22 July 2005

We returned to the flat after a dismal day during which it became clear that I possess neither the patience nor the motor coordination to saw 8’x4” panels of  4 mill plywood into interlocking segments that will then elegantly insulate the garden office walls.  A largely wasted day, apart from an hour in the Red Lion getting outside fishcakes with bits of bacon in them, & two pints of Archer’s.   A sense of proportion was swiftly gained on hearing of the shooting to death by police of a young Asian man on the platform of Stockwell (South London) Underground station.  Additionally, two men have been arrested in connection with yesterday’s attempted bombings, one in Stockwell, the other in Birmingham.   The efficiency of the police & security services is impressive.  The response networks have been in place & actively employed since the early ‘70s, but the striking element in the swift apprehension of suspects is the apparent breaching of the protocols of secrecy that kept the families of first four bombers in total ignorance of their sons’ activities.    We await further developments, with particular regard to the man shot dead in front of passengers at Stockwell station. There is a sense here now of battle being joined.  All towns & cities with substantial Asian populations will be subject both to increased police scrutiny & local prejudice.  Both Hitchin & Luton, the two towns either side of Great Offley, have large Asian communities. I fear for the Moslem minorities in both.   #   This announcement may seem excessively coy, tucked away inside a workaday post. Not intentionally so, however. See it more as a reflection of Emma’s & my horribly unsentimental view of things matrimonial.  On Wednesday August 10th we’re getting married.  It will be at Hitchin Register Office; the service will be one of the shortest on record; only immediate family will attend; when it’s over we shall run at some speed into the centre of town for big drinks & a meal. And the following day life will proceed much as usual, the only significant difference being that both life insurance & the kids’ welfare will be made the more secure.  As for Emma & I, our feelings for each other will be unaffected by the State’s ratification of our relationship.   #   THREE PICTURES FROM VIOLENT DELIGHTS IN PERFORMANCE.   Or not. ‘NOT FOUND’, I am informed, even though I placed them carefully in the relevant folder & upstreamed them in the usual way.  Maybe tomorrow… 10:59:05 PM    Mmm? [] Nearly a full week from the end of my last term. A dreadful year & a grim final couple of days.  As time passes & I move forward into new territory I shall peg the moment of career closure from my parting with my street theatre cast on the Thames Embankment.  The rest is silence…   #   We’ve been doing what we can to advance progress with the preparation of the new house.  Although the quality of the building work seems to be high, members of the various crews have taken full advantage of the British worker’s right to stand motionless for long periods of time sucking on mugs of tea, or coiled up in the cab of the van with a fag on & a copy of The Sun, or striding up & down the roadway yelling, “Not a problem, mate. Yeah, no, what? No, yeah, not a problem, mate” into a mobile ‘phone.  When I turned up unexpectedly yesterday, the front door flew open & a guy came sprinting out with a toy water cannon. As he leaped up into the cab of the lorry & locked himself in, another guy appeared in the doorway similarly armed. When he saw me approaching the house he disappeared; when I entered he was plastering a wall.   Today Emma & I painted the 14’ x 10’ cabin we’ve had built at the end of the garden.  She reckons it looks like a South Coast beach hut, but as we splashed away I had visions of Sam’s nest in the West…   #   More London bombs.  The news is still breaking as I write, but it seems clear that what could have been carnage on a comparable scale to the massacre of two weeks ago was averted by none of the bombs fully discharging.  It looks a little as if only the detonators exploded, suggesting dodgy workmanship by the same hand.  Such is the sophistication both of the investigative methodology & the coordination of the work of the various agencies, it’s likely that arrests will be made soon.   This latest set of incidents can only provoke further the baffled discussion of the inspiration & motives of the bombers.  It’s simply not enough to attribute them to the disaffection & alienation of Moslem extremism. These bombers are not young men whose obsessive corruption of the tenets of Islam has been bred in the perpetual battlefields of the South Bank or the mountains of East Afghanistan. They’re British citizens from the streets of Leeds, just 2 hours drive up the A1, or from the housing estates of Luton, just 10 minutes from Great Offley.   #   Sorry, folks – I’ll catch up with comments & visits over the next few days.     12:05:02 AM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2005 Dick Jones. Last update: 01/08/2005; 23:34:29.