A couple of bombs in Central London are found in time, and no one is hurt. Good news for Londoners, but the tone of many reporters is one of disappointment, a juicier story denied to them. Passers-by are interviewed, confessing that as nothing went bang, it’s really not a cause for alarm. Just another bomb. But the reporters insist, loading their questions: ‘Do you feel less safe? Do you feel you’re a target? Are you more afraid? Are you defiant?’.
Most of the answers express neither fear nor defiance, just a shrug. The fact that curiously unites police, politicians, journalists and terrorists alike is that many Londoners now find terrorism a bore. They see the overkill in the overkill. Killing has been done to death. Bombing is SO last season.
Londoners are awash with distraction and fractured priorities. Everyone is too busy, or too tired, or both. Everyone is high on multiples of distraction, novelty and celebrity. This is both the curse of London and its greatest asset.
One silver lining of the bout of teenage stabbings, it could be argued, is that it’s helped to equate random murder with childishness. Would-be killers of all ages are now pathetic little children, idiots, unimaginative, immature, and tiresome. Those bent on taking life should just, to use the youth vernacular, get a life.
Far more of a bombshell today – at least, in terms of making Londoners react at all – is the sudden closure of the beloved chain of CD, DVD & book retailers, Fopp. Fopp was original in promoting the serendipitous side of impulse buying, grouping its items by price rather than by artist, its novels by nationality of author, not by genre. Fopp cut its prices so low, one found it genuinely hard to walk out without picking something up. Shame. And rather larger a shame too that 1000 of its staff have been left high and dry, a whole month’s wages in arrears. I presume the landlords of the unlucky staff will not be putting a Fopp-style discount on their rent for the month.
I know it’s standard practice, but asking workers to somehow eat and pay the rent and clock up a whole month of work before getting paid still staggers me. If you sign a contract to work for a month, you should get paid at least some of the money right then and there, I feel. Half first, half later, say. It’s all about trust on both sides, after all. The company trusts the worker to turn up and work. The worker trusts the company for not going bust without paying him.
For staff to have to ask for an advance or loan on their wages in order to survive the first month of employment seems pointless. But of course, I speak as someone outside of the world of Work, looking on with ever-estranged bafflement at the many-tiered ways humans make each other jump through hoops.
***
Since moving into the Cat Flat, I’ve already had two baths in one and a half days, one of which was spent listening to the Archers. I don’t even particularly like The Archers. Actually, I’m still not sold on baths over showers, either. But it’s nice to have the option of trying out another kind of life for a spell. A life with a cat and more than one room of my own.
