oh benefit of the doubt yes I remember it should be extended, I think, to those of a certain I don’t want to say class that’s not me and anyway that’s been made into such a loaded term, but of a certain standing in the town let’s say a kind of public figure I suppose you’d call it, getting things done nearly forty years and always always on the people’s side it comes with being from a Labour background and I’ve never been a champagne socialist a Mateus Rosé socialist at one time possibly, that I’ll admit to, though I’ve always had a common touch at least that’s what the wife says no I’m only joking what I’m saying is, I’m part of this community been living down here all these years bit of a local landmark you might say close to his roots and I think people most people respect that when I’m seen out and about like now they smile and nod and recognise me from the paper and I think I’m generally appreciated but of course there’s always one or two
it’s quite a nice night not what you’d call summery but better than it has been Mandy’s out walking the thin blue line with her police friends what with one thing and another it’s not often these days that we’re home at the same time I often say we’re like those couples that you used to get in weather houses those old novelty barometers we had one up in Scotland when I was a scruffy little muppet although no doubt there’d be those amongst the worthy opposition or in my own party for that matter who’d say that was still the case, no with her being out I didn’t fancy rattling round the place as if I was a dried pea in a cocoa-tin and since I stood down from the council what three years ago to as I put it spend more time at home with Mandy there’s not been so much to do I thought I might as well go for a turn around the block perhaps call in and have a swift half somewhere before wending my way back it’s been a few years since I did that on a Friday night although at one point it was every week we change as we get older in what we can stomach and of course a Friday night in town these days is asking for it really with the way it’s gone these sixteen-year-old numpties, half a dozen theme pubs every street it’s like that Enoch Powell speech only rivers full of vomit and not blood although you get a fair amount of that as well down at the A&E it’s definitely a decline I blame bad government and yes to some extent people themselves they have to take responsibility for what they’ve done but it’s too easy I think saying everything’s the council’s fault what people fail to understand is that our hands are often tied but anyway
in Chalk Lane there’s a moderate breeze but not so as you’d notice really left or right here should I go uphill or down a left will take me up into the Boroughs and that can be well not dangerous but on a Friday night and all of the remaining pubs are either dead or full of people that you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time with, right it is then and so into Marefair, going downhill, following the path of least resistance
just across the road there the Black Lion looks like it’s on the way out I can remember when it was all bikers not what you’d call threatening but things could be unpleasant around chucking-out time with the noise and everything it’s not fair on the residents a load of half-baked pissheads revving up shouting the odds but anyway they’re gone now long gone and we’re rid of one more obstacle stood in the way of Castle Ward getting the new development and I suppose you could say the new people that it needs to be a different place a decent neighbourhood to move up in the world not that we’d ever sell that’s not what it’s about it’s an attachment to the district, not for how it is but how it could be living down here all these years of course it’s not our only property but it’s the one that we’re identified with part of our brand if you like I mean the oldest most historic part of town we’d lived here years before I’d heard more than the barest outline, to be honest I was never all that interested but when you find out about some of it well it’s fascinating you take Peter’s Church across the road there put up in the first place by King Offa as a chapel for his sons at their baronial hall in Marefair then it’s rebuilt by the Normans in eleven something and hold on what’s that
a teenage boy it looks like floppy brown hair jeans and trainers with an FCUK shirt on that’s too big for him a lanky streak of piss he’s in St. Peter’s doorway underneath the portico and shovelling something up into his arms as if he’s in a hurry it’s a sleeping bag, he’s dossing at the church the mangy little twat I’ll have a word with Mandy when I see her next oh hey up here he comes stumbling along the path between the flowerbeds out the church gate with his bag like an enormous boneless baby clutched against his scrawny chest and scuttling across the street he’s in a rush alright although I can’t imagine where he’s got to go
“Good evening.”
not a word straight past me and away up Pike Lane Pikey Lane somebody’s changed it to and frankly you can see why though I’ve never liked the term myself well it’s derogatory isn’t it, you know something about the way he ran at me across Marefair like that I felt a bit weird for a second not quite déjà vu but it reminded me of something though I don’t know what it can have been did someone run at me like that across a street before or oh wait I know what it was it was that dream I had I put it down to dodgy seafood at the time when was it eighteen months, two years ago, I was in Marefair in the dream as well but it was night I couldn’t find my shirt or trousers and had I gone outside in my pants and vest to look for them I can’t remember but I know the street looked different in the moonlight was there any moon the dreamlight anyway there were all buildings from the present jumbled up with places that were knocked down years ago and there was that damp creepy atmosphere the Boroughs seemed to have when we were first moved in and in the dream I was just starting to feel a bit anxious and self-conscious about being out in just my underwear when I saw somebody across the street this old chap with a trilby covering his bald head and he ran, he ran at me across the road exactly like that boy just now but he’d got it was horrible he’d got dozens of arms and where his face was it was just a lot of eyes and mouths all screaming at me screaming like he hated me I don’t know what I’d done to make him hate me like that but I woke up in a sweat with my heart going and there wasn’t anybody there it’s just this place with nightmares in its timbers like old farts trapped under bedsheets in my bones I’m still a Marxist to the core I don’t believe in ghosts
and anyway that’s just the sort of fright you give yourself when it’s the middle of the night but you look at the place now on a nice Spring evening you see what it could be, there’s St. Peter’s with the long light on its limestone and then here just up the road Hazelrigg House where Cromwell bunked down before his demanding day at Naseby when you think about it frankly it’s a marvel, Doddridge Church just up Pike Lane back there across the years people have said it must be awful living in a tiny neighbourhood like that but honestly it’s not it does us anyway a bit of smartening up we could be happy here and if the district’s small well then so what I’m not a big chap in the height department so it’s big enough for me it’s like the Bard said what was it I could be bounded in a nutshell and yet count myself king of infinite space were it not that I
something like that anyway no it’s a lovely night I’m glad I came out for a walk I’m glad that I’m not in my vest and underpants there’s no denying that it’s changed, the neighbourhood, changed since we first moved in was it in ’sixty-eight around that time I mean the south side of Marefair well that’s still pretty much the same at least the upstairs but with different businesses moved in below kebab shops takeaways what have you and the rooftops are all largely how they’ve always been across the street though on the north side it’s a different story there’s the ibis obviously Sol Central the whole complex when they put it up it looked like something out of the first Batman film but now I don’t know on a Saturday or Friday night you tend to see a lot of couples checking in who don’t look like they’ve known each other long drunk blokes with hard-faced younger women or sometimes with spotty lads of course it’s not my business I think everyone should have the benefit of the old doubt but when you think about it yobbos fornicating right where a Saxon baronial hall one stood and after that the Barclaycard headquarters it still doesn’t seem right almost sacrilegious, here we are, the crossroads up the hill directly opposite there’s Gold Street and already I can see where further on towards town centre there’s the usual muppets wandering in the middle of the road girls with their arse-cracks showing and it’s only just gone seven