08.04.2020

The American anthropologist and Bullshit Jobs author David Graeber recently wondered on twitter if the famous British sense of humour feeds into our masochistic tendency to vote, against our own interests, mendacious incompetents like Boris Johnson into power. Not his exact words, but it was along those lines.

Possibly. We are odd people. But I think it has more to do with our peasant mind-set. England missed out on the revolutionary republican period between feudalism and liberal capitalism that most nations enjoyed. Our civil wars in the 17^th century weren’t about freeing the people, they were sectarian wars between the aristocracy and the monarch over a royal overreach of power. In 1628 Charles the first prorogued parliament and used royal prerogative (without the approval of parliament) to levy one of the few taxes the king could, ship money. Remind anyone of summer 2019? The magna carta made it illegal for monarchs to tax without parliamentary consent, but the king found a loop hole in ship money, which was an emergency measure, and not technically a tax because it was a demand for warships, that coastal areas were expected to contribute to. The difference was, Charles did it in peace time, and forced inland areas to pay too. This pissed the nobles off a lot and add in a load of anti Catholic bigotry and you’ve got a big old series of wars which we’re still affected by today.

Remember at this time you couldn't vote if you didn't own land, and there was no salaries for members of parliament so you had to be independently wealthy to run (actually true to this day, candidates have to use their own money to campaign for parliament). This idea that it was a struggle for democracy is nonsense, at least it wasn't the main issue, as people found out when Cromwell became an even worse dictator. 

Interesting, but a digression. My point is, we never had the proletariat uprisings of countries like France that resulted in the birth of liberal republics, in which feudal hang overs like kings and queens became poor taste. We went more or less straight from people being owned by the lord of the land they live on, and working for free, or food and board, right into Milton Friedman’s wet dream of free market capitalism in Charles Dickens’ time. So we have a lot of feudal hang overs, including class deference. Which is why, I believe, Kier Starmer won the Labour leadership election, and as a nation we go weak at the knees for any (white skinned male) clutz with a well cut suit and plummy accent, and end up with people like Boris Johnson running the country. Obviously there’s a bit more to it than that, a good book to read on the subject is Why We Get The Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman.

In Germany, for example, they don’t really have class accents, only regional ones. But in England, two people can grow up in exactly the same place, but as soon as they open their mouths, they will have the measure of where each of them stands in the hierarchy of class.

All this was going through my mind at eight pm last night when there was due to be a widely promoted clap for Boris. A disgusting typically British display of sycophancy. Applauding a man whose reckless behaviour has, so far, resulted in the deaths of 18 NHS workers, 10 bus drivers, and god knows how many thousands of other people. And we should clap for him because he got sick? I wish no harm on him, but don’t Tories go on about how we shouldn’t reward failure or something?

I was very pleased though when eight o’clock came and none of my people clapped once. Long live the people’s republic of London!

So last night was my last shift. Man, I was relieved. Fuck. That. Place. I told my Greek pal it was my last, he said, don’t tell anyone, call in sick, get the week or so statutory sick pay, and avoid the risk of them not paying the hours I’ve worked because I didn’t give them notice. Good advice. Seems like tempting fate to claim I have coronavirus, so I might say I have the worst case of diarrhoea in the history of the republic. Or even that I literally shit myself on the train in, dare them to tell me to come in anyway.

You don't really see planes in London much anymore, so you really notice the few that are still in the air. This one looked a lot like a military plane to me.

When I got the scoot out I saw Christopher’s been back by his signature bottles of urine. He also left a mysterious package, something he must have nicked. I opened it up to see if it was anything good. It was a till receipt printer. Weird thing to steal, but ok.

It was comparatively quiet tonight. I found out the Greek has been telling customers they get better deals on Deliveroo, to save us the bother of doing the delivery. This dude. He said when he gets back to Greece he’s going to take it easy. He’s got a fishing boat. You don’t need money to go out catch an octopus, grill it on the beach and have a beer. What else is there to do?

I didn’t get a single tip. I think the spasm of gratitude and guilt Britain experienced for service workers has now passed. We’re going back to the old class hierarchy.

We also had another go removing the great wall of trash out the back, brick by brick. Once the rubbish was out on the pavement (we’ve been doing a load a day), we over heard council workers complaining, how could one business produce so much shit?

Look under the table leg. 

The chef is a great tall bloke with an eyebrow piercing. He’s worked for the company for fourteen years. I’ve literally only ever heard him say, or actually shout, one word. “KURVA” Polish for fuck/whore. It constantly reverberates around the building. Last night he went for a smoke out back. The back opens out from the loo, so when I went for a leak after, it was full of cigarette smoke. I opened the door to get some air in, and saw about seven huge rats. I don’t mind these guys, they’re just trying to make a living like the rest of us. But restaurants have a responsibility not to leave shit everywhere that attracts them and causes public health issues. Part of the problem is almost all the other food places are shut, so all the rats congregate where ever there’s the good stuff. We’ve even got mice in our kitchen now, and can hear rats scurrying through the walls, because all the chicken shops have closed. I’m sure the mice would rather be out in the street snacking risk free, than venture into the lairs of monsters.

I used to work at a fancy restaurant, you'd know it, there were mice and cockroaches everywhere. One time I made someone a cappuccino, and a cockroach climbed in. The guy only discovered when it was in his mouth. Didn't kick up a fuss, just asked for another one. 

Another thing, turns out those students I told you about the other day, who couldn’t make it in because of their landlord. They hired them to undercut the chefs, who are on just over £10 an hour, these guys are minimum wage, but do the same job.

A new guy started. He was there the evening before when I walked out but I didn’t meet him. My first impressions are usually quite accurate. Apparently it’s common for people with ADHD to be highly intuitive, we are unable to filter out bits of information that other people miss, which is partly why we can’t focus and are so easily distracted. It also means we pick up a lot without realising. I’ve heard, but not read it myself, that Jung described certain highly intuitive personality types as indistinguishable from psychics. My first impressions of this guy weren’t good.

I didn’t like the way he held himself, the tattoo on his hand, the fact he kept his face covered, which is acceptable in the time of pandemics, but something was off with this guy. He spoke with an accent a bit like my dad, semi-posh west London reprobate, with 70s comprehensive school signifiers. He was probably in his 50s, everyone at work is unshaven, but his beard was particularly ratty. Turns out he’s lost two jobs in the last couple of weeks, keeps starting at places to do deliveries, they shut up shop and he gets nothing. I felt bad for him, and I knew how this place treats people, but where else is there work? So I told him about the NHS hospital jobs and gave him the email of the recruiter. He asked if you need any qualifications, and I said just the DBS check, see if you have a criminal record. Oh, he said. I told him it was unspent convictions, and I think your record is wiped after five years, especially if it’s non violent, that’s the case with police cautions anyway, not that I’ve ever had one, but a lot of my friends have roguish streaks.

“We’ll I ‘aven’t been nicked for about 11 years.” Should be alright then. I thought you know, benefit of the doubt, good people do bad things, make mistakes, they shouldn’t be defined by their lowest moment. I thought he’s probably a recovering addict, doing his best. But later on I doubted my logic. In fact, the more he talked, the more I realised my first impressions were correct.

I glanced at the news and read, oh jeez, a third of UK prisons now have coronavirus and they’re not letting them out. “Good” he replied, “why let them out, let them die.” Fucking hell, I thought, I assumed someone who’d had run ins with the law would empathise with people on the inside, have some insight into the circumstances that drive people to crime etc. But no.

I have nothing against conspiracy theories, in fact I think people who dismiss them out of hand are unenquiring and anti-intellectual. Every big scoop starts off as theory. The VIP paedophile scandal, the US and UK governments mass illegal surveillance, Cambridge Analytica, the royal family devouring the souls of innocents to placate the Old Ones that dwell inside their animated corpses, all these things started off as conspiracy theory, but are now established fact. However, there’s a particular type of ill informed conspiracy theorist, who doesn’t question the narrative, but dogmatically follows whatever their favoured loon tells them as blindly as any Sun or Daily Mail reader. In pre total reality collapse event times, this was merely irritating, you could ignore it, but now it’s a form of weaponised stupidity.

He was saying it’s just flu, it’s not dangerous, then moments later he’d claim it’s a deadly man made bio weapon. Which it could well be, I don’t know, but I don’t see how it can be both. I said what about all the ambulances, his reply, there’s always ambulances about. I didn’t count, seems bad luck, bad taste now, but that evening I saw a stomach churning amount of ambulances. And I’ve seen people, delivered pizzas to people who were on death’s door, I’ve seen people collapsed in the street. He said he’d, or some friend of some friend, had been to A & E and it was quieter than ever. Could be because people had sense to avoid them if at all possible, and the advice is if you are sick with covid, not to go to hospital, and anyway, someone close to me was actually in hospital very recently and that’s not the story she told. He carried on boasting how he’s been all over the place, shaking hands, he doesn’t give a shit. He was unaware of any news, said Boris was out waving this morning, which he wasn’t, he has a machine breathing for him. He dismissed it all as an attempt to control the population, then started going on about the Democrat primaries and they’re just trying to stop Trump or some shit.

I happen to be reading Naomi Klein’s brilliant book Shock Doctrine about disaster capitalism, and I agree, there will be efforts to reduce civil liberties and corprotise society. That conspiracy is right in front of us, it’s called capitalism, we are all its victims. After that, my mind was made up, I stayed the fuck away from him. I was pissed off.

I thought it was incredibly disrespectful. I’m working because I have to, but trying to stay safe because I don’t want to die, and I don’t want those around me to get sick. I realised he’d touched my phone earlier, and was disrespectful of personal space, so I ran down stairs to find some bleach spray. I couldn’t find any so I smeared detergent on my phone and washed it off.

I went an hour early, glad it was for the last time. As I put the scooter back I noticed there was one more than normal in the lock up. It had branding on box with the name of one of the take aways that shut, causing him to lose his job. I wondered if he nicked it. Fuck that guy. And fuck that boss for hiring people like that and putting the rest of us at risk. And fuck the owners for staying home because they think it’s too dangerous to be working but expecting all of us to carry on, on minimum wage. Fuck the lot of them.  

Walking home, the only people out were homeless people. They looked like they’re having a really hard time. I saw my guy who I usually give a pound to, asked him how he was, but didn’t get much sense out of him and apologised I didn’t have any money because I didn’t get any tips that night. He was with a kid I’d never seen before with the worst broken nose I’d ever seen, like it was on backwards. I didn’t want to be voyeuristic or shame this guy, that’s why it’s a bad photo, but I wanted to show you how things are, the only guys out are like this, going through bins for food.

My Ritalin/Concerta arrived mid way though writing this and I popped one, so if my writing suddenly seems more frantic that might be why. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Someone caught short in the lift at Shadwell station. I don't really get it, there's no one around, piss behind a bush.

One last thing. I got a couple of comments on my last post, one from someone in Turkey! I didn’t reply because I want to keep this blog anonymous if I can, because I might get fired from the hospital if anyone knows it’s me. So thank you both for reading and commenting, and to the Turkish person, güvende ol ve sağlıklı arkadaş.

Stay safe readers!