I have just witnessed something with my very own peepers, that has left me in a state of limbo somewhere between wide eyed disbelief and incandescent rage.
On my daily circular trudge to town and back in search of passable sustenance, I pass through the Moss Eisley Space Centre otherwise known as The Bear Pit. There amongst the various living stages of evolution on display are people who usually ply their musical abilities amiably in the hope of meagre reward. Buskers.
This has been going downhill recently, well more of a mild rolling from a very low hill to a lesser hill really as I can’t recall it ever reaching a particularly heady altitude of any steep gradient in the past. Apart from a wonderful always smiling Hungarian man and his accomplished accordion accompaniment and once a soul filling rendition of the late Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day” from a young girl who heartbreakingly looked like she had not seen enough of them.
Alas today, they were not there, and in their place was a young lady of dishevelled yet not impoverished appearance and a couple of her cohorts, dressed in similar festival fashion, sat happily swigging lugubrious low cost libations, dancing to music, laughing carelessly and generally wiping their asses on the very fabric of modern society.
There was I, tired and unwontedly returning to work, the work that I go to not out of choice but in order to earn money to feed, clothe and shelter my family at the ever dwindling cost of my own soul and sanity, and here they are, this special brew/Rum Bunch having a regular old Hoo-Haa!
This would all be a merely irritating yet everyday occurrence that I imagine many of you suffer BUT the part that really made my shit itch, the part that tightened my teeth and made me growl crude and depraved things like Muttley with Tourette’s, was….
Down on the floor in front of them was a small speaker attached to an iPod, this speaker was perched on the edge of a hat, within the hat lay coins of various denomination, and by the hat….(breathe, breathe) was a sign.
The sign said “Need Money for Laundry”.
Immediately, mental images of this wrongful picture were swooshing towards my mind as if I were watching the titles to Superman in reverse. The laughing: life is tough at the bottom, the drinking: at 1 in the afternoon, how continental, the iPod: You know, like every discernable Tramp worth a damn has these days, the hat: a bloody hat, and the sign, THE FUCKING ASS RAPING CHEEK OF IT SIGN!!
Laundry? Not “Please spare change I need shelter for the night”, not “Home repossessed, kids going hungry”, not even “Cold, Alone and scared” but “Need Money for Laundry”.
In a mind montage I unleashed a almighty torrent of verbal violence upon them and then grabbed and hurled each one in different directions like BA Baracas in a bar fight, but in reality, like a true English person I mildly waved my raised clenched fist once a sufficient distance away from the riling rabble and made my way back to my cell/office.
I had every mind to pull out my iphone, play a song through it's tinny speaker and start asking for money to redecorate my lounge, or stock my liquer cabinet, or pay the exsorbitant energy prices that rape my wallet monthly in order to keep my own vestments clean.
A busker is a musician that applies his trade in the street for appreciation and donation, a beggar is someone who usually through no fault of thier own has fallen through the cracks in society and is trying to climb back up, a Bum is a person who has made the choice to live life outside of the rules of convention, most likely with the aid of crack and White lightning.
What I saw today was a piss taking bunch of bonafide trustafarian 24 carat Cuntrags.
As the day wore on, I found myself dwelling on their audacious belief that blasting some shitty ditty though a smartphone, that no doubt was bought as a last ditch attempt by Daddy to lure their little princess back to finish her architecture degree, whilst masquerading as down at heel forgotten-abouts was somehow a splendid creative offering, a dazzling display of unfathomed musical showmanship.
A staggering achievement of naivety and incomprehensible thought processes, that the world somehow owes them a living for their awful audible contribution, and that sharing their considerable gift with us is worthy of our appreciation and kind donation to the most heart felt of causes, clean clothes.
The whole sorry spectacle was put into perspective on my journey home as I saw the nice Hungarian accordion man wearily lowering his instrument into its case, his overworked cold fingers twitching from the days duress, whilst the deluded digital minstrels of malevolence had seemingly moved their party elsewhere...perhaps to the laundromat. Perhaps to the seventh level of hell.
