What do you do when you come back? Upsweep the old linoleum? Waste untold hours over the underlays of newspapers bespeaking of the relief of Mafeking or of Bill Lowes £3 suits – the identical to which he always wore to Randwick and exulted places. It all gets as screwy and symmetrical as a Rorshach blot. An accident of happening into which you read what you will or wish. A vortex wherein everything is valid – heliotrope or mid-brown paint – moss or rubber plants – white ants or quarry tiles. Expensively reconstructed pull bell systems or rich men’s electronic sifters of the knocker at the door. Of peeling plaster or blasted sand-stone brick – of a garage where the drawing-room was or a motor bike in the hall? Of the fly door butcher or the bulk meat purveyor? Of the horses pooh collector or the distributors of filth into lanes and alleyways. Of neighbourliness or even of a quorum let alone a collection of devotees of St Georges Church?
Not even good old operatic killings.
There’s a haze of culture and the pensioners manage to get the Labor boys re-elected.
The fish and chip shop is strangled by take-away pancakaries and quicharies and pizza plazas.
Children have nowhere to play in Glenmore Rd School. After hours offers them safety from the traffic. The elegant potters vie with antique shops which trade in boarding-house has-beens.
The old pub you should not have been seen alive in is classified A1 by the Trust.
The Paddington Society who made the realty values cannot raise enough for a home.
Pubs are full of exotic grogs for the dine-at-homers while serving a one beer choice to the old and steady.
Mercedes and Jags clutter the Art Gallery tiny lanes while bombs are dumped in noble streets.
You can buy a sandwich at one joint for 50c. and a counter lunch big enough for two at another for 60.
It’s all getting too bloody democratic?
[W.E. Pidgeon c.1975]