The bottom line of this perhaps rather long narrative, is not, as I initially started out as a perhaps green, green badge cab driver, who did not move to the valley of Diesel “Ilford” with the obligatory new cab, wife, mortgage and two kids.

No one more surprised than I at the realisation of what has materialised, a first hand description humiliation and deprivation of the British working class from the 1930's.

This erosion brought about entirely by deliberate policy of successive governments.. and the ten draconian years of Tony Blair who deliberately, for whatever reason, encouraged the influx of irrepresible waves of the World's disenchanted onto these shores, by doing so, creating a powerful, intimidating, devisive weapon against the indigenous labouring masses and a hard core of … crime, poverty and unemployment… the triple iron fist of all governments,plus Enron, 9/11, Afghan conflict over oil, Kosovo all emphatically used by Blair; any outcry was by "politically incorrect racists" as Dr David Kelly was to find to the cost of his life.

The differential between rich and poor, is greater now, than during the Middle Ages.

"Free" again.

After so very many years being absorbed in Jennifer, Mark, the aspects of living for other people, the same shock waves running through my system at the realisation, more subdued than my heydays of Ruth, of Australia. Once again, no longer having to concern myself with anything other than myself... Interested to see if I would fall back into the same pattern of depression, the vacuum left in my existence... complete lack of interest, even the most basic human. Hardly had long to wait before the tentacles were reaching out, out into my being, into my brain, regardless of any effort attempted to divert the deteriorating situation. Scraped the bottom of the barrel... going with Big Eddy to the "Singles Clubs" the name itself conjuring up every kind of despair and isolation. Life at these places, subterranean... lights, other people, music, laughter. A deep underlying decay, looked at the faces, in itself enough. The eyes, always looked at, the eyes first... then the hands. So much told by these factors, the suffering there, in the face, written clearly for anyone to see... totally ignored... The hands, their lives... how hard, how soft it "had" been. I, jaundiced, certainly had seen too much, certainly hardly needed to put myself through all that...

"preparing a face to meet the faces that I meet"

We would trundle off in our respective cabs to the Red Lion in Hatfield.. The Country and Western at Southgate ... unending places to go, countless people looking for something... someone, anything, the intolerable realisation of it being "all over"... the rest of the road a repetition of which had gone before, cynicism bitten deeply into their lives... deep mistrust replaced the openness, the "love" of their young days, creating a strange atmosphere in the Rooms, the Halls ... loud laughter, smirks, whispers... broken lives slowly disintegrating.

*****************


Knew my option ,if I did not fight, to fall into bed, perhaps for two years, driving my mother mad, as I did after the Virginia turn out... for months after Ruth...

So, I smiled. Met Big Eddy, had our fish and chips in Millman Street. listened to his long diatribes about women ... how he so much hated them, yet, unable to leave then alone, a true misogynist.
Posted by

Niciun comentariu:

Trimiteți un comentariu

Abonați-vă la: Postare comentarii (Atom)