RANDOM 4/11/05

Redditch Police Station to report the theft of the £300 from my bank account – a man in his early twenties sits in the counter room waiting, a huge deep cut freshly scabbed over his right eye and bruises on his ears and side of his head; he can’t speak properly, stuttering and swallowing his words, but I don’t think that was a result of his injuries, more a simple lack of will or else a good smoke screen in the presence of authority. He is late for a hearing/meeting of some kind and is reporting in late because he was robbed the other day. He is told his solicitor was there this morning but has now gone. A community officer, or some kind of liaison, comes in from her lunch break and seeing her he makes a bee-line over to her and explains his situation. But she can do nothing about it and backs off, reminding him of the appointment they already have in a week’s time. He is then told by the duty officer to take a seat and wait while they try to reorganize the hearing, but he leaves anyway.

Unemployed males, hawkish and hooded; and the steady stream of prams and pushchairs with Mums on their own, rolling through paved town centers in the afternoon rain. The fight and fuck mentality is here.

Ugly statue in the center of Redditch, outside the church in the center of the paved pedestrian shopping area - a slab of white stone that looks like a polystyrene block, has been carved out with the image of a soldier giving a flower to a child; scary thing is the soldier looks like a US one and there is a reminiscence of Vietnam period battledress which is faintly disturbing. I can’t work out who commissioned it or why? Or what it maintains or commemorates? Is it perhaps some kind of symbol of support for current US imperialist intervention? If so, it fails on all fronts both symbolically and aesthetically.

Worcester in the late afternoon. Skies glowering over the Malvern Hills, which not surprisingly look somewhat akin to those on the horizon back in Italy. Passing through wild country: an army surplus store out in the middle of nowhere with (guess what) another US GI statue outside it. This time a larger than life photo-realist one (a giant Action Man) of a grunt in present day camo battledress and state of the art rifle and communications system plugged into his Kevlar helmet. He is crouching and aiming straight at the oncoming traffic. I wonder about right wing militias, rednecks and conspiracy theorists out here in the Worcestershire countryside. Might they exist?

Worcester Cathedral - handprints worn in to the old bricks at the entrance to the quadrant. Clear fingers and palms, and scratch marks. I fit my hand into them, fingers splayed, and as I do a woman walking a dog stops and explains that they appeared one night about a year ago. No one knows where they came from. CCTV recordings of the entrance have been sifted through and no one has been seen working them into the brick like corn circle hoaxers or similar. She leaves saying that they are a mystery, but isn’t it good to have a few mysteries in life? I turn back to the prints and look further; some appear to have been marked in the throes of a fit by a fevered person or else large animals scraped thick paws in consecutive slashes, whilst at two other points there are clear defined hands one smaller than the other: a medieval couple’s tryst?

Final militarist clues of the day: stained glass windows commemorating Gallipoli and other WW1 battles and losses – a huge angel embraces a Boer War soldier also crouching with rifle pointed at an invisible enemy (that term ‘invisible enemy’ sticks, pronounced – invasions procure the invisible?) – and a park named after a Boer War battle. I am wondering if Worcestershire shouldn’t be renamed Warcestershire?

Sepia photo in Eagle’s Nest pub: two Indian elephants bathing in a nearby lock beside a stone bridge near Worcester town.