Fallen Idols

The future viceroy of India, George Nathaniel Curzon, as part of his failed attempt to become leader of the Conservative Party was advised to try some of the things which ‘ordinary’ people had to put up with. So he tried to catch a bus. He hated it because, as he told one of his colleagues, the driver wouldn’t take him where he demanded to go. Didn’t really understand the principles of bus routes and was antipathetic to the whole idea of the common herd. I felt something of the same rejection travelling by bus myself today.

Before you get too aerated about my snobbishness, I am perfectly aware of bus routes and payment and having to stop for other people etc. No, the cause of my discomfort was an elderly gentleman wearing jam pot glasses, with dirty grey hair and whose right arm and hand were grasping a crutch. No, again, nothing to do with disability but everything to do with proximity.

Finding a seat on a bus is a very specialised skill. Not all seats are the same, as Orwell wrote; some seats are more equal than others. Choose the wrong one and you invite people to seat themselves next to you. Some seats incorporate the wheel arch of the tyres into the floor and thereby limit your leg room; some seats are at a different level to others and are not as comfortable; some are narrower, but two seats are excellent. These seats are the ones which are at 90˚ to the rest of the seating facing the luggage storage area. These seats have vertical bars, are elevated and relatively spacious. I took one of these seats at once and, as any boy brought up by a mother like mine would do, looked back along the bus to see if there were spare places which would tempt passengers to sit and not stand, thereby demanding a polite offering of my seat to them. Safe. Plenty of seats, though some of them had people sitting on the outside protecting their inner space.

So, the old guy got on, ignored the spaces further down the bus and parked himself opposite me. What could I do? I offered him my seat at once. And he refused! So, for the majority of the journey I was sitting down with a disabled person standing opposite me.

This is exactly the situation which the phrase ‘exquisite discomfort’ was invented to define. Stop after stop came and went with aged people (it was after 9.30 in the morning so the grey free bus passes were out in force) seeing me sitting down with crutch user swaying gently in my vicinity. He also engaged me in totally incomprehensible ‘conversation’ or monologue as I am used to defining it, to which I smilingly added, from time to time like a Greek chorus of one, the word, ‘yes’. This word has stood me in good stead throughout the version of the world that I have travelled. Thinking about it, it has also got me into some tight spots from time to time, but generally speaking, I come out on top. Which may also be related to some of those tricky situations, to which I alluded, but, let it pass, let it pass? I even pretended to be asleep to avoid eye contact and gibberish translation. It was positive relief when he got off.

The Job Centre person was, as last time, not at his post, so I plonked myself down and waited. He soon bustled in, still wearing that dirty coat, put down his cup of tea, ignored me (again) and went through the lengthy process of changing his glasses, starting the computer and, as a small courtesy gesture today, burped.

Not a penny has passed from the coffers of the state into my humble bank account and, after listening to the only enthusiasm that Dirty Coat Wearer allowed himself (another paean of praise to the Welsh radio personality that he listens to in the morning) and then his only piece of real advice to go to a telephone and press ‘E’ and speak to the disembodied voice. This done and a further telephone call to another disembodied voice in Newport and it turns out that the fault of the lack of cash is to be found in the tardy attitude of my past employers. Though, when they were contacted, they denied any communication with the Newport office; backwards and forwards with myself as the go-between. I think that I have now put these two organisations in touch with each other and I await developments with interest but little hope.

My purchase of The Big Issue was, as usual, a good buy with variety being the spice of life once again. One article that I read with interest and fury was entitled, ‘Battle Royal’ and concerned the ruminations of Jeremy Paxman about the monarchy.

Once a committed republican he now seems to be wavering in his opinions: “Of course I think they [the Royal Family] are democratically indefensible, utterly illogical and a product of history; all these things are true. But among other things, what are we supposed to replace it with if we ever get that far? It seems to me that most of the stable countries in Europe are monarchies. Where is the great model that’s out there? Do you want a president? Do you want the idea of our state wrapped up in a flag, religion or a slogan? Is it not better to have a figurehead that’s removed from the grasp of politicians wanting to satisfy their own ambitions?”

I find this depressing, he is using facile arguments which, as he has already highlighted the element of the illogical he feels that that is a point made and conceded. The Royal Family keeps this country in an almost infantile condition, as exemplified by Paxman’s “what are we supposed to replace it with” a plaintive cry of a frightened child frightened by the dark of a lack of political imagination. I do not take my understanding of whom or what I am, or what my country is by reference to a dysfunctional set of arrogant, overpaid parasites. Whatever their personal qualities their supine acquiescence in the costly charade of monarch damns them irremediably.

He also responds to the nauseating outpouring of saccharine grief on the death of the Queen Mother by suggesting that it is our ‘familiarity’ with the Royal Family that encourages this identification. The Queen Mother never gave interviews, apparently after some impertinent reporter was rude to her in the 1930s, she maintained this breathtaking stance of studied superiority throughout most of her life – and, astonishingly, was loved for it. Going to London at the time that her body (one almost feels that one should capitalize those words, Her Body, sounds so much more appropriate) was lying in state, the sight of the meandering crowds of people waiting to get a glimpse of her coffin made me ashamed to be British. I do sympathise with the family in their loss, but that little woman meant nothing to me or mine, except for the very real symbolism of a false distinction between the adulation given to her generally empty life of sterile ‘duty’ and the world in which the vast majority of her so-called subjects live. As I have always said, much as I hate and loathe Margaret Thatcher (the candle I have of her is waiting to be burnt on the occasion of her death) I have infinitely more respect for her and her real achievements than for any member of the British Royal Family. British people demean themselves by citing spurious justifications for their continued existence.

That’s better!

Tomorrow a viewing: so much depends on what happens in these next few months that, were I to think too closely on it, I would go mad, my masters.