although
although there’s obviously there’s paedophiles serial murderers war criminals there’s obviously exceptions you can take all this predestination business too far and if nothing’s anybody’s fault if everybody’s only doing what the world is forcing them to do all just obeying orders then what are we meant to think about morality I mean you’d have to say that Myra Hindley Adolf Hitler Fred West there’s the 7/7 bombers everybody’s innocent you’d have to let them go you’d have to throw away the whole idea of sin of punishment it’s not that I’m religious not especially but you’d be saying in effect there was no right or wrong and that’s just wrong it stands to reason otherwise there’d be no basis for the law all Mandy’s work with the police it would be stood on nothing how would you judge anybody there’d be no one to condemn for anything and, and, and there’s another side
if no one’s evil how can anyone be good how is there such a thing as virtue or a virtuous act if everything we do is preordained just as you couldn’t judge the guilty there’d be no way you could even recognise a saint a decent person no way that we could reward somebody for outstanding work by giving them a medal, say, or making them an alderman I’m only using that as an example but I mean you’d have to throw away Mother Theresa Jesus Ghandi Princess Di not that I ever thought that much of her to be quite honest, clearly there were those who did, there’d be no heroes heroines no villains and what kind of story would that leave us with we’d have no way of shaping a society I can’t imagine one how could we impose any sort of pattern any sort of meaning on our lives how could we tell ourselves we were good people no, no it’s ridiculous there has to be free will or all of this is just a story just a pantomime with all the world a stage and all the men and women merely players it’s free will or free Will Shakespeare that’s quite good that I’ll perhaps remember it and put it in the column no it’s like I’ve always said how everyone’s responsible for what they do and how they act although in certain circumstances, I’m not saying mine, there might be strong extenuating reasons why they feel they should do one thing rather than another free will it’s a complicated issue
Katherine’s Gardens just across the dual carriageway Garden of Rest they used to call it when the Mitre was still standing up in King Street just across the road from the Criterion there used to be that statue there the Lady and the Fish she had these hard stone tits it was like an erotic idol standing at the garden entrance I think later someone knocked the head off so they moved it out to Delapré and all the girls the prostitutes they’d either have the cab firm next door to the Mitre run them to their flats in Bath Street or they’d have a quick knee-trembler in the bushes the police would turn a blind eye for a hand job mind you all the trade’s moved down to the St. Andrew’s Road these days between the station and the Super Sausage Quorn Way all up that end where I saw the stripy-haired girl that time otherwise the Boroughs is just how it always was I mean we put the concrete bollards up blocking the streets from Marefair all the way to Semilong we thought it might discourage the curb-crawlers but it’s not made any difference all it’s done is make it harder for the ambulances or the engines to get in if there’s a fire say in St. Katherine’s House where all the dregs all of these kids straight out of care get placed the tower block well the fire services condemned it and yet there’s still people being put there so God help whoever’s council leader if it all goes up in flames you know I miss it sometimes but I’m well off out of all of that the stress it puts upon you knowing things like that the worrying in case somebody finds out, all that on your mind and obviously the people in the flats you worry for them too and it would be a dreadful thing if that should happen right there where the Great Fire broke out in the 1670s whenever but then on the other hand a lot of the planned changes to the area could go ahead so it’s an ill wind and all that although of course no one wants that to happen I’m just saying if it did
of course this thing about there being no free will then just because we might not like it or we might have to surrender things that we regard as moral certainties that doesn’t mean it isn’t true
the gardens at the back of Peter’s House in Bath Street on my left now everything looks grey and threadbare litter all the usual it’s depressing and across the street you’ve got the Saxon the hotel the Moat House sticking up down at the foot of Silver Street with all the scalloped frills the pastel colours it reminds me of an ornament you might stick in a fish tank though I don’t know why, at least it’s better looking than St. Peter’s House I think I can remember when they put the Saxon up in 1970 I think it was whereas the Bath Street flats they’re 1920s 1930s and they show their age the fancy brickwork that’s got cracks and fissures sprouting tufts of yellow grass of course when they went up same as a number of the flats around the Boroughs they weren’t meant to last this long they were intended as a temporary measure but with nowhere else to put the people I imagine that they’ll be there either till they die or till their homes just crumble down to dust around them what was here in Horsemarket before the flats I wonder I suppose the clue’s most likely in the name horse-traders wasn’t it or did I hear it was horse-butchers there was once a knacker’s yard I think down near Foot Meadow so perhaps oh God that’s broke my dream my other dream I had it just last night oh God
I was where was I, I was in my vest and underpants again and I was I know where I was it was a cellar a Northampton cellar in the dream for some reason I think of it as being Watkin Terrace Colwyn Road one of them up there by the Racecourse but the atmosphere it had it felt like somewhere from the Boroughs somewhere really old and I remember now, before that in the dream I’d been just walking in those big grass wastelands with the flooded earthworks giant disused railway bridges and just single red brick buildings sticking up, middle of nowhere under heavy skies a bit like that one house still standing at the bottom end of Scarletwell Street but it’s weirder it’s a place I’m sure I’ve dreamed about before perhaps since I was little but it’s hard to tell I’d somehow got inside this house at first there might have been somebody with me but I lost them and the only way that I could get to where I thought they might be it was through this sort of granite shower-block where the lights were out and there were all these toilets without proper cubicles around them and they all had their seats missing or were overflowing all over the floor and I went on and down these stairs, stone stairs and then I went the wrong way and I found myself in these they were like cellars and they were all lit up as if by electric light although I don’t remember seeing any bulbs or lamps and on the floor the rough stone floor it was like straw and sawdust horrible mixed in with it there was a lot of blood and shit you didn’t know if it was animal or human and there was it looked like fish innards and skins and strings of meat all rotten in the corners and I must have gone from one part of the cellar to another trying to find my way out and suddenly there’s the mad poet bloke the one who’s always pissed Benedict Perrit he’s lived down the Boroughs years everyone knows him though I’ve never had a lot to do with him myself he’s standing waiting for me in this cellar smells of frightened animals like in a slaughterhouse I’m getting nervous I explain I’m lost and ask him how I can get out and he does this peculiar high-pitched laugh and says he’s trying to get further in and I wake up with the old heart going at nineteen to the dozen I know that it doesn’t sound much but the atmosphere it was that atmosphere that hangs around the Boroughs and it always puts the shits up me it’s I don’t know it’s ancient, stinks, it isn’t civilised older than that with its collapsing buildings people its collapsing past it’s like a Frankenstein thing stitched together from dead bits of social engineering it’s a monster from another century resentful in its ominous reproachful silence I can tell that I’ve done something to offend it that it doesn’t like me but I don’t know why time and again I wake up sweating here we are the Mayorhold Merruld the old dears down here pronounce it, makes them sound half-sharp