Drunk on the Old Kent Road with Captain Mainwaring

I got lost last night on the way home. I was supposed to get the 171 from Waterloo but somehow ended up walking through those surreal yellow lit arches in Bermondsey. Eventually I found the Old Kent Road, which I floated along in a pissed up daze of confusion and spin. Wandering through places that I’d never even look at in the daylight, that somehow lager and darkness have tamed.

Probably not the best time to start considering the state of the world, but you know how it is? Things just pop into the head and they just wont go away until you discuss them with yourself out loud. Which is actually a good way of staying safe on the streets at night. Nobody in his right mind is going to mess with someone walking at full speed and arguing with himself . Especially if they occasionally stop to make a point with some loud expletives.

The ideas flash like a strobe light.

FLASH! The concentrations of power and how we’ve ended up in this state. How a race of people, capable of things like the Space Shuttle and Captain Mainwaring, can simply give up control and allow others to think for them.

FLASH! Lager, and the sweet taste of Greek food.

FLASH! People like Tony Blair, Lord Levy, Dick Cheney and all those other insanely powerful men of spite and grandeur. Men deluded by the high minded values of religion, celebrity and control. Who are these people?

FLASH! Mandy, laughing.

FLASH! How an individual can pursue a personal cause with such conviction without intervention, either from other human beings or something a little more rational, like a sense of humour for instance.

FLASH! Again, Captain Mainwaring, one of the people I admire most in the world.

FLASH! Donald Rumsfeld, and that bloke who owns North Korea. The whole scenario of paranoid men verging on mental illness but yet still responsible for so much.

FLASH! Borat, dancing.

FLASH! Young people behaving the way they do, but yet all they have to look up to are societies twisted by pious self righteousness and greed.

FLASH! White Riot, by the Clash.

FALSH! Is it any wonder, is it any wonder at all, that people turn their backs on it all and look to drink or drugs or insanity for some kind of salvation.

FLASH! Next time, I’m getting a taxi.

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