by Danny King
I know this was something I should’ve liked but oddly enough it wasn’t. Because it seemed like the one thing couples were attracted to more than each other were other couples. And the one person they never seemed to talk to when they were out with other couples was the matching half of their own couple.
I lost count of the number of conversations I had about the TV show; when it would be on, how long the shoot would be, whether I’d be the star of it and whether or not I was free to come round and retile Clive’s kitchen for nothing. I was not.
In fact, the one couple I never got to meet in all that time was her mum and dad, and the two weekends Charley disappeared back to Berkshire to attend family functions, my presence was noticeably not required. I guess parents and friends have different amusement levels when it comes to watching hairy-arsed brickies trying to butter bread rolls with fish knives.
Yes, it was still on my mind, that comment. You know, the one about me being beneath her station. That was still bugging me.
Why had she said it? Why had she chosen to make that joke? It must’ve been something that had crossed her mind in the past, otherwise how else could she have even come up with it? Everyone knows that all great jokes contain a seed of truth, which meant that this particular seed was planted somewhere in Charley’s brain and that one day it would grow into a mighty oak of doubt and misgiving. Particularly when she was no longer winning ironic ribbons for being with me. And this is in spite of the fact that I know oaks don’t grow from seeds, they grow from acorns, but an ‘acorn of doubt’ didn’t sound right and a ‘mighty tree’ sounded like I didn’t know the names of any big trees when I did. Just none that grew from seeds.
Anyway, all of this stuff must’ve taken a stroll around her mind at some point or another and if it had, then she had probably also got to wondering what our long-term chances were like, because you don’t get yourself in a tizz worrying about parental approval and inheritances when you’re simply sowing your wild oats, do you? Which meant that somewhere along the line Charley had also probably pictured us in fifty years’ time, old and grey and holding hands, rocking backwards and forwards on our porch together and moaning about the price of robot oil, to see if she liked the image.
Cue thoughts of stations, Daddy and money.
Oh, what was the point? I knew how this was all going to end before it had even started so why was I even surprised? I mean, Christ, if this stuff had occurred to me, Tel the thicky trowel, then it had to have occurred to a clever girl like Charley. And her mates. And her parents – at least it would’ve had they known about me.
And that’s probably what disheartened me the most. Because I could see it coming. I could see it coming from a mile off in fact. It was like going into a builder’s merchants when you’ve forgotten your measurements, taking a chance and buying a couple of metre-wide sash-window frames, only to get them home and find you needed one-ten all along. I’ve done stuff like this before in my time. Most people have, I expect, and it’s not the fact that your windows don’t fit that gets you swearing when you get home, it’s the fact that you sat in traffic for a hour and a half thinking to yourself, ‘These windows are the wrong windows. I know they are. I fucking know it,’ making the resultant ‘See, I fucking knew it!’ all the sweeter when you push them through your big gaps.
Not that Charley was getting me angry, you understand. That was probably just a bad analogy. I should stick to oak seeds in future. No, quite the opposite in fact. The whole situation was just making me sad because the more weeks that passed, the more it felt like I was turning on to the last straight of a ride that I didn’t want to get off.
But I was going to have to. Because all good things come to an end. And this was a very good thing. So the end was going to come with that much more of a bump.
I dwelt on this thought as I slowly chewed my egg sandwich in the passenger seat of Jason’s van.
One day, Charley would finish with me. I knew this was going to happen. And it wasn’t like knowing that one day I was going to die or that one day the taxman was going to catch up with me because this was something that was going to happen sooner rather than later and I was never going to be able to get rid of that apprehensive crease in my brow until I’d been through the worst of it, much like an amputation I kept putting off.
‘Smile, then,’ Jason told me, pouring us both a cup of tea from his two-litre flask.
‘What?’ I said, looking up from my sandwich.
‘I said smile,’ he repeated, handing me a cup and nodding towards the side window.
I looked around and almost spilt my tea when I saw my sullen puss reflected back in a big black camera lens.
‘Shit.’
‘Exactly,’ Jason replied. ‘Creep up on you, don’t they?’
My reflection continued to stare back at me for another couple of seconds before moving off to stare at someone else.
‘How long were they there?’
‘About two minutes,’ Jason guessed. ‘Can’t wait for that particular episode. I’ve always wanted to see myself eating Scotch eggs while reading the paper.’
‘Who hasn’t dreamt of that?’
‘Think it’ll make Pick of the Day?’
‘I’m sure it’ll be everyone’s favourite bit,’ I mulled.
We watched the camera team move from car to car, filming the lads and their lunch until the clock struck half past one and we went back to work. We’d started an oversite this morning and were just moving inside to take up the internal walls, but Gordon had other plans for me.
‘Fancy doing a couple of chimneys, Tel? Roy’s just lifted the scaffold on those gables we did yesterday.’
I looked around and saw that CT and Barrie had followed us inside and were settling in for a gripping afternoon of breeze blocks and banter, so I dropped my trowel into my bucket, grabbed my level and headed for the rooftops.
Grateful to leave the showmen to their show and return my head to the clouds.
20 The poshos are revolting
The following Saturday morning Charley phoned me up and asked me if I was doing anything that afternoon. Normally, I spent my afternoons in Catford doing my shopping, doing a bit of tidying around the flat and killing a few brain cells in front of the box before going up to Charley’s for the evening, so something was afoot.
‘Er, why’s that?’ I tentatively asked, wary of committing until I’d made sure that Clive wasn’t laying a patio and wondering if I’d be able to give him ‘a hand’. It wasn’t that, though.
‘It’s just that a bunch of us are going on the World as One march and I just wondered if you wanted to come along too,’ she told me.
‘What’s the World as One march?’ I asked, suddenly in a patio-laying mood after all.
‘You know, the anti-globalisation rally. It’s been in all the papers all week,’ she pointed out.
This may have been true, it may have been in the papers all week, but not everything that made it into the papers automatically made it into my brain. Party politics, Euro news, trade negotiations and celebrity sightings all went the same way as the previous evening’s football reports when it came to my tea-break flick. In fact, few headlines got me turning the page faster than something like ‘Tessa Jowell Climbs Down over Legislation’, though I would’ve probably given ‘Tessa Jowell Climbs Down over Ledge’ a look if somebody underneath had snapped off a couple of sneaky pictures. That was around the sort of news I could just about handle at ten o’clock in the morning.
Anti-globalisation rallies were never going to get me forgetting about my sandwiches.
‘No, sorry, I must’ve missed it. What is it?’ I admitted.
‘It’s a rally against world poverty and the IMF,’ she explained. ‘It starts in Hyde Park and then goes all the way along Oxford Street and around Whitehall and finishes in Green Park. There are other rallies all over the world too, in America, across Europe, Australia, Japan and even China. Millions of us are marching on every continent to raise
awareness,’ she said, making me wonder why I needed to miss the Saturday afternoon matinee, then, when they sounded like they pretty much had things covered without me.
‘Right, yeah, sounds… er, great,’ I told Charley, in two minds over whether or not to ask her if there was going to be a beer tent or if this was a bring-your-own-booze sort of shindig. In the event, I decided to play it safe and simply ask how much tickets were.
‘It’s free, you lummox. There aren’t any tickets. It’s a rally,’ Charley told me, a hint of amusement in her voice.
‘Oh yeah, no, I know that. I mean, what about when they bring the buckets around? Do we just chuck in a couple of quid or something or are they going to want bank details, because I’m a bit skint at the moment what with the old…?’
‘No, Terry, this is a political rally, not a fund-raiser. You won’t be asked to contribute anything, just your voice,’ she assured me.
‘Oh. Oh, all right, then. Yeah, sure. I mean, if it’s for a good cause,’ I told her. ‘Where shall I meet you, then?’
I’ve never been to a football match before but I’ve occasionally made the mistake of trying to drive through Selhurst on a Saturday afternoon when Palace were playing at home, so I’ve seen what crowds look like. Let me tell you this, though, those football crowds had nothing on the crowds that greeted me at Hyde Park – in terms of numbers or duffel coats.
I’d caught the train to London Bridge, then the Tube up to Bank and then along to Marble Arch, and the closer the train had got to my stop, the more the carriage had swelled. All along the Central Line the platforms had been mobbed, though at first I just put this down to it being Saturday afternoon and central London being what it was. But more and more people squeezed aboard our train until there was barely any room left for air. And that was when I suddenly remembered just how much I hated central London.
It probably took fifteen minutes to get from platform level at Marble Arch to the surface, though even once out of the station the whole place was still heaving. It was particularly packed around the entrance of the Tube itself, making me wish I’d chosen another spot to rendezvous with Charley and her mates. But luck shone on me when a nearby lamp-post became free and I suddenly had something to lean against… … for the next forty-five minutes.
‘Oh, hello. Hello [kiss kiss]. You haven’t been waiting long, have you?’ Charley said, all in an excited tizz with herself.
‘Grumble grumble fucking grumble,’ I replied, practically biting my tongue in two, though Charley wasn’t really listening.
‘Ooh, where’s Clive and Simone? Are they not here yet?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t seen them,’ I replied. ‘Look, just give them a call in a bit and arrange to meet them somewhere else, like across the road, or in the park, or in a pub. Anywhere. But let’s just get away from here, can we, please?’ I pleaded, my patience shaved down to punching point by a never-ending procession of worthies, Worzels and wankers who’d walked straight out of the Tube station and straight into me without so much as an ‘excuse me, mate’.
‘Hold on, just got to wait for CT and Hugo,’ Charley told me, really topping off my day.
Not Hugo. Not that gooseberry.
‘All right, geezer? Fucking mental, innit? Wasstheword?’ Hugo gor-blimeyed when he bounded into view. I reluctantly shook his hand to say hello but pulled it free before he could go through his geezer pat-a-cake routine with me again. Hugo was the last person I wanted to see on this rally, but at least I was here to keep an eye on him and Charley.
Hmm, small-minded, jealous, control freakdom. Not good.
I shook this thought from my mind and passed my hand over to CT.
‘Glad you could make it,’ CT smiled, making do with a simple handshake. ‘Surprised to see you here, to be frank.’
‘Me? No, I love this stuff, I do,’ I told him. ‘What are we burning again today? Books or bras? I brought both with me this morning just to be on the safe side.’
After a token five minutes waiting for Clive and Simone, we chucked in the towel and upped stakes for Hyde Park across the road, and once through the gates we were able to fan out and reclaim a little personal space – a luxury I hadn’t known since Holborn.
‘Look at this, it’s well naughty, innit,’ Hugo reckoned, eyeing all the ‘smash the system’ placards through his new two-hundred-quid Police sunglasses before taking a shitload of photos on his iPhone and emailing them to himself at home. Unbelievable. Him and Charley. Unbelievable.
Unlike the crowds I got stuck behind at Palace, the individuals who made up this jumbled jamboree looked a right pick ’n’ mix lot. Student types mingled with pullover-wearers, crusties rubbed shoulders with trendies, and anarchist punks queued patiently behind dyed-in-the-wool union rabble-rousers to sign petitions handed out by professional protesters. About the only people not here seemed to be people like me. But then again I guess it was Saturday afternoon, they were all at Palace or Spurs or QPR or West Ham, cheering on their teams and shouting names at the man in black rather than lobbying to have his debts cancelled.
We sidestepped our way farther and farther into the park, towards a big raised stage and the ever-thickening crowds, until we could go no farther. Smelly, dirty eco types and chubby little fat student birds hemmed us in on all sides so that it was like being back on the Tube all over again, despite the fact that we were stood in the middle of three hundred and fifty acres of open parkland.
‘Do we have to be this close?’ I asked. ‘They have got microphones, you know. We’ll hear them from back there too.’
‘But I want to get a picture of Annie Lennox,’ Hugo argued, keen to show his commitment to the cause. ‘I heard she’s going to speak.’
‘Well, as long as she doesn’t fucking sing,’ I replied, scoring a turn of the head and an angry glare from some frumpy little tub of pent-up frustration in front of me.
Annie wasn’t the only celebrity on show either. More than a dozen actors, pop stars and politicians pencilled themselves in to thump the poor and needy’s drum for them this afternoon, and my mind couldn’t help but drift back to the last big celebrity showcase that was supposed to have made a difference – Live 8. I didn’t go to it or nothing, I just saw it on the telly, but I specifically remembered it because act after act came out onstage and gave themselves, the crowd and everyone who’d tuned in a big collective pat on the back for making history and changing the world. Hallelujah, and aren’t we the bee’s bollocks?
Yet here we were all over again. The same old faces, the same old placards, the same old poverty and the same old rallying cries. The only things that had changed were the T-shirts.
So what had happened?
I don’t know. Smarter blokes than me could probably tell you, but I’ll take an uneducated guess if you like and say that half, if not three-quarters, of all the people who turned out for these sorts of parties probably didn’t really give a tuppenny fuck about world poverty. Not really. Of course everyone cares. Hugo cares.
I care. My dad cares. The lads on the site care. How can you not when there are children starving in the world?
But there’s a world of difference between caring and being seen to care.
A good proportion of the people at this rally, I reckoned, were more interested in having a cause to get in a strop about at parties and a nice little collection of wrist bands than actually changing the world. And I mean genuinely, seriously changing the world. All the students, the crusties, the trendies and the punks, the pullover-wearers, the rabble-rousers, the eating disorders and the activists; they looked on the surface like a wide and diverse cross-section of society, but to me they all looked like they’d probably grown up in the nicest houses in the leafiest suburbs and arrived here via three years of Student Union sit-ins.
Of course, this could just be me generalising and I’ll be the first to hold up my hands and admit that I can’t see into other people’s souls, but this is how it seemed to me after six months on the Islington dinne
r party circuit. It was so often about image for so many of them.
I was there.
I led from the front.
I cheered the loudest.
I cared the most.
I manned the barricades.
And I got a picture of me with Annie Lennox.
It’s a nice story to tell your mates and it shows you’ve got a social conscience if you’ve put in the hours weeping over the little people, but does it actually make the slightest bit of difference to anyone? I mean, real, actual, serious difference?
Of course it doesn’t. How could it? Marching in a big circle around London, stopping the traffic and closing Oxford Street for the afternoon. How was that going to feed one starving orphan, African or otherwise? I couldn’t figure it out, but like I say, I’m not really all that clued up about these things.
All I did know was that Charley, Hugo and CT – oh, and Clive and Simone, who’d just caught up with us – got paid about a quarter of a million pounds between them for flogging us ketchup, publicising celebrities, managing unit trusts, laminating pinboards and filming me eating my sandwiches, yet here they all were rallying against the unnecessary excesses of Western capitalism.
I’d heard Charley herself one night moan on and on and on about the Kyoto Treaty (that’s the international treaty against carbon emissions and climate control, etc.), slamming America for not signing up to it and bashing Brown for not agreeing to stricter targets, yet when we got back to her place I found every light in her flat burning away and the heating on.