07.05.2020 - Take a shit Tesco.

On a motorbike, in order to survive you need to assume every car driver wants you dead. They’re reckless, careless, aggressive, stupid, inconsiderate, irritable, drunk more often than you’d think, and just generally dickheads.

Near death experiences are a daily occurrence. A black cab, indisputably the worst drivers in London, might, probably will, do a U turn from a queue of traffic you are filtering past without checking their mirror, or going the opposite way, will swing a right in your path, or maybe a late delivery jumps a light, or a rare courteous driver, waves a car on a side road into the line of traffic, they assume it’s clear so don’t bother looking, and bang. Any of these things could easily do you in, or a lot of pain. You learn to keep one eye on the direction the wheels of parked cars face, filter very slowly past busses, people step out, keep a lot of distance from the car in front and when you over take or filter, go out as wide as you can, space around you is your air bag, and you can see better. I once got pulled over by a copper who told me off for filtering too far on the other side of the road, when actually that is by far the safest way to do it. I've had the odd spill but survived. 

When ever these transgressions happen, you take evasive action and most of the time you're fine. But part of me, a very small part, wants them to hit me so they realise they can’t go around driving like that. A lot of the time, they’re completely unaware of the risk to my life they have just taken.

I’m trying to think of a word for that feeling. It’s a bit like schadenfreude, and I’m sure there’s a good German word for it. Maybe gutgefühlschmertze (good feeling pain), or Schmerzehaftebefriedigung (painful satisfaction), or shitstormfreude, Germans love the word shitstorm.

Schmerzewissenvonaktionfolgeheit. Painful knowledge from action consequence-hood.

Wissenmitwehgelegenheit. Knowledge with pain opportunity.

Schmerzwissen is a good one. Serves you right for breaking my leg. Gerneweh, glad pain, maybe that's closest. 

I’m getting gerneweh a lot at the moment. And it’s not nice, I know, it's petty, but I hope this game Boris Johnson and that lot are playing comes back to bite them. Unfortunately, it means a lot more people will die due to their actions, but I hope it becomes clear. 

It is incredible, on a day we had 622+ deaths from covid they are talking about lifting the lockdown, we only had around 400 when it started. They’ve been leaking bits to the press, so the front pages today were all, HOORAY END OF LOCKDOWN, HAPPY MONDAY (when the relaxing of lockdown is due to come in), pub gardens opening etc. and now, the government are trying to backtrack. Worst of all, call me a cynic, but I’m pretty sure they’re trying to time it to Victory in Europe day, because they are horrible little Englanders and there’s no other appeal to them than racist jingoism. They can claim some victory over this too, even if only subliminally. 

The psychology of VE day is worth looking into, but maybe another day. Raising a toast to the people who fought and died, side by side with our European cousins (yes, even the Germans), to celebrate peace is worthwhile. It’s telling that the Daily Mail referred to it as Victory over Europe day. They also ran an article about how Germans are using scientific language, rather than military language like the UK and the US, because they lost the second world war. Fucking grow up.

Don’t forget the Daily Mail was actually quite a big fan of Hitler, and in 1934 ran the infamous Hurrah For The Blackshirts article about the British Union of Fascists, the good press from which got them exclusive interviews with Hitler. So many it’s fair to say that The Daily Mail actually lost the war too.

The damage is done. They might now say, stay in, but they’ve had it splashed over the front page of almost every paper that we’re all fine to go out now. It’ll be chaos, and thousands more people will die. I hope they know what they’ve done.

Actually it’s obvious what they’re doing, reducing furlough, and talking about opening the economy will force poor people back to work, on the tube and buses into their graves, just to to subsidise the better off. It’s social cleansing. I would say close to genocide. Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention defines the term as this –

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a.         Killing members of the group;

b.         Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

c.         Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

d.         Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

e.         Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

It doesn’t say social group, I don’t think it takes much wrangling to put in those terms. Especially considering the much higher death rate among BAME people (black people are four times as likely to die from covid than white people).

I am very disappointed in Kier Starmer for pushing for so long for details about lifting lockdown rather than workers’ protections. I think he shares responsibility.

After a depressing few days (and nights, last night I dreamed of rats and mice crawling all over me, and my partner said she dreamed of a tsunami sweeping away London, then one funeral after another), we decided to change the scenery a bit and walk into town.

I haven’t been into Soho for months, so we walked down there through The City, down to Piccadilly Circus and back along the river.

Before we go on, I’ll just update you about the magic square. It’s gone. It’s just a pile of sticks now. I saw my pal Sam who I met by the square back a week or so ago. He doesn’t want to hang around at his flat because apparently his flatmate, some 60-year-old geezer, keeps going out and getting shit faced, and has been staying round other peoples’ houses. He also said Sam shouldn’t join in the Thursday evening claps for key workers because it spreads the virus. Sounds like a total arsehole.

Sam if you read this, hope you got to Kensal Rise alright.

what remains of the magic square

I think the square was swept aside by the iron fist of Tower Hamlets council, who do not tolerate superstition, or needed to mow the grass. Maybe it will substantiate itself again. I did like that square.

Note, I just got a message from Sam, who said the square is back. He lost his key, walked back to the park at night and found it right there in the middle of it. 

I won’t be too heavy going about our walk into town today, analysing all the coats of arms we saw everywhere or every drain cover, or all the cosmic debris littering the streets. There is a lot of spooky shit about the City of London, and walking through with the time and space and quiet, you notice more and more of it. I’ll save it though. I’ll just talk about relevant things for now.

This was amazing, having this sign switched off was blissful. Normally it's blowing 1000 watts of luminescent hatred right in your eyes. I don't know if it's my ADHD, or possibly being on the spectrum or maybe just being a sensitive type, but I find this sensory assault painful. I don't understand why their right to blast that shit out is greater than my right not to be blinded by it. Why is that ok, when graffiti isn't, what's the difference? 

Speaking of adverts, the other day I mentioned a theory about ads high jacking emotions and thoughts. I've experienced this first hand a couple of times since lockdown when I've spoken to my family over zoom or facetime. Something I didn't do much before so I only really know from ads, Tesco ads with "real people" (they're obsessed the idea of 'real people' and want to get them right, the way Count Dracula begs Jonathan Harker to correct his English, tell us about the real people) having their birthday celebrations together even though they're on the other side of the world and it's like family matters even when it doesn't or some shit, or like people singing a song together shows that you can keep time even in different time zones Google or Tesco has something to do with it. I mean, I've written tons of that crap, a magnum opus of dog shit, landfill. Anyway, the other day was my birthday, and I had dinner over zoom with my family, which was nice, but I couldn't help feeling like I was in a fucking Tesco ad the whole time. 

Fucking... take a shit Tesco. 

This is a new one. Never seen a hearse like this. Not even counting ambulances now.

I want to go back briefly to a point I made the other day, about how I very much doubt the figure I’ve seen about homelessness in London. This is from an article in the Guardian from 27 April, a few days old –

The idea that there are only 500 people, or even the fact that it’s “possible” the number is larger is absurd. I felt a bit voyeuristic doing this but I took photos when I could of tents, and people washing in Trafalgar Square, as well as at least 50 people using a Sikh soup kitchen. Of people and tents sleeping, I photographed I think 9, I also saw about 5 or 6 homeless people walking with sleeping bags, I saw (and photographed, but you don’t need to see it) human faeces in the gutter of Old Compton Street. We walked about six miles today, so yeah, that number just sounds like a joke.

Someone sleeping behind their possessions in the underpass.  

Guy sat in the doorway there. 

The old boy said he was protesting about something to do with the European Courts, outside the Royal Courts of Justice. He had a stick with postcards of old masters pinned to it. It was interesting because he didn’t seem to be demanding anything, and wasn’t bothered there was basically no one around to see his protest. I’m not even sure if it actually was a protest. It seemed more like an act of magic.

I got a lot of interesting photos of gothic statues and amazing buildings like the Old Bailey, and odd symbols, but I think I’ll save that until I have something coherent to say about them. Maybe I’ll do a post about legends of the city, there are some great ones.

The silence was very unsettling. It was actually really hard to get my head round.

Also, remember, don’t get Deliveroo. Social distancing isn’t a thing for Deliveroo riders.

The conspicuous absence of any artwork on fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square seemed ominous, or symbolic.

Boarded up astrology shop, wonder if they saw any of this coming?

This is a bit odd, foot bridge across the Thames is blocked. Maybe nothing. 

And what does this tell you about the British character that we think it’s appropriate to put a huge heraldry crest on a toilet. Rather pompous maybe?

The West End is very sad at the moment.