le jardin. Beep. Kids took the piss. Enjoyed those
days. Bit of spirit the kids had. Full of life but not malicious, like in
the last years. OFSTED. Turned the whole system to vinegar. Nasty stuff. Oh,
forget that. Rumination on ruin. The king my father’s wrack. Tempest?
Aye. Saw it first at the Century. ’67? About then. Miranda. Lovely young
actress. Theatre. Could’ve had a life there. Soho Cellar. Script in hand.
Weekend workshops. June Catlow. On my side. Script advisor. Shoved one under
the nose of Sarah Catterall. Artistic director. Powerful. Don’t worry. Does
what she fancies. Usually takes eight years or so, first script to full
production. Thought I was on my way. Keep going, she said. Eight plays I
did. Something like that. Then her tragedy. Boy same age as Colette. Used to
exchange stories. Good days. Good trips. Back on the train thinking it over.
Script well received. Actors lifted it. Met a few famous now. Sally thingy.
Pete Priory. On the telly. The radio. Didn’t hear from her for months.
Dropped a line. My script? Did you manage…? Terrible to get the letter.
Hand-written. Poor woman. Some infection the kid got. Throat maybe. Went to
his organs. Kidneys? And me pestering about a bloody play. Promised to pass
it on. End of her life in the theatre. Future she had. Cruel life. Imagine
that. Never get over it. Lost kid. Worst thing. Your parents go, right
order. Your kids. Rip the heart out of you. Bloke who took over. Never seen
your script. Workshops shifted to Wednesdays seven o’clock. Impossible.
Work. Kids. Opportunity gone like a flimsy paper in a roaring fire. Start
from scratch. Four years work. Near misses. Artistic director at the
Polygon. What was her name? Any scripts? Sent a couple. Liked ‘em. Moved on
before a chance. Aye. Other places. And the Touch. Five wins and a full
production. Four and they stepped in to stop me. Why? Didn’t know how to
direct it. Farce. Bit of Orton, bit of Beaumarchais, bit of Moliere.
Tantalising. Where’s that from? Tantalus. Water receded each time he was
about to drink. That it? Look it up. Punished by the gods. Aye. Punished all
right. Dad. Punished for living. Vicious culture. Rain hold off? Hope so.
Use the gamp as a walking stick. Need one a few years. Ten years do this?
Doubt it. Maybe slowly. Fifteen. Might be walking to the corner and back.
Dread it. Shrinking limits. Still, never know. Like Mick says, get to that
stage might be happy with it. Don’t know. Cant’ run. Chase a ball. Whack one
over the net. Scoot about a court for eight hours. But out. Fresh air. The
odour. Changes as the day moves on. Love that smell of the early morning
air. Paper round. Sunday morning. Half five. No one about. Lovely. Bike out
of the garage. BSA Golden Fifty. Five Campag. Thought it was something.
Twenty seven on the old thing now. Lovely odour in the air. And the silence.
Imagine everyone’s died overnight. World to yourself. Closed curtains.
Lie-in after a hard week. No traffic. Ride no hands in the middle of the
road. Holden’s shed. Blokes already there numbering up. Macs. Caps. Needed
the dosh. Poor buggers. There was I, chirpy. Carefree. Really? Dad gone. Mum
sunk. Something in my genes? Life always interesting. Dismal seeing ‘em,
standing there, thick pencils in their hands. Check the list. Write the
number. Automatons. How much? Twelve bob? Something like that. Maybe more.
Twelve and six a Sunday round. Two I did. Get an easy one, home for half
seven. Long bugger, pain in the arse. Drives like the bloody M6. Twenty-five
bob. Not bad. Evening round. Thirty papers. Half an hour. Seven and a tanner
a week. Nice money when you’re fourteen. Old Holden had to pay well. Needed
reliable lads. No good if they pulled the covers when it was pissing or
minus three. Not many lasses. One. Stopped me on Church Ave. Got a
light? Never smoked but always had matches. Fires in the woods. Like
sheath knives. Eyes she made at me. Woods behind her. Fancied it. Seven on a
Sunday morning. Drizzle. Terrified. Gave her the matches and skedaddled.
Best thing. Not for me. Affection. Crushes I had. Marilyn Booth. Lovely
sunshine in her hair. Started it. Coy look. Father fixated. Friend of
Cochrane he was. Snob. Neurotic about success. Elder sister. What was her
name? Barbara? No. Pauline? Maybe. Dark. Nice face. Slender. Good badminton
player. Marilyn too. Took me for a fool. Dangling for three years. Wanted
her French O Level. Dad’s pressure. Ach, ugly words and face when the exams
were over. Odd that. Sense of rising. Threw herself into the abyss. Aye.
That’s the test. Line from Heaney. He is borne up by what he buckles
under. Good that. Gets the psychology in the physical detail. Curious
how that works. In the genes? Must be some fundamental process. Folk
submitting as a way of rising. She stoops to conquer. Not quite the
same. People going mad for a look at a royal. Shake the hand of a dim-witted
princess feel their lives are redeemed. Easier than fighting back. Our
destiny is terribly hard. Lenin? Lousy ideas. Avant-garde. Democratic
centralism. Dictatorship by any other name. Marx to blame. Denial of given
human nature. Products of precise circumstances. Something in it but has to
be a nature for it to work on. Can’t rely on that, someone has to decide.
Short route to Stalin. Have to put faith in human creativity. Common folk
can look after themselves. State the problem. Agency the mad can get hold
of. Hitler. Pol Pot. Trump. No State what can they do? Small stuff. Convince
the masses? Believe in democracy. Extend it. Government of the people by the
people. Not a tiny group of chiselling representatives. Workplace. Old idea.
Proudhon. No good getting political power without economic power. Gone
backwards. Fifty- year retreat. Thatcher. Major. Blair. Brown. Cameron. May.
Johnson. Truss. Sunak. Ten
million depending on foodbanks and charities. Third world country. Used to
call ‘em. Developing countries. Tush. Held back countries. The time is
out of joint oh cursed spite. Born in a time like this. Global warming.
Nuclear weapons. Maybe a few hundred years and the adventure is over. Some
hidden tribe survive? Depths of the Amazon or the Congo Basin. Start again.
Loudon Wainwright. What is it? Hard day on the planet. Peripheral
stuff. Who’s heard it? Shove
The Spice Girls down people’s throat. Clever. Constant distraction.
Adulation. Who said that? Adulation for fools, admiration for the wise.
Despair drives people to it. Lousy lives. Dull. Work without control.
Killing. Not the job, the relations. Some jumped-up little twat of a boss.
Spencer. Give me the revolver I’ll put him out of his misery. Wretched
little man. When I was elected sec of the association. The people’s
choice. Sneering little arsehole. Professional bum-sucker. Who elected
him? Usual sycophancy to rise. Live like that. Please your superiors get
dropped in a hole in the ground. Some life. What is it Lawrence says about
Hardy? His characters coming into being. Aye. Hard to find the
language. Right though. Daughters of the Vicar. Lacking the
full range of human emotions. Middle-classes emotionally stunted. Counting
their money. Obsessed with the price of everything. Thought we were going to
throw all that aside. Naïve. Electing a limited snob like Thatcher.
Mother-in-law. Three times. Identifying with wealth and power. Narcissism.
Christopher Lasch. Lot in it but impossible to pin it all down. People have
to rely on their instincts. No need to be an intellectual. Not quantum
mechanics or Sanskrit. Propaganda. That’s our age. The Age of Propaganda.
Never been anything like it? Middle-ages? Church? Aye. Had a grip on
people’s minds. Different though. Knew the Church controlled. Accepted what
they said was self-serving. Trick of our propaganda is it looks like
something else. What? Common sense. Bit of blue sky anyway. Size of that
place. Recycling Lives. Began as a charity. Scam the wife says.
Multi-millionaire. Non-ferrous metals. Stuff they get. Big business, waste.
Like to have a butcher’s one day. I’m a poet. I’d like to write
about what goes on here. Can I have a look around? I’ll stay out of the way.
Forget it. Who’d publish it anyway? Lits neck wrung by commercialism and
dumbing down. The Literature Racket. How many read it? A dozen?
Getting known, as Beckett says. Saramago. No point expecting the masses to
read serious lit. Right? Probably. Expect them to read Relativity? Lit needs
an asylum. Market in books, everything kilters down. Nadine Dorries
best-seller. Dismal tosh. Can’t write a sentence. Universities. Have to
distinguish good from bad. What was it I watched? Ten minutes. The
Kitchen. Writing as thin as…What does Flaubert say? Sèche comme un
cotret? That it? Thin as a lath. Worn out. Thin as….. a poor kid’s broth.
Bit better. Anyway. Lousy stuff. Heard the writer on Radio 4. Kirsty
Young. Mutual ego masturbation. Ten thousand write like that. Shakespeare.
Marlowe. Austen. Joyce. Conrad. George Eliot. Carson McCullers. Unique. Like
Parker. Django. Have to be. Pick up the novels in Waterstones. Could
all be by the same person. Aye. That’s the success. Dumb it down. Library.
Look on the fiction shelves. Nothing by Hemingway, one by Fielding, nothing
by Yates. Forster next to
Follett. Folk don’t know the difference. I like it it’s good. Disaster. I
like Trump, he’s good. Little classics section. Two hundred books. Culture
lost. Snobbery? Tosh. Confusion of realms. Bach better than Bacharach. Not
snobbery. Correct distinction. Vulgarity in the ascendant. Ortega.
Reactionary but some decent ideas. What does he say? Not the right of
vulgarity but vulgarity as a right? Something like. The wife. Thrillers. My
enemy. Ruth too. Doorstep thick crap. Buy that keeps me from publication.
Never read my stuff. Twelve novels. Wife reads like a censor. Nothing about
her in it doesn’t give tuppence. What’s that? Buzzard. Aye. Maybe. Eyes not
good enough that height. Lorries coming in. Big operation, Booths. Family
firm. Edwin. Daughter knew one of the kids. Parents split up she wouldn’t
use the shop. Good crack. Nice stores. Can’t criticise that. Lovely produce.
Some organising. Looks rational. Folk get good quality veg tasty cheeses.
Capitalism works. ABC. Why not a workers’ co-op? What can’t be done that way
that’s done now? Have to imagine it. Easier to accept what is. All right for
the folk who can afford. Us. Wife pulling it in. Where does it go? God
knows. She slaves. I’m out here. She earns it she spends it. Drive people
into debt. Good trick. Get their dosh before they’ve earned it. Make ‘em
more submissive. Dread of it mum had. Dad pretty much. Borrowed for the
coffee bar. Grandad. Frugal as a.. what? Monk? Too predictable. Frugal.
Etymology? Look it up. Was though. HP a trick on the poor. Wanted something
she saved. Aye. Discipline. Something lost there. Maxed out credit cards.
Lunacy. Rational use of debt. Mortgage. End up owning. Enterprise. Aye.
Makes sense. What’s money after all. Universal pander? Who says that? Marx?
Smith? Wealth of Nations. Labour theory of value. Both economic
determinists. Bollocks. Millenia we had no economy. When Adam delved and
Eve span. When Adam hunted and Eve gathered. Just like us fifty
thousand years ago. About. No one knows. Language and abstract thought. No
trade. No barter. No economy. How many years? Agriculture about twelve
thousand. Nearly forty. Complex social relations. Not production.
Reproduction. Blind spot for Smith. Died a virgin? Probably. Shaking fits at
Oxford. Nervous breakdown? Frustration. Needed a good woman. Or a good man
if he was that way. Influence on his work? Must be. Still, mutual sympathy.
Something like. But never to know passion. Kath. Never to know that. A woman
in her ecstasy. Dried him up a bit. Hume? Like a good nosh and a laugh.
What’s the story about him in the water? Damn. Gone from me. Book I
reviewed. The Great Guide. On the top shelf by the window.
Pre-capitalist. Make of it now? US. Bonkers desire for domination. Monroe
Doctrine. Manifest Destiny. O’Sullivan. That his name? Yes. Journalist. God
likes America. No accounting for taste. Western hemisphere their playground.
Keep out! No Europeans. No blacks. No dogs. Grandiose ideas. Where does it
all come from? Those big words which make us so unhappy. Stay in one room. A
la Pascal. Something like that. Quirk in the brain. Need for self-elevation.
Easy to see impossible to prove. Comes down to political rhetoric. Vacuous.
Israelis at it in Gaza. Big heads. Netanyahu mad liar. Kids slaughtered for
the sake of a madman’s ego. World where that’s possible. Worth living in?
Point is the opposite is possible. Who wouldn’t prefer love, sex, music,
food, sleep, a good walk by the sea, a laugh. What is it drives us away from
pleasure to mass killing? More than men less than beasts. Who’s that?
Diderot? Kid. I always thought everyone wanted it. Nice life. Shocking when
you realise. Warped minds? Folk I worked with. Landers. Off his rocker. Head
of department thought he was Napoleon. Power. What is it? Command of someone
else’s potency. That what I wrote? Where? The mag? Aye. Maybe. All lost? Way
to spend your life writing what no one will read. Still. Not my
responsibility. Did what was right. By my lights. Always that. Wrote what I
could. Editors, publishers, agents, theatres. Their business. True though.
Don’t have that pushiness. Fault? Could be. On the other hand, pushy to get
on in the present state of things means conformism. Aye. Maybe there’s a
degree though. Trim a little to gain a lot. Doesn’t work. Power demands too
much. Got to face it down. Get it in the neck all right. That’s
authenticity. Never should’ve taken the bloody job. What did he say old
Barrow? I haven’t anybody else in mind. Cunt. Should’ve told him to
shove it up his arse. Year I thought. Stuck. Bloody Johnson. Thought he was
god’s emissary. Tight-buttoned little twat. Probably stirred his tea with
his dick till he was twenty-five. Should’ve got out. I’ve had to put a
reservation in your reference. Aye. Should’ve pulled any scrap from my
pocket and written it there and then. Dear Sir, This is to notify you I
shall be leaving your employ..Too easy-going. Public school
Oxford bloody nonsense. Lawrence has it all right. Not the full range of
human emotions. On the spectrum? Maybe. Pity him? Screws up other people’s
lives. No pity for that. Three times he kicked me in the teeth. Sense of
superiority. What else from public school? What they’re for. Burn the bloody
places down. Waste? Good buildings. Resources. Aye. Destruction is a lousy
method. Bakunin. Right about Leninism. Saw Stalin coming. Nothing more than
Marx to go on. Shows the theory’s flawed. More religion than analysis.
Manifesto anyway. Prediction. George Eliot says about that? Look it up.
Still how to be rid. All my life. ’64. Long time. Decades. Centuries.
Feudalism. On and on. Generation after another. Gross injustice. Kicked it
off? Agriculture. Surplus. Idea of accumulation. Turned our minds. Conrad.
Not a moral aim. Not pretty when you look into it. Litotes. Bloody ugly.
Odd. Conservative in his views. Like Balzac. Royalist who saw the cause was
doomed. In his lit. Something about lit which drives to objectivity. Prose
at least. Poetry? Too much toothache. Ha ! Holub. Lyricism. Conceals more
than it says. The inauthentic I. Sense of a self removed. Novel a social
form. Drama too? Beckett. Krapp? Still principally about his relationship.
Subjectivity can reveal the objective but. Most poets from the elite.
Centuries the masses illiterate. Kind of tradition is that? Eliot’s
bollocks. Fit into that you’re on the side of the oppressors. Conrad right
though. Racist? Nigger of the Narcissus. Should change the title.
The Narcisssus. Censorship? No. Avoidance of harm. Do no harm.
Who is it accuses him? Achebe? Think so. Valid but Heart of Darkness
not about the evils of the coloured folk. Pursuit of lucre rather.
Indigenous people of Cuba and Saint Domingo. Silver and gold in their hair.
Handed it over to the Europeans. No idea of exchange value. Innocence. Eden.
Fall. Bite of the apple. Not sex, money. Sex a pleasure. A joy. Joins
people. Property divides. No way back. Some cataclysm. Einstein and the
fourth world war. Humanity taken a wrong turn. Where’s that lead? Go that
way one day. Must be the industrial estate. LFD. Nostalgia. One day. What is
it now? Offices full of computers. Call centre. Mad idea. Barrier to human
communication. Maybe one day. Stroll past. Think about those days. My
history. Our history. Joe. Forgotten people. Laughs we had though. Two
fingers to the company. Worldwide. Billions. Set up a depot here Joe leaves
school needs a job. Hey presto. Make use of the local talent. Good brain he
had. Wasted. Kid from the back streets. Millions of ‘em. Toffs get
remembered. Names in history books because they emerged from the right cunt.
Right dick delivered the tadpoles. Crazy. Charlie boy sticking his nose in.
Thinks he’s an ecologist. Jumping on private jets. Living in palaces. Carbon
footprint the size of Asia. What’s the other bugger? Jeffrey Epstein.
Shagging young girls. Doesn’t sweat. Lying bastard. Entitlement. Drives
people nuts. Some quirk in the brain. Advantage sets people off. Think
they’re superhuman. Blue eyes brown eyes. No solution but equality. No
deference. No power. You talk rubbish I say so. Likewise. Having to defer to
idiots like Spencer. Petty functional hierarchies. Distorts feeling. People
want to say, do me a favour you pillock. Have to say, Yes
William. Of course, William. Right away William.
Inauthenticity. Hallmark of our culture. Identify with power feel big. Odd.
Pop stars. Sports stars. Film stars. Sparks up some part of the brain.
People leave themselves behind. One day might go that way. Explore. Probably
no more than a track. Still re-live those days. A la Proust. Nothing like
it. Some detail kicks off a way of feeling. Long gone. Long gone. Most dead.
Suppose. Short life is. Sixteen you’ll live forever. Sixteen years. Little
pile of ashes. Shouldn’t wonder. Dad gone a decade before my age. Mum
fifteen years more. Uncle Arth. Few weeks from a hundred. Kept him going?
Walking. Fresh air. No booze. Raw onion every day mum said. Maybe one day.
Someone coming. Better move on. Think I’m nuts loitering. Young she looks.
Little dog. Nothing to worry about. One of those mad things the kids at the
far end of the nature reserve have. Up on their hind legs. Leash tight as….A
fat man’s belt. Quite like that. Teeth bared. Have you by the throat if the
kid can’t hang on. Protection. Drugs. Probably. From the estate. Worst in
town once over. Dominant families the wife said. Had to visit clients.
Better these days. All the same. Stay away from the steps. Pity.
Liked pressing up there. Bit of effort for the thighs. Ça forme le mollet.
Un kilometre a pied. Kids who couldn’t get the melody. L’air. Même si tu ne
connais pas l’air. Henri Lebrun’s little daughter. Cute she was. What did I
sing with her? Came in from the garden eating. Qu’as-tu dans la bouche? he
said. Un bout de gruyère. Laugh. What was she? Three? Different culture. Got
ill. Terrible. Lovely little child. Old git like me dies. Had my three score
and more. Little kid. Too cruel. Like Lynn. Forty-three. No age. Me. Why do
I deserve it? Kids in Gaza. Yank bastards. Biden claiming beheadings. Liar.
Hamas terrorists. Amateurs compared to the Americans. Laying waste to
Vietnam. What’s that? Benevolence. Everything we do is angelic. Same thing
with folk in power. It’s for your own good we make you work like a donkey
for not enough to pay the rent. Funny. Something in the brain. Gyrus of
deception. Ever find it? Neural pathway makes people think they’re god?
Ethics forbids experiment. Mystery to ourselves. Clean down the middle.
Can’t see what makes us love. Nice stuff. Can’t see what makes us monsters.
Despair. Charming walk she has. Morning. Hi. Not a bad day. No,
not too bad. Come on, Eric. Eric? Who’d give that to a dog? Maybe in
memory. Pleasant little animal. Couldn’t do with it. Too tying. Little black
bags. Changed enough nappies. Still better than the old days. Coils of the
stuff on the pavement. Tread it through the house. Simple to change
behaviour. Make it hard to behave badly. Reward beneficence. Some chance
internationally. Who’s got the biggest dick? Yanks bombing and murdering.
Allende. Alexandra Square when the news came through. CIA. Kissinger. Mad
bastard. Hailed as a statesman. Blair licking his arse when he popped. Thug
in a suit. Psychopath with a doctorate. Used to think education made people
moral. Ideas you have as a kid. Recognised the madness in teachers though.
Cochrane. Relished whacking your arse with a thin cane. Bloody sadist.
Wakefield hitting us with a sawn-off cricket bat. Should’ve been in prison.
Ignorant cunt. Call that education. Waterhouse. Good teacher. Never laid a
finger. Some like him. System attracts bullies. Weak-minded enjoy pushing
kids around. Weak-minded? Get to the bottom of it. Freud? Probably all
bollocks. Penis envy. Make you laugh. Pneumatic model. All scuppered by
neuroscience? Can’t prove it anyway. Not a science if you can’t test it.
Marx. Scientific socialism. Rubbish. Post-structuralism. Codswallop.
Stuff I had to read. Piles of it. Roland Barthes. Gothot-Mersch. That
her name? Drive you barmy. Trying for an esoteric language like the
physicists. Fear. Talk bollocks in science you’re found out fast. Talk
endless tosh about lit you get three professorships. Could’ve written my
handy little thesis on Flaubert but. Dog-fight with Steve Barnes. Nice
bloke. Red socks.Tucked his feet under his bum in supervisions. Like a kid.
Enjoyed those two or three hour sessions. All I had to do once a fortnight.
Knock up a supervision paper. Took a day. Rest of the time read what I
liked. Wrote. Banging off poetry here and there. Papering the room with
rejection slips. We’ll get you a chair. Nearly fell off mine. Old boy
stuff. Manchester Grammar and Oxford. Tony Pomeroy. Big name. External
supervisor. Hello, old boy. Bright young chap doing some work on
Flaubert. If you’ve chair..Grandad say about that? Cheat. Looking
over my shoulder all my life. Anyway, by then post-structuralismed into a
paste. Where to go? Should’ve asked dad. Bookshop. Second-hand. He could’ve
done the café. Better than getting screwed in the public sector. That
lunatic old bat Thatcher. Damage she did. Free market my areshole. State for
the rich. People fell for the prestidigitation. For my next trick I will
slash taxes without fucking up your hospitals. A child of three
could get it. Great for the super-rich. They get it too when climate change
strikes. Trump. Thinks he’s invincible. Ego of a two-year-old. God save him.
God obeys the laws of physics. Shove out the CO2 we’re all fried. Or
drowned. Legacy. Christ. Brought kids into this mess and can’t guarantee
their well-being. Grandson. My age the seas may be a metre higher. That
much? Who was is it? David King. Ex-government advisor. Can’t recall the
figures. Don’t stick to my brain. Look ‘em up. I’m standing on the beach
at Cambridge. Mitchell. Saw him read it. CND rally? Bruce. What was his
name? Slip away they do. Dementia on the way? Christ. All I need. Nuts they
say. Almonds. Fats. Good fats bad fats. Buy that stuff in Aldi.
Little jars. Delicious. Nothing but almonds. How do they do that? Grind ‘em?
Busy here. Bad bit of the walk. Speed they go. Size of the lorries.
Electrified before long. Batteries. Best way on the railways. Beeching.
Silly twat. Dr. Thick as a ….workhouse butty. No. Thick as a Greek yoghurt.
Not much good. Let it fester. Shut the lines boosted the car sales. All
about. Profit. Railways nationalised. Thatcher avant la lettre. Cars
on the road. How many? Thirty million? Look it up. Sixty-five million. Forty
million adults. Thirty million cars. Madness. Say fifty on a bus. Couple of
hundred on a train. Something like on a tram. Do the division. Sixty-five
million by fifty. Six point million by five. One and a bit million. Christ.
Get folk on buses trains and trams and we could turn the motorways to
cyclepaths. All done for the rich. Hits them too. Stupid bastards. Clogged
roads. Pollution. Accidents. Live in the country. Big houses surrounded by
fences. Guarded by Dobermans. Tristram and Felicity in private holes. Think
they’re evading the problems. Climate change kicks ‘em up the arse.
Lorries from all over the place. Look at that. Spain. Carrots or
something. As if we can’t. Globalisation. More dosh for the rich. When I was
a kid. Made in Hong Kong. Dad used to joke. Toys. On a boat all that way.
Can’t make a bloody toy here? Pitiful motivation. Lucre. Like a dog after a
bitch on heat. In the street. Like Diogenes. No sense in that. Wanking in
the public square. Drives us mad. Pelf. Loot. Wampum. No gods I am no
idle votarist. Timon. Shakespeare saw it. So much of this will
make black white, foul fair. How? Our capacities externalised. Coming
back to us in coin and paper. Wad of tenners means look at me. I’m potent.
Morally empty. Emotionally vacuous. Not money people want. Humanity. As if a
quantity. Quality. Lit the best guide. Shoved aside. Psychology.
Behaviourism. Sociology. Embedded. Serving the corporates. Bernays. Getting
women to smoke. PR rules the world. Fake. All phoney. Ever find our way
back? Doubt it. Maybe cataclysm. Climate change surprises. Florida under
water. London swamped. Manchester the capital. Good ruse. We’ll let you come
up here if you embrace egalitarianism. We’re not having Surrey in Salford.
What a time to be alive. Humanity on the verge of suicide. I’ll be gone. The
lad. Nothing worse. Leaving the world worse than when you arrived. Do?
Christ. Speed o’ that. No indication. Don’t mind me mate. I’m just the
codger trying to dodge the wheels. Self-driving stuff. Disaster. Not thought
through. Read it somewhere. Autonomous car hit a woman dragged her half a
mile. Same drive. Money. Great chance. Get cars off the road. Won’t do it.
Less profit in trains, trams and buses. Woods at last. Pity the noise still
loud. All the same. Might cop a deer. Ready for a piss. Nip down that early
path past the farm. Wonder if the horses are in the field. One-eyed bugger
bites. Conversations with a one-eyed horse. Best-seller. Some chance.
Should’ve brought a pair of apples. Got to know me. Click of the tongue.
Heads over the gate. Power they have. Grabbing the hedge. Ripping. Tame ‘em.
Bit in the mouth, Spurs in the ribs. First world war. How may died? Horses
dragged into our madness. No species like us. Dinosaurs not suicidal. Drive
you to despair. No horses. Pity. Recognising by sight? Dogs all smell.
Olfactory brain area as big as China. Rats. Bad eyesight. Makes sense. Live
in the dark. Shit filled sewer their paradise. Rat holidays. Come to the
pitch dark drains of the favelas. All the shit you can eat. We evolved for
the light. Here we are. Muddy.
Watch in. Over your boots…..