Public places chairless spaces

I met some elderly ladies this week in a queue in a post office in a small town well outside the Dome where I had ventured on business. They said that they found the hardest thing to bear in our new society was the complete eradication of seating in our contemporary urban landscape.

"In a democracy everyone has the right to stand," said one.

Looking around me in the post office, which has been 'there' for about seventy years, I could see where there had once been benches but they been removed. It's the same all around the town they said-when they are there people sit on them all day and wait for opportunities to rob people. So 'they've' taken them away. I was told earnestly.

And people who are unemployed or need to feed babies would sit there for hours feeding children talking to their friends and generally appropriate the amenity.

'They' took the chairs away because those people weren't spending any money one of the old duck's hissed vehemently at me, and their presence intimidated people who had money to spend so the seats had to go.

I wanted to ask her who 'they' were but the other touched me suddenly on the forearm saying, 'We have to go to the coffee shops to have a sit down'.

That seems reasonable, I said, you need refreshment to cope with the horror of shopping.

Yes there are more coffee shops now than there used to be.
But you can't just sit there and catch your breath and deal with your pains said the older of the pair, stabbing with a pointed finger on my arm to emphasis her point as if I were some layabout lounging around on chairs all day. If you're not spending money they move you on-just like 'them'. She managed to sound both sad and indignant simultaneously.

'And at the library there's no where to sit anymore, not even for the schoolchildren who come in to do their homework, because the unemployed and the homeless come in there to sleep.' Her friend added. She didn't sound angry, she seemed sad and helpless about the unemployed who roamed that husk of a town like caged tigers.

'It's even true in the shops too the other launched in randomly. You want to try on shoes there's nowhere to sit. You have to go and ask for a seat.

Yes and even in the change rooms the benches have gone.
Yes that's because homeless women would go in there to feed their babies so most of the shops have taken them away.

Later in the day I gatecrashed a conference at the three star hotel where I was staying and found earnest people outlining a plan to prepare other people to accept mediocrity as a viable option in life. Their role model was a sports star, not noted for anything but a tireless ability to keep exercising to a point of excellence who now in his post glory years was reduced to sustaining life trading on his laurels and exhorting people to 'do their best'. Ironically he makes more money doing this, I am told, than most people who spent their days exercising their brains to become 'clevers'. It is tough being unemployed and homeless I imagine in a world where the standard of mediocrity was some Herculean success.

I was reminded of Sean Connery's admonition in The Rock; 'why is it that losers always whine on about doing their best.' And left the conference feeling profoundly depressed and in need of a drink and a fuck not necessarily in that order.

A fuck is a wonderful depression cure don't you think. OF course finding a fuck is easy or not depending on what you're prepared to pay isn't it? It is also usually the start of something that ends up as a need for a depression cure of a different type-What about murder?

Now there's a game that has all the ingredients of post-mediocrity. What about finding someone to fuck and then murdering them?

I read somewhere recently that about ten percent of all the murders committed in this country are solved. Since we do not get credible crime statistics anymore we have to assume that to be correct-even if I was charitable, 20 % would be tops, I understand. It is certain that there has never been a better time than now to commit murder and I first said that over a decade ago.

Consider that we had five times more murders last year than the Americans had murdered in Iraq since they invaded it. And since the Iraqi war [invasion] started more people [non-combatant citizens] have been murdered in our country than [non-combatant citizens] have been murdered in Iraq. Which begs the question why are we not making as much fuss about the murders as the Americans and others are making about those deaths there. We are however making it harder for murderers to sit.

So what. One of them that was murdered wasn't me and I shall continue to live now because it may be me tomorrow although I hope it wont. Do we regard life with such contempt here that the issues of elderly customers are of less import than keeping the homeless out of our shops? Perhaps we never thought about it.

Perhaps we decided that in order to reduce the likelihood of being murdered we shall remove all the seating from our business environments so as to reduce the number of loungers and loiterers and limit the ease with which they can study me and my movements.

Death to loiterers.

Democracy is so much more of an adventure than fascist dictatorships could ever be.

'Red shoes blue shoes
Which one will you choose,
Should they let you buy?'

Loves Ya
NiK