ECHO 1/2/06

In High Wycombe of all places, five flights up discussing journalism and bad theatre – realisation – a moment, there with concrete domes stretched out toward those singularly suburban hills – the truth is a difficult beast to master particularly when you are trying to write about something beyond the self – what gives a writer the right to presume that he/she could write about an issue in the rarefied atmosphere of his/her own home/workspace? If a playwright sits down to write about (for example) the US/UK invasion of Iraq, what truth can they be expressing other than second hand info and guesses?

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ROYALTY

The man walks proudly along the street in this satellite village. He walks at a pace very much his own. The village allows him that. When he moved away, years ago, to Brighton – alternative cosmopolis - he was beaten up for the way he looks, the way he crosses gender. But here, in the non-descript village where he was brought up, he is left alone; observed, yes, but left alone.

When I am introduced to him he is on his way to the shops. I have seen him do this daily. His hair is swept back from his forehead and completely bleached. Through his eyebrows are three metal studs and ring piercings. An elegant black, embroidered velvet coat, hangs heavily down to his black leather DM’s and is finished with black fur collar and cuffs. His fingernails are painted black; and he carries a black and white cow skin handbag. His face, slightly puffy, is whitened with powder, enough to change his natural skin tone; his eyebrows are neatly plucked. He does not walk so much as glide along the street, his head held high. He doesn’t say very much, doesn’t need to.

The only people that give him grief, and make him flinch with the memory of the Brighton beating, are the three lads who charge up and down the street on their mini-bikes in the early evening, hammering the air with the incessant, thin whine of their motors and throwing the occasional taunt at him as they pass. But they dare not touch him - no one does - for fear of being ostracised.

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Polluted nose and throat from Monday’s exposure to London.

This is a place of men in vans, with huge paunches and steely eyes.