Bill Batley's Notebook by Hogg Gil;

Author:Hogg, Gil;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2019-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

16

I Am an Anarchist

I have worked dutifully at the food bank for some months, but I have become bored and restive. It is very mournful work. The helpers are mournful. They are neatly dressed and clean middle class people who frown all the time, mostly ladies of about 50 or 60. They take themselves very seriously. Pullen himself hardly appears but when he does, he strides down the alleys of shelves mouthing imprecations like “Move briskly now”, “Keep talk to a minimum”, “This isn’t a social centre”.

Our customers are of a wide variety of ages, sexes, classes, colours and ethnicity. They are also in a variety of conditions, from dirty, untidy or drunk, to newly washed, smelling of shower-gel and stylishly dressed. Most have smartphones. When in the food bank, they tend to behave as if they had been invited into Aladdin’s Cave. They cannot believe the largesse.

For a while, I adopted Pullen’s military attitudes with my customers, pushing a basic bag into their basket with cursory enquiries about them, shoving them along, picking up optional items while babbling a version of the rules. I noticed that many were wary of me, a few were anxious that they might not get what they needed. There were also plenty who had a sense of entitlement, or thinly veiled rage and some with a cunning eye who were playing a game.

To relieve my apathy, I began to spend more time with the patrons, to talk to them about their many and varied troubles. I felt I was looking at people, for the most part, who were telling me their story from the bottom of a dark cess-pit into which I could only imagine falling. In their talk, they revealed some of the horrors that were in the pit: murder, rape, starvation and disease and the destruction of their families (with some hyperbole, I suppose). Some contended their benefit hadn’t come through, others that they had been maltreated by their landlord and thrown out on the street. All had a story of deprivation, injustice, violence or ill health. None admitted that they were incompetent, though many were. They seldom ascribed their fate to bad luck at the betting shop or the bingo hall, excess alcohol or drugs, but it could have been. They usually found somebody to blame. Some were genuinely needy and some were at a low point which they would rise from with a little help. Some were mentally defective.

When I had checked them in, I began to say, “You are in a bad way. Who is to blame?” if they hadn’t already told me. I received and could compile, a long and incredibly varied list from President Assad of Syria, or some other foreign potentate, to ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the British police, MI5, people smugglers, British colonial asset strippers, the NHS, the Tories and the Prime Minister. Only one or two were prepared to admit that their plight was their own fault. When I asked about their families, I got guarded replies.

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