IN THE BUSY CITY streets, tyres, rubber, diesel fumes.
On a Sunday afternoon, those days before the shops could trade, a man with overcoat undone, a bunch of flowers in his hand, his wavy hair, grey, silver white, his battered hat has gone askew, sings April Showers to the street, the street all empty save for me, sings brings the flowers, bloom in May, sings when it’s raining, no regrets, not raining now but will be soon; the yellow flowers in his hand, he holds his arms outstretched.
It’s getting late this winter day, his dinner now will have gone cold, his wife there sulky, angry fumes, the yellow flowers are for her, to make it better, was the plan. But first, a song to cheer the world, his audience, a dank wet road, His song thrust warmly, from the heart.
Into the gutter, I throw up my lunch just eaten on the nerves, with colleagues from the work, I’ve left them now. The family nerves, the nausea, prevents the food from staying down, a curry eaten after work, we’ve been in work this Sunday morn, to set something in place, in air conditioned sterile room, we three all use our brains and think and bluff. Experience.
Then I look up, we go to eat, we three who know each other oh so well, but that does not prevent me being sick, into the gutter waiting for the bus that takes me home.
Though April showers. May come your way. They bring the flowers. That bloom in May.
The man has been inside a smoky pub and yellowed is his hair. My family were working class. Working class, what’s that? Most people work, most people labour, why were they different from anyone else who doesn’t call themselves that?
I know what it means, being working class, It means being passive and fatalistic. As soon as you begin to strive, strive to break out, strive to make the world a different place for yourself or society, you are striving, and no longer passive, no longer working class. Working, and working hard maybe, but not working class.
It’s an attitude of mind.
It was the end of the Second World War. There were officers and there were soldiers – and soldiers were required necessity not to be challenging. My parents, my aunts and uncles, were formed by that.
But it’s wider than that. Challenging the prescribed way is firmly frowned upon. Outlets for individuality are expected to encompass the status quo. You can agitate for more pay for the workers, but by doing that you reinforce the idea and nature of workers, working class workers.
Some would disagree with my analysis, they would say that being working class is to be part of the struggle, part of the struggle for the rights of working people and with a common opposition to the ruling classes, an opposition to the bosses. Not passive at all, far from it.
But it is passive, because struggling for workers’ rights is to struggle for the structural status quo. A better paid status quo maybe, and one with free soap and showers, maybe, but not one where it is considered honourable to break away from the system, that’s for sure.
I was one of eighteen boys, And we all wore corduroys.
I was the roughest of the gang, ’Cos my braces used to hang.
Dangling all around my feet, my mother used to bawl, Pointing to a textoleet she’d hung upon the wall, Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, dangle.
Never thieve, don’t deceive, never row or wrangle.
Stick to the right, keep away from the bad.
Don’t get tight like your poor old dad.
But the greatest motto of the lot, my lad:
Never let your braces dangle.