For all those us who have had 'one of those days': keep the faith.
There isn’t much that can awaken me from the general stupor of living in London. I expect shock headlines, fears of airborne virus, the decline of traditional values, and worse, traditional sexualities. Rogue pigeons have weakened my flight or fight response, and if my pocket isn’t emptied by direct debit, it’s emptied by every street beggar from WC1 to SE16. In the 80’s the fear was nuclear war, now it’s not even terrorism, it’s the fear of being mown down by the paparazzi on the trail of a GMTV guest. So, yes; sufficiently indifferent about covers it.
Sufficiently indifferent until I came across something in the World Book Encyclopaedia, Volume 1: A-B. I was reading up about “Animals” because having left the womb 27 years ago - and Ireland about four - I was totally disconnected from any meaningful relationship with mammals, four legged friends, or those with gills. Anyway, I was on to sponges, which “swim freely (how nice!) with cilia (hair like extensions of their bodies: think mullet).
“However (the verbal equivalent to the proverbial ‘dark cloud’), these young animals soon attach themselves to rocks or other firm objects and stay there for life”. The cilia bit didn’t scare me. What made the blood drain from my face, and my pupils dilate, were two little words that sounded and echoed loudly in my head, ‘for life’. How terrifying.
My mind raced. Where can I find the closest sponge, and how can I go about freeing it so it can continue to swim freely? Do I have a snorkel? Do I have the bus fair? I dropped my head; no on all accounts.
“For life” terrified me. It sounded like a key locking a box that I had no control over. I could hear all variations: ‘You’re diabetic...for life,’ ‘She’s going to be fat...for life’, ‘You’re going to be married...for life’. The sweat dripped from my nose unto the page. Maybe there were some happy things that happened for life? ‘You’re going to be rich...for life,’ ‘You’re going to be in a loving relationship...for life,’ ‘You’re going to breed dogs...for life’. Maybe. Just maybe.
What terrified me so? And how did those two little words pierce through that stupor to the brave and resilient brain cell that withstood years of retail, and that was still, in the words of the immortal Bonnie Tyler, holding out for a hero? Then it came to me, the little brain cell squealed: ‘You’re going to be in London...for life!”
Back in your cell, brain cell!
Was that it? Was that the worst that could happen? Was that what I was so afraid of? Was London even that bad? It was the surety of the expression; the finality. I saw myself in the sponge. I too had roamed, happy and salty, throughout my days, only to one day see a nice rock, and with innocence swim by and unintentionally attach myself there (to fulfil a moment’s inquiry) for...life. This is all sounding a bit Freudian.
What a bastard life was to trick me so!
It was so metaphorically loaded: a lifetime’s pain, for a moment’s pleasure, hills always greener further off, a moment on the lips, forever on the hips. The fate of the sponge, I resolved, would not be mine. I had to not be a sponge. I had become a vertebrate!
I went to my balcony. I threw open the door and my bathrobe, and I stared full on at the Gherkin, St. Paul’s and the BT tower, and screamed: “Hear me, miscreants! I will not be a sponge. I will grow vertebrae. I will not live here for life. I will cast down this milky film thou, smoggy bitch, has kept over mine eyes these four years, and I will take night classes, and go to the gym, and join eharmony.co.uk and start converting my Tesco club card vouchers into travel tokens...you will not have me for life!”
“Shut the fuck up” came the reply, “or I’m calling the police”.
I closed the balcony door, and sat on my couch. My hair swept with the wind, and a ruddy glow on my buttocks. I looked at the sponge, etched in grey in the Encyclopaedia. I traced its shape with my thumb. But this is natural for the sponge, isn’t it? This is life? Its only foolishness, boy, to think that you will never be claimed, never settle down, never start contributing to a pension. These things will happen. Do they have to? I asked myself. Yes, it may be natural for the sponge, to stay there ‘for life’, until it gets plucked, dried, entombed in cheap plastic and sold in Boots. Then again, perhaps the same destiny awaits all of us.
I continued reading. After such a powerful promise to the elements on my Bermondsey balcony, I felt at once entrapped back in the confines of the sitting room. I had so nearly escaped. I had nearly grown wings. Was there to be any release, any promise, any hope? Was I always to remain a sponge, ‘for life’?
I continued the next paragraph. “Snails travel on roadways that they make themselves”. My heart leapt beyond the confines of ecstasy. One moment before I was in the throes of anguish, now I was higher than a high note in a Bee Gees song. I raced to the balcony, kicking off my slippers and my bathrobe. Once again I threw open the doors, and faced London and its immovable grin,
“I’M GOING TO BE A FUCKING SNAIL...ON A ROADWAY THAT I MAKE MYSELF”
And I did.
