From The Recesses Of The Mind This Month

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

London’s on edge. There’s tension in the air. It’s as if a fight’s going to break out at any minute. It can be seen on the grim faces in the streets and heard in the aggressive tone of the conversations in pubs. You see, the economic downturn has exasperated the ‘us and them’ situation, us being the employees, and them, the big bosses. And the rumour among us workers is that our masters are taking advantage of this recession, making redundancies (the euphemism for being fired) under the guise of essential cost cutting, so they can get rid of the people they don’t like. The rebels, or clock-watchers as ‘they’ call them, you know, the ones who stand up for themselves and have a life.

The powers that be have also introduced the pay freeze, which is forecast to last for at least the next 6 months. And this, along with the firings, has meant that us workers have had to take on more work for the same money, without the hope of a bonus or pay rise. We can’t move jobs, as the big bosses have worked together to come up with a cunning plan in the form of the no hiring mandate, which orders that there can’t be any hirings after a firing for, yes you’ve guessed it, at least the next 6 months. So we’re trapped into doing more work for the same wage, and made to think that we’re just lucky to still have a job.

And through it all we’ve kept our heads down without saying a word like the good little workers we’re supposed to be, for fear of being put in the firing line ourselves and having a black mark against our names, turning us into ‘untouchables’ or outcasts, meaning it’d be hard to get another decent job. But now we’ve had enough, and last Monday signalled the beginning of the uprising. Yes, we’ve begun to play them at their own game. If they’ve been taking advantage of the worst recession in 30 years, then we were going to use the worst snowfall in London for 20 years as an excuse to have a day off work to spend with family and friends.

And what a great day it was. We all reverted back to being kids, naughtily skiving off school, while every street and park became a playground as communities made snowmen and threw snowballs at each other. One of the best things about it was that us workers did it together. There was solidarity. It was a day where we all stood up against ‘them’. Many of us stayed at home to have fun in the snow, even those who could have made it in, as their commute wasn’t really disrupted. And the strength in numbers weakened the big bosses’ power, as they couldn’t penalise scores of the workforce – apparently a fifth of Britain’s workers didn’t make it into the office.

Yes it’s the worst recession for 30 years and the worst snowfall in 20, but we’ve also just had the best Monday in living memory. So they can keep their Black Monday, because we’ll always have our white one.

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Everyone looks past her as she struggles to get on the packed bus with her baby, buggy and bags full of shopping. We sit there, motionless. Something holds us back from helping her. A strange urban force that pins us down in our places, making us incapable of interacting with our neighbours.

It takes her at least 3 minutes too long to get on. The mob doesn’t appreciate the wait, so it starts firing the killer looks and sharp tuts. She doesn’t even flinch, and bulldozes past the glares with her thousand-yard stare, and parks the buggy in the pram space next to the swarm of fly-girls waiting to squat her. It’s like she can’t hear their sniggers and snide comments. Her face a gnarled prison wall, that’s being constantly chipped away at.

She sits and looks out the window at the continuous line of cement, pebbledash, fences, barbed wire, alarms, anti-climb paint, arguments, bums and drug deals. The kid now with a face like mashed banana and peach, screams blue murder. For the murder of her mother. You can see the evidence in Mum’s dead eyes, her glazed glass eyes that have been swallowed and then spat out. Piss holes in the dirt.

Even when her kid cries she doesn’t stir. She doesn’t even blink, just sits and stares out the window. Maybe that’s the best way to look after children. Ignore them. That way you can’t be blamed for how they turn out. Eventually she plugs the hole with a plastic nipple and the wailing stops immediately. From the dark shadows under her blood shot eyes, you can tell she lives for the bottle. It’s a great tranquilizer. Hers just contains warm milk.

Although from the way the kid’s dressed you know she’s loved. Matching pink shoes, coat and hair bands, then there are her bright eyes with a spark that sets off smiles all round the bus. Her soft, glowing, comfortable skin. All the care has been sucked out of the mother and into her, and I think about who’s there to take care of Mum. Some woman looks at the kid and starts to pull stupid faces. The kid giggles. It carries on for a while, but the mother barely acknowledges this tender interaction. For a good few minutes she has a respite from her persistent job and can relax and let people baby-sit for a change.

Harder than any knife-carrying gang member, the mother carries on relentlessly day after day with the odds stacked against her. I see her doing this journey everyday. Not for herself, but for her kid. It’s as if she’s not actually living in the present at all, but in the future. Maybe that’s why she can’t hear those snide comments. And I wonder what she actually sees out that bus window.

I watch her take great effort to get off at her stop, manoeuvring with difficulty past all the people standing in her way. But she makes it. I hope I see her again tomorrow. Somehow her presence is comforting.

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Last week an unlikely relationship was discovered. You may think I’m talking about the one reported in the papers between the killer whale and the albatross, where the bird flies alongside the killer whale snatching scraps from its kills. But although similar in its unusualness, the one I’m referring to involves the big killer boxer and the little white bird. And, yeah you guessed it, I’m the little white bird.

The first sightings of this improbable relationship happened on Friday at the council gym in Brixton, or as it’s otherwise known, the sea of sweat. As usual, I was strutting around like a headless gull, going from one piece of equipment to the other. I had just finished flapping over having to adjust the seat on the seated leg press because one of the huge bull sperm whales had just been on it, when the killer boxer hunted me down. Now in the gym’s food chain, the little white bird is low, low down, basically in the anaerobic detritus, so I knew immediately that I had no chance as he propelled his heavy, stocky body over towards me, cutting through the sweat and testosterone with ease.

He got down to business straight away, by stunning me with his superior, tertiary consumer gym knowledge. “You know, you’re not getting the most out of that machine,” he said, loudly, with a hint of derision in his voice. Now in the sea of sweat what this really means is “You know, doing it that way means global warming is going to flood the earth before you get to shift that behind.” All the sperm whales turned around at once to watch this interesting spectacle. Even a couple of hammerheads put down their weights for a second and looked over. And the old turtle, upside down on the mat kicking his legs in the air, popped his head out and sat staring with his mouth open.

Now little white birds aren’t like puffins. We don’t preen ourselves before we go to the gym, put make-up on or wear the skimpiest outfits. We’re more like the penguins, who spend their time waddling along on a low setting on the treadmill, keeping their heads down, not wanting to be noticed. Us little white birds know our technique isn’t up to scratch and that the weights we struggle with, everyone else can move just by breathing on them. But we don’t appreciate this being pointed out to the whole gym. Yet at the same time, I did want to get the most out of the machine, otherwise I might as well be getting the most out of my sofa at home. So he’d successfully caught me.

And after killing me on that machine, he went on to kill me in lots of different ways. He was waiting on a client and had 20 minutes to spare, so he told me he could show me a few kickboxing and self-defence moves. I didn’t really have a choice as he summoned me over to the mats pointing out that it’s a dangerous world out there, and little white birds can’t be too prepared.

He passed me a pair of bulky great boxing gloves and stood directly in front of me. As I put them on, I caught a glimpse of us in the mirror. We looked like one of those diagrams at the Natural History Museum where the small human figure is about 100th of the size of the blue whale or Tyrannosaurus Rex. I reckoned I could fit into him at least 6 times. Underneath our diagram there’d be descriptors for both of us. His would read:

Height: 6.5 feet
Weight: 6 tonnes
Diet: On average 227 kg of food each day, including whole fish, sea lions, walruses and raw eggs

While mine would be:

Height: 5.2 feet
Weight: Lightweight
Diet: Tuna, chickpeas and rabbit food

He then looked me straight in the eye and asked me to punch him on the back, on the front, just not, you know, down there. He had good reason to be concerned about ‘down there’, seeing as because of the height difference, 'that' was almost directly in front of me. Now, I’ve never hit anyone in my life, let alone a huge great killer whale of a man. I stood there, finding it a bit of a struggle to just hold the heavy gloves up, when he bellowed the words “Come on, hit me!” from deep within, which came out with such force they created a tsunami of spit and sweat that swept across the room. The old turtle sat up startled, his mouth slowly opening and closing. I couldn’t work out whether he was out of breath or drowning. I hit the killer boxer as hard as I felt comfortable with, I mean I didn’t want to hurt the guy. Yet I soon realised that actually, that would’ve been physically impossible. Although my hand was hurting.

“Come on, harder!” he boomed again, and I swear a jet of steam shot out from the top of his head. This time I punched him with all my might, but I expect a gentle fart would’ve had more power behind it. “Look, think of someone you hate and pretend I’m them,” he said with a knowing twinkle in his eye. A series of people jumped into my mind; my ex boss, Boris Johnson, Paris Hilton, but I realised in that moment that I didn’t hate anyone enough, not really.

“Come on, hit me!” he shouted, goading me. To make him shut the hell up I punched him as hard as I could again and again. “Yes, good. That’s it!” he exclaimed, as if I was giving him a soothing massage.

It was my turn to drown and I stopped for a second to gasp for air. “Come on! You’re not even sweating!” he yelled. In that moment, I realised I actually did hate someone enough. Him. This time I punched him again and again and again and again, harder and harder and faster and faster. It must have been a funny sight to all the onlookers, watching a little white bird trying to knock if not seven bells out of a huge killer boxer, then at least the smile off his face.

Then when he’d got bored of killing me that way, he made me stand still while he pulled my leg up almost 180 degrees. He’d obviously mistaken me for a rubber chicken. “Aaargh!” I screamed, to which he replied that I had to get used to that pain as it was the biggest barrier to overcome. I was relieved when it was time to move on to the squats and kickboxing moves. By this time his client, a huge great beluga, had turned up and joined in with us. Despite his size, he was surprisingly fast. Every move I made, he’d made at least 5 minutes before. The killer boxer shouted “Come on!” all the way through and I did until I couldn’t take it anymore and thought I was going to create an ocean of puke in the sea of sweat.

While I lay gasping for air on the bed of mats, all washed up, not unlike a beached whale, his killer instincts quickly moved him onto the sale. I sat there, barely being able to breathe let alone talk as he went on about how he’d like to train me up and what programme he’d put me on. He told me he didn’t charge much as he does it to help people in the community rather than to make loads of money. He apparently teaches underprivileged kids mostly. And why? Well, it turns out that he was in prison for many years and since he’s been out, he’s turned his life around and is helping other people do the same. Like the killer whale itself, he’s been misunderstood and maligned in his past, but really he only attacks in self-defence and underneath all that tough, rubbery skin, he’s pretty soft and intelligent.

So stranger than the killer whale and the albatross’s or the rhino and the oxpecker’s, there began the symbiotic relationship between the big killer boxer and the little white bird. I punch his back, so no one’ll punch mine. He protects me from all the dangerous sharks out there and I help him to feel better about himself and his past (and give him £20 an hour). Although judging from what a challenge it’s going to be, I only hope I don’t turn out to be an albatross around his neck.