Depression Era Brighton 2: The Day

How are you even supposed to think? I have a fat arse that's growing and I've seen nothing but the insides of these walls for far too long. Now that the season has grown colder I have no will to leave for a walk, but I'm utterly sick of the view from here. I could have work if only they'd give it to me and then at least I'd know what my time is supposed to be - without that knowledge, the boundaries of time disappear and it all just turns into a mess of two different kinds of light, three different kinds of cheese, two chairs, one sofa and a table. At times I tell myself I can play the guitar instead of languishing and I do, often - same for the violin - but without work I seem to lose the perspective on their sounds and their forms. Time is like light - the more you have, the more it burns into you until you're exhausted without ever moving. The sounds of my guitar flatten and die the more I hear them, the violin loses its lilt and just seems crass. And I know that my wife is working so hard at two jobs and is ill already and that crushes me even further. I want her to be able to think of her husband as someone who is capable and active and commanding, but as it is I am none out of three and less besides. Every application I send comes back with a misspelt name or a swing-and-a-miss gender guess attached to the inevitable 'unfortunately we cannot countenance giving you a job on the basis of a hasty scanning of your covering letter and CV (all right, we read your name and assumed you were Polish)' and I don't know what else to say in them. When I get work I'm the best there is, but I'm going to work one day this week - which is a day more than last - and I'm not guaranteed anything next week. The bin men are striking in protest of their rates of pay. I've worked as a bin man - you run the round, work 5-6 hours, get paid for eight hours and a great workout. There are other perks - like greasy spoon cafes giving you free meals if you take their trash for no charge (they'd have to pay a rate for industrial waste or some such - it works out well for both sides). And whilst you stink and the work is heavy going, you make plenty more than minimum wage for unskilled labour. But the bin men are striking, in the worst economy since WWII they're laying down their gloves (they have no tools to down), leaving trash piled high on the streets, trash piled high in the kitchens, overflowing bins and rotting veg strewn across the pavements of Depression Era Brighton because the they want more pay and I can't even think for lack of work. In 'The Road to Wigan Pier' George Orwell laments how there are many unemployed men who write exceptionally well, but who rarely write at all. Though he understands their mindset, he still notes that there is a vast expanse of time in which to craft and research any number of papers. I often think the same way and, when feeling industrious, throw myself into a particularly gruelling application form or covering letter or session of music practice. But as for writing in its purest form, I find that I will write what I live and I do not wish to live this so I do not wish to write this. I also distract myself with arguments on youtube - here are some highlights: there are no highlights of arguments on youtube. Tomorrow will be better

Depression Era Brighton 1: The Dream

I fell out of bed with a thump. It was three thirteen and the floor was rough and cold. I tried to lift my hands to catch myself before I hit it, but they caught on a pair of jeans, meaning I landed heavily on the backs of my hands and forearms. My dream had begun in some crumbling cottage in a made-up county; all my friends lived there together and we all had damp, unkempt rooms. Flashes from the dream badgered me as I rolled over on the bedroom floor at three thirteen am with my eyes burning and my head throbbing. I saw a woman with black hair and a ledge I had to cross over and over. This is a format of a particular kind of dream I often have - where I seem to have no choice but to risk traversing a precarious mountain ledge or high wire or high dive, over and over again until I finally slip and wake-up unpleasantly cold and heading for the carpet. Other times I feel myself landing on the mattress as though my body had become weightless in the dream and consciousness had brought gravity flooding back into my very cells. This time I had to cross a thin ledge with no hand grips to get to a room where I could be alone and at peace, but I always forgot something so, when I got there, I had to go back. Every time I returned I would have something else to carry - a pen, a laptop, my guitar - eventually I'd have to carry an armchair or a bed across and would lose my balance, tumbling to my impending death. My wife tells me I grind my teeth in my sleep. I thought about just staying there, on my back on the floor, with the warmth of my jeans covering my chest and a fishnet petticoat cushioning my heels - I felt quite comfortable. Cold, yes, but comfortable. I thought I felt a carpet bug brushing my ear but it didn't bother me. Three thirteen turned to three fourteen and I shivered, got to one knee and swayed drunkenly. Of course I was drunk. Not happily drunk, though earlier I had been; no, dirty drunk on lambrini. I used to drink whisky and beer and straight whisky and cider and quadruple whisky and I'd get up at six am and work a hard, hazy shift. Lambrini is a dirty drunk - cheap and harmless until you pass the threshold to the world of phantoms and wild scenery and precarious ledges over unfathomable drops - during dreams, it turns your head to charcoal and decapitates your will. It suits me to get out of bed early and go for a run, but I drink lambrini and sleep 'til ten and don't dress all day. That is unless the phone rings and I go to some 'job' where I help able bodied people eat dinner. I pick up bottles of wine and pour them drinks as if they were incapable of such a geometrically challenging task; I offer little rolls of bread and little cups of tea and little pallets of chocolates but, much the worst of all, I 'pull down for dessert'. Can you imagine what this can possibly entail? How such a task has become pro-forma at large-scale, upper-echelon catering events escapes me: just who was the progenitor of the practice is a question that brings to mind idle, rich, obnoxious sons of swindling bankers whose obese forms are an insult to every sentient being who has ever wanted for comfort, food or security. I find it humiliating in the extreme and demeaning to all concerned: actually, yes, you've probably guessed it. The waiter, when tasked with 'pulling-down', is to lean over the shoulder of the guest, crotch against back, and 'pull down' the dessert fork and dessert spoon from their station at the peak of the place setting to their ready positions under hands, left and right. I don't even know which side the spoon and fork should be and have been corrected by guests more than once. Having swapped fork and spoon over, one wonders why they waited for me to 'pull' them 'down' in the first place. 'Pull'! Young girls used to crawl miles through coal mines 'pulling' carts laden with their father's and brother's excavations. They would tread over rough shale and through unthinkable darknesses and would be killed by cave-ins and gas-leaks and fires and when at the end of the day they emerged coughing and heaving with their skin blackened and their lips bursting red they might be paid enough to feed themselves sufficiently to have the energy to do it again the next day. Christ, this catering is no work for a man! This is depression era Brighton and I'm doing better than some, I know, but I'm paying for it with my dignity and the dignity of those others who still can spare the cash for a banquet and a waiter who will force his crotch into their backs and, forced smile dimly visible, incorrectly orientate their fork and spoon for them. I rolled back into bed with no particular time in mind other the last one I saw. This is depression era Brighton town in the year two thousand and nine and I'll drink lambrini, 'pull down for dessert' and dream of precarious ledges and the inevitable fall over and over before the clock's meaningless face.