zany

hey.
i've been away.
in kent, visiting relatives.
the weather was warm.
the relatives were lovely.
i was there.and now i'm back, in london, doing not much of anything.
the weather is still warm. kind of nice but it makes you sweaty and that means you have to wash your clothes more often. and everyone always wants to get drunk, and then you're hot and hung-over the next day.
and i haven't been paid. for two weeks, it's not difficult to pay someone, they do the work and then you give them money. last week they paid someone else. this week's reason/excuse has not been made known as yet. the truth will out.

i watched crimewatch last night, my aunt making the observation that a lot of the criminals were foreigners and immigrants (but there were also a lot of british criminals...). it is true. and there are various issues bound up in that. but robbing a bookmakers shop is still not something acceptable( if you ask me owning a bookmakers shop is also unacceptable) but raping the cleaner of the bookmakers shop is repellent. they showed another guy who is eastern european and gets on buses at night looking for single women, sometimes who are in obvious distress, so that he can rape them.
so you have to say, surely there has to be something done about this. for me you can have a one strike and you're out situation, if you come to this country supposedly for a better life and you then go ahead and f_ck it up, for whatever reason, then i think your permission to stay should be immediately revoked. we send our own people to trial in america these days without batting an eyelid so why can't we send people home who commit crimes? we've got enough of our own criminals to deal with so i don't see why we need anyone else's. and they're not doing any favours for all the people who genuinely come here to work and behave like useful citizens.
i don't know, it's a tricky one, i don't want to get all right-wing about this but i just don't see what we get out of keeping those people here. and we'd have a lot more time and resources to sort out our own problems if we sent all foreign-criminals back to their country of origin. if sweden or any other country did that to me i couldn't complain. i wouldn't be in that situation if i hadn't committed the crime in the first place.
it's a strange world we live in, many parts of it are quite sick and horrible, but in these cases one has to be bold enough to stand up and say 'no more'. poverty may lead to crime but rape is not about how much money you have.
things have to change.
and don't think im blaming all crime on foreigners, but the fact is this country can't even look after its own people, and more poverty means more crime. i'm seriously leaning towards the policies coming in in many european countries where you lock the doors and say enough is enough. i just don't think we can cope. england used to be a country of tolerance but i think nowadays that is being abused. we need to make useful people feel welcome here. but we need to see where we are going and if that means not letting in any more people for a while then so be it. i'm not sure how many of them are really being dealt a good hand taking shitty jobs and living in crime-ridden estates anyway. and this makes it worse for the people who've already emigrated and those who've been here for generations. it becomes an us-and-them situation and at some point the lines will be drawn. i hope this doesn't happen. but the only way i can see is if we close the doors and sit down and talk and find out exactly who we are and what we're about. it's not good extending help indefinitely and not checking to see what kind of position we're in to be offering that help in the first place.

wow, i feel a bit like enoch powell but i'm not saying what he said, i'm saying let's appreciate our diversity, let's work together and let's try to make a better society. we're not going to fix the world's problems by immigration to britain anyway, we will only do that by actively helping the rest of the world to adequately take care of its own affairs.

ok, i'm gonna stop now. glad i got that off my chest.

random events in a dying universe... (burroughs)

i am in london. it is another of my trips. with more bizarre and seemingly-unconnected-and-meaningless-but-actually-totally-connected-and-meaningful events.
tomorrow i start a course. and i feel ok about it. i shall learn the art of copywriting and all that it entails. tonight i watched the world cup final and drank red wine, having made myself a fairly respectable risotto, yes, i was supporting italy but the food was coincidental. if there are any coincidences.
i got to london on thursday, almost missing my plane but being saved by those who decide what becomes of us... that night i went out for an adequate italian meal with my dear friend johnnie 'polyester'. we then went to clapham, thinking shoreditch could get messy. but clapham was dull, and surprisingly empty, johnnie started to go to the dark side, and then we left.
friday i went to portobello market to see my friend 'steve'. we hung out and talked of many things and plans and told jokes and stories. did you hear about the wooden car? it had wooden wheels, wooden, doors, wooden engine. it wooden go.
boom boom. yeah, bad i guess. maybe you had to be there. or maybe not.
then we ate moroccan and drank portuguese coffee and eventually i split and played music you-know-where. perhaps you don't know where, and perhaps it's better that way. probably, in fact. though steve maybe can fix me up with more interesting possibilities. he knows people, which is a very important quality. he has talent too, but even a man with no talent can do ok if he knows people.
and saturday... well, saturday, interesting, i was at home doing nothing for hours, not at home exactly, but where i'm staying. eventually i persuaded myself to leave the house and head out, possibly to steve's stall at portobello yet again. but first i decided i would go to camden, and there i went, shopping for women's gear to sell at the stall. was gonna get discount from a friend but the boss arrive so that went out of the window. these things happen. but, as one door closes, another one opens... whilst in the shop i spoke briefly to an incredible looking girl, and when i arrived at the till she was just before me, and as she paid for her item it turned out she was a pound short, and being a nice guy, i stepped in to save her in her hour of need, i'd like to think i would have done the same for anybody, perhaps for an old lady i would have done, but maybe not for a guy, unless he seemed like an honest person, which too few people do these days. and she was very thankful. and i was happy to help. and she was beautiful and smiled and we spoke for a second. my transaction took a long time. or perhaps it just seemed long as i was desperate to get out and catch up with this lovely woman. and when eventually i did get out she was in the next shop, but we didn't talk there, or the next shop, i think, but eventually we spoke again, and it was good to talk to her, even though she seemed a little bit hidden behind her sunglasses. she had a lovely personality as well as looking amazing. and i was enjoying it, and we walked around together a while, and all was well with the world. then she stopped to talk to a finnish guy, oh yeah, i forgot to say she was finnish, anyway, she talked to this guy and his girlfriend. i didn't introduce myself, just stayed in the shadows... it was her ex, anyway, and after they left she was a bit shaken up. so we talked a bit more, but i was getting the impression maybe i could be bugging her if i stayed around longer so as she went into the next shop i decided i should move on, and she offered me her number, which i gladly took. and off i went, kissing her on the cheek and thinking, yeah, sometimes things are good...
so then i went to portobello and sold nothing. then i played my records you-know-where again.
and that was that.
but i know there are lessons in all this. i'm just fitting them together. i'll take whatever life wants to throw at me. but a date with that girl would have been a nice thing to throw at me. a walk along the river, maybe an exhibition, an evening meal and a drink, followed by a walk beneath the stars. but no, not yet, life seems to have decided i should walk my lonely walk, trotting to my course and back and playing my records at the weekend. for now at least. i know life can surprise me though.
take care
mr w
x

p.s. by the way, in case you all think i'm a bad guy, i'm single these days, for a couple of weeks now.