Sticks and Stones 12

I’m now back at my mother’s flat in Shalford waiting for Suzie to call. I feel like a complete moron, having blown the best part of £500 on horses, fruit-machines and booze yesterday. My hands are shaking and I hyperventilate when I get up. I’ve had two joints and feel twice as bad again for it.
Suzie’s in Cornwall with the children seeing her parents and brother’s family and I can’t wait to have them back. They are the only constant entity that I know, and I’m aware that I have to change my habits to continue in their world. I have gambled away £2500 in the past month or so, and my luck isn’t changing. I have a flat to move into in Lavaur as soon as I get back and I have to make good there. I think that this is my last chance to publish my work; whether it’s music, words or photos, I don’t care. I need recognition as an artist because it’s in me and I need to express it to stay alive.
Well, I’m in France again now. The journey back was hair-raising. I won’t go into it.
The good news is that I have moved into my flat in Lavaur and happily secured my spot of DJing every Friday and Saturday at Les Americains, the new pub that sells Guinness, Leffe and Stella.
It’s only a stone’s throw from the flat. I have ordered amplified speakers, a mixer and decks on the internet and wait with bated breath for them. I have no experience in being a disc-jockey but have been shrewd in buying a mixer that counts bpm’s. What a clever idea that was.
Life at the house is as hectic as ever, only I’m not there all the time. For the last three nights, I have peeled myself away from the family, bidding ‘sleep well’ to everyone with a gentle, loving kiss after dinnertime. From there, I have whipped into Les Americains for a quick one, which has generally turned into a sharpener to a longer pencil of Stella, and I have woken up startled by my new environment, alone, and with time and space for a lazy lie-in before getting up and having a spliff.
Granted, I’ve done my bit for the children and Suzie, which means I’ve done nothing constructive during the day in terms of writing, but there seems to be a sure change for the better in the way of the family.
When I’m there, I’m there. It’s not like before, when we’d both be running around like flies after Clara all day, without enough time to wrap our heads around a simple phone call.
As usual, France Telecom are pathetic and waste my time opening a new line, and the decks I tried to buy on the internet aren’t coming because the company couldn’t read the fax I’d sent confirming my identity with photocopies of my passport and credit card, which I’d spent ages putting together in newsagents.
I hate French authority. They, the state, waste enough of my time that I end up having no time at the end of the day to get on in life, which makes me drink beer alongside all the other losers.
Everywhere I go, there is discontent.
Like in Guildford, the old, the wise, the wonderful, the poor, the rich, the middle class, even the handicapped, have nothing but hatred for their government. Both states seem irreversibly destined for self-destruction, and all who I have talked with know it’s an internal thing. It’s not because of other countries that we find ourselves in this mess. The French are finally accepting the fact that it’s not the fault of the English that Europe is all but dead in the water. They have finally accepted that, because they voted against the euro four or five years after its introduction, the only problem to face is that they now have themselves to blame, which isn’t easy for a proud nation like France, especially with Germany breathing down their neck.
There are car bombs going off everywhere here and the press are loving it.
Like the Brits, they know this is only the precursor to something much more serious, because a lot of people are talking of when rather than if a civil war will take place.
If they had odds at twenty-to-one for a civil war in France within five years, I’d go for it.
I met Fred tonight. He works in a hardware shop here in town and had five plants of proper African weed swiped by friends two weeks before harvest. He has disowned all his friends, hoping that one may speak out in earnest. It’s been three months now.
Fred and I had a great chat about how easy English women are (he was in London at nineteen and did one a night, apparently). He told me about his son of seven months, and I told him about Clara.
Fred wants to move to Kenya because he hates the French and believes they have no sincerity any more. He has lost faith with his own people as I have mine.
I said that sincerity wasn’t a commodity any more and he talked about his time in Africa and how, in spite of its ghastly plight, there remains sincerity and warmth.
The French and the English seem to have collectively passed the moment when America, Russia or China were to blame, and are presently sniffing much closer to home for retribution. It’s almost sad for me to watch, because I have seen this coming for twenty years now and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’ve already started to shrug my shoulders, which isn’t a good sign.
Everyone talks of political unrest. No one is happy. Everyone has reached the end of their tether. We’re all being ripped off by everyone.
The government has gone to sleep for two weeks after quickly reinforcing the army for fear’s sake.
An English bloke I met at Les Americains came up to me and pleaded to find him something to smoke.
He looked terribly lost. I asked him if he was alright and he gave a straight no with marbled eyes.
It turns out he works for the British arm of a huge plastics plant near here. This man is part of a team of British manufacturers who have come over to install the machine that makes the slit on a Schweppes bottle. The slit, so delicately named, is the plastic film that goes over the bottle to identify it.
I asked a French friend if he knew about this great machine and he told me that the British entourage were in the local papers last week because the machine had broken down.
He looked over towards the group of Brits and told me the machine still wasn’t working.
‘It’s going tits up,’ he remarked. ‘All because of that twat over there.’
I looked over and saw the twat. There was no doubt in my mind that his man was a twat.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said to him, but his eyes had glazed over with a film of dreamy horror. He was killing him in his head. I could see that much.
‘He’s the supervisor,’ he said, without coming out of his reverie. ‘And I want to kill him’.
‘No, you don’t,’ I replied. ‘How do you like France, anyway? Enjoying the food?’
‘I don’t eat food,’ he replied, then he realised that he’d better try and join in, if only to leave quietly. ‘No, France is nice. It’s a nice place, only there’s too many frogs here, if you know what I mean.’ He couldn’t resist.
I said nothing.
He then went on and told me England was a shithole and advised me never to move back. ‘It’s a mental home, mate.’
That had been my own view from being there last week. I’d seen the uselessness of the money-plight, the longing for more materialistic self-worth ever present in deadened, hapless eyes, and I’d been sucked back into it. Even the old lady from Mum’s village, who had never spoken a word against anyone for fifty years, mouthed off heretically to me about the state and its horrific plan for us all, how she’d hoped it would change but knowing we’d entered the abyss already.
‘There’ll be no return from this,’ she’d said with a tear welling slowly in her left eye outside the petrol station with her Mail wrapped under her arm.
The English bloke left without saying a word after downing a quadruple vodka for the road, brushing past his supervisor as he went. He reminded me of Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas as I watched him down the vodka awkwardly, battling with his white tongue to suck the last of the poison from the ice cubes.