| middle england blues |
[Jul. 23rd, 2005|04:09 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
I haven’t been blogging for a while.
The reason for that is that I’ve been stuck, through my own device, and, admittedly, only for a few days, in middle class suburbia, eating chips, holding babies, going to weddings, getting to the shops via squadrons of teenage boys in basketball caps. This is middle England , a place where two of my best mates have ended up, and it’s both lovely and awful. Bleerch. Excuse me. Keep that little bit of vomit down.
This is a best mate who used to take so much pleasure in the obscure
(mutual hero Bohumil Hrabal, that wonderful Czech writer who delighted in documenting and imagining obscure deaths, who ended up in hospital in his 70s, and died after falling out of a fourth floor hospital window trying to feed the pigeons),
my friend who used to be blessed with an eastern European sense of humour, and who is now on the point of throwing her toddlers from a second floor window. This is the quiet side of middle England. This is a woman I once loved, I still love, who is now only barely recognisable.
This afternoon, sitting on the grass outside Salisbury cathedral with a picnic lunch – me, my friend, her husband and their two young kids –
a sudden flash of Addis; a sudden flash of the streets I’ve lived in so recently, the streets I was so accustomed to,.
A flashback to rubble, to corrugated houses, to the familiar beggars, the shoeshine boys who would call out to me – hey mister! The buildings on bole road, the snipers perched on top of the highest ones, on the lookout for dodgy citizens while African presidents pass by on their way to and from the airport. Dead dogs, stray moving targets left to rot, troops on street corners brandishing rifles, david.
Do you remember david? Of course. A somalian refugee with south African passport (what the hell was he doing in addis?) who declared his love for me the first night. You can’t have me, I told him, until you write me a love letter that blows me away. Every time he got drunk, it was: When are you going to marry me, you know that I am your destiny.
David, I would say, you haven’t written me my letter yet, of course I can't marry you.
And david, the one night I decide not to go to the bar, a Sunday when I‘ve decided I’ve had enough after thirty nights in a row, david picks a fight with some other somalian bloke, decides that the best way to solve it is to go out onto the streets and call in the troops, who are very experienced in matters of civil unrest. Enter army who beat the shit out of everyone in bar with rifle butts.
Good on ya david.
Back to the real world. Real? Fuck. How unreal does this feel? I am on the green by Salisbury cathedral, having lunch with my married friends and their two kids. Everything is so civilised. Clean. Quiet. Jeeeesus.
Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? How can i possibly be cynical when my friends seem so happy? But what's wrong with simply saying PISS OFF YOU BRAINWASHING TWATS WHO DRESS YOUR POOR BLOODY DAUGHTERS IN PINK, after all it's true that they forgot to think.
Last time I saw these people, there was only one kid. One kid is a little more manageable. But back then I had no bloody idea how to deal with kids. Since then, I’ve had some experience as a teacher… Still, help, Salisbury full of prams and wheelchairs, extremes of birth and death, few in between, as though everybody in between in this part of the world has committed suicide... I wouldn't blame them.
Still, this is what they call the first world. First or not, it does have its advantages. I feel safe, despite the fact that eight bombs have exploded in London in fourteen days.
Mad fuckers.
but why, why, why, do i suddenly find myself missing Addis so much? |
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