12/9/07
PARKLIFE - The view from St Jude’s –
You have, of course, your dog walkers making their way through the lower reaches of the Park – they vary in approach. Some are very brisk and perfunctory with their animales; this is not a leisure activity for them but a chore. If the dog strays from the footpath seeking out smells and interesting places, the owner will conspire against it to immediately rein them back in. No fun, my babe, no fun. Others are embarrassed of their pet (or themselves, unclear which really); slouching in the shadows of the tree line, they’d rather not let anyone know which dog is theirs, and when it is time to retrieve it they slink up close to it at the park gates and quickly, covertly attach the lead and drag the thing away along the street, head down.
By evening there are more joggers than trees.
Parakeets whine and chatter as they sail across the gaps.
The nether corners, close to the vicarage, however, are gateways to another world. Something much darker, lonely, and desperate. These are the junkie hideaways, where the bushes and trees just about give cover from the nearby footpath and the playing areas, tucked in behind the ivy and the tree trunks. Early morning you’ll find them there sucking on pipes, or standing around with a white syringe hanging out of a forearm, a livid and focussed attack. Two groups, different times, but not so long apart. The first group is three jubilant men in baseball caps, open shirts, carrying plastic bags stuffed full of clothes perhaps, other items. Street/squat men, all in their late twenties/thirties, lightly bearded Hispanics. They are borderline. They plump for a space behind the wide bole of a plane tree. Begin their routine, individual and unsightly. Yet they do not seem abashed. Needy, aye. Not abashed or embarrassed; but then I assume they have no choice. One of them half drops his trousers and kecks, semi squats, his arse exposed to the shadows, the green shadows, and he finds a vein near his dick (or maybe in it?) and shoots up there. He cannot move, even though his friends have become insecure and walked away aware that they have only so many minutes grace before someone spots them. The have no idea I can see them from the house. Later, I spot the half-nudist on the main road having just bought himself a can of beer and poking through a litter to pull out a discarded newspaper. For a junkie he is surprisingly portly, though his flesh beneath the wiry beard is yellow/grey, thinning on his cheekbones.
Later, on the opposite side of the house but still down in the cloaked nooks, a couple arrive with a white Staffordshire bull terrier. The woman is in a forlorn white tracksuit top, wears pigtails in her hair, close on 40. The man is tall, wears a pale denim shirt and a kind of knitted waistcoat, intellectual glasses, shaved head and very tanned. He is nervous, she doesn’t give a toss. Even though they can see me in my study, she squats straight down and begins to bake the brown, her arse crack (what is it with these folks, are they actually secret exhibitionists?) given back to me when she turns her back and bends down, is she telling me to ‘kiss my arse’ without needing to voice it? Clouds of blue smoke. The dog sniffing around the works. The man on point, watching, furtive. The Staff has bright pink testicles that hang low and heavy, and swing as it moves and sniffs around head down. Eventually, the woman rises, leaving scarred tin-foil on the ground and she calls to dog ‘Jasper, Jasper’ then wanders off with it while two-bit Charlie is left behind to see to himself with a spike. He taps up a vein and shoots the stuff home.
Brockwell Park, London
PARKLIFE - The view from St Jude’s –
You have, of course, your dog walkers making their way through the lower reaches of the Park – they vary in approach. Some are very brisk and perfunctory with their animales; this is not a leisure activity for them but a chore. If the dog strays from the footpath seeking out smells and interesting places, the owner will conspire against it to immediately rein them back in. No fun, my babe, no fun. Others are embarrassed of their pet (or themselves, unclear which really); slouching in the shadows of the tree line, they’d rather not let anyone know which dog is theirs, and when it is time to retrieve it they slink up close to it at the park gates and quickly, covertly attach the lead and drag the thing away along the street, head down.
By evening there are more joggers than trees.
Parakeets whine and chatter as they sail across the gaps.
The nether corners, close to the vicarage, however, are gateways to another world. Something much darker, lonely, and desperate. These are the junkie hideaways, where the bushes and trees just about give cover from the nearby footpath and the playing areas, tucked in behind the ivy and the tree trunks. Early morning you’ll find them there sucking on pipes, or standing around with a white syringe hanging out of a forearm, a livid and focussed attack. Two groups, different times, but not so long apart. The first group is three jubilant men in baseball caps, open shirts, carrying plastic bags stuffed full of clothes perhaps, other items. Street/squat men, all in their late twenties/thirties, lightly bearded Hispanics. They are borderline. They plump for a space behind the wide bole of a plane tree. Begin their routine, individual and unsightly. Yet they do not seem abashed. Needy, aye. Not abashed or embarrassed; but then I assume they have no choice. One of them half drops his trousers and kecks, semi squats, his arse exposed to the shadows, the green shadows, and he finds a vein near his dick (or maybe in it?) and shoots up there. He cannot move, even though his friends have become insecure and walked away aware that they have only so many minutes grace before someone spots them. The have no idea I can see them from the house. Later, I spot the half-nudist on the main road having just bought himself a can of beer and poking through a litter to pull out a discarded newspaper. For a junkie he is surprisingly portly, though his flesh beneath the wiry beard is yellow/grey, thinning on his cheekbones.
Later, on the opposite side of the house but still down in the cloaked nooks, a couple arrive with a white Staffordshire bull terrier. The woman is in a forlorn white tracksuit top, wears pigtails in her hair, close on 40. The man is tall, wears a pale denim shirt and a kind of knitted waistcoat, intellectual glasses, shaved head and very tanned. He is nervous, she doesn’t give a toss. Even though they can see me in my study, she squats straight down and begins to bake the brown, her arse crack (what is it with these folks, are they actually secret exhibitionists?) given back to me when she turns her back and bends down, is she telling me to ‘kiss my arse’ without needing to voice it? Clouds of blue smoke. The dog sniffing around the works. The man on point, watching, furtive. The Staff has bright pink testicles that hang low and heavy, and swing as it moves and sniffs around head down. Eventually, the woman rises, leaving scarred tin-foil on the ground and she calls to dog ‘Jasper, Jasper’ then wanders off with it while two-bit Charlie is left behind to see to himself with a spike. He taps up a vein and shoots the stuff home.
Brockwell Park, London
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