14.04.2020

The mouse came back. It seems I was outmanoeuvred by the second mouse’s escape to the balcony. My mouse rout turned out to be its strategic retreat. At some point it emerged from its balcony hinterland into the kitchen, only to be discovered by my partner in the middle of the night on the counter top. I engaged in a brief skirmish, but once again the mouse made a crafty escape. I slinked off to bed, outwitted by a rodent. We’ll settle it another time.

The terrible sadness of the situation struck me yesterday. The monotony is hard, but it’s being absolutely powerless, knowing the longer this lockdown goes on, the harder it will be to get back on our feet, that’s really tough. The thing that hit me though was listening to a John Prine album my dad used to play a lot, called Souvenirs. It’s a beautiful album, profound, wise, and very simple. He gets exactly to the point in the most plain-speaking terms possible. He was a postman, which is maybe where he got the insights needed to write songs like Angel From Montgomery, about an middle aged woman who feels older than she is, and dreams of being on the poster of an old rodeo, anything to make her feel special.

His simple tight lyrics never had an ounce of fat, every word worked hard. This is from another beautiful, kind song about the painful loneliness of growing old called Hello in There.

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more
She sits and stares through the back door screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what could I say if he asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? Nothing much to do"

Even Bob Dylan was a fan, he said “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism… Midwestern mind-trips to the nth degree.” To me he’s a blue collar Tolstoy.

There’s a song of his I love called Far From Me, about a relationship that’s over but no one can say it yet. It has a lot of amazing lines, but one in the chorus sums up his style for me “ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle looks just like a diamond ring.” It also has this in a verse –

"Will you still see me tomorrow?"
"No, I got too much to do"
Well, a question ain't really a question
If you know the answer too

He was funny too, have a listen to Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore. I am grateful I had the chance to see him live. He beat cancer twice, but coronavirus was too much for him. He died a few days ago.

I know hundreds of thousands of people are dying, people are losing relatives and friends in awful ways but so far it hasn’t really touched me. When someone you have an affinity to, or some who’s work you love dies, it really hits home. What a tragedy to lose a man like John Prine. I apologise to anyone who may read this who lost someone close, who might think, why are you worrying about an old man who made some records? My parent/husband/friend died. I understand that and I’m sorry if it seems insensitive, but until this point it had only been numbers on a screen and coughs in the street for me. Now it’s real.

I thought it would be nice to have a listen to John yesterday while we ate, but it was just very sad.

We went for a walk with the dog around the neighbourhood, just to see something different, stretch our legs. See what’s going on.

I was feeling a bit like this tied up swing.

Down Commercial Road, into Commercial Street at Aldgate, slight detour through Petticoat Lane, and back via Spitalfields, Brick Lane and Whitechapel.

Saw some confusing street art. Immigration raids have been particularly bad around here. You used to see UK Boarder Agency vans, with Immigration Enforcement written on the side prowl the streets. Not sure of the motivation of turning the N into the N word at the end of immigration though.

A lot of people round here have this sort of nihilistic attitude. For example, I often see people pull down their coronavirus masks to spit in the street. Like real proper fucking gobs. People throw trash out of their car windows, fly tip right outside their own houses, smoke crack under the train station stairs. I don’t understand if it’s the architecture, or the poverty or just hopelessness that makes people behave like that, but they can be incredibly anti-social. I feel like that N word is a crack in reality where the effluent of hate and anger that flows just under the surface round here worked loose the and seeped out. It’s just stupid, hurtful and most of all pointless.

This monstrosity has appeared at the bottom of Commercial Road since we went into lockdown. A lot of the building work is still going on. But those two photos demonstrate quite well the two opposing realities in this city.

An Italian food lover misspelled their favourite dish in an alley off Petticoat Lane.

We passed Christ Church Spitalfields, another Hawksmoor. This one marks the top axis between the eastern and north western arms of the pentagram his churches form across London. To me it looks like a gigantic, monolithic mausoleum. It has a real air of menace to me, like an occult temple. I can’t help thinking of the cover of this H P Lovecraft book whenever I see it.

Apparently, I’m not sure if it’s this church or St Luke’s on Old Street, another Hawksmoore, the one with an obelisk instead of a spire, but when workers were restoring it, a lot of them suddenly got sick digging out the crypt. They all called in sick. At first the foreman was worried they may have disturbed a plague pit, and released miasma with the bacteria. But it turned out all the workers had suddenly become terribly depressed and refused to go back down to finish the job. No workers lasted more than a day or two down there.

To the side of the church I noticed this drain cover. No idea what it represents, but it looked interesting.

On Lombardy Street walking down to Brick Lane, we say this jubilant display of thanks to the NHS, and this improvised ‘library’.

I was looking at some of the art people had put up recently, when I noticed there was a coffee shop still open. The queue of yuppies outside it did their best to ignore the desperate woman wearing a surgical mask crying as she asked everyone for money. “Just a pound so I can get some chips.” I was sorry I had nothing on me.

On the way back we passed the ancient Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The foundry can be traced back to 1420 but started in its current form in 1570 and moved to this premises in 1670. The building is older than that, it was a pub called the Artichoke that was damaged in the great fire of London before the foundry moved in. It famously casted the cracked American Liberty Bell, it also casted the Big Ben bell in the Elizabeth Tower at the Palace of Westminster, it made a bell as a gift for the American people after 9/11, which is now back in St Paul’s Cathedral, it made bells for all the great churches across London and as far a field as Chennai in India. It made the bell of St Mary Le Bow, which defines cockney identity, according to legend you’re only a true cockney if you were born in ear shot.

This foundry belongs to the British people, and most of all to Tower Hamlets, it is us. But last year plans were announced by a US developer to turn it into a boutique hotel, restaurant and bar. Once again, our identity and history is being commoditised for wealth extraction, while we will be denied access to it.

If things like this are taken from us, we won't be able to see our place in history. If history is taken out of our hands, we don’t see ourselves as part of it, so we lose the power to change it. History becomes something other people do and we slide further towards becoming commoditised units of energy to extract wealth from. One step closer to serfdom. This is the state London was in before the pandemic, and why we can’t go back to normal.

A rather sad window display on Commercial Road, with one lone protective glove, like some defiled anti-Christmas decoration.

Which reminds me, I need to delete that grimmoire off my kindle. Having black magick texts around, even if they are intangible feels like asking for trouble.

Years ago I read The Plague by Albert Camus, about a scruffy French town that has an outbreak of plague in the 20th century. My main recollection of the book is the deserted streets and boarded up shops in the sunshine. It came back to me on this walk. 

I’m still waiting to hear from that hospital and am about to fire off a load more job applications.

Stay healthy friends.