man, I tell you, you’ve only got to be there for a minute to know there’s something radically wrong .
Across this whole mess there cuts, diagonally, yet another railway, that rides high above this slum property like a scenic railway at a fair. Boy, if you want to admire our wonderful old capital city, you should take a ride on this track some time! And just where this railway is slung over the big central road that cuts across the area north to south, there’s a hole, a dip, a pocket, a really unhappy valley which, according to my learned Dad, was formerly at one time a great non-agricultural marsh. A place of evil, mister. I bet witches lived around it, and a lot still do.
And what about the human population? The answer is, this is the residential doss-house of our city. In plain words, you’d not live in our Napoli if you could live anywhere else. And that is why there are, to the square yard, more boys fresh from the nick, and national refugee minorities, and out-of-business whores, than anywhere else, I should expect, in London town. The kids live in the streets – I mean they have charge of them, you have to ask permission to get along them even in a car – the teenage lot are mostly of the Ted variety, the chicks mature so quick there’s scarcely such a thing there as a little girl, the men don’t talk, glance at you hard, keep moving, and don’t stand with their backs to anyone, their women are mostly out of sight, with dishcloths I expect for yashmaks, and there are piles and piles of these dreadful, wasted, negative, shop-soiled kind of old people that make you feel it really is a tragedy to grow grey.
You’re probably saying well, if you’re so cute, kiddo,why do you live in such an area? So now, as a certain evening paper writes it, ‘I will tell you.’
One reason is that it’s so cheap. I mean, I have a rooted objection to paying rent at all, it should be free like air, and parks, and water. I don’t think I’m mean, in fact I know I’m not, but I just can’t bear paying more than a bob or two to landlords. But the real reason, as I expect you’ll have already guessed, is that, however horrible the area is, you’re free there! No one, I repeat it, no one, has ever asked me there what I am, or what I do, or where I came from, or what my social group is, or whether I’m educated or not, and if there’s one thing I cannot tolerate in this world, it’s nosey questions. And what is more, once the local bandits see you’re making out, can earn your living and so forth, they don’t swing it on you in the slightest you’re a teenage creation – if you have loot, and can look after yourself, they treat you as a man, which is what you are. For instance, nobody in the area would ever have treated me like that bank clerk tried to in Belgravia. If you go in anywhere, they take it for granted that you know the scene. If you don’t, it’s true they throw you out in pieces, but if you do, they treat you just as one of them.
The room I inhabit in sunny Napoli, which overlooks both railways ( and the foulest row of backyards to be found outside the municipal compost heaps), belongs to an Asian character called Omar, Pakistani, I believe, who’s regular as clockwork – in fact, even more so, because clocks are known to stop – and turns up on Saturday mornings, accompanied by two countrymenwho act as bodyguards, to collect the rents, and you’d better have yours ready. Because if you haven’t, he simply grins his teeth and tells his fellahin to pile everything you possess neatly on the outside pavement, be it rain, or snow, or mulligatawny fog. And if you’ve locked the door, it means absolutely nothing to him to smash it down, and even if you’re in bed, all injured innocence and indignation, he still comes in with his sickly don’t-mean -a-thing kind of smile. So if you’re going to be away, it’s best to leave the money with a friend, or better still, pay him, as I do, monthly in
Across this whole mess there cuts, diagonally, yet another railway, that rides high above this slum property like a scenic railway at a fair. Boy, if you want to admire our wonderful old capital city, you should take a ride on this track some time! And just where this railway is slung over the big central road that cuts across the area north to south, there’s a hole, a dip, a pocket, a really unhappy valley which, according to my learned Dad, was formerly at one time a great non-agricultural marsh. A place of evil, mister. I bet witches lived around it, and a lot still do.
And what about the human population? The answer is, this is the residential doss-house of our city. In plain words, you’d not live in our Napoli if you could live anywhere else. And that is why there are, to the square yard, more boys fresh from the nick, and national refugee minorities, and out-of-business whores, than anywhere else, I should expect, in London town. The kids live in the streets – I mean they have charge of them, you have to ask permission to get along them even in a car – the teenage lot are mostly of the Ted variety, the chicks mature so quick there’s scarcely such a thing there as a little girl, the men don’t talk, glance at you hard, keep moving, and don’t stand with their backs to anyone, their women are mostly out of sight, with dishcloths I expect for yashmaks, and there are piles and piles of these dreadful, wasted, negative, shop-soiled kind of old people that make you feel it really is a tragedy to grow grey.
You’re probably saying well, if you’re so cute, kiddo,why do you live in such an area? So now, as a certain evening paper writes it, ‘I will tell you.’
One reason is that it’s so cheap. I mean, I have a rooted objection to paying rent at all, it should be free like air, and parks, and water. I don’t think I’m mean, in fact I know I’m not, but I just can’t bear paying more than a bob or two to landlords. But the real reason, as I expect you’ll have already guessed, is that, however horrible the area is, you’re free there! No one, I repeat it, no one, has ever asked me there what I am, or what I do, or where I came from, or what my social group is, or whether I’m educated or not, and if there’s one thing I cannot tolerate in this world, it’s nosey questions. And what is more, once the local bandits see you’re making out, can earn your living and so forth, they don’t swing it on you in the slightest you’re a teenage creation – if you have loot, and can look after yourself, they treat you as a man, which is what you are. For instance, nobody in the area would ever have treated me like that bank clerk tried to in Belgravia. If you go in anywhere, they take it for granted that you know the scene. If you don’t, it’s true they throw you out in pieces, but if you do, they treat you just as one of them.
The room I inhabit in sunny Napoli, which overlooks both railways ( and the foulest row of backyards to be found outside the municipal compost heaps), belongs to an Asian character called Omar, Pakistani, I believe, who’s regular as clockwork – in fact, even more so, because clocks are known to stop – and turns up on Saturday mornings, accompanied by two countrymenwho act as bodyguards, to collect the rents, and you’d better have yours ready. Because if you haven’t, he simply grins his teeth and tells his fellahin to pile everything you possess neatly on the outside pavement, be it rain, or snow, or mulligatawny fog. And if you’ve locked the door, it means absolutely nothing to him to smash it down, and even if you’re in bed, all injured innocence and indignation, he still comes in with his sickly don’t-mean -a-thing kind of smile. So if you’re going to be away, it’s best to leave the money with a friend, or better still, pay him, as I do, monthly in
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