Blue Collar

by Danny King

  ‘Are you growing orchids or something?’ I’d asked her at the time, to which Charley apologised and explained that she’d forgot. But this wasn’t the only time Charley forgot about that planet she had a sticker of on her rucksack. Newspapers, bottles, jars and tins all regularly went in the bin rather than the recycling, the curtains usually stayed open at night while the heating was on, the taps stayed on while her teeth were being brushed and the telly, stereo and computer all ticked over quietly on stand-by whenever she wasn’t around to use them. What’s more, she had more shoes than some African countries and she never holidayed in Europe, let alone Britain, which meant costly plane rides and cubic tons of CO2, according to Big John at work.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly a saint myself. I only close the curtains, turn off taps and lights, switch off the telly and head to Spain or Devon for my holidays simply because I can’t afford to throw away good money after bad lighting and heating the street and seeing what the beaches in Bali look like compared to those on the Costa. If I’d had Charley’s sort of money, maybe I wouldn’t care if my heating bill was triple what it was or ever wear the same pair of socks twice or something, like millionaires are supposed not to. Maybe I’d live the comfortable, spendthrift life that financial security brings and look to other people on other continents for my worries. Then again, who knows? Too late to second guess how I might’ve turned out if I’d been born to money, so what difference did it make one way or the other?

  She was who she was and I was who I was.

  And we just had to make the best of it.

  ‘Here, let’s get a picture of you two together,’ Hugo insisted, backing away a step and snapping off a shot of Charley and possibly me if there was enough room in the frame.

  He pressed a few buttons and called the image up on screen, then giggled at it hysterically and told us it was wicked.

  ‘Look at Terry’s face!’ He laughed, showing it all around and then to me, though I couldn’t see what the problem was. It was just my face. The same one I’d had on all day. ‘Here, now take a picture of me and Charley,’ he ordered me, thrusting his iPhone into my hands and wrapping his arms around Charley’s shoulders in a way that almost won him two hands wrapped around the throat. ‘Make sure you get the stage and all the banners in.’

  I reluctantly took a couple of pictures of Charley and Hugo pulling faces and raising their fists in militant defiance before handing him back his iPhone when the celebrity speeches started.

  I can’t remember everything of what was said that afternoon but here’s a few highlights:

  According to some barmaid off EastEnders, thirty thousand children died in Africa every day – something like one every three seconds – and this could be wiped out overnight with an aid and grants package in the region of £40 billion, half of which could be achieved by debt cancellation and a restructuring of something or other that I’d never heard of and didn’t really understand.

  Next up was a stand-up comedian who I’d only ever seen in crisp adverts who gave an impassioned plea on behalf of some poor little Ugandan girl who had AIDS, no money for medicine and no chance of seeing her fourteenth birthday.

  Then some singer did her bit. Then half the cast off The Bill did theirs. Then a few more bods who hadn’t had a hit in a while said a few words. Then someone I didn’t know. Then some politician who looked like he needed the publicity. Then someone off Big Brother who looked like he needed a punch in the gob. Then someone else. And then someone else. And then someone else. Each having their say and each whipping up the crowd into more and more of a fervour until I could no longer hear what the people on stage were saying because the clamour for justice, vengeance and the president of the United States’ gizzard had all but taken over.

  Look, I’ll say this right off the bat, that I’ve got nothing but sympathy for the world’s starving. If they’d passed round a bucket, I would’ve put into it. If they’d handed me a petition I would’ve signed it. If they’d proposed putting a penny on all of our taxes to fly medicine out to them, I would’ve voted for it. I would’ve done any of these things and more (with the possible exception of buying Annie Lennox’s new CD) but they weren’t. In fact they weren’t asking us to do anything, nothing at all except walk around London and shout slogans at all the Day-Glo coppers who’d been drafted in to chaperone us around the streets.

  I simply didn’t get it.

  Style over substance, that’s what it was. Style over substance.

  ‘Down with the IMF! Down with the IMF!’ Hugo was shouting along, jumping up and down with the tubbies in front and filming himself on his iPhone.

  ‘Where’s this march going again?’ I asked CT.

  ‘Down Oxford Street and then Whitehall,’ he replied.

  ‘Think we’ll be passing any pubs?’ I wondered out loud, but before CT had a chance to answer, Charley spotted the crowds moving off.

  ‘Hey, look, we’re going,’ she pointed out. ‘Quick, everyone stick together.’

  She linked her arm through mine and held on tight as the crowds around us started to jostle for a bit before finally moving. A few moments later we were marching through the park in step with a hundred thousand comrades, passing through the gates and straight out into a tunnel of coppers.

  ‘Fucking look at ’em all! Fucking pigs!’ some punchy scarecrow next to me screamed when he saw the lines of police on either side. ‘Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs!’ he began shouting, prompting one of the chubby little militants Hugo had been bouncing along with to start chanting the same.

  ‘Pigs? Bit rich coming from her, isn’t it?’ I pointed out, but this was lost in the commotion as crusties all around us erupted into a chorus of ‘Death to Bush’. Personally speaking, I couldn’t see what this had to do with that poor little girl in Africa who’d had AIDS or how Bush, Brown, Blair, ‘the pigs’ or Daddy’s death was ever going to help her or anyone else for that matter, but more and more people began joining in, waving their fists at the steely-faced coppers and flicking two fingers at the helicopters circling above.

  To be fair, a lot of people in the crowd looked pretty upset at some of the more antagonistic elements they found themselves marching alongside and scuffles broke out all around us as a few of the braver do-gooders tried to take on the obvious troublemakers. By the time half a dozen punches had been thrown in half a dozen different directions the Old Bill nearby had no choice but to wade in, and before we knew it people were starting to get carted away.

  ‘I think I can see how this one’s going to pan out,’ I shouted in Charley’s ear, sidestepping some screeching Swampy who was going mental underneath a dirty great pile of determined-looking coppers and almost walking smack bang into someone who was having a game of overcoat tug-of-war with two more brave boys in blue.

  ‘Bit boisterous, isn’t it?’ CT cracked, his face a mixture of concern and amusement.

  A few of the more opinionated gasbags inevitably opened up at the Old Bill as they put their handcuffs to good use, screaming at them to ‘let ’em go, you fucking pigs’, only to find themselves face down on the tarmac two seconds later underneath a few ‘fucking pigs’ of their own.

  ‘Come on, let’s just keep walking,’ I urged Charley, steering her away from one almighty hippy cull and between several others. ‘Ooops. Sorry, mate. Mind your backs. Coming through.’

  It’s amazing just how quickly things descend into chaos. One moment I was part of a peaceful demo, taking to the streets to highlight the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves, the next I was part of a mob, hell-bent on trouble and a punch-up with the Old Bill. Halfway down Oxford Street – and I’m surprised we even made it that far – the whole march fell apart at the seams and all hell broke loose outside John Lewis.

  ‘Kill the pigs! KILL THE PIGS!’ came the cries again, as traffic cones, rubbish bins, newspaper stands and signposts flew past our ears in all directions.

  I looked around and saw that we’d lost CT, Clive and Simon
e somewhere farther back, but Hugo was still with us – obviously, his head down and iPhone now well out of sight to save it being snatched out of his hand and used to knock some copper’s hat off with.

  ‘Fuck this shit!’ he shouted, and for once I was in full agreement with the little tosser.

  A lot of shops in the street had seen this coming and had had the foresight to board their shopfronts up in anticipation of the march. Those that hadn’t came to regret it as unprotected doors and windows were put through in the name of the poor and needy, though I was still scratching my head to understand how this was helping anyone except poor and needy glaziers and coppers, who were all presumably on double time for this particular knees-up.

  From out of nowhere, a loose elbow whacked Charley square in the face and she shrieked and fell back, clutching her mouth. I caught her before she hit the deck and shoved the fucking dickhead who’d swung it with all of my might, sending him head first into a knot of punchy crusties and as far away from us as possible.

  ‘Hugo, help us here!’ I shouted, pulling Charley to her feet and doing my best to shield her from all the pushing and shoving that was going on all around us. Hugo quickly came to Charley’s aid and we sandwiched her between us and gave her the once-over to make sure she was OK. She had an enormous red mark on her face that would turn a lovely shade of blue given a couple of days, and her bottom lip was split down the middle and pumping blood all over her chin.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ Hugo shouted, and for the second time in as many minutes I found myself agreeing with him. Remarkable.

  The protesters… or were they rioters by now? Well, let’s stick with protesters for the time being. Anyway, these twats were now demolishing everything in sight and pulling up steel benches and street railings to use against the chipboard covers protecting Debenhams, Burtons, Next and a dozen or so other shops I’ll be setting up standing orders with the day I’m rich enough to pull on brand-new socks every morning.

  I couldn’t understand why the Old Bill weren’t steaming into them with all batons blazing, but Hugo pointed out that they’d pulled back and formed up into lines on each side of us.

  ‘Oh, fantastic, just what we need.’

  ‘I reckon we should turn back and go the way we came,’ Hugo suggested, over the din of screams and the blare of sirens. This sounded reasonable to me, as the road up ahead was now jam packed up with protesters, while every side street and turning was barricaded with police horses and paddy wagons. About the only way left open to us was the way we’d just come. As things turned out, we’d been closer to the rear of the march than the front, so there was every chance we might be able to duck out of this mess before the Old Bill closed it off, hemming us in on all sides.

  Unfortunately, before we got five yards, the left flank of our riot collapsed and protesters began sprinting in our direction, chased from behind by a roar of intimidation and a tidal wave of Day-Glo yellow. Instinctively, we turned with the crowd and legged it from the oncoming roar. Me, Charley and Hugo ran as one, ducking from side to side through the shifting maze of fleeing bodies and into whatever space we could find. I wasn’t sure which way I was running, it’s all pretty confusing when you’re in the middle of a stampede. We just went with the crowd and after a few hundred yards found ourselves gummed up in the centre of an enormous cluster of bodies, bang smack in the middle of Oxford Circus.

  I don’t know how many of us there were in there, but there was barely a square foot of open tarmac anywhere to be seen. The place actually looked like it had been flooded – flooded with people. We lapped at the walls and the chipboard covers of the surrounding shops and flowed out across the Circus in a nice even dollop, so that only the tops of the street signs could be seen above the sea of jostling heads.

  ‘Shit, you know what, I reckon we should’ve stayed where we were. Crouched on the floor and let the Old Bill run straight over us,’ it suddenly occurred to me. ‘Because I don’t think we’re making it to Green Park any time soon.’

  Oxford Circus ran off in four main directions: Oxford Street to the east and west, and Regent’s Street to the north and south. All four ways were now blocked by an enormous knot of luminous jackets and ten or so thousand protesters raged, snarled and hurled their remaining mobile phones at four banks of perspex shields as they struggled to either break free or win themselves a coconut.

  Noticeably, we no longer counted the pullover-wearers or the real trendies among our ranks. Most of the people caught in this trap were crusties, punks, rabble-rousers and the professional troublemakers who’d probably had something like this in mind all along. As for the rest of the march, I couldn’t tell you. Either they’d all done a runner once the trouble had started or made it to Green Park and were now listening to Annie Lennox congratulating them on a job well done – that was, if she wasn’t in here with us lot, chucking bottles at the Old Bill and kicking McDonald’s window in on behalf of the people of Tanzania.

  ‘Leth get out oth here,’ Charley lisped, holding her bottom lip to try to stem the flow of blood.

  ‘Yeah, come on, let’s go home,’ Hugo agreed, and together we turned and tried to push our way back through the tangled mass of torsos blocking our way.

  It was impossible trying to chop our way through as a threesome, so we unlinked arms and fought our way through as individuals.

  Hugo led the way, followed by Charley and then me. The closer we got to the police lines, though, the tighter the crowds became until, twenty feet from the front, we ground to a halt. The crowds had formed up to push back against the police, but the police were trained for this sort of thing and able to hold their lines.

  ‘Kill the pigs! Kill the pigs!’ the chant continued unabated, and I was rapidly losing my patience with the rest of Oxford Circus.

  ‘Oi, you want to stick a sock in it so we can all get out of here?’ I told one spotty little anarchist who was hanging on to a lamp-post and screaming blue bloody murder from the safety of the rear.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he spat back, outraged that anyone should try to oppress his free democratic right to incite murder. I half considered giving him a quick taster of Mr Left and Mr Right while Charley wasn’t looking, but that would’ve been like taking a spark to a powder keg, so I settled for flicking him several of my fingers before continuing towards the front.

  ‘It’s too jammed, we can’t get through,’ Hugo called back, a dozen or so feet short of the swaying ranks at the front. We looked about and saw there were fewer people off to the sides, so we struck out in that direction, chopping, squeezing and pushing our way through the masses towards the boarded-up shop windows of Benetton’s.

  Once again, we got to within about twenty feet of the grey stone walls before grinding to a halt.

  ‘Thith ith impothible,’ Charley protested with frustration.

  Over the chants of the crowd, I heard the cold metallic voice of authority appealing for calm through a squeaky loudhailer.

  ‘You have been detained under Section One of the Public Order Act and we are permitted to hold you for as long as necessary to protect persons and property and…’ the voice got as far as telling everyone before it was drowned out by the ever-popular ‘Kill the pigs! Kill the pigs!’

  The voice did have one coincidental effect on the crowd, however. As it had come from the other side of the Circus, the east side, some of our ranks broke away from the west and made their way across to confront it, leaving enough gaps for me, Charley and Hugo to squeeze through to the front.

  When we got there, we found a line of grim-eyed policemen, three deep at least, behind a see-through barrier of perspex shields.

  ‘Sorry about this, mate, but can we just get through there, please?’ I asked the copper directly in front of me. The copper didn’t answer. He just stared into oblivion and stood his ground, bracing himself against the swell. ‘It’s all right, mate, we ain’t with these fucking idiots, we just got caught up in it, that’s all,’ I tried to explain, but the
copper either didn’t care or had been taken on during ‘hire a deafo’ week.

  ‘Pleath let uth throogh,’ Charley then tried, with about as much success as me, until I pointed out that she’d been injured in the trouble and needed looking at. This finally brought a flicker to the copper’s face, so he told me to step back and swap places with Charley.

  I did as he said, assuming he just wanted to give her the once-over, but the moment she stepped towards him, the shields parted and Charley was immediately sucked inside.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said, as the shields closed behind her and I watched in vain as she was passed back through the lines and disappeared from sight. ‘Wait, we’re with her, can we go too, mate?’ I asked, pointing to Hugo and myself, but the copper was once again deaf to all requests and back to practising his poker face.

  ‘Would that be all right?’ Hugo double-checked.

  When Hugo didn’t get a response he looked at me and asked me what we were going to do. I didn’t know; join in with ‘Kill the pigs’ was about all I could think of.

  ‘Here, I’ll give my dad a ring,’ Hugo then said, pulling his iPhone out of his pocket and making me and the copper look at each other for the briefest of moments before he remembered his training and snapped back to neutral behind his clear perspex shield.

  ‘What’s he got, a tank or something?’ I asked, but Hugo was already busily jabbering on to his old man.

  He talked for about five minutes, explaining exactly where we were, what we were doing here, how none of it was our fault and how we were worried things were going to really kick off in a minute, before pocketing his phone and telling me and the copper to both hang tight.

  ‘Seriously, Hugo, who is your dad?’ I asked again.

  Hugo didn’t want to say in front of the police, who were now suddenly all ears, so he told me he was no one special and left it at that.