3.43AM. I live close to a thunderous main road. Hulking lorries roar along it through the night, making my bedroom window shake. They hurtle around the city’s arteries in ceaseless circulation, like an army of ghouls sent to torment sleepless souls. If this background rumble were not enough to disturb me, the night is punctuated by the demented shouts of the drunk and deranged, and the mournful wail of police cars chasing ghosts through the streets. Then, quite suddenly, all this fades to silence. For one brief moment, I can enjoy tranquility, the promise of golden sleep. All remains quiet - until something cries out. It is this yelp, strangulated and primal, that pulls me into consciousness. I am now reluctantly awake, but a lead weight behind my eyes tells me that I have not really slept. Sleep remains a stranger, hidden in some remote place as distant as childhood.
At first I imagine that the scream is that of a baby being murdered. Then, as my conscious mind ushers aside the wanderings of my unchained id, I realise that it is, in fact, the foxes at play in the garden. Still, my rationally attuned ear finds the mating cry of the fox to be uncomfortably like that of a mortally distressed infant; worse, I know I will almost certainly not get back to sleep until daybreak. I get out of bed and go over to the window to see if I can spy the night gypsies amusing themselves on the lawn.
The moon is out and I can’t see the stars for clouds. Even if it was a clear, moonless night I would not be able to see more than a handful of stars because this is London, and the firmament of the city drowns out the light of the heavens. I point skyward and focus on the nail on my index finder, knowing that behind it lie 10,000 galaxies, each containing an average of 100 billion stars. These improbable, unimaginable numbers contain in them the facts of our insignificance – the knowledge of which, once grasped, takes away a small part of my own self-absorption, and the hopeless fixation on the petty frustrations of my life. I find it comforting to think that, obscured by the blanket of electric light that we live under, there is a Universe teaming with countless stars and planets, in which all the light produced on our tiny and densely populated world is wholly invisible. We do not register at the scale of the Universe, or the Milky Way, and only the equivalent of a particle physicist using the most advanced equipment would be able to detect us at a distance. From space, we are invisible and undetectable, silent despite all the noise we make.
The vastness of space makes me remember that I am part of something far, far more majestic than my own brief and inconsequential existence. When the prophets of old looked up in the desert they saw a brilliant canopy, the face of God, but from my window that face is obscured by London’s brash fluorescence. Unlike the prophets I do not perceive an intelligent creative force in the Universe, just the inkling of a mysterious beneficence. Millions have discovered this force through the ages, using prayer and submission to higher powers, however capricious and apparently random. It sounds very New Age, and perhaps it is. It does not rule out the possibility of cruel fate coming along and crushing you without reason. It accepts this as the will of the Universe, that there is an interstellar, quantum bus waiting for each of us. If you fall under it, it’s not your fault. And if you don’t, and several non-lethal ones come along instead, remember to thank the stars.
Looking down I see the fox’s reflective disks locking on to me. They are lit by some fierce inner power source, feral lazers that hold me in their unwavering gaze. Then something turns her head and she scampers into the undergrowth.
6.30 AM. I get up after failing, as predicted, to get back to sleep. I take a shower. I consider masturbation but decide against it as time is limited and I wish to preserve my chi. Masturbation can lead to spiritual dissipation and, in its aftermath, an unsettling feeling of having succumbed to a private and selfish urge. However it was my most reliable and consistent sexual relationship, even though it became less satisfying the longer it had been since the real thing. My catalogue of ex-girlfriends and the various girls who’ve given me the ‘look’ – it’s not a long list - seems to have dwindled down to Ex Numero 3, Claudette, and I am tired of having to share the shower and my empty bed with her. She has served me well since we parted ways three years ago but she does need a rest from her conjugal duties. True, I am lonely. It is a loneliness of the body and the spirit. It is strange, really, that the more people there are around you, the more lonely you feel. I think of loneliness, and its bedfellow anxiety, as my most loyal companions in the city. The lonely are many here. The crowdedness, the relentless pace, the fierce battle for time and space and social status, the struggle to get from place to place, to make appointments, to make enough money to live, all these things conspire against companionship, and those precious moments of care-free happiness. London is a great big sucking machine, it hulks over and feeds off its inhabitants, as if a giant invisible space vampire has landed here, feeding on a hapless army of millions, which it voraciously turns into zombies.
6.50 AM. I listen to the news and hear that the Icelandic volcano is spewing out a huge cloud of gas, which northerly winds are bringing our way. Flights will be disrupted and civilisation as we know it perhaps brought to a shuddering halt. Nature’s little reminder of whose boss. I quickly compute all the people I know who are currently out of the country and might be caught up in this ash crisis. The figures are alarmingly high. How is it that at least half the people that matter to me in my life are spread across the world? I must be part of the jet set, even if it is a more of a sub-set, the Economy Set. Perhaps that is how it is now in this rich nation of ours, more and more of us are no longer living on earth, but are suspended in flying tubes eating reheated and overpriced bacon rolls; at least until the ash comes along like a divine clamping unit and grounds us.
7.26 AM. Arrive at Oasis Swimming Pool, Covent Garden, for morning swim. Swimming allows me to think and to meditate. The changing area is predictably cramped and busy. This is central London and every inch is expensive real estate. This means getting up close and personal with a range of nationalities and body types. Just as breasts come in an infinite variety of shapes and forms, so do the intimate parts of the male anatomy. There are always the well endowed who take an inordinate amount of time to get changed, and appear to take great pleasure in leisurely displaying their assets and thereby establish their physical superiority to the rest of the gym. What a difference an inch can make in the male social hierarchy.
My pleasure at the pool is also undermined by the difficult cultural interplay and the primitive displays of machismo that take place both in the changing rooms and in the water. There is the muscular Russian gangster type who, although only in underpants, cannot put down his mobile phone. He takes one call then makes another and he does not cut any of these conversations short. They are all obviously very important and best conducted in tight pants. The Russian speaks gruffly and swaggers around the changing area, preening in the mirror and flexing his overgrown muscles. When I look in the mirror I see a scrawny figure, muscles on the arms barely discernable, my chest of the pigeon variety. I can see a few of my ribs, which at least means I am not overweight, but there is no sign of a washboard. My mousey straight hair on my head needs a cut and there are signs of receding in the corners of the temple where the parting lines end. I cover these over with a brush of my hand. Despite awareness of how puny I seem compared to my Russian friend, like most men I still harbour pretensions of masculinity, even if I have neglected it in my desk- and sofa-bound existence.
In the water I am just getting into my stride, using the middle lane, when somebody cuts me up on my inside to overtake me. In central London there are a lot of global professionals, part of the new ethnographic and economic life of the city. Some of them treat the pool like an exchange floor without the pinstripes. At the end of one length I turned to begin the next, moving into the anticlockwise lane, when I collide with someone. I stand up and see the swimmer turn and stare at me, if you can stare when you are wearing goggles and speedos.
“Watch out, stay in your own lane, ” he says. I stand speechless. If you cannot see someone’s eyes then you cannot gauge enough about them to make a judgement call on how to gauge your own response. Having made his point, he shrugs then turns and continues swimming before I can say anything. I felt like an unwanted guest in this upstart’s private pool. The anger rises up inside but I have nowhere to put it, and besides, swimmers look very alike with hair cap and goggles.
A young male lifeguard interjects: “Wow, it’s getting hot in here this morning. People just need to chill.” He smiles at me and I smile back. The spiritual path means not rising to all the provocations that life throws at you. I use the swim to exorcise the tension that the incident had burnished in me. Why should I care? London is full of testosterone-breathing, SUV-driving, dick-swinging geezers who came to the city to make ‘bizniz’ and act like they are Scarface or Gordon Geckov from Novosibirsk, buying up properties in Chelsea and building swimming pools in the basement. This ugliness is the logical conclusion of a culture that embraces the global moneymen and spivs without prejudice, like a blank-faced Berwick Street whore (she too was recently imported, globalised flesh). In the West End there was no sign of a new spirit of modesty or accommodation to the sensitivities of others. The swimming pool was not for the real money anyway, as it was a public pool for people who could not afford to join the swish private gym next door. These were just wannabes. But they acted like they were money. The recession had not changed that. If anything, it had just injected a note of desperation into proceedings. I imagined seizing my pool companion by the ears and smashing his skull into the smooth ceramic edge of the pool. Momentarily I felt better.
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