There were two young women playing Irish music on
fiddles. They looked like sisters at least, if not identical twins, and one of
them repeatedly smiled at me as I watched them. I went into a shop to buy
something, intending to put some money into their case when I came out. By the
time I did so, they’d gone. I wonder whether that was life reminding me again
that if you have something to spend money on, do it now. Tomorrow you might be
dead.
* * *
Can you believe that the supermarket trollies
still carry an advert for toothpaste that says ‘the leading brand that dentists
use.’ Surely, surely, surely, nobody’s taken in by that sort of thing these
days, are they? Remember the famous old American one that said ‘Doctors smoke
Camel?’
* * *
The ice cream van made a rare appearance today,
but they’d put the prices up - £2 for a standard cone or tub. That’s twice what
they charge in the nearby cities of Stoke and Derby. It’s what they do in Ashbourne:
they assume everybody’s well off, so they charge more for everything. I
declined the ice cream on principle. If everybody did the same, we could put
the situation right.
* * *
I saw a young lad who obviously came from the poor
end of town. Whatever they wear and however well or badly groomed they are,
people from the poor end of town always wear their origins on their faces and
in their eyes. They live in a different world than the one most of us are used
to. It’s a different form of reality with different conventions, attitudes and
expectations. That’s something the pompous, privileged politicians – as well as
the majority of Middle England – singularly fail to understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment