Bill doesn't want to be friends! *gasp*
Just back from power-stomping to the shops to buy some wood. Just a thin strip. I need to fill in the last gaps in my reinforced lean-to outhouse. It might as well be, seeing as I've trained Skyler the big Australian Shepherd/Lurcher puppy to use it as a shitting space, so it's easier to clean up promptly and so the familiar (not in the slightest!) neighbours don't complain if I'm taking him woods-walking and he has to go, having presumably discovered one of his scats two miles deep in the bush, and recognised it from the photos they took four years ago by peering over our fence, squinting in case you can make out a hint of malevolence in any particular finely shaved pixel, a bounteous opportunity for future civic duty.
I've got some outdoors multi-use filler for the wall and inner ceiling cracks too, although I'm not sure what the point of all this is, beyond life itself, and to make a slight subsidiary mockery of their addictive currency system perhaps, knowing I'm utilizing £215 of monthly DLA for all this, and yet, pretty inevitably, they'll turf me off long time in September this year, or perhaps wonder if the landlord might wonder, and phone up in aftermath to request this within-legal-boundaries construction demolished from the tenancy. I considered leaving a 10ft by 12ft home-woven teddy bear in the bedroom before my departure, just to see if social services would mutter further, and the Police run in and sort out danger by staring in aghast holy horror at the giant bear and pulling his arms off, thus once more presenting their popularity to the local children as they carried the brutalized appendages out for environmental disposal, much as it might make a little bit of money for the Council (sadly, so the idea had to be abandoned) so they can go and spend it on a relative's Georgian house work-space, exquisite sarongs, laminated brochures for the upcoming Mosque (to be displayed in the Harwich and Dovercourt Hub adjacent to The Co-Operative Funeralcare premises up the road from The Bottle Kiln; the Harwich branch - and it would be - of JD Wetherspoons operating out of the former furniture store of The Co-Operative Society), and then a few pennies remaining to tip that annoying Big Issuer woman on Dovercourt High Street, who can indeed speak English, but probably shouldn't.
Unfortunately, I bumped into my neighbourhood sheriff-of-concern, Bill, just exiting his home-built house down the other end of this decrepit Tilbury housing estate of a 'village', by the crap, fake park, in the posher bit (though there are even better areas). I had meant to pass on a copy of my newest book to him though, surely as recompense for the flop of the last one I handed through, but maybe just to, you know, give him a book to read for free, no motivation or planning beyond the non-committal principle that is the sharing of ideas. I have (or have had, as I like to discern), around 7200-7400 books in my own personal libraries, scattered about the place, and could well have more if I could get them. I thought, poor fool me, that I might be doing the old codger a favour. Then we got chatting, much as he didn't really seem to want to, as per always.
Here's what followed. I start first. I can't be bothered to fill in all the contextual he-said-I-replied adverbs & descriptive mannerisms, so just roll with it.
"Hi Bill, I must get you that book I promised. Don't worry, it's not political this time. Not a matter for ideology. Just science, by which I mean physics, not... medical speculation. And, of course, a lot on culture, and civilizational worries. It's also my life-story, everything that's happened up until now, you know, just in case you ever wondered. I don't know if you'd realise this, but I'm not actually a nationalist. I despise nationalism. I don't think it's prudent to delineate countries along nationalistic boundaries, it just breeds jingoism and one-upmanship. I think I'd prefer another option. Something that deals with the community. I have a real dislike for capitalism, and I despise conservatives, not to say that I support communism, or anything Bolshevist; this Bolshevistic capitalism and internationalism, for example. I don't like globalism one bit. There must be a third option in all this, somewhere!"
"You strike me as an educated man, I can tell."
"Oh yes, maybe. Education's not everything though. I have been to university though, yes."
"Yeah, you see, it shows. I mean, there's a lot of people out there not so fortunate, who couldn't..."
"Hmm... I really don't think that's a fair appraisal. I think you'd do better to read my life story. If you're trying to in some way insinuate that I'm privileged, you're sorely mistaken on that. I dropped out of university pretty early. I learn through self-study and buy all my own books to do that. As I say, I think you be interested to know. Also, intelligence means nothing if there's no... bond between people. I don't care if someone's smart or thick. I mean, does it matter? Out of interest, I'm a socialist, very much, and though I don't find a party or faction that matches me, as their ideology prevails over their common sense as people, I think I'm probably closest somehow to Labour."
"Oh yes, yes. I'm a Labour man myself, and always have been. Did you know, I'm actually the Labour representative for this constituency? So, what would you do, do you think, to make things right?"
"Hmm... well I think, definitely, at root, it's about community. To tell you the truth I despise politicians, all of them, and that includes activists, just little amateur politicians in training, and anyone who has to talk about it non-stop at the exclusion of moral reality, pragmatic action, and simply supporting one another, regardless of what fan club they leap into. To be honest, I hate the local politicians. I think they're self-serving and nepotistic. Somehow, weirdly, I'm a Labour person. A Liberal Conservative, Party of Order, Ancien Régime, you know. I'm from a primarily Norman family with Carolingian roots, at least as far as the surname is concerned, and it kind of fits a little. I mean, what's all this corporate egalitarianism doing for us as a community? We're just sat round watching TV on smartphones and smoking pot and playing X-Boxes. I should say, I'm not a Luddite, it's just I kind of hope we could meld a little Agrarianism into that, you know, get back to growing the land, somehow secede - not in a legal sense, don't worry - from all this and get back to each other."
"Oh yeah, yes, yeah, I agree. Smartphones... X-Boxes... yeah. I coach the local football team."
"Yes. I should warn you; I don't think a society can function under multiculturalism. I mean, look at Alexander the Great's empire, look at the Fall of Rome. Both went down for that reason. The first Eastern empire collapsed through cultural treachery, leaving it wide open for more of this to flow in from abroad, and his own men even turned on him for that, and the second's pretty obvious, if you know what happened. It's not a particular exclusive hatred, no sir it’s not, well, bar a few discrepancies which should be stabilized, as much as I notice they don't always like us so much yet can otherwise still utilize the same economics paradigm we're under, much as the ideological tenets we have - and they like - push them to the top for social reasons concurrent to that."
"Oh, you know, but that was then, times move on, people can think what they want..."
"Does that include Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Nicholae Ceaușescu? I mean, can they think what they want? It seems a bit risky. We might have to learn a bit more of that history... books, and such. University's quite pricy, a problem. You see, a big group of people can gang up and push through an incorrect idea if enough think it, a bit like the problem of democracy altogether, given that there are a lot of very stupid people, as we seem to have both recognized. Extremely difficult people, all “oops, I’ll say ‘sorry’ in passing, so you shut up and let me off the hook” mixed with “sorry, will you speak up, we need to see what you're scheming!”, and certainly a consumptively mismanaged disregard for all bodily selfhood; defeatist, come to think of it. I mean, surely that would get in the way of someone like Copernicus, for example, or Galileo at a stretch..."
"Ah... yeah. It's a delicate matter, yes. A very delicate matter. I'm 80 years old myself. I remember this country when they first started coming over, and lived through it, the riots, and all the race problems, that stuff. I mean, it wasn't nice for... I think we should just let people blend in, and settle, to get along."
"Would you still be saying that to a group of blacks with machetes as they continued to stab you to death whilst another group of Middle Easterners chased the Policemen back into their own van whilst they vocally insulted them and then watched them drive off in a puff, no arrests applied? The latter occurred in video news only this week. Do you really think we can escape this at this scale? I mean, I'm anti-capitalist, but we could always retain a national industry preserving home-turf socialism. Surely it's ridiculous that we've outsourced all our own industries, and yet are paying for the imports back, and employing as professionals those who earn on this from their own systems abroad and yet can fly in and siphon off more from our particular little bit of soil, rather smaller in geographical area, much as there's energy devolution given that the net zero tech's crap in efficiency and it takes a thousand years to mine enough of the raw materials necessary for the switch to electric for the industry vehicles and the transport logistics, and the currency's about to collapse, give or take a 3/4 decade, a little less. What do you think all those new integrates will do once we can't keep paying for them, and paying them, and paying out to them? I don't think they'll be pleased. They might enact their revenge too, and make it pan-spectrum, as much as they seen quite good at looting already, and the odd spot of violence here and there, as you recall."
He went to shake my hand at this point. I accepted it, a firmer handshake, for a flippant and perfunctory reason, as was very evident.
"Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. Tell you what, I must go, sorry, I've got to do something I've arranged to do... over there... and I might have to speak later instead."
"That's ok. As I say, I'll get my book to you. It really isn't ideology. There are enough of those. It's just hard-minded common sense. To be honest, I feel like I'm more of a Labourite than you are, in some odd sense, much as I'm certainly some radical at it, much as I am with academia, from which I am, by best approximation, a renegade of some formal assimilation. I hope you don't get all Roger Scruton on me. I'm not so fond of him despite it all. Conservatives get my goat."
"Yeah. I must be off… cheers. Bye!"
"Congratulations on making it to your age."
As I walked off, I thought to myself:
"You've had a better life than me. Tell me Bill, are you black? Well done if so, you've hidden it very well; it wouldn't show, even. When it comes to all this race stuff, I think I prefer the Jews to the English. Not that there's realistically anything in it though."
But there was no point. I am continuing with my day. I hope he continues to age.