Street Sadness

     I found myself at the French House in Dean Street, Soho, where I sat at the bar and had a number of glasses of the house lager. I eavesdropped on the conversations.      A young man in his late twenties asked his friend, a woman about thirty, how she was.      "Oh, alright, I suppose," she replied, "except for having to shove suppositories up my father's arse for the last ten days."       Two old gents were seated on the stools under the window. They were red-faced, very merry, and very loud.             "And, of course, when I was sixteen," one said, "I was taken under the wing of the old Marquis, and I went out to live on his estate. He taught me a great deal about society, and food, and wine, and what to wear to table, and that sort of thing. All kinds of things, really. It was the perfect education for a young chap, in all sorts of ways ... And, of course...

     Two women in their early-thirties sit at the next table, sharing their mindless psychobabble stories.      "It took me a long time to love myself," one says, "but now I do love myself and I fully acknowledge that love. And because I now love myself other people are now able to love me because it's only when we love ourselves that the love of others can enter our boundaries."      The other woman nods enthusiatically and reaches across the tabl e to grasp her friend's hands with a wide, affirming smile. The friend continues.      "I wish I knew the importance of self-love years ago, because I'd probably be in a successful relationship by now. But for the rest of my life I know that I am the most important person in my life. I try not to deny myself anything that I want. If I feel like buying something, I buy it. When I meet a new guy for the first time I think to myself, what can I get out of this person which will n...

     I caught a bus to an area with which I was unfamiliar. I wandered around the streets looking for photo opportunities. It was a world of cracked concrete, and broken glass, and mucous-larded pavements, and no prospects. The lead-grey sky draped itself heavily over the tracts of council houses and flats. No birds were to be seen in the barren trees: they'd clearly long ago given the area up as a bad joke.      I walked across a small concrete square which was glossy from a recently passing shower. It was ringed with tiny, beaten up shops, which were all locked for the weekend, some with metal screens and chains. A dozen or so local women, wearing hijabs, walked across the square, individually or in pairs, their dark eyes sweeping before them, as inscrutable and unknowable as their husbands could wish them to be. I looked past them down one of the roads and saw four mid-teenage boys; one of them had a smaller boy in a headlock and the rest were spitting ...