We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

white car

by sonja berlin-jones

/
1.
white car 58:54
buy track

about

Yesterday morning the radio was telling us about the protesters in London and how they were blocking Piccadilly and Haymarket and I got the train to the city and arrived mid-morning and you could hear the drums across the city.

London was boring yesterday. London is of course never boring but I just wasn't in the mood and everyone around me annoyed me. It only came to life again when I said goodbye to everyone and walked back towards Waterloo across the Hungerford Bridge and looked across and saw all the buses parked in a row on Waterloo Bridge. They weren't parked. They were moving very slowly. I'd got so used to the drums that it took a minute to notice the banners on the edge, slowing everything right down.

By the time I approached Waterloo Station the protesters were marching past. Everyone stopped and photographed them. Yes me too. I was the only one in sight with an actual old-fashioned "camera". A white car was blocking the pedestrian crossing. The protesters were blocking the cars. My train would be delayed. The loos at Waterloo are still, after about 78 years, being "refurbished".

Inside one of the temporary-loo portacabin things I got talking to a couple of American tourists. Don't worry - nothing pervy - we were waiting to use the solitary hand-basin. They asked me if we were all in a "water closet" - was that the right term here in the UK. I avoided the obvious answer. I avoided the answer totally. Bizarrely I felt obliged to apologise for the squalor of these loos - loo cubicles that are so tiny that you have to stand on the actual toilet to give yourself enough room to open the door to get out.

They laughed. And I realised that was the right answer. It's nothing to apologise for. Laughter is always the right answer. Nothing works anymore. It's the UK's biggest selling point, our biggest tourist attraction. Labour can do nothing to turn it round, and wouldn't even try anyway. The poor will stay poor, but at least the letter from the state funeral director will use the correct pronoun when they freeze to death.

I miss the class war. The protesters yesterday all over London were just a ride in a useless Disneyland.

recorded this morning, photo outside Waterloo Station yesterday afternoon

credits

released April 25, 2023

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

sonja berlin-jones image

sonja berlin-jones Southampton, UK

katharinebeastman.bandcamp.com

contact / help

Contact sonja berlin-jones

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

If you like sonja berlin-jones, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring Riley Pinkerton (aka The Rat Queen) from the theatrical NYC rockers, Castle Rat.
listen now