I'll Follow the Sun

My old colleague wants to reminisce. He seems to think this is a good idea.

Sitting here in one of those shopping mall corporate coffee shops I feel distinctly uncomfortable as I always do in these global chains. Faux-friendly and pricey-as-fuck, you just know someone’s getting shafted somewhere down the line. I haven’t been the same since I read Fast Food Nation and my trade union hackles rise every time I walk into one of these soul-less café’s. I’m old school, more at home in a greasy spoon – a working man’s café to quote the great Ray Davies song.

Humanity is deeply selfish, at least here in the west. It’s cliché now, but how can we live like this when folk are starving two thousand miles away? How dare we? Another piece of over-expensive frankly mediocre chocolate-fudge cake? Yes, why not you complacent, greedy, thoughtless bastard.

I’m not great in these places.

And this old friend…?

Can’t stand the cunt! Never could.

It was his idea to come in here. Not a great deal of choice in this giant witless barn of a ‘mall’ – another American import, not unless you want to go even more upmarket and play a fucking fortune in some slice-of-pizza place or a Trattoria where you’ll be fleeced for some bland calamari or gnocci..

“The bill, sir? Four-hundred and forty pounds plus VAT and, of course, a generous ‘service charge’”

People are generally thick and lap all this shite up. It’s their kids that do it: holding their mulish parents to ransom and blackmail “but Daddy, Echinacea and Josh have got these new two hundred pound trainers, you can’t buy these cheaper sturdier one’s, it’ll look terrible, and I don’t even know what sturdier means”.

Me? All I’ve got are some dodgy memories when things seemed to have more substance somehow. In reality, everyone’s armpits smelled, women got their arses patted, and racial prejudice was part of everyday dialogue.

And this cunt wants to reminisce in a fake coffee franchise surrounded by the guilty stink of commerce….

As if I want to remember working in the job centre. I’m due to sign and account for my very soul there in less than an hour.

The sun is shining outside this Mammonolithic Mausoleum, the sky is blue and the rain is weeks away. The heart of the matter is elsewhere and forgotten. One has to learn to follow the sun again…