Nov 092013
 

 

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Uncle Mel and Aunty Mel and all the little Mels, all with their heads down, hiding out until the pink one with the army of shotguns has finished blasting the night air. Meanwhile there is plenty to discuss, to while away the long hours. After the ancient bard Max Mele has finished his party piece recitation of Gerusalemme Liberata and there is always the favourite game of darts; tossing the arrers at Descartes pinned to the packed earth wall. And then they can all settle down to watch that grumpy old meles meles also known as the dreaded Paxman chatting with Russell Brand and causing a stir, coming out into the open and claiming that politicians are a waste of space, and probably merely a front organisation for global corporate power.

I thought it was warmer than it turned out to be. Though it may be that I needed a nap rather than forcing myself out again. Why bother? Mind you the coffee is welcome, my hands clasped round the cup to try to get some warmth into the bones. What am I to do when the cup is empty and I will be alone once more? I can’t do it, can’t manage. Maybe it’s too late to rearrange the world. The blood slowly freezing, sluggish; it can hardly be bothered to make the effort. What do we have to do to say, hold on, just hold on there. Put the brakes on. We’ve gone the wrong way. The aliens have taken over. Madness is a real possibility. Poor old Tasso.

I caught the bus the other morning. It was near empty. But it remains an ideal way to travel, leaving the mind free to travel down its own secret pathways. Occasionally dipping into an article I was in the middle of, such as the interview with Iain Sinclair in last Saturday’s Guardian. His new book American Smoke which hadn’t attracted me at all until I read the interview. I had tried reading Radon’s Daughters and Downriver some years ago but found myself not quite in sympathy with them but have, meanwhile, kept in touch with his thoughts through his articles in the LRB. And I liked the sense of how he keeps to his adopted roots of Hackney – radicals – roots. Roots? Roots suggest under the surface, invisible but it must also be about looking, seeing what’s going on; a two-pronged process of connection with the ground and seeing round the corners, prying and spying into the hidden. Perhaps we all have our own GCHQ/NSA tempora programme running; tapping into the fibre-optic roots of society. I have the intention of reading Simone Weil on roots but that’s another book I haven’t got to yet. Sinclair walks in preparation for writing. And the artist David Blackburn adopts the same discipline, walking on the nearby moors before the commitment of his studio.

Here is the puzzle of remaining alive and well and not falling into the surplus to requirements basket. We don’t want to give them a reason for a cull – shooting us and setting the dogs on us.