Local hard men in black leather, thigh length jackets bring their pit bull/staff crosses to ‘do their business’ here. These men do not carry pooper scoopers. I can’t wait to see the sign writer make a citizen’s arrest and demand a £1000 on the spot fine.
The grim window is open and reggae blares out. Satellite is received: cricket, Arsenio Hall, stuff they have on Sky Digital in America. Somebody’s mum looks down on the kids at the bus stop, a picture from when she was young and the view was earth red and aquamarine. This is her room with a view although she has an even bigger view from the sky where the earth is as big as a beach ball or small as a fly’s eye.
Blag Lady interviewed a Char Lady this week. (I know Char is not very PC as a phrase, but Domestic Cleansing Associate just doesn’t have the same ring to it.) It was not Agnieszka as pictured. Agge has a pierced tongue, a gypsy scarf with little mirrored discs hanging from the fringe and something about those Marigolds shrieks ‘golden showers’. This was borne out by the fact that all the boys who saw it felt instantly compelled to make jokes about ‘dom’-estic services.
I’m not convinced Agge’s marketing strikes the right note. Does she not realise that women employ cleaners? I recall with startling clarity the advice Julianne Moore gives to the drippy Ann Somebody-or-Other in the equally flaccid nanny-goes-psycho shocker The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: ‘never, never, ever,’ hisses the beautiful Julianne, ‘give an attractive woman a power position in your home!’. Of course the dimwit heroine ignores this wisdom and soon enough both baby and hubby are sucking at the cuckoo’s pert breast with gusto.
Mrs Mopovska fly-posted an ad through the door last week. Having established that she was no sultry temptress I proceeded with the ‘interview’ in what I hoped was an authoritative manner. This authority was soon undermined by 1) a lack of ‘Flash Liquid’ and ‘proper mop’ 2) the presence of Ecover 3) my hangover. Seeing as I failed the last ‘interview’ I conducted with a Domestic Cleansing Associate I was delighted that she conceded to take me and my mess on.
However, the initial thrill soon faded: the cream cleanser which she insisted on using on the glass shower screen was not wiped clear, she scratched the polished wood floors, barely managed three rooms in three hours and generally had little or no eye for detail.
The sparkling utopia that was to be my new ‘I’ve got a cleaner’ home did not have the vim I was hoping for. Having engaged the services of a DCA I now have to work out how to get rid of one. Perhaps Agge is the answer after all.
They say it’s grim up North: well here’s living proof of just how grim things can get down South. This is the first in a new series called Grim Windows. (Although it was an agony deciding against THE CLOSE UP and opting for a bit of perspective.) It just goes to show that while we live in fear of the mirror-glassed march of faceless globalisation some things never change: foxes are still dodgy, local newspaper subs still know where to put apostrophes which is no small feat in these days of grammatical heresy, ruched nets still hang and the mono-business is alive and well. Although not having read the story, perhaps it indicates that local newspaper subs have NO idea where to put apostrophes. How many pairs of shoes did the fox get away with? This punctuation suggests two pairs minimum and that shows pre-meditation. A heist so cunning, so daring, so dastardly even Raffles/Ronnie Biggs/George Clooney himself would have been envious. The Streatham Fox would surely have had to fetch the shoes in its jaws, if not sandal by trainer, then pair by pair. A family of 10 are now Shoeless Joes and the Streatham Fox tapdances in the alley with a smirk on his chops and a pink flip-flop thong chafing his left hind paw.
As for the grim windows – how grim can you get? The only thing grimmer than these windows is the view: Brixton Prison.
A greenyblue man emerges from the shoreline and my hand hovers over the N95. I would never have asked to take his portrait, thinking he might go bananas at the intrusion. But, as Little-Caligula points out, people who have gone through the pain threshold to get their whole body tattooed are only too pleased to pose for a snapshot or two on the beach.
I wrenched my ankle in the cinema foyer a few months back and the pain was excruciating. But it was also sharp and intense, and it made me feel more alive. I kept wondering if it might happen again, with an odd mix of hope and dread.
I asked a few questions while I twisted at his feet trying to shift my own shadow out of the frame. When was his first time? DIY jobs it turns out; that’s why there are large, aqua patches on his back and shins; to cover up wobbly Quink inscriptions that probably looked like homework gone wrong.
‘This side is the, well, the evil side, and the other side is more upbeat.’ True: his right side had two winged lesbians kissing on a rock. On the left, I could make out some serpents writhing across his torso
We were opposite Warrior Square, killing time on the beach while an embattled friend made a statement at the police station. I decide that this empty seaside town is full of dodgy geezers. (Unfair generalisation when the TatMan has been nothing but polite, but that is what I decide.) We told this one off for not being more chivalrous as his girlfriend emerged from the water in leggings and a T-shirt, dripping wet and shivering in the wind. He made a quick exit: all he’d asked for was a Rizla.
Back to the interview. TatMan has been on telly, Richard and Judy or Trisha and the tat artist is in…I forget as soon as he tells me. Somewhere on the coast. He’s saving his chest for a portrait of each of his daughters, one on either side.
‘This is all one picture,’ he says, obligingly extending his leg for a close-up. I resist the temptation to ask his name. It feels better not knowing.
‘What does your wife think?,’ I ask. ‘She doesn’t,’ he replies, quick as a needle puncturing flesh.
