ENGLAND REMAINED RELATIVELY CALM LAST NIGHT
(Inspired by Jonny Marvel)

Hear it read aloud: http://www.mixcloud.com/RebelArtsRadio/rebel-arts-radio-22nd-august-2011/

Jonny’s in the basement mixing up a Molotov. I’m in the Grand Arcade, Cambridge thinking about a poem. Thinking about a poem. Get this. Thinking about writing a poem. That’s writing. Not rioting. I think it’s important to make the distinction. Writing. Not rioting. Not Luton. That’s a place in Bedfordshire. Not lute. That’s medieval stringed instrumentation and this is Cambridge, in the grandest of Grand Arcades. And I’m thinking about writing a poem.

The shop assistant in Gant accosts me, as I loiter with poetic intent in the vicinity of two comfy armchairs, in front of a blue mosaic chintzy tiled fireplace and a faux coffee table festooned with appropriate lifestyle magazines with all the studied casualness of a Bananarama hair-do.

- What are you thinking about? I am asked.

- I’m sorry? I reply in my best middle-class.

- You’ve been standing there for some time now. Thinking. And I have to ask.

- Yeah, that’s right. I’m thinking.

- But why are you writing notes?

- Notes?

- Notes.

- Yeah, they’re notes for a poem.

- Well, I have to ask, she says defensively as she walks away.

For all the world looking like I’ve just goosed her with the unrubbered end of my HB pencil.

- Why? Why do you have to ask?

- Security.

- Security?

- Yes. Security. We have to ask.

She doesn’t elaborate. So I do.

- What? In case I’m a security risk. Like I could be EDL, Al-Qaida or a looter planning a riot or…

- Are you?

- Am I what?

- Planning a riot.

- No. I’m planning a poem... ...about a riot.

The last three words seal it. Off she pops. To get a security guard by the look of her.

Next shop. Jack Jones. All on my Jack Jones funnily enough. At ten past four pm on a Wednesday in a high-end clothes store all on my own with two assistants and nothing more than a piece of rhyming slang in my head and a biro and pad.

The assistant does a passable impression of knowing who Jack Jones is. He of the Trades Union Congress, the Liverpool Docks, the Spanish Civil war, pensioners’ rights, Las Vegas cabaret and the rhyming slang. He gets the rhyming slang and the American crooner but has to search for Trade Union Leader in the dark cultural recession of his social history. He leaves the reference hanging in the air.

So, as a parting shot, I note how Jack’d be turning in his grave if he only knew the things that were happening in his name these days…

- Could be worse?

Could be worse? Could be worse? I can’t resist. I turn back towards the counter, as he leans over it, all cocky for the benefit of the other assistant/bouncer because he does know who my Jack Jones is after all.

- Really? Could it? What could be worse?

- What do you…?

- Go on. Name one thing. What could be worse, I goad. Go on!

- Well... he... he... he could be the next Hitler.

Hitler! Jack Jones could be the next Hitler. I repeat at slightly less than soto voce. I leave Jack Jones at that point in order to laugh my freakin’ head off in full view of the shoppers and security contingent now in entourage around a fully aroused Gant girl. Boy, has she been busy. She appears to have told all those gathered that a dangerous and subversive act of poetry preparation is in progress in the Grand Arcade, Cambridge on a Wednesday afternoon.

Two of the security are high-end: smart shirt & ties, walkie-talkies, hi-tech earpiece gizmos, the works. I hesitate to look too closely at an increasingly militant Gant girl, but I’m sure she’s busy checking that the community police lady has sufficient rounds of plastic bullets and tear gas.

The security look at me and laugh. I surmise it is merely nervous neuro-mimicry. Unless. Unless they’ve got Jack Jones bugged (after all, it wouldn’t be the first time Jack Jones has been bugged… by Mi6 admittedly, and not Grande Arcade security, but anyway…) That must be it. They’ve got Jack Jones bugged and they’ve just heard the hilarious the long-time dead International Brigader and fighter for pensioners’ rights as Hitler gag!

Next stop. The Apple store.

- Excuse me mate. What's this shop called?

I am careful not to cross the threshold this time. Suddenly, politically conscious of how much of a threat my 1968 NATO issue Smock Man’s Combat Jacket and 1963 Liverpool issue accent pose in the Grande Arcade, Cambridge, I stay out of the shop, filled with enough hi-tech gadgetry and gizmos to arm a techno-geek’s Berlin bunker should he have Jack Jones-like designs on our precious liberal democracies.

- The Apple Store, mate. Why?

- Why what?

- Why do you ask?

- I’m writing a poem.

- Oh.

He doesn’t say it but I know by now what they’re all thinking. What? And you thought I might be planning an armed insurrection and Apple is where we lift the techs from.

Apparently, Swarvoski isn’t Russian. Though it’s high-end crystal jewellery is just about within reach of the average oligarch’s income. Swarvoski is Austrian actually. As Austrian as Freud, Vienna, Bach, schnitzel and Jack Jones.

Passing Frank Hart’s Gucci custom jewellery and TW Steel, big in over-sized watches, the next stop on the top shop trail is Kuoni. A new concept of luxury travel. Again I stand outside and read the marketized wordage on its high-end façade, doing my best trying-not-to-laugh laugh, at full volume, until the curious and bored sales clerk emerges.

It is surprising how little buying actually goes on in high-end retail on a Wednesday afternoon. He asks the inevitable, predictable, rote learnt question every language student from here to Shanghai knows. The open sesame of international capitalism no less.

- Can I help you, sir?

By now, I have abandoned polite sarcasm for full-blown persecution complex.

- If I wanted any help from you, I’d’ve gone into your store, wouldn’t I comrade?

- Sorry. I was only asking.

I rant something about joining up synapses and being a jobs worth shop clerk to the devil, but by now I am merely an ex-curiosity and no longer a potential threat. I’m fast learning that the threat of a customer looms larger than actual custom in the high-end retail market. You don’t get this much attention in Primark.

Azendi’s sterling silver 925 freshwater pearls remain unlooted as I note down their names. I ask the thirty-something woman in Guess with a glamorous haircut what the name of her store might be.

- Guess, she answers missing the irony inherent in my request for redundant information.

My raised eyebrows do nothing to enlighten.

- A shop! I guess.

- Sorry?, she replies.

- A shop. That’s my first guess. I reckon it’s a shop. High-end I shouldn’t wonder.

She grins nervously as her colleague looks suspiciously at my notebook which I am now brandishing like Sub Comandante Marcos would a sub-machine gun. My biro has become a pipe full of coca leaves in the armed struggle for the liberation of the proletariat and peasantry of the entire Latin American Diaspora, and it’s only Wednesday afternoon in the Grand Arcade, Cambridge.

Rigby & Pellier confirms the unlikely link between shopping mall and Amazonia with their promotional sign front of shop, which contains nothing but bikinis and glamorous, bored women, not selling any swimsuits of any kind and reading glossy magazines.

Purchasing one bikini, announces the promo, purchasing one bikini saves one square metre of the rainforest. There you go. Job done. Put down the machine gun Sub Comandante Marcos and put on a mankini.

Next stop. Schuh. Not a poetry critic. But another store. Shoes. Two shops away from Azendi. By now names mean nothing. Build-A-Bear Workshop could be The Bilderberg Group. The White Shop. (Everything’s white.) The Pen Shop (Yep. Pens) and the ubiquitous Hollister. Someone in a Hollister 22 emerges looking every bit like a Harper Seven in a few years’ time: all gelled hair, vacant smile and retail therapy.

On the frontage of yet another three-quarters empty high-end store, a list of aspirant metropolitan centres. I read out loud including my own additions: Zagreb, Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Antwerp, Tottenham. Munich, Moscow, Berlin, Milan, The Arnedale Centre.

A young woman in pink and glitz from the shop next door to Guess barges her way through pretend community police in low-end yellow bibs.

She blurts,

- If you do start a riot, I’d like a pair of Prada slingbacks, size 6.

But it is the two full-on female officers from Cambridge Constabulary who I engage in conversation. If I’m going down for writing a poem, I want to be shopped by the law not by a couple of hobby bobbies.

- Aha officers, I start, almost relieved. Excuse me I’m just texting a comrade.

- A comrade?

- Yes, a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party. We meet for coffee and chat. She’s terribly sweet. Just a little text to tell her where I am, just in case, I add knowingly.

- Now, how can I help you officer?

- Er we...

- ...you wanted to know why I am causing so much consternation and mortification on a Wednesday afternoon in the Grande Arcade, Cambridge.

- Yes, we did.

- I am writing a poem. Would you like to see my notes? Here we are officer.

As I hold them up, I read an abandoned couplet,

- Carluccino’s the first to go/cappuccinos all over the show. What do you think officer? Too doggerel?

- Well, I...

I can see her literary critical apparatus is on temporary suspension due to other pressing matters. I’m certain, ordinarily, on civvy street, she’d wax eloquent about iambic pentameters and rhyming couplets, a small Amontillado, slippers and Radio 3 on in the background. But not today. Not four days in to generalised rioting the length and breadth of democracy. Not with a sarcastically militarily attired smart arse masquerading as a poet and marauding the Grand Arcade, Cambridge planning riotous verse left right and centre. She went straight for the literal, of course.

- A riot? Why have you written a riot?

- It’s not a riot, officer, It’s the word riot. It’s notes for a poem… about a riot in the Grand Arcade, Cambridge on a Wednesday afternoon in August. Rather than rioting, I thought it’d be altogether better to use my creative imagination to write a poem about having a riot. It’ll be cosmic. Firebombs all over the shop. Kurt Geiger’s windows dished in. The arcade up in flames. Glorious. Can you imagine officer?

No she can’t. Instead she adopts the line of questioning she’s been trained to adopt.

- What is it you do?

- I’m a poet. And a writer. And a teacher.

- A teacher?

- Yeah. Of English.

- An English teacher.

Her grasp of language is outstanding.

- Is that a Liverpool accent?

- It is, officer.

She’s quite pleased with her detective work.

- And how long have you...?

- A long time. I’m resident in Cambridge. It’s a lovely place. Completely riot-free. It is my preferred haven of tolerance and intellectualism in my favourite of all the neo-liberal democracies. That’s why I came here to write poems, officer.

- Can I have your name?

- Why do you want to know my name?

- We like to know who we’re talking to.

I’m disappointed. I thought she might’ve wanted a copy of my poetry book.

- Tell you what I’d like officer. I’d like to go and write my poem now.

I turn to the small throng of two cops, two hobby bobbies, four Arcade security and several unoccupied high-end sales staff and scream.

- Is that OK everybody? Is it OK if I write my poem now? Is that hunky dory with all and fucking sundry?!

Later, in the station, they are helpful enough to provide pencil and paper.

That’s where we came in. Jonny’s in the basement mixing up a Molotov.



Based on a true story.
10th August 2011, Cambridge magicphil@btinternet.com