Bad at Games

It is easy to forget we live on the edge of the posh side of town, when we leave for work in the dark to return in a fog of pollution and exhaustion, after pumping energy to power the system, then sit in traffic to look at the concrete of tunnels and the painted out windows of an adult shop and through the grey nets to children who lean against each other as they munch on fat fists and dream of chips and red sauce, past the African takeaway and the prom-dress shop, full of sequined and gauzy loveliness, past the cash converters and the luxury retirement apartments, which are lit up in yellow with comfy armchairs at windows, though no one sits in them, then over the dividing road, past a suburban pick n mix of Victorian, Edwardian, pre and post-war houses, past the dreary local shops that sell nothing anyone really wants but things like vaping and shaving and eating and drinking, which are all things better done in private you think, and pause at the lights by the chip shop and wonder if there is anything to eat or could that veg stew from two nights ago be improved with grated cheese and actually all you want is a glass of whatever is left-over in Christmas bottles and thank god there is the driveway and the cat and dog at the window, so who really cares what this neighbourhood is, when soon you will slip into the comfort of digital obsession, before it’s time to start again.

But on Saturday we are bored after shopping for cat food and dog food and snacks to eat when we watch Nordic noir, so we drive up and down the private roads, amazed at such flaunting of wealth and who could be bothered and if we had that money we’d live somewhere else and let’s have a drink in the posh people’s pub that’s too far out for poor people to walk to and there are no buses and it’s far too dull to make the effort to go to, so we sit on soft leather at half past four which is early enough to watch locals arrive in a mist of perfume, as both genders are meticulously groomed, with the women in black and their hair is so ‘done’ and they vie for the eyes of middle-aged men who have shaved and smell good and it all seems so odd, but they smile at us, so we think they are nice, though they hardly look real and we are rough in our careless attire, that none of us mind, and I am happy that I’m no competition in this brittle world of polished veneer as I was always bad at games and surely they would rather slob-out in walking boots and elasticated waistbands on the side-line, laughing with you about the Staffordshire hoard and the Rykneld Way and how wonderful it was that Victoria Pendleton rode so well on a horse not a bike, instead of holding a pose and faces just so the cracks don’t show, but who can say, so we leave them there and manoeuvre past Jags and Mercs, content enough to have watched.