A Partisan Diary

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Move

I am still moving in. There are appliances I am not used to even if the electricity was working. The bed is up the roof no longer leaks daily but only in storms. The refurbishment will take until the end of time.

It is my last stand.

I have been doing some wandering around as paint dries or pipes are relayed due to explosion caused by a combination of methane from the 'trap', and new pipe pressures in my redone flat, wandering in my new neighborhood. This on foot. Or I am taking things to new places to be fixed in the car. Micro waves. Clocks. A vacuum. A cracked mirror. It is a constant movement of fixing.

This area of the city, Blackheath and environs is a map of late 20th century history laying itself over the map of mediaeval London in peeling skins of a Palimpsest over, I'd say, invisibilities of the 14th to 16th centuries still haunting upwards from the chalk caves underneath.

Down Shooters Hill from my place, from the old communal cattle trough in front of The Conduit House built over the well of the old naval hospital, and over tombs of scurvy and grapeshot victims, some still wondering perhaps, in underground ruin, covered by the south circular ring road, where they are.

Down there past all that from the plateau of the Heath, is Deptford.

Deptford was settled, in the usual London way, recently by the terror enlivened wanderers and refugees from war, in this case the from the Biafra war, so mostly Ibos or middle belt tribes and so Christians. These were followed by those from that chain of West African wars up until the just recent influx from Sierra Leone. Mixed in and folded over the Africans are Vietnamese from the Asian wars and some Thais extending now to a very small sprinkling of Burmese and Laotians. So in Deptford there are groceries of good variety and restaurants cheap and authentic.

Sidling upwards around the Heath on an old route originally to a small and nasty former Royal palace of profound ugly history of torture and mayhem mainly to peasants, reworked by a clothing manufacturing family into an art deco wonder, is Lewisham.

The Palace is near where murderous racism begins in Eltham. The old white working class is still there bordered by the rows of concrete cliffs of the massifs of those estates administered by Somali gangs.

Lewisham, in the middle of Deptford and Eltham, is where the disappeared lower middle class of the world war period of rationing and state reverence, while thieving like mad in the cornucopia of the black market, met the immigrants from the Caribbean in the sixties.

This produced a flowering of culture tending towards funky surreal. This had the old Odeon to perform in.

The Rolling Stones, from neighbouring suburbs, did 'Sympathy for the Devil' after an exploration of blues. Spike Milligan conceived of the Goon Show and modern comedy in racist Aspergers frenzy. The bowling league is known as 'The Hoodoo'. It is by invitation only. This is the generating gestalt of modern rock and comedy.

I mention Lewisham because I spent a day there, a day not wandering, in the Library reading the new biography of Mao, which I recommend for those who want to understand aspects of narcisstic personality disorder in persons with limited I.q., but Aspergers. It treats 20th century history well, as it should be, as a mad narrative.

I was in the library while my car, yes I have one, oh yes I do, sorry, as it is a social necessity and an economically prudent resistance to the current ecological scams going on all around, scams connected to the ruling class being left In charge of fixing global warming, not those of us being warmed and drowned, which as you know from the Apocalyptical perspective I have, I consider a not unpleasant development in terms of setting the stage for dissolution of the present order. These ecological scams which will not fix anything but rather will increase exploitation and mayhem. Remember I am now in memory in the Lewisham library reading Mao as the car is tuned.

First an excuse. Because of global warming marketing I got my car cheap. No one would dare buy a special limited edition Schumacher Fiat Abarth Stilo in Ferrari red with re-engineered suspension and an oversized Engine. It was produced as car art, it is beautiful, but produced just at the time philistinism had moved into bed with the token ecology morality tat to slaver and drool about with electric buggies filled with celebrity as a generator of new profits, government guaranteed.

The Lewisham Library has the usual narrow dark Victorian dust scented aisles. It has a good collection of music biographies and the complete works of Spike Milligan. The rummies and smack heads are frightened to go in there as it is intensively used by intense knife armed industrial and cooking school hoodies for their computer work.

I was sat on an old cloth couch among the aisles when a caravan of mums went by pushing elaborate six-wheeled and tented prams, the sort you think right away overcompensates for a complete lack of gnos on motherhood. But probably doesn't, they may be a kind of mobile temple.

All at once the caravan stopped, like the congestion on the A2 by my place or after an accident on the road to Eltham caused by a drunk racist.

From their accents it was clear that these were mainly new EU Poles, Latvians or South African and Congolese. But there were others. I chatted to a mum from Lebanon stopped in front of my couch. She explained, in a way, that the mums were related somehow to a Lewisham social welfare program for immigrant single mothers to help with literacy and social access. They were waiting for the doors to the children's section of the library to open, because they were required to take their kids to a pre-school book appreciation class.

The doors did open and the moms filtered into a florescent snapping and hissing lighting up room hung with rotating coat hangers, hung in turn with strings of cardboard Thomas the Tank engines, Alices in Wonderlands, a variety of mad hatted hares, Rupert the Bears and other flying myths and legends.

The kids were decanted and unbuckled from their plastic and steel wagons, I believed now that these were state supplied as they had number plates. The kids stared at the mobiles blinking.

They were sat next to mom's on hard backed institutional chairs, legs dangling, facing a superb, bun haired, stereotypical example of Norfolk librarian resplendent in a blue suit of cartoon librarian school bony intellectualism, nattering "be seated, be seated", with a BBC fantasia accent, an accent which does not occur anywhere naturally on earth. It is a voice generated by the dreams of British essence perhaps best in dreams of those leaning back and closing eyes in Black Holes while being raped by fuzzy wuzzies.

"We are all going to have such fun," she said.

I was now seated at a small table just outside the Children's library door which I shared with a guy reading a copy of the Singapore Straights Times. He was chewing pumpkin seeds.

The woman sat in front of the semi circle of chairs and buggies and opened a large glossy book. It had big, oh so big, print on one side and a picture of a very, very, yellow glossy duck in a red jacket on the other. The duck was smiling. The print said 'Quack'.

"What do ducks say?" she said in a very loud voice.

The kids were all in their twos or threes of two and three year olds. As the kids of single welfare moms sent to an obligatory state function, they were elaborately dressed. Some had multi-plaited hair with florescent beads, some had leather caps, all had new trainers, some with the lights on the toes.

One little trucker had a blazer and bow tie. Very few had removed outer clothing but those who had done so revealed rainbow hued shirts and blouses, often under suspenders, and hung with fairly bright jewellery. The kids were universally wide eyed and almost to a poor thing, sniffling. Many had ears or arms grasped by slitted eyed moms. The sound of prolonged guttural sssuh'es and whispered threats throbbed out of the children's room.

"Quack, quack" said the thin English lady, quite loud over the ssushing.

She turned on a machine beside her. It was a ghetto blaster armed with an audio book. A deep voice of government doom said "what do ducks say?"

The moms cried out as one "QUACK." They knew what to do.

That was enough for the kids. I think a few may have seen a book before but not one like that one. They had seen English ladies before at the immigration desks, in doctor's offices and as police. Very few would have encountered ducks, but if they had, cooked or uncooked or hanging on a hook in Deptford, those ducks were not electric yellow, jacketed and grimacing with lust. The man's voice was the voice of an alien God.

The flight was led by a little guy in a pink snowsuit crying out in a Bantu language and running, as he may have been taught to do, for the nearest exit, hole or clearing.

The others, screaming, easily with few exceptions twisted or squirmed from mom's arms, as any kid can do, like leaping cats at a sudden snake, whipped themselves, legs pumping, around buggies and chairs, and whizzed past me into the dark aisles of the main library.

As they ran they formed into small groups, knots of threes or fours, holding hands or pulling one another, darting around corners, under tables, I think some of the groups were multi-national. Every group had a weeper and a stumbler.

The fruity voiced reading experience enabler cried out "Children, children. Please settle down!" Even as idiom this cry of hers made no sense to me. We were all trying to settle down.

The audio book voice of bad news was saying "Farmer Brown loves all his animals."

Oh sure.

The moms looked at one another in fierce accusation, "what has your child done to my child" "my child has nothing to do with this", rising slowly and with unruffled grace and dignity from their chairs, gathering loose pieces of clothing and speaking out, in small projected voices, what were probably the baby nick names of children, Tooo Too, Rizzy, Kabble.

One name I recognised as a Hausa weekday name, probably a birth date and most likely used because it would be the tempting of evil envy to use the formal name of a child so young and lovely in these circumstances.

A great laughing and weeping chase began up and down the aisles, around the check out desks, into the disabled toilets, across the foyer to the welfare offices, out onto the streets. Revolution.

While this was going on I realised no-one could think in this atmosphere. I put 'Mao' back on the shelf and went out to collect my car; I had to get grout and other fillers for the bathroom tiles because of the explosion.

If you have Google earth you can see my flat as it is in the roof. It is near Greenwich Park, the Queen's House and the Meridian. The Deer Park. Far above Deptford and Lewisham. Far away from the nasty palace. That is 00,00,00.

The corner, just by the little park. On the edge of a big bland space which is Black Heath. It looks like a giant eye as the centre of the heath has collapsed into the Caves (and people have built in there). Not bland on the ground though. Hidden depths.

The roof I'm in has a skylight. Google can see it. But not for me. I ain't under that. I'm in the bit that juts towards the river. If you are there on Google Earth you can see what I see from the Windows. Saint Paul's, the London Eye, the Tower, the Croydon Needle. Fifty church spires.

If you google 'Blue orange publishing' on Google Earth you will see the roof of my old flat, as Google hasn't changed my address and never will. That is so good for the surveillance society. It is nearby this my actual location and so causes maximum confusion. Better yet I have no officially understandable address, the house has No number. Ha, ha. You have to know where it is or are in the sky.

It has a postal code. There can be mail. That is ok for sat-nav too, and therefore for bombing, for eyes in sky it has visibility, for the common apocalypse it's here.

But for on the ground individual state agent non specificity it is not.

It happens every day. The council people, the electricity people, the police.

Yes, I have a flat number, under the roof. On no floor. But no actual street address for bothersome day to day police raids looking for illegal immigrants and imperfect citizens.

They (bad guys) will instead hit the guy with the street address number but not me in the upstairs flat way above whose number you can read only if you are a friend coming to see me.

This means that it is hard to place me for the direct face to face state. It makes so much trouble. The electoral roll guys just wander back and forth on the vale, scrunching their eyes, looking for a street number. Looking out over the blasted and empty heath. But no. Ha ha. No where.

So good, is all that, for generating multiple identities and false Leads.

I dissolve into story.

I am the guy under the roof, at the top of the street in 'the big house.'

"Jesus Christ," (says a bad guy) "what does that mean, the big house, I mean where is that? Deptford? Lewisham? I can see it on Google but I can't find it. I get it on the sat-nav but its not there. There’s just a blank heath."

"It's supposed to be by the little .. by the park, Point View."

(This Park has the best view in London. But it is virtually inaccessible surrounded by a jungle of Holly. It is approached by slanty stone steps through tall grass. You can see St. Paul's, Wembley, The London Eye, and Parliament, everything from it but only people in Conduit house know it is there. Everyone else goes to the Meridian Park with its wonderful, but limited view.)

"That Park, I can't find that either. I just keep ending up at the
Meridian. 00,00,00. That's not where it's supposed to be."

"Well raid that then. Or get the guy in the house numbered that way that we saw from before."

"Sat-nav says he's not him, he's at the bottom of the hill, and his wife says it isn't him."

"Whatever, get someone."

Richard Rathwell is elsewhere and he is well.

Except the arm went up again and I had to go to emergency again on moving day.

On the arm going up again. I have, due to a long story I have told
Elsewhere, a complete lack of lymph nodes. Several times because of
The way I hold a pen, which results in thumb stabbing when
Correcting hard copy with resoluteness, I have almost, so far just

The second time was last week. The lack of lymph nodes means that any
Foreign toxin under my skin, especially in my writing arm
Immediately becomes precipitous unfolding cellulite death, a
Creeping Ebola type of poison heading for internal organs,
Particularly my heart, and also my brain. The tiny prick must be
Followed by an emergency rush to the hospital for
Intravenous antibiotics and other horrors or that's it Alice.

What they do there at the hospital is draw black lines on my upper
Arm and elsewhere ,final boundaries which, if the creeping redness
Of the toxin under my skin and in my blood now as death poison
Crosses, means immediate and drastic surgery or a dirge. More bits
Of me, or the arm itself have to go, or worse yet, heart and brain
May be gone already. Sorry sir.

It s funny in a way. Almost metaphoric.

The red tide goes creep, creep. The anti-toxins and anti-biotics go
Drip, drip. I hallucinate the great poets and, from time to time,
Someone checks up on me. Sometimes a nurse, sometimes Virgil.
They don't take a blind bit of notice of
The dramatic struggle of good versus evil under my skin, in my
Organs, or of the dead greats reciting their best around my
Ears, 'make it new, make it new', 'equal that is to the real
Itself,' we are but flies to the gods they kill us for their
Sport.., nope! They look at the black line. They look at the red
Tide and then they say 'OK' or 'tch tch' and then go away.
Leaving me to myself and own devices.

This all happened last week on moving day and was another reason
Other than the kitchen explosion of over pressured pipes and related
Methane gas that I was going for walks after hospital and moving
(similar in stress) and getting things fixed.
Walks cleared my head. I walked with Orpheus, little gabbling stinker,
Smelling of the underworld and grabbing my throbbing arm
To show me the sunset behind a coven of crows on a lone tree saying
'the end of light, the end of day, the end of music, is coming'.

And I thought of you and others,
(and truth be said in a maudlin, self
pitying and judgemental way, of me). I thought then that Hamlet was
Right that there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt
Of in literature (or something like that) or as me said that there
Is more to a single person than in all of the cantos.

And so on.