Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Two Things. The first is the London Marathon. I’d only ever watched this on TV before and always considered it quite tedious, all those wacky costumes and over enthusiastic charity types seemed a little bit too much. We went to see some friends who live in Canary Wharf on Sunday so got caught up in the crowds on the way there, and bloody brilliant it was too. Despite my ill informed judgment (who would have thought it?) about the event it turned out to be not only really good fun, but also quite inspiring. Moreover, in the current climate of hysteria surrounding our identity here we have an event that shows that we can be a great nation without necessarily involving the tabloid press.
The costumes, the pain, the smiles and the decency all underpinned a general feeling of pride both in the spectators and the runners. As the Samba bands played in the sunshine, and pubs spilled out onto the cracked pavements on the Isle of Dogs, we suddenly had a glimpse of how life can be lived without politics, greed and Richard Littlejohn.
The second thing is a gig I went to at the Electric Ballroom last week. And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead has been one of my favourite bands (aren’t they all?) for years, and last Thursday didn’t disappoint. I won’t bother using F7 to come up with a load of adjectives other than to say that they’re the real deal, and as I’ve said time and again, all the best bands are American.
Things are looking up!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alcoleman/sets/72157617401351574/
http://www.trailofdead.com/
Thursday, 23 April 2009
I try to cross the road in an attempt to buy some foreign food for lunch but can’t use the pelican crossing because it’s blocked, by a nausea inducing mini coach. The driver stares gormlessly ahead as I watch the little green man appear through his windows, completely unaware that hundreds of people now have to squeeze through a twelve inch gap in front of his stinking vehicle. I take my turn in squeezing past, like everybody else, and in doing so look up at his flabby face.
“Fucking twat”
As the silent words leave my mouth I get a closer inspection at his hunched gait. His ageing lips hang loosely above an obscene roll of fat that extends round the base of his head. He points at the road with a podgy finger and the loose lips bounce up and down. It’s at this point that I notice the flag of Saint George sitting on his dashboard, A4 in size and laminated so that he can take it from mini coach to mini coach at his pleasure.
So this is where it’s come to has it? The millennia of science, art, engineering, bravery and discovery. This is where everything that successive generations have strived for, through austerity, hardship and war, has finally ground to a halt. The sneering middle classes sat around waving plastic flags with bitterness in a desperate attempt to ignore the reality of a miserable life of condescension and sheer fucking boredom. Their working class counterparts, waddling around KFC in Chelsea shirts, staring at the grease with resentment and anger. All of them, crushed with the disappointment of identity and all of its unwanted side effects. What a waste, what a waste of everything we could have been.
The more we wave our plastic flags, given away free with every Happy Meal, the more we distance ourselves from Brunel, Kohima, football and everything we’ve ever achieved.
