no name yet
an excerpt

When you see London on television it hardly ever shows how ugly it is. There may be nice old buildings or swanky new buildings in the centre, but the chances that after days of buying Loot and ring up to find all the reasonably priced places are taken, you will in sheer desperation end up settling for a place with a weird smell or a tiny room or dodgy heating , and it will be in an ugly area, a nondescript suburb. All rented accommodation ends up tatty or dirty, especially gardens in shared houses, or the general cleanliness in shared houses. Imagine its dirty when you move it – its not your dirt so aside from your room you aren’t going to clean it. If the tenants have come and gone at different times, there may even be dirt that no-one living in the house actually caused.
So after an unfulfilling and either boring or soul destroying day spent at work, the poorly paid ant workers commute back to ugly houses. The tube journey may be a hell of other people’s armpit smells and not knowing where to look, with the mild state of panic being ignored – a state which is only natural considering you’re under the streets in a metal box wizzing down a track in a tunnel built years ago , surrounded by strangers who may have an kind of dangerous mental impairment, whereby if you look at the funny they’ll gut you like a fish. And of course there’s always bombs, water mains bursting, gas leaks, random acts of annoyed deities.
Kim dreams of a different life for herself. It is more beautiful, every where is more aesthetically pleasing, more stylish. More like Venice and less like Green Lanes, which is false advertising. It should be called Asphalt lane, traffic chugging along a row of shops and kebab takeaways, banks from countries you’ve never heard of, people trudging the mile to and from the nearest underground station, many different languages spoken. The only advantage to the area aside from the price was the greengrocers that stay open till 4am, for that early morning or late night seedless grape fix. It also felt safer coming home from working in the pub as there were still people about or at least some normal people doing their jobs in shops , diluting the heady mix of drunk people, bored teenagers, potential homicidal maniacs and pickpockets.
A different life, where things are beautiful and there is no danger, or at least only thrilling dangers.
She imagines a life spent in cafes, the Parisian or Venetian style of cafe, rather than a soulless chain which eats all competitors or a full English with a fried atmosphere of grease, nicotine stains and strong tea. The imaginary cafes are where you watch the world go by, look out at the shapes the clouds make, people watch, make friends with your fellow cafe dwellers – of course they must be artists, poets, writers with moleskin notebooks, philosophers and musicians, maybe historians and scientists at a push, but absolutely no date imputers, accountants, bank managers, fast food operatives, or people who work on IT helpdesks - No one whose thoughts involve the temperature of the server room, or the budgets deficits or implementing any strategies. These people do not exist in the magically imaginary place.
The view from the cafe is picturesque. They may be shops, but shopping is not a hobby here, it is not a pastime of bored teenagers or those workers who sense something is missing in their lives and believe a cruise, a new pair of designer jeans and a tanning salon can fill the hole. Shopping is what you do when you need bread and milk. Pleasantries are exchanged with the greengrocer and the baker’s wife. Though not the dull “looks like rain” or “it’s warm for April” nonsense, they are on first name terms and chat philosophically. In this imaginary land while people may have come from anywhere in the world, preferably with a great recipe for a sweet delicacy like baklava, the Tower of Babel never was, and all races can speak the same language and there is no prejudice, no ghettos, no fear and mistrust.
Outside the cafe, the writers and philosophers smoke a special type of cigarettes which doesn’t give you cancer or make you clothes stink. They fall in love with the waitresses who bring them coffees and beers, bring them flowers, teach them to tango and write poems for them, sonnets which will earn them a living also, so they can remain relaxed in the cafe and needn’t rush home to put on a shirt and ties and go to an office. The waitresses are part time poets and musicians and singers and dancers. They enjoy the company at the cafes, their feet don’t get tired as they only work part time and no one rushes them or is angry when things take time as no one is in a hurry. They smile and make jokes. There is laughter in the kitchen while the chef makes soup. He is a happy man as while he works he feels satisfaction in the job well done, the people around him work as efficient whole, his assistant always cooking the eggs at exactly the right time, or handing him the spatula he needs, remembering to take things from the oven at the right time. The way they move around each other is a familiar dance. They put extra on the plates of those they like the most. Those they know need something to cheer them up get a surprise cake spent from the chef or their eggs and bacon made into a smiley face on the plate. Of course the cooking of eggs and bacon doesn’t get grease everywhere or make the chef’s hair smell. They sell homemade ice cream which is divine and cherry beers.
There is no Job Centre Plus in this magical place. There is an informal employment agency where the baker can go to swap a wedding cake for portrait of his wife – how else would these people live? There couldn’t be state subsidies for the arts, as no-one is paying any tax to fund it. Other municipal problems have been solved by a science with freed itself from working for big business and the aims of a homicidal military and instead made cures for diseases, things that don’t wear out (so don’t need replacing), the non-lethal cigarettes and so on. Then they all retired or became cafe owners, painters and flaneurs. The scientific and the bohemian have gently intermingled as everyone follows their dreams.
In celebration of the wonders of this Golden Age there is a carnival, a time for dancing in the street, drunken camaraderie, an opportunity for fancy dress and music and gaiety. Crime is at the lowest since records began - disease too. People live into a happy old age, devoting time to telling anyone they meet how much better it is now than it was in their youth. They remember when all the parks where tower blocks, when there was noisy vehicles everywhere and people who never smiled and ugly buildings and people who didn’t know what they were looking for but knew that something was missing.
There is also more love in this version of the future. Children are loved; they love their parents who have time to listen to them. Their grandparents tell them how lucky they are, in their day they hardly saw their parents who had to work long hours and spent the evenings slumped in front of the television, while they sat in their rooms and watched a different tv, being brought up more by DVDs than parental input, seeing a world full of crime and unhappiness and murders through their TV window. The grandparents know in their day the vogue was for moral panic, for reporting the worst of the news as it looked more exciting. Journalists exaggerated, dramas were gritty and love was portrayed as formulaic, a short hand could be used to shows it, and always seemed to involve a scene of running, of love nearly lost. It was not love they showed but gratefulness at not losing the things they’d nearly lost surely?
Love in the this world is different. There is time for it for a start – people aren’t force to live at such a fast pace that they never have to time to get to know the people living their lives around them, the fear of stranger danger is gone. The need in the few hours left over after work, sleeping, chores have all been taken care of needn’t be spent on imbibing copious amounts of alcohol and staggering with your Dutch courage to try and meet someone new, impress them, make some kind of connection before the light come up and it’s time to go home to prepare for more work.
In this world people find their soul mates and it makes them happy, they make each other happy. Problems of whose turn it is to wash up evaporate when neither is forced into a life of work drudgery. They have time to get to know each other, to make each other laugh. Having someone they want to spend time with lends it to leisure pursuits such as star gazing, or picnics or spending all day making love.
The daydream crumbles slightly with the dawn. It is a beautiful dawn, clear sky steadily turning blue. It is still cold as the sun had not get warmed up the air. Without the awful glow of many street light, the not inky, not velvety black, the not star strewn sky at night over a city, without the need to escape from her surroundings real life practicalities wobble the foundations of the dream world.
Would they need money? Where would the food come from? There would still have to be farmers and transport to bring the food. Even if everything was local...maybe each person would have to grow part of their own food. There would have to be beekeeper for the honey to make the baklava as well as farmers to grow the hops for beer and flour for bread. Organic farming would be best. And what about wine, pineapples, bananas, ? If the climate wasn’t warm enough or too warm in the place she would be, things would have to be brought from elsewhere – transport, truck drivers? Horse and cart drivers? Or planes.
There is the super sci fi solution of a replication machine, but instinctively she knew it would never make the perfect cup of tea. Perhaps instead there ought to be a transporting beam, a high speed no pollution way of sending food and other things around the world very quickly. Now that would deserve a float in the carnival dedicated to appreciating the inventors.
As she realised how stiff she was from sitting in the arm chair with her legs tucked sideways under her, she thought of getting up, stretching and lighting the gas fire. In the golden age they would have sorted out the fossil fuel, global warming problems surely.
She thought about getting out, past the dust bunnies in the hall, down the worn out carpet on the stairs through the door which sticks slightly when its damp and finding beyond the door another land, just like in The Wizard Of Oz when Judy Garland becomes colour and leaves the black and white world of dead parents, nasty neighbours and extreme weather far behind her.
Kim wasn’t so sure she wanted to be greeted by singing midgets on arrival though. And she didn’t have a Toto to take with her.