There Really Is Nothing New Under the Sun

‘Young mother down at Smithfield
5 am, looking for food for her kids
In her arms she holds three cold babies
And the first word that they learned was “please”

These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
“Remember what I told you
If you were of the world they would love you”‘

Black Boys On Mopeds, Sinead O’Connor

In the early nineties I was taking my A Levels and living with my parents in a 1930s semi detached pebble dashed house in the suburbs of Birmingham.  I also had some pretty severe psychiatric problems (an eating disorder, depression etcetera).  The house in which we lived was one of those ex-council houses that so many people enjoy sneering at, forgetting that their inhabitants are only there because they were desperate to be a part of Maggie Thatcher’s ‘Home Owning Democracy’.

Most of the neighbours were ‘decent’, reasonable, hard-working people but there was a large family whose children pretty much terrorized the entire street.  They would smash the wind screens of cars, verbally intimidate people as they walked past, attack the vulnerable.  I was sexually assaulted by one of them.  They targeted our next door neighbour.  He was a retired, elderly gentleman living in the upstairs flat of the house next door.  His garden was at the front of the house.  He worked hard on it, planting flowers and vegetables.  Eventually he gave up because these kids would trespass on his land and simply wreck it.  My father tried to intervene on several occasions but eventually he gave up too.  The reason?  On the final occasion the eldest ‘child’, a boy who was taller than he was, shoved my father.  My father, reacting instinctively, shoved him back. The police were called and my father was told that if he did anything like that again then he would be the one who would be prosecuted.

WTF are people getting out of pretending that this is anything new?

‘Sink Estate’ Or ‘Life in the Ghetto of the Damned’

 

 

 Midnight. A knock at the door.
Open it? Better had.
Three heavy cats, mean and bad.

They offer protection. I ask, ‘What for?’
The Boss-cat snarls, ‘You know the score.
Listen man and listen good

If you wanna stay in the neighbourhood,
Pay your dues or the toms will call
And wail each night on the backyard wall.

Mangle the flowers, and as for the lawn
a smelly minefield awaits you at dawn.’
These guys meant business without a doubt

Three cans of tuna, I handed them out.
They then disappeared like bats into hell
Those bad, bad cats from the CPL.

Roger McGough

 

I’d like to tell you about the horrors we witness on a daily basis on our particular ’sink’ estate. 

There is a ninety two year old world war two veteran who still has his service revolver.  (although it has no bullets so that means I can’t borrow it to shoot myself). He also claims that he is still capable of killing someone with his bare hands (although I don’t actually believe this) as a result of his commando training.  There was an old lady who died last year, aged 102.  When she reached 100 and received a telegram from the queen she said that our reigning monarch could shove it up her posterior.  (although she didn’t actually use that word).  There is another old lady who used to sleep with American GIs during the war in exchange for silk stockings.

We are also terrorised by a gang of mad cats. I think they’re called the Cats’ Protection League.  They are never seen together but the intimidation they inflict upon us must be co-ordinated.  They are feral felines, not unlike the Kray twins. They are specie-ist and intimidate the local Canine population. They say that ‘Everything has gone to the dogs’.  Well, not in our area.  Here, everything’s gone to the cats! They miaow loudly outside your door and when you are forced to let them in they eat your food and scratch your furniture.  I also hear they are addicted to cat-nip although it’s hard to distinguish the users from the dealers.   There aren’t enough rehab facilities for them. They fight amongst each other.  The courts give them special animal ASBOs but they simply ignore them. There aren’t enough interpreters who speak ‘Miaow’.  One came into my flat and stayed with me for ten years before finally succumbing to mortality.    

And, in addition to all this degradation and desperation, my house has been inhabited by a bunch of insane teddy bears who party incessantly and keep us awake.  They plan to go to war with the Feral Felines.  We really do inhabit the Ghetto of the Damned.

Now, I’m so depressed after having written all that – all the sordid details, the sheer wretchedness of our lives – I’m going to throw myself off the roof.