Soliloquy

First published 21st July 2017

Along Desborough Road, 20 minutes’ walk from the town centre: The Step In Café has a “no loitering” sign. Loiterers throng the frontage of Mo’Fro Barbers & Coral Betting Shop—a favourite spot for Afro-Caribbeans and their admiring hangers-on. At far right is Cool Runnings, where they sell Jamaican food

Idle thoughts while walking into town, Friday lunchtime …
It’s noon but the sky is darkening and the wind has suddenly whipped up as I walk along the Desborough Road, trying to justify not bringing an umbrella, on my way to meet Karleen in the pub. Feeling myself to be “somebody”, not in relation to anyone else but more like Whitman’s “I contain multitudes”. This is my terrain. I belong here, whether or not I’m respected, or even accepted. I think I’m suitably dressed and look good. Why not? Everybody should, to the best of their ability. That’s what people on this street like to do, no matter their stature, no matter what shape they’re in. It’s that kind of street. Even before I knew of my real father, I sometimes felt myself to be “of the earth, earthy”, somehow “rough trade”, though never in the homosexual sense. As well as an autodidact scholar.

I pass a black dude, with reflective sunglasses and a spring in his step. And others similar. Two white guys now, they think they’re cool. I’d say they are. A guy stands in the doorway of the “Food and Wine” shop looking shifty. As well he might. I think he owns the shop. If you own a shop, you want to take a breath outside, when you don’t have a customer. Why wouldn’t you? Taste the fresh air, watch the passers-by. Remember you’re alive, not just a shopkeeper skulking all day behind a counter.

And me? My knees don’t feel entirely great; but then, my body isn’t quite its normal, not its ideal. Perhaps it will be, soonish. It’s that time of the week when women with small kids gravitate towards the mosque to do a bit of begging. Charity, in the sense of giving to the poor, one of the commandments for Muslims. So Friday prayers is a Mecca, you might say, for those who want to get some pennies from those anxious to fulfil their duties. These women do look the part, dingy and forlorn, whether genuine or play-acting I cannot tell.

Its true I don’t feel 100%, but that’s OK. I’m functioning. But I accept whatever it is that I have, and whatever it is that I feel. I’m a late-learning student of how to live, and if this is my last day, fine. I’d feel yeah, I got to the finishing line properly. Late-flowering, like Larry, that cheeky reprobate.

I said above “feeling myself to be somebody”. For a week or two now, I’ve had in mind to write a post about being a “somebody” and being a “nobody”. I thought the title might be “The Scheme of Things”. We say things like “In the grand scheme of things, it’s no big deal.” I guess most people don’t brood on such idioms. But I do. I wonder about the grand scheme of things, and whether I shall be a somebody or a nobody. Being a somebody doesn’t require recognition from anyone else, just as being a nobody doesn’t require one to be invisible to others. There is more to say, I think . . .