Two nights in Leicester and I feel I have been away from home for months and with the town I live in under terrorist threat - Apparently Balham is high on Bin LadenÂ’s hit list. There is an Urban Myth that that is because a girl from Balham once rejected his sexual advances. (This is clearly not true. Girls from Balham arenÂ’t at all fussy about who they put out with. Especially all the women on Sistova Road. All of them. Yes, even the nervous looking, middle-aged one who walks up and down the street all day, talking to herself and seems terrified by any tiny human interaction.)
The point is I would like to go home to die alongside my community. Not because we get on together, clearly we all hate and avoid one another as much as possible. ItÂ’s just that if the girls downstairs were to die horribly in a poison gas attack then I would want to be there to see that. My own expiration would be a small price to pay for getting them back for whatever it was that was annoying me a few weeks ago (I canÂ’t remember, but IÂ’m sure it was important. Or why would the residue of annoyance still fester in my craw?) Ironically they'd probably choose to die in the garden, letting me know only a few minutes beforehand that they were having a private party and I couldn't come.
Instead I find myself heading out of Leicester (always a good thing. The only thing that makes heading into Leicester bearable is the knowledge that at some point you will be heading out again) towards Aberystwyth (which wouldnÂ’t have been my immediate choice of location).
Nothing against Aberystwyth. It’s just if London is destroyed I may have to make a new life amongst these strangers. I will be the last of my Cockney breed (the kind of Cockney who was born near York, then lived in Loughborough between the ages of 4 and 8, then relocated to Cheddar until he was 18 and didn’t actually take residence in the capital- and even then only in Acton, which is scarcely ever within ear-shot of the Bow bells – until he was 22. The best kind of Cockney.), doomed to live a lonely life of sexual incompatability, amongst the people of West Wales.
As it happens, the gig goes really well and by 10pm I am in a car driving back through the glorious, Welsh countryside, towards the gloomy, wet streets of South London that I love.
We listen to the radio for news of the destruction of our homes. But all thatÂ’s happened is that a man has tried to get on a plane with a hand-grenade (subtle). I sort of wonder if these terrorists had access to nuclear weapons, why are they wasting their time trying to blow up planes with hand grenades that they havenÂ’t even had the imagination to disguise as novelty cigarette lighters? Are they really as organised and efficient as we are being led to believe?
I am home by 3am. It seems like months since I was here. I am kind of expecting the door to get stuck on the mountains of mail on the mat, and the ansaphone to be full of messages. But I have two letters and no phone messages. I realise I havenÂ’t even been away for three days.
The clocks run slow in Leicester.
