Contents
1. She:
2. They:
3. He:
4. The Banker & The Clerk:
5. The Accident & Emergency:
6. Bridge:
7. Titanic!
8. Avatar:
9. Cannon Fodder:
10. Rent:
11. Slaughter:
12. Brute Justice:
13. Global-Den(i)zen:
1. She.
‘It’s like living in a rabbit hutch’ She often said metaphorically, and He replied with a shrug, nothing to say in reply. It was; and it would take long enough to pay for. Four rooms. Eight-floors up, eight flights of long turning concrete stairs, access and egress, and fire escape for when the elevators did not function. A balcony open passageway at the front, looking over the street below, now starting to become busy with traffic.
They had lived with his parents for a time, and then after they were married in a small rented flat in The City, before they needed to afford somewhere to live together, and to bring-up their two small children. Both saved, and with some financial help from a relative (deceased) they had managed to get this place. When the housing market was ‘buoyant’, and mortgages easy to get. The Home was bought with a loan, a promissory note, deposited and co-lateraled together with the home itself. They were afloat.
Both worked to pay-off the loan, which although it was supposed to reduce each year did not seem ever to keep up with pay and prices. The loan would anyway be paid-off many times over if they were ever to pay-off the debt. If this place was ever to become their own. If they managed to keep paying-off the loan for the ‘Shelter from the Storm’, as they called Home.
That they did not actuarily now own, and may not ever, actually own, lose-lose. To sell-back to the mortgage company the difference between the original buying-price, with bank-lending cost money prime interest rate not paid-off defaulted re-possession on the commodityies’ market their home, their work, themselves, their children even and homeless either lower or higher re-selling-price that as house price equity inevitably rose, or occasionally dropped dramatically, then through bank equity not theirs, but their negative equity, they would have lost completely to The Bank…The Mortgage Company their mortgaged home-insurance, their pension against homelessness. No social-recourse; and be homeless to parents and over-crowding again, or with friends similarly fixed, or unfixed. Sofa surfing. Their home, such as it was re-possessed.
A two-bedroom apartment, she thought of: kitchen, lounge, shower-bathroom toilet and tiny balcony onto the world below, between them, and the sky above. Each day, each month, each successive year into the unthinkable future; two-thirds of two-lifetimes at least, two-thirds every month of what they were both paid. She did the household accounts, and she knew. The Home. The Loan. Would have been paid for several times over by the time, if ever it became theirs, and The Childrens’; and perhaps even their Grandchildrens’, or by that time the shared building bombed-out perhaps, through war or accidental explosion, simple longevity uninhabitable, demolished, needing a roof, being moved-on again. Needing a roof this land re-built-on again their leasehold gone, back to the freehold of the landowner, public or private a new extended leasehold, to someone else, and another earned/un-earned payment rented-out again; then, when the market said sold-off profit motive mortgaged all over again and again…in time...a patch of air in the sky….
But, that is the nature of the human animal, is it not? To do over, and be done over, time and again, and again, she thought: want more and more, for less and less, and in the quiet mind wandering moment of pillared door, a room, a table, a bed let go, and a bed sheet left behind, ready to be buried with perhaps, as they did in the olden times, shrouded as now by thin curtains pulled-back each-Day: like a fiscal dance, two steps forward and then backwards side-stepped, worked to pay off the loan on the apartment home and to pay for food and domestic energy cleaning bills and extras, clothes, and nights out, occasionally. Maybe once a month, or not at all.
Then. He had been laid-off work at The Bakery. Three-day-week, and three days wages. The Home mortgage was re-negotiated, and they continued struggling to pay-off the loan, and other loans, credited and directly debited debt from that which they both earned together. There was never an issue of who would earn more, and be the main breadwinner; and who would do the most caring, of each other, and of the growing children. The unpaid responsi-bilities shared around the home, and in the world of work, shopping and holidays, and other friends and family out there. All indebted, in credit, they, were equal, without even having to think about it or confront societies and others’ false expectations of gender and families.
They were equal in debt and credit, and supported each other’s frail and fragile ego’s with a natural equanimity respectful, and loving, each contributing their best and differently, not indifferent but in different ways, to make the whole, whole.
‘It’s not all doom and gloom!’ she did often think, and he tried not to think on it. The homely claustrophobia only had to be relieved by going out. To the cinema, to a bar or restaurant. But that was not very often. Definitely, now there were children as well. Seldom did extras make their mark, clothes bought carefully a piece at a time replacement rather than extravagance. The cupboards filled with groceries and emptied by the time the next week’s shopping is needed and the next week’s earnings already spent.
She was awake, first this morning, and she got up from the bed upon which he still lay awake but not yet awake enough to leave its’ night-time warmth. The bedroom led across the narrow-passage to the living room, which led directly to the tiny gallery kitchen and balcony on one side, and front door to the balcony on the other side.
Except; that it wasn’t the front-room, exactly, only like the ‘front-room’ of her childhood, playing on the street and door directly to the rugged ragged matted smell of cooking from the stone wall white-washed country kitchen. There, where there was an upstairs, two bedrooms, one on the side gallery landing for the children, and a closet room to flush away with a basin of water from the kitchen sink into the slurry sump. Where you could hear it ‘slurry’ all the way down; and, then going back down to replace water from the outside tap pumped up from the well, into a zinc-metal bucket, heated over an old copper kettledrum fire, when there was a fire, and re-filling the fired china-clay bowl for washing, and ready for the next use. At bedtime children first, then the adults, on the front gallery watching over the entrance, guarded. Rats nested runs, beetles and cockroaches were kept away by the domesticated cats and dogs that shared the yard and house; with horses at the local stables, to ride at weekends, and Holy Days. Each week, special times into the market town for food supplies, and the children’s treats.
Their whole world a Living Market Place, of Work and Play. Now, great enclosed parked superstores and supermarkets and factory outlet warehouse where goods are now transported she thought-of: ‘to and fro from and by foot and hand and motor vehicle, train and massive tanker and containership, freight flight from the docks and airport, at the city harbour hub humming away, remote yet directing everyday life, everywhere.
Cargo, and Passenger with the affordable ferry or flight, to get away from it all: a change; a necessary move, once in a while, not every year, but always to visit family here and there and elsewhere, or else you’d go stir-crazy. Do a night-time flit, leave the rent, the mortgage, unpaid.
Only, to otherwise keep on fighting, for the bargain: cheapest within budget to get through to the next day, and the day after that. When debts and fines could not be paid, the debt collector Bailiffs to: The-Auctioneer: selling-off the personal possessions, and then sold-out: the personal and into the public sphere.
The laptop computer on sleep, awakened, opened, placed on the table, booted-up and she blogged instantaneously her thoughts: ‘We all need a roof over our heads…and to: put Food on the Table!’ without any other word or contextual continuity that did not remain obvious, to this early morning.
Everyone, and anyone in the same and similar circumstances getting the same hastily tapped-out messages excluding those without tablet, home or food; and those with patently far too much, who had admin. to do that for them. And her thought continued in the context of the mindful moment and that which we all have to pay extortionately for, over and again, even when the food is eaten and the crap washed away there remains a nasty stain, a nasty taste. The original wages sweated over day upon day, and the loans ever in over-payment or negative equity! To who? Them! Extortionate exorbitant bank lending<borrowing interest-rates and volatile prices and pay…looking up, and down again now, not in dejection, but circumspection ever against apparent possible failure, with desperate optimism, toward an un-realistic perfectionism.
Mechanised traffic building-up, soon into a busy rush-hour congestion. Cars and buses, pedal-cycles, motorbike and motorised delivery-truck, from here, and there only another view.
From two-sides; and every side…the bedrooms along the passage corridor, the sleeping children slept. Earlier peeked into soundless in beautiful dream or dreamless seeming startling worrying death-checked for breathing. Crossing from night into daytime TV, automatically remote switched-on, confirmation, that life goes on.
The Living-Room, as she entered, bore all the chatter and the silence of one who listens. Still and safe, cosy and secure. The other rooms took over the emotions and daily needs: sleep and food, love and occasional arguments.
The central room, the central chamber, looked-on and awaited, eventual, almost inevitable, but never certain, re-conciliation, and rest. Indulged in social events, noisy chatter, and quiet evenings indoors. The furniture was adequate and filled the room. Table, chairs, television, a drawer and shelved cabinet standing against a wall, displaying various icons. Family photographs in frames, a portrait of a film star, or a print of a famous oil painting. Ornaments, statuettes, figures of worship and of novelty. The furniture, the infrastructure, lent borrowed only part bought from the livelihoods earned, by both, and eventually: the roof over our heads; in-over our heads heard as if originally spoken. There were unopened envelopes and cajoling leaflet advertisement: Kill your debts! Die debts! she thought of letters and bills for payment, propped up behind a ticking clock. There was a picture postcard from someone-else’s’ holiday forming a picturesque frontage to hide the stack of demands for reply and payment that lay beyond.
She drew back the curtains and looked out of the window across the balcony, with its only unflowering plants growing in flower-pots. Where there was a real still rising foggy mistiness outside from the early morning gradual solar warming; and she gazed over an area where many lived, and it seemed to her, this morning, where they too only lived out their lives: day to day, week to week.
They too thought to themselves as she looked-out onto the dawn of a gradually opening new day, that the world must have always been this way.
2. They…
