The Word on the Street, from the street.
A series of musings from the dirty gutters and overflowing dustbins of Cliftonville.
As Marx (Groucho not Karl) famously once said
“I do not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.”
That’s the correct version of his oft-misquoted, quote.
So, you can safely assume that it was not I, who became a member of the local resident’s association here in Dalby Square, Margate.
‘Someone’ else in the building we inhabit has signed up to this well-intentioned, if somewhat, DFL-esqe community, currently embroiled in the ongoing blitzkrieg against the incessant littering here in what a ‘leading’ national ‘family’ Sunday ‘newspaper’ once described as the most socially deprived neighbourhood in the UK.
For the non-cognoscenti, a DFL (down from London) is a disparaging acronym used by ‘locals’ to describe people they are jealous of who have invested heavily in their shithole town and ruined it for everyone.
Admittedly that was before the opening of the Turner Contemporary Gallery 12 years ago, and the lemming-like flood of ‘creative’ types and other assorted, dole-scrouging wastrels (self-declared ‘artists’ who can’t sell their work) to the town.
These days, Margate is regularly described as ‘Shoreditch on Sea’, I can assure you it’s nothing of the sort. It’s Stoke Newington on Sea ACTUALLY, and we all know that ‘Stokey is Dalston for grown-ups so ‘Margs is now heavily populated by people by who have seemingly outgrown N16 and who are currently leading the cavalry-charge of second/third home owning, poverty-safari-on-sea, Dryrobe wearing hordes who’ve collectively decided to turn the previously neglected streets and houses of the area into their own personalised version of Margate Monopoly©. They arrive complete with their own financial get out of jail free card, aka bank of mum and dad, and a furious determination to embrace life here on the coast. But only on occasional weekends and school holidays obvs, ‘cos, “You know, Margate’s AMAZING but I don’t want my children going to school there”. In case they get ‘infected’ by the refugees that are not the same colour/creed as the three Ukrainians I posted about on all my social media that I’ve offered to help accommodate in one of my spare homes.
Not the expensive Air BnB in Cliftonville, they’re going to live in the basement I’ve not had time to get damp-proofed in the flat in Lower Clapton.
You now the type right?
ANYWAY, where were ‘we’? Oh yes, ‘we’ have realised that our own creative efforts are unlikely to ever make a single shekel, in an age where people steadfastly mainly refuse to pay for music and if they do, certainly not from a middle-aged ex-junkie with deluded dreams of playing at Brixton Academy who could only manage to get 7 paying punters along to his last solo gig.
*See dole-scrounging wastrel comment above*
Admittedly the current financial commitments here in a town once described as, ‘sign-on-on sea’ ©The Daily(hate)Mail 1986, are not as demanding on the (sows-ear I am still attempting to turn into a silk) purse as they were when I also lived in Stoke Newington. (1999-2021) My ‘purse’ is still empty most days, but thankfully, I’m not forced to handover the thick end of £2k a month to Hackney council for rental of an ‘ex’-council flat in Stamford Hill, with walls so thin I could hear my Orthodox neighbour in the Kahzi saying goodbye to his previous nights’ Kugel each morning. (Figure it out for yourself and apologies for the resulting mental image).
I came here to escape the insane rents in London and am therefore an economic migrant, sort of. Ironically, I am also part of the ‘problem’ of skyrocketing rents in a once destitute area of Kent, currently forcing people on no/low incomes out of the area. I do know this, in my defence *the person who is a member of the residents committee* and I, have chosen to provide a long-term home for a lovely young couple, rather than join in with the Air Bnb Mafia.
*Virtue Signalling over.*
I also came here to try and avoid spending a disproportionate amount of my hours, working for the ‘man’/woman/non-binary. Hours that could be, nay SHOULD BE, better spent, pursuing my midlife crisis in its’ various incarnations, as well as leaving me free to see Tabitha as often as possible now that I’m not living 5 mins away from her as I’ve done for the previous 14 (on Friday) years of her life.
Everybody….
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Tabitha, happy birthday to you.”
As far as jobs go here in planet Thanet, well, yes, there are some of those if you are a ‘normal’ person who was learning something useful (A trade/skill) at roughly the same time as I was trying to figure out which vein, I could use to ingest my daily combination of heavily cut instant nothingness. I am not one of those people though, am I?
No, no I’m not.
I’m a bit of a dickhead with bizarre notions of what constitutes normality and how one should approach such existence each day. So yeah, not enough people pay for my music, I still haven’t found a publisher for my new book, there were more people at the cashpoint outside than inside at my recent solo gig and I spunked the last of my savings on a trip to Paris with Mrs M, a monthlong binge on Discogs and a new Fender Telecaster that I REALLY NEEDED ACTUALLY.
So, I need a regular job, several ‘little’ regular jobs, but I’m not ready to wipe other peoples bumholes in a care home for minimum wage just yet. I have tremendous respect for those people that do, I simply don’t have the necessary patience, maybe one day? But not yet.
If I’m going to get involved with other peoples’ shite, I’ve recently discovered that I much prefer doing it as a part-time road sweeper, bin-emptying, park-cleaning, nosey/concerned constituent of Dalby Square. This societal upgrade is directly as a result of being in love with someone who IS a member of the local resident’s association and therefore in what can only be described as flagrant but much appreciated nepotism, landed me a gig. One of the innumerable benefits of convincing the object of my desires to say “I do” a few years ago, is that I now get my own Hi-Viz jacket, deluxe rubber-ended litter picker-upper pole thingy, local authority embossed refuse bags and £60 a week to walk the neighbourhood picking up other peoples discarded rubbish.
I applied to the local council last year for a fulltime job on the bins, but they turned me down flat, didn’t even get an interview but did get an email wishing me ‘all the best in my future career’.
Well fuck-you Thanet Council! I may not have a ‘proper’ road sweepers trolley yet, but neither do I have the seemingly requisite casual racism required to be a part of that particular section of your workforce.
I love this job, I don my ‘work gear’ and earphones a few hours each week, clasp the tools of my trade with pride and head out onto the mean (and fucking filthy) streets of CT9 and launch myself into the honourable task of making our neighbourhood look just a little bit more pleasant. Within minutes I find myself in a zen-like state of contentment, bopping along to whatever/whoever is caressing my ears very loudly. I choose to ignore the annoying messages from the health app on my iPhone (6, if you must know) about EU directives concerning possible damage to my hearing due to prolonged exposure to music.
Hey! Someone needs to tell apple that ‘we’ ‘Brits have decided to leave the EU and should therefore NOT be told to turn our music down by some C**t in Brussels or whatever.
Excuse the Brexit (remember that) loving vibe of that last sentence, one of the lads on the councils bins team just walked past and I was engaging in some binman/woman/non-binary ‘bants.
Which brings me nicely to this, unforeseen bonus of plodding the pavements of Cliftonville every few days.
I’ve been able to learn almost every word of the Yard Act album as it’s provided the PERFECT soundtrack to my own observations of this particular corner of Engerlaaaand.
And so, from this most enviable of positions, I will be detailing my ongoing thoughts about the state of ‘this once proud nation’ and my observations of those who inhabit it, especially those wankers that keep throwing their rubbish in the bushes in the park.
I look forward to sharing this sort of nonsense with you each week alongside whatever else has caught my eye/ear.
Substack is where you’ll find all this, please subscribe to The Sober Pirate on there, meanwhile, here's the lyrics to Dead Horse by the fanfuckingtastic,
Yard Act.
Have a nice weekend.
The last bastion of hope
This once great nation has left is its humour
So be it, through continued mockery
This crackpot country half full of cunts
Will finally have the last laugh
When dragged underwater
By the weight of the tumour
It formed when it fell for the fear mongering
Of the national front's new hairdo
So, then what becomes of the inhabitants
Of this once unstoppable isle
When all of its exports are no longer in style?
Are you seriously still tryna kid me?
That our culture will be just fine
When all that's left is nobheads Morris dancing
To sham 69?
Gob on the ragman and rally 'round the maypole
Hijack the sound and stake your claim to it
Every card played is a statement made
And there's always a new a scapegoat to blame for it
England, my heart bleeds
Why'd you abandon me?
Yes, I abandoned you too, but we both know
I wasn't the one lied to
And I'm not scared of people
Who don't look like me, unlike you?
So, bold it is in its idiocy
So bound by its own stupidity
It does not realise it has already sentenced
Itself completely to death
The last bastion of hope
This once great nation had left was good music
But we didn't nurture it, instead choosing to ignore it
Yes, we've been trapped by the same crowd that don't like it
Unless they've heard it before
Leaving me stuck flogging my progressive dead horse
South of the border to the
So-so and so's and through and throughs and this and that's
I'm buttered breads and proud of it
Who's values flit whenever it fucking suits them
And we're supposed to let it slide
Because the press have normalised
The idea that racism is something we should humour
Yeah, the last bastion of hope this once great nation has left is to converse
In a manner that will pacify, divide, and unite the room
But no one's talking and rational thought has been forced into submission
By the medium through which all our information is now consumed
Yes, fake news
Yes, fake news, mate