Street Sadness

   Yesterday afternoon I went into Tesco to buy a couple of things for Friday's xmas lunch. The blazing neon lights dazzled as I came in from the dark 4pm street. It was crowded with shoppers. A fat christmas tree leaned drunkenly in the doorway, bedecked with tinsel and hanging things. Searching for the christmas puddings, I wended my way through the haphazard, basket-wielding shoppers. A young mother yelled at her three under-tens to "Stop fuckin' touchin' everyfing!" An old dear in a moulting black shaggy coat blew her nose on a scrunched handful of tissues. Several of the employees were wearing big red christmas baubles as earrings; some had Santa hats made of red felt perched on their heads. Suddenly, an entire christmas elf came lurching down the aisle, carrying a stack of baskets to the checkouts. The unfortunate, lumpen creature was dressed in a red and green outfit, complete with curly pixie boots and pointy hat with a little bell on it. Her makeup was qu...

   I called in to a pub for a very late lunch. It was nearly 4pm and beginning to get dark outside. The pub was festively festooned with xmas paraphenalia: twinkling lights; tinsel; paper decorations; a bushy christmas tree with colourful glass balls. I was served by what appeared to be a nine-year old girl, with braces on her teeth, although I surmised that she was probably in her late teens. I took my pint of pale ale to the back corner and settled in to listen to the various conversations. It being school holidays the room was sprinkled here and there with children, eating lunch with one-or-other of their parents. To my left was a large table of three women and three nine-year-old boys. They were all filled with xmas cheer, and/or alcohol. The women's voices were loud and shrill as they talked about their home-renovations and their child-minders - each trying to outdo the other in terms of the inconveniences visited upon them by their workmen. The boys were much-buoyed by a...

It's always disconcerting when one of the pub's kitchen staff goes downstairs to the toilet and returns fifteen minutes later, and there is no sound of the very loud hand dryer to be heard in his wake. It makes lunch a trepidatious affair - like dining at 10 Rillington Place.

   In the street two special needs men in their mid-thirties were having a face-off. The fat, red faced one, with a crewcut and a runny nose was standing in the doorway of a shop with his hands firmly jammed in the front pockets of his hoody. His adversary - a toothless Turkish man with wild eyes who resembled a demented Larry Rivers - was sprawled up against a parked car, his arms flailing manically. They took it in turns to shout at each other through the falling drizzle. The fat one was the more articulate of the two.    "Fuck off!" he yelled, at the top of his voice.    "Arrrgh!" came the earnest response.    "Fuck off!"    "Aaarragh!"    "Fuck off!"    "Rerrrgh! Arghagh!"    "Fuck off!"    "Aggah Durgh! Arraghaa!" (and now the arms were helicoptering wildly)    "Fuck off!"    "Arg! Argh! Aaaaarrrgh! Gurrah!"    "Fuck off!" It continued behind me as I ma...

   An elderly geezer on the 388 bus to Stratford Central mutters away to himself as he gazes out of the window. It is a surreal stream-of-consciousness ramble of bizarre juxtapositions.     "Oh, remember that woman who lived there? She was a lovely lady, really lovely... That's where Jim fell down the manhole... It won't be the same once they knock all them houses down... Not so cold these days... Lovely bit of bacon... Betty certainly had something to say to 'er - what was 'er name? Judith? Jenny?... Over the canal... Over the canal... Over the canal... Bloody idiot - you wanna watch where you're goin', mate!... Why ain't them kids in school on a Monday mornin'?..."   After twenty minutes of this running commentary he reached his stop. He left the bus and shuffled over to an old woman who was standing in the bus shelter and yelled "BOLLOCKS!" into her very startled face.

   A diminutive young black woman in Bethnal Green Road meets her friend, who is pushing a sleeping toddler in a stroller.     "'Ello", she says, "I juss got me hair done. Do you like it? Do you like me hair? Do you?" Her friend gave it a quick once-over, as did I. It looked like someone had fitted a tight helmet of macraméd nylon rope on top of her head. It was totally artificial and a very poor imitation of reality. Her friend said, "Ooh, very nice, Jamella. Yeah, really good", and then she quickly changed the subject.

   A young black man stands in the doorway of his ground-floor flat. He holds his phone up to his ear with his left hand.     "Yeah, dass right, fam, dass right. Iss always like that on a Monday, innit? All quiet an' everyfin', I ain't gunna lie." His right hand was plunged deeply down the front of his track suit pants as he spoke and he was having a really good fumble around his package. Even my frank eye contact with him as I walked by failed to halt his enthusiastic rummaging. I have to say that I rather envied his self-assuredness. 

   On Saturday there was a collection of street stalls along the main shopping strip near where I am staying in Hackney. Many of the proprietors had set up trestle tables outside of the shops with hot food, cakes and soft toys for sale. I wandered, rather desultorily, along the street, the chill December wind whipping up coattails and tablecloths and dead leaves.     I picked up a soft toy rabbit at one stall. A gushing middle-aged woman behind the table told me it was really good quality and that it was made by a local women's group. She pointed at a sign at the end of the table, which read: 'Womyn's Kollective'. This horrible distortion of the language prompted me to fling the rabbit back onto the table amongst the rest of the overpriced tat. I then moved on to the next table, which was manned by the street's gay Thai hairdresser. His stall had an array of confectionary, which was, he assured me, "Made by my very own little hands." He talked me through ...

    I had just left the little supermarket and was walking up Broadway Market towards home. A little way ahead a small commotion was occuring. A large man, perhaps in his late-forties, was leaning forward, bracing himself against some or other street furniture. He was wet with perspiration and grey-faced. A harried-looking elderly woman with dyed black hair was rubbing his shoulder; she was staring up into his clenched face and saying something to him. A young girl of about thirteen stood with her arms by her side, looking on in bewilderment. The man began to shake his head. He made a small step backwards and then his legs buckled and he fell, heavily, onto his back on the pavement, his eyes half-closed. The elderly woman gave a short cry.    "Ronnie! Oh my gawd, Ronnie!"    "Dad!" yelled the young girl. Within a minute several people - obviously medically-trained - had run out of the various cafes along the strip and were kneeling beside the stricken man...

    A few nights ago I was on the Northern Line tube and a young black guy got on the train. He began pacing up and down, swinging his arms about. Then he went through a mechanical round of sitting down, standing up, sitting down again. From all of this, and the fact that he was frantically chewing a great wad of gum, it was clear that he was speeding off his chump. He stood up and began taking off his tee-shirt, which was wet through with perspiration. He balled it up and wiped his wet face with it. Then he caught my eye, and my knowing look of approval, and said, "Ah, bruv, it's fuckin' 'ot in 'ere, innit?.... I'm sweatin' like a leaf."

    I trekked over to the Marks & Spencer shop in Kensington High Street to buy a pair of trousers my only other pair now worn through at the crotch. I found a pair of black jeans to my liking for £24. Then I caught the tube to Notting Hill Gate, which I had not visited since my art residency as a fresh-faced, naive, recently-ex-student, here in 1983 : after a stint living in the painter John Walker's studio in Kew Gardens we had moved to a bedsit which was almost next door to the Royal Oak tube station. I remember often walking the short distance to Notting Hill, where we sometimes browsed the Portobello Road Market. I wanted to see if things had changed in the thirty-two intervening years. They had. I was a naive, fresh-faced fool to have thought otherwise.     I walked up from the tube entrance and found my bearings immediately. I turned right and headed up the road in the direction of Portobello Road. I turned off the main road and immediately knew where I w...

     I walked down the length of Roman Road until I arrived at Bethnal Green tube station. The final few blocks of the road are grim and there is much evidence of bad municipal decisions on 'brightening up' the soulless tower blocks and estates that crowd up towards Cambridge Hill Road, as if trying to flee to better regions. In a concrete common area, surrounded by one such estate, a brittle-looking metal statue of an adolescent, of indeterminate sex, and its dog, straddled a trickling fountain; it made me think of a bidet.       I turned right into Cambridge Hill Road and headed towards the V&A's Museum of Childhood. It is housed in a grim Victorian warehouse. I heard screams as I neared the big 1960's glass entrance doors. As I pushed these open the screams became deafening. In the foyer a sullen young girl in a black uniform sat on a stool at the next doorway. I smiled at her as I entered and received no response whatever. The screams we...

On Saturday afternoon I stopped into the pub for a pint. As I stood waiting at the bar, a middle-aged black man was engaged in conversation with the young barman. "Iss my berfday today. It is. Iss my berfday and I'm fifty-one today. I know I don't look it, do I?" I looked at his sunken cheeks and his 'lived-in' face and thought that he looked every minute of his fifty-one years.     "You are doing very well for fifty-one", I lied.      "Yeah, bruv!" he said, "Black don't crack!" He laughed at this observation and cast his gaze around the room for others who might be laughing along to the truism. Then he asked what football team I followed. I told him that I didn't. He said that he had a big Chelsea tattoo on his thigh. And then he launched into an obliquely-related story.     "You see, the fing is, right? I rang up this lady from the escorts, 'cos I really like big bosoms, right? An' she's out HERE!...

   This afternoon I found myself in Baker Street and outside a cinema where 'Legend' was playing. I saw that the next session started in fifteen minutes, so I went downstairs (it was a basement cinema) and bought a ticket. The good looking young man behind the counter said that they had only sold four tickets. I expressed surprise and he said that people rarely came in to an afternoon session, but that the evenings are always packed. We then got talking about the brilliance of T om Hardy, who we agreed was a very special actor.     I checked my ticket and found my seat number in the dark. It was immediately behind a young Afro-Caribbean couple. They talked all the way through the advertisements, which for me is a cardinal sin for which I would hang, draw and quarter all perpetrators - when the lights go down, shut the hell up, even if it IS only the ads.     All through the promo for Michael Fassbender in 'Hamlet' the young man kept flicki...

    The other day I walked down Dean Street to The French for an afternoon drink. It was rather drizzly and I had worked up a thirst traipsing around trying to find a bank so that I could do some boring bits of business.     Outside The French was a crowd of boorish young men yahooing and showing off for each other, several were smoking those recently-fashionable glass things that resemble thick, ugly thermometers. I ventured inside, where it was quite gloomy and just my style. A few people clustered around the bar engaging in friendly banter. Two men from behind-the-scenes in television sat at the corner of the bar talking about various projects they were working on at the moment. I ordered a glass of beer from the sullen blonde girl with pigtails, in her early-twenties. She poured it out with bad grace and slammed it on the counter in front of me, slopping a few mouthfuls onto the bar. I withdrew my proffered £5 and asked her to top up the glass. S...

    I sat having a quiet pint yesterday, my mind preoccupied with some very pressing matters. All of a sudden an Australian voice called out to me,     "Oi, mate! Smile, why don'tcha? Why so serious?" (All through my life, I have been plagued by this inane question from people for whom quiet reflection is anathema).  I looked up to see a skinny, horse-faced young man with bloodshot eyes. A Balinese tattoo was emblazoned on his forearm. He was evidently far gone in drink. We clocked each other as gay straight away, although he was very far from my ideal of that blessed state.     "Snap out of it, mate. Cheer up, why don'tcha?" he went on. I groaned   inwardly as he gestured me over to his table. Foolishly, and against my better judgement I acceded to his beckoning and went over to sit opposite him.     "I'm Carl", he said, holding out a skinny, flaccid hand for me to shake. I told him my name. Believing me t...

    The other morning as I headed up to Vauxhall tube station I saw a group of commuters standing on the pavement, looking at a gang of policemen on the other side of the road. One of the policemen had an iron bar and was wrenching a sheet of corrugated iron off a window of an abandoned shop. I looked up to the top windows and saw that it was not abandoned after all. There were squatters living inside, one of whom could be seen frantically pacing back and forth in the makeshift bedroom. The crowd milled about, smugly enjoying the theatre. An old geezer now approached where I was standing, wheeling his bicycle on the pavement beside him. He looked disgustedly at the policemen. And then he yelled at the top of his voice, "Go and arrest some real criminals, you fucking cunts!" Several in the crowd clapped and one elderly woman cried, "Yes!"     The policeman with the iron bar pulled the metal off and it fell with a clatter, revealing some old couches...

    Just now I began hearing the screams of a child I thought was having a tantrum downstairs. Then I heard the father shouting at it. The child kept screaming. It sounded about six-years-old. All of a sudden the father bellowed, "Shut yer fuckin' mouf!" The child kept screaming. And then the mother's voice began to wail also - a high pitched, desperate noise. There followed an indistinguishable background rumble of the father's anger. Something was smashed. I went to the window. The battle was taking place in the flats across from mine. The child's voice had now risen to an even higher level of hysteria. The father was yelling, out of control. And then, an ominous sudden silence. A few minutes later the mother began screaming. Something else smashed. The child's wordless, screaming voice sounded like a young trapped animal. It was a horrible sound that I hope never to hear again in my life. The mother yelled, "Give me my keys! I want my...

    I left Kennington tube station and started to walk back home. I saw a group of policemen standing around a tall, wiry young man in his early twenties. The boy's mother stood to the side holding onto a push chair in which sat a small girl, the boy's daughter, I assumed. The boy's hands were cuffed behind his back with black plastic strips. He was crying and rocking from foot to foot.     His mother said, "Well, I'll just take 'er 'ome then, will I?" He looked tearfully at her and  replied,  "Yes, Mum, take 'er back, will yer?" He started to cry again. I walked over and sat at the adjacent bus stop, the better to listen in, and to try to find out why he had been arrested. One of the policeman, a squat fat man with a beard, tightly gripped the boy's upper arm. A yellow-haired policewoman with a lifetime of spite etched into her hard little face decided to make things worse for the boy by saying,    "You've been very silly ...

    Couldn't sleep very well last night. I was awake till around 4.30 in the morning. The foxes were roaming the estate for many hours, clambering into the rubbish skips for their dinner. Their eerie yelps and barks sounded like a woman being strangled, or stabbed, out there in the dark. And at 3.30 there was a domestic row between a husband and wife right in the middle of the concourse below my open window. He wanted her to come back inside their flat. She was having none of it,  "Oh, fuck off back inside, you ANIMAL!" she screamed at him, "Oh yeah, yer a big tough man ain'tcha? Jus' fuck off and leave me alone. Didya fink I wouldn't know you went frew me purse, scroungin' for what yer could get? Fuck right off! You belong in a fuckin' PSYCHO ward, yer cunt!" I knelt at the window to watch them. She was hidden by the leaves of the big plane tree just below. He was drunkenly walking a wobbly figure eight on the tarmac with his head lowered ag...

   A burly man with a blonde crewcut strode into the pub. Behind him trotted his son, a thin, sheepish looking boy around seven years of age. Then came the man's father, a wiry, hard-faced old geezer, also sporting a crewcut. They sat at a table.     "Oi!", called the younger man to the barmaid, "Wot can we 'ave for lunch?"     "I can bring you the menu if you like?"     "We want chips."     "I'm sorry, chips aren't on the menu."     "Never you mind abaht not bein' on the menu, you go an' tell 'im to make us some chips." The barmaid, clearly rather rattled, disappeared up the stairs to speak to the chef. The man sat down with his son and his father. The boy had a glass of lemonade and was drinking it through a straw. The old man sat staring with melancholy at his pint of bitter. Then he looked up at his son and said, "That fahkin' cunt wiv the van come rahnd to pick...

    I was reading in bed this evening and half-aware of the sound of the kids around the estate that drifted in on the gentle breeze through the open window. Gradually the noise became louder and more urgent as a fight began to develop down below. I got up and leaned out of the window to see what was happening. Eleven black boys in their mid-and-late teens were milling around down by the front steps of my block. Two more were rolling in the dirt beneath a tree, locked in a grapple and swinging punches at each other's heads. A bicycle lay on its side in the road surrounded by plastic shopping bags full of groceries. It was impossible to ascertain what the fight was about. Their shouting voices were more warnings than words. Occasionally, a phrase could be discerned: "My bruvver's bike"; "Leave him, Antony!" The two grapplers got up and brushed off the dirt. Then the group split into various twos and threes and made a show of holding each other back by graspin...