Street Horror and a Sisyphean Task
I left Hackney at 10am and caught a train to Faversham to pick up my suitcase which due to the spite of my brother I had to collect from the police station - it being 'neutral ground'.
As soon as I arrived at Faversham train station I realised that I had inadvertently descended into the First Circle of Hell, for it was the day of the annual Hops Festival - Faversham being a major brewery town. The station entrance was choked with people of all ages sauntering, mooching, dawdling or just standing about in untidy, gormless groups. Many of these people had wreaths of hops entwined around their big, plain heads and they gazed aimlessly about them in a slack-jawed, dull-eyed kind of way.
I pushed through the dazed crowd and walked across the zebra crossing in order to enter the main street of this doll-village, and I now entered the Second Circle of Hell. Unusually, I couldn't see any of the shops along the street because the street was engorged with a crowd, tens of thousands strong. The noise see-sawing up off this mass of humanity was deafening - the usual whoops and cries of families on a day out; the ragged shreds of music from the half-dozen little stages erected at regular intervals; the cries of the hawkers, selling fried matter and horrible jewelry from rickety stalls. The snail's pace of the horde continued. It was impossible to negotiate this because there were no clear spaces to be seen - everyone was packed solid in this morass of flesh, inching their way down the cobbles in negligible increments. Nobody seemed to mind the crush: all around me were the smiling, hop-wreathed heads of the easily-satisfied. We all shuffled along through Hell together - they with smiling, eager acceptance of their horrible fate; me with a face as furious as Hell-thunder.
Four days later, or so it seemed, I reached a turn off from this living river of the damned and the demented and I turned eagerly onto it. It was empty of people, and I breathed my first air not tainted by fried dough and perspiration.
This Paradise was short-lived, however, because my way to the police station necessitated that I soon re-enter the stinking hubbub by now turning down through the main town square.
I had now entered the Third Circle. It was sobering and something of a shock to see such a concentration of Caucasians. Before me, and all around me, stretched an ocean of over-fed white people: mothers; fathers; children - some loose, some tied into pushers; and grandmothers (grandfathers being, by and large, a noticeable absence from the throng). The grandmothers all had tattoos on their beefy, red forearms, or across the backs of their necks - these usually consisted of their grandchildren's names written in curling script highlighted with butterflies: 'Connor'; 'Bethany'; 'Melissa'; 'Tyler'; 'Jade'; 'Ruby'. Everybody was smoking, which added to the infernal vista. Everybody carried plastic cups of beer, the celebrated drink of the day. Not a black or Asian face was to be seen anywhere amongst these many thousands.
Five days later, or so it seemed, I arrived at the police station, which is off the main road and nestled next to a big church built of the local flint-stone. There was a note pinned to the door of the police station announcing that it would be closed over the entire weekend and open again tomorrow (Monday) between noon and 2pm. I felt sick at the prospect of wading back through the Hell-horde empty-handed: the thought of all of my worldly possessions being locked up in custody behind the big blue front door, just feet away from me, was dreadful.
I limped away from the building, my arthritic ankle joining painfully in with the amusement. I decided it would be best to walk back to the railway station along side streets, thereby avoiding the hop-bewreathed zombies. As I passed along one of these quiet roads I saw four children dressed as policemen-and-women (two of each) walk towards me. As they came nearer I saw that they were actual members of the constabulary, although impossibly young. I limped towards the most attractive of the set, a chubby, baby-faced bobby of thirteen and told him the situation
"Orright, sir", he said, "I'll ask Gina to ring the desk now." He gestured to Gina, a doe-eyed eleven-year-old, who immediately used her radio to speak to another officer at the station. Once finished, she said,
"Thou be ixpectin' you, if you go there righ' away". I thanked the kids and limped my way back down the street.
When I arrived back at the police station it was still locked, and no amount of banging and thudding on the solid front door roused a soul within. I stood there for thirty minutes. Then a nine-year-old policewoman emerged from the side of the building, driving a police car. I flagged her down and again explained why I was there. She spoke to 'Nigel' on her radio and drove off. Ten minutes later, Nigel unlocked the door and ushered me inside.
Nigel was quite handsome, in a Colin Farrell kind of way: his short-back-and-sides haircut set off his dark eyes beautifully. I explained yet again the situation and he went out the back. A minute later he emerged through a side door, trundling my suitcase in front of him. I signed the necessary papers and was ushered out into the country lane and shortly thereafter into the Fourth Circle of Hell.
The suitcase was massive and enormously heavy. My brother had in his spite contrived to removed the handle, and so I had to push the behemoth from behind. Its castors gave off a loud, rhythmic rat-a-tat-a-rat-a-tat against the cobbles, but even this was not sufficient to shift the lallygagging locals and yokels from my path: they merely stopped in their tracks and looked down at my task as I inched - no, centimetered - along amidst them.
Seven days later, or so it seemed, I reached the train station. Three of the four castors on the suitcase had disintegrated along the way, in protest. The one remaining was insufficient to the task: the case wobbled, span and screeched dementedly and I was forced to hug it to my chest and heave it along, one painful, limping step after another. It was truly Sisyphean and by the time I threw myself into my train seat, exhausted and drenched with sweat, I bellowed a silent curse on the heads of those who had made this horror necessary.
As soon as I arrived at Faversham train station I realised that I had inadvertently descended into the First Circle of Hell, for it was the day of the annual Hops Festival - Faversham being a major brewery town. The station entrance was choked with people of all ages sauntering, mooching, dawdling or just standing about in untidy, gormless groups. Many of these people had wreaths of hops entwined around their big, plain heads and they gazed aimlessly about them in a slack-jawed, dull-eyed kind of way.
I pushed through the dazed crowd and walked across the zebra crossing in order to enter the main street of this doll-village, and I now entered the Second Circle of Hell. Unusually, I couldn't see any of the shops along the street because the street was engorged with a crowd, tens of thousands strong. The noise see-sawing up off this mass of humanity was deafening - the usual whoops and cries of families on a day out; the ragged shreds of music from the half-dozen little stages erected at regular intervals; the cries of the hawkers, selling fried matter and horrible jewelry from rickety stalls. The snail's pace of the horde continued. It was impossible to negotiate this because there were no clear spaces to be seen - everyone was packed solid in this morass of flesh, inching their way down the cobbles in negligible increments. Nobody seemed to mind the crush: all around me were the smiling, hop-wreathed heads of the easily-satisfied. We all shuffled along through Hell together - they with smiling, eager acceptance of their horrible fate; me with a face as furious as Hell-thunder.
Four days later, or so it seemed, I reached a turn off from this living river of the damned and the demented and I turned eagerly onto it. It was empty of people, and I breathed my first air not tainted by fried dough and perspiration.
This Paradise was short-lived, however, because my way to the police station necessitated that I soon re-enter the stinking hubbub by now turning down through the main town square.
I had now entered the Third Circle. It was sobering and something of a shock to see such a concentration of Caucasians. Before me, and all around me, stretched an ocean of over-fed white people: mothers; fathers; children - some loose, some tied into pushers; and grandmothers (grandfathers being, by and large, a noticeable absence from the throng). The grandmothers all had tattoos on their beefy, red forearms, or across the backs of their necks - these usually consisted of their grandchildren's names written in curling script highlighted with butterflies: 'Connor'; 'Bethany'; 'Melissa'; 'Tyler'; 'Jade'; 'Ruby'. Everybody was smoking, which added to the infernal vista. Everybody carried plastic cups of beer, the celebrated drink of the day. Not a black or Asian face was to be seen anywhere amongst these many thousands.
Five days later, or so it seemed, I arrived at the police station, which is off the main road and nestled next to a big church built of the local flint-stone. There was a note pinned to the door of the police station announcing that it would be closed over the entire weekend and open again tomorrow (Monday) between noon and 2pm. I felt sick at the prospect of wading back through the Hell-horde empty-handed: the thought of all of my worldly possessions being locked up in custody behind the big blue front door, just feet away from me, was dreadful.
I limped away from the building, my arthritic ankle joining painfully in with the amusement. I decided it would be best to walk back to the railway station along side streets, thereby avoiding the hop-bewreathed zombies. As I passed along one of these quiet roads I saw four children dressed as policemen-and-women (two of each) walk towards me. As they came nearer I saw that they were actual members of the constabulary, although impossibly young. I limped towards the most attractive of the set, a chubby, baby-faced bobby of thirteen and told him the situation
"Orright, sir", he said, "I'll ask Gina to ring the desk now." He gestured to Gina, a doe-eyed eleven-year-old, who immediately used her radio to speak to another officer at the station. Once finished, she said,
"Thou be ixpectin' you, if you go there righ' away". I thanked the kids and limped my way back down the street.
When I arrived back at the police station it was still locked, and no amount of banging and thudding on the solid front door roused a soul within. I stood there for thirty minutes. Then a nine-year-old policewoman emerged from the side of the building, driving a police car. I flagged her down and again explained why I was there. She spoke to 'Nigel' on her radio and drove off. Ten minutes later, Nigel unlocked the door and ushered me inside.
Nigel was quite handsome, in a Colin Farrell kind of way: his short-back-and-sides haircut set off his dark eyes beautifully. I explained yet again the situation and he went out the back. A minute later he emerged through a side door, trundling my suitcase in front of him. I signed the necessary papers and was ushered out into the country lane and shortly thereafter into the Fourth Circle of Hell.
The suitcase was massive and enormously heavy. My brother had in his spite contrived to removed the handle, and so I had to push the behemoth from behind. Its castors gave off a loud, rhythmic rat-a-tat-a-rat-a-tat against the cobbles, but even this was not sufficient to shift the lallygagging locals and yokels from my path: they merely stopped in their tracks and looked down at my task as I inched - no, centimetered - along amidst them.
Seven days later, or so it seemed, I reached the train station. Three of the four castors on the suitcase had disintegrated along the way, in protest. The one remaining was insufficient to the task: the case wobbled, span and screeched dementedly and I was forced to hug it to my chest and heave it along, one painful, limping step after another. It was truly Sisyphean and by the time I threw myself into my train seat, exhausted and drenched with sweat, I bellowed a silent curse on the heads of those who had made this horror necessary.
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