ECHO 6/2/06

Karachi, Baghdad, Jakarta, Gaza City, London, Denmark – the noise is coming on loud, the volume turned up fullest into the red – everyone is demanding blood, and blood is what they will get – ours and theirs – Christian and Muslim blood, the Dark Ages are returning and we are at the behest of the elites on both sides in this decision – 2000 years means nothing, has taught us nothing about achieving a higher goal, an example of respect, education, progress, tolerance, humanity – all the words written, all the images, all the knowledge is being debased –

Meanwhile:

Michelle sits in Burger King in the Kingfisher Shopping Centre with a large paper cup of coffee and a Whopper for lunch. Black two piece, short skirt, hair back in a tight ponytail, the secretarial look is perfected. She gazes out of the window onto the mezzanine where the pushchairs and the OAPs roam; her hand ponderously placed on her cheek like she’s forgotten something. Why this underlying sense of dread or fear again? Where does it come from? It is a question she asks herself often these days, gazing into next doors garden from her first floor flat or, as now, arranging to meet her best friend for lunch; she’ll bring her three-year-old and they’ll all laugh for an hour before Michelle goes back to work in the reception at the recruitment agency fending off advances from the local lads and silly questions from the Eastern Europeans who’ve just arrived in the area looking for a job.

I am heading out to the superstore Tescos at the edge of town (Oakenshaw), and as I pull into the slip road heading toward the car park an Audi TT slips in ahead of me. Silver bodied with a pale red cabriolet soft top and either side of the number plate two silver Playboy Bunny symbols. I reckon that the guy driving this must believe himself to be some kind of super stud, but as the car takes a right hand bend ahead I see that the driver is actually a woman: late forties, serious blonde highlights, and a fake tan that makes a Seville orange look bleached by comparison – she guns the motor along one of the routes to parking spaces and slips effortlessly between a couple of family saloons. When she gets out of the car she checks to see how many people are looking at her. I am guessing she owns either a series of local body-health suites or hairdressing salons. At a guess I’d say her name was either Natalie or Tracey (with an ‘e’).

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Daylight and life – this is what she says she needs before her nightshift starts, so we go for a little circular walk – school’s out for the day so the road is full of cars and 4x4s, and hurried pockets of children and parents who all (can’t work out why) look vaguely scared – maybe it’s just stress – through the council estate at the end of the road, identical houses, where men collect cars that don’t go anywhere and bags of litter remain at the foot of trees and shrubs and big sisters walk their little brothers home – beyond this, numerous derelict and abandoned low lying factory pre-fabs are set back from the road, evidence of local 1960’s manufacturing hey-day long since dormant – arranged at the rear are some large machines removed from the gutted buildings, now rusting, and old lemon-yellow office furniture worn out by time and the weather – we go in to the brand new breeze-block and steel Leisure Centre, a friendly girl in a bright yellow sweatshirt and jeans shows us around the facilities: the new (empty) pool and gym hall, the changing rooms, even the barely touched drinks dispenser is a new feature – a man in his early fifties sits alone in the viewing room overlooking the pool, staring at the soft ripples on the water there, he doesn’t move as we pass by and I cannot work out what he’s doing there but either he’s a pervert waiting to watch anyone who arrives for a swim or else he’s meditating in the peace and quiet and warmth – once out of there we head back, the wind whips across the adjacent playing field and we roam along narrow alleyways between housing estates that remind me of being a teenager and losing my virginity in one on a summer’s night . . .