Anything You Want to Do

Fruit sellers fruit sellers fruit only gets in the way I want to squash it. Banks left and right I don’t have a bank had one twenty years ago or was it ten? Eyes of all the cars looking at me, metal mouths want to eat me, walking past me all the faces staring even when they’re not looking at me. Once they’ve seen me they can’t forget I'm in their mind even if they can't smell me their brains remember I would smell like lice in my hair and rotten teeth and greasy grimy.         Cafe bars left and right I worked in a kitchen for a week then I saw a ten pound note and stuffed it in my pocket I was desperate I might have paid it back but they kicked me out. MacDonald’s and Burger King make a post office big mac royale with rubbish bins. Charity shops left and right faith, hope, and charity, that’s the way to live successfully, dum-dum-da-da-de-da-daaa they wouldn’t like me to go in. I’m the charity, I’m not the customer the customer is always right as I say, used to say, used to say.         Don’t look left and right don’t feel the bitter cold don’t ask yourself why you’re here in this colourful filthy street filthy lots of alleys to sleep in filthy that’s why. Old men go mad it’s the money money drives them mad they have none so that’s two reasons you only need one. Don’t look too closely or you’ll see what others see they hold their breath or they’ll catch insane insanity or at least a cold they mutter under their breath why can’t I talk to myself then I have no need for company and none offered.         Hello who’s that in the glass, there I am that’ll do nicely thank you. Don’t look so disgusted lady, I’m just looking at the window I’m not going to piss on it. Two of me now although one’s a bit hazy but don’t think I don’t know what I look like I can see my own reflection don’t think I don’t reflect. Hmmm, not looking too bad, eh? Need a shave, must pop into the barber’s later, eyes a bit puffy, rub them with mud, must remember to get these jeans mended. When I get home I’ll tell the butler to send a man round.         Why so many shops selling spectacles little John Lennons everywhere Imagine imagine a world without these eyesight stores has everyone gone blind or just shortsighted? Lots of video tapes for rent too big movie posters with blonde boobs and leatherjacket men, maybe everyman’s going blind from watching too many videos. I’ve seen films before cars explode and the good ones have lots of blood fake blood don’t worry not like the real stuff that won’t wash off. Dry cleaners left and right I bet they do a tidy job cleaning the nasty details from quiet lives. Blood red eyes I have and a sniffy nose and a twitch in my neck from sleeping on the pavement too often so think about that when you’re lying in bed at night and can’t get comfortable turning left and right, left and right dizzying colours of mud on the Camden High Street.                     * “St Pancras Hospital Older Persons Unit”. Why can’t we just be straight? Say things as they occur to us? Geriatric ward. Grey-hair-care. Or white. It doesn’t make it better or worse if you give it a different label – and it’s not bad. She’s comfortable. More than comfortable: made a few friends, food not too bad, nice nurses – one or two very nice nurses. Doctor-doctor with Lucy, aah Lucy, wonder where she is now? If I had to pick a place to spend my last few months …well, at least she’s got a view of the park. And the old church. Confession: forgive me father for I have sinned. Catholic not Protestant. I protest – my own mother stuck in National Health, and me too cheap to buy her out. Kids to feed and school and … she understands, she knows about bills, she knows what it is to go without. We could go without the trip to Wales, but the kids and we’ve got to get away at least for a weekend Sarah’s always saying so there you go and she always wanted her boy to get into the country more so what’s the point if it’s only worth two days in a posh hospital-hotel? Escape this godawful city – just as well she can’t see too much of it from her ward. South to King’s Cross, north to Camden, west to council flats; east, some green respite. Then council flats to the horizon. Don’t want to go back to King’s Cross: too much of beggars and druggies and madmen and hookers and druggie hookers and madmen druggies and hookers begging. Get some lunch on Camden High Street and catch the Tube back from there.     Mornington Crescent Station, Sainsbury’s, mountains of dentists and old bookshops and of course dodgy cafes some nice ones though. Was it ten years ago or more? Wouldn’t work near here again. ‘In Camden Town, you can do, anything you want – to – do …’: UB40, you lied. UB40s you were lied to. You can’t do what you want if you’re living on the street. Look at him, just standing there. Just standing there. Takes enough to get yourself out off the pavement in the first place I bet. Talking to himself. Mumbling, spluttering, swearing, staring in at shop windows. Jumping away from parked cars as if in fright. Fallen gentleman. Poor sod. Hey, there it is, wonder if the friendly Greek guy’s still running it? Battling with MacDonald’s and Burger King. Come on, support local business, clean inside, clear your mind, in through the door, safe.     Conscience eats me as I bite into my sandwich. Who’s to blame? Probably his own fault that he’s in that state – the drink that did it. Or was lady luck a bitch? Lost all his savings in a bad investment. No, you’ve got to have some control, we are not helpless victims, we are captains of our souls … Maybe a crook – fraud. Embezzled a million pounds. Sold ideas to the competition. Stole a computer from the office. Swiped a tenner from the boss’s desk. Court case? No, hush it up. Prison? I am the captain of my soul – that’s a poem. Wonder if he can read? Come on, he was born on the street and he’ll die on the street.                     * Courage, man, can’t be that bad. “Have a nice sandwich! Have a nice day now.” Wonder if he’s married? Didn’t see a ring. Bad news at work maybe. £10 down on last month’s profits – or is it 10p? Mind you, maybe not such a big shot. Not exactly a sharp dresser. Courage, woman … once more into the street … ugh, smell and dirt. Should have had another coffee. Back to the bookshop.         Oh, poor man! Didst thou give away thy kingdom, and art thou come to this? So many of them here, must pass at least five every time I walk to the station. Is he looking at me? Scares me, even with all these people here. What would he do and who could blame him? Must be so angry. Deserve it? Serve it. Desert? Dessert? Never. Maybe once or twice, when he was younger. Desert? An empty life, a void. A moral vacuum – no, don’t label him. Could have been the glum businessman from the café in those shoes.  Change places, handy-dandy, which the judge and which the thief? Which the beggar and which the chief? Come off it, what good does it do him for me to quote Shakespeare? You may see how this world goes. No comfort to him. Each day like the last? The next? That’s literary enough.         And so it goes … and you’re the only one who knows. Only me. Will never talk to the café-guy, will never talk to the homeless man, just exchange looks and maybe not even that. A thousand people a day I bet. William Hill give me space, no wonder this country’s going to the dogs if they go there every weekend. Those poor dogs, those poor dogs, slobbering and snapping and howling and tearing away and jaws wired shut like Hannibal Lecter. Waste £20 on the round of human life next time, give £20 to a poor old man. And those homeless people who sit with their dogs, oh it makes me want to cry I get so angry with them, probably just a ploy for sympathy but what did the dogs do to deserve cold and damp and dirt and fleas no doubt and ticks and worms. What did the owner do? Must find fault, or if there is none, blame a higher power. You will always have the poor with you. Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit … no, no. But Christ was born into poverty. A thousand people at least. And none the wiser, none, knowing not never none when we cook supper in the evening who’s talking about us as an anonymous other to a stranger who is their close one other. None of us. What would we say if  we did?           I cross over the road and leave a space on the busy pavement, which is then filled by a running woman – running after a thief? No. Running to catch a bus? No. Yes, late for work, running woman late for work who needs the gap I left behind and takes it when she would not have had I stayed. Lands her foot at an angle and breaks a heel. Falls down in the path of a child in a pram who is scarred for life – no, leave off, another time maybe. Has to take the heel in to be fixed. Shoe-man tailor (what do you call them? Yes, cobbler) has to phone the shop around the corner to order more glue. The line’s busy so when the sister of the wife of the man who owns the shop phones to say she’s going into labour, she can’t get through. Tries him on the mobile phone instead, which rings to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas. A customer in the shop hears the song and is walking steadily further and further down memory lane as the shop-owner excitedly runs out the door. The customer, named – Sean? Jessica? Needs to be a man – call him Sean, thinking of The Yellow Rose of Texas and the record he had listened to as a child and his mother who is dead and his father who is not. Decides to visit his father who lives in Bristol. Goes home, packs a bag, starts walking to the train station. May get run over by a bus or may be reconciled to his father. All because I crossed the road. Causal links in the great Chain of Events – and the Primary Cause? Prima mobile, first mover and shaker in the Chain of Being, which is still in place and there are still serfs and peasants and slaves and here they are, here is one of many on Camden High Street and there are many more elsewhere and everywhere. Prima mobile, break the chain.

 

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