in which we discuss - the bride that wore red

He was banging keys yesterday, when he took a call from a friend. She is suffering at the moment from the behaviour of some unscrupulous people who have taken a lot of money from her, and we're not talking enough to buy cases of Scottish smoked salmon here, we're talking enough to buy the lake. She isn't the only one of his friends these people have damaged, there are more. Too many of them. They chatted for a long time, and she said she'd been naive, and she probably felt embarrassed that she'd been gullible. She hadn't been though. She was just a really lovely and trusting person, who is finding it so hard to allow herself to believe that people would purposely do this kind of thing. It sounded like she wanted it all to be a terrible mistake. It isn't, they are just shit people. There are a lot of them about. That's why one bride wore red...

He has worked in the building industry for many years, not building new places, but improving, altering and refurbishing older ones. He's worked in some of the roughest estates there are, and met some of the roughest people. When you are immersed with people at the lower depths of the pond you tend to meet pond life - but not goldfish. Some of the people he's met have been lovely, and he considers himself privileged to have made their acquaintance, then there's the bottom feeders. The worst are the ones who have no life, they merely exist in some form of chemical haze. The ones who answer the door at 9am, spaced out with a bottle and a fag in one hand, a vicious dog in the other, and a crowd of screaming children desperate for mental, physical and spiritual nourishment behind them. They are the ones he calls filth. He doesn't care who knows it.

He doesn't care how they choose to live as long as he doesn't have to go in and mop up behind them, and as long as no children have to suffer from their total failure as human beings. One dickhead social worker lectured him when he'd been threatened by a junkie in a sheltered block. The excuse for a man had made a formal complaint about Softboy telling him in no uncertain terms that wrecking his brand new fitted kitchen that Softboy and his family's taxes had paid for was not nice, and that he wouldn't be getting another one this side of the next Millenium Eve. "Try calling him Sir, you know, to boost his self esteem" the social worker - who seldom went into the flats, and definitely not THAT one - suggested by safe-o-phone. Our not-so-softboy visited the junkie again the next day to clarify his position. The next time they met, the junkie called him sir - from behind a locked door. As I'm sure you are aware, skinning cats is not a good thing to do, but if you have to, there are many ways.

He gets criticized for being "negative about people". It makes him smile. It's easy to be positive and upbeat about people and life when you live in a relatively stable socio-economic society, and don't need to travel outside of the nicer trade routes to earn a crust. When people talk about the "bright lights and vibrant night-life" of London, they probably aren't talking about the bright light cast by a burning car in Loughborough Junction at the arse end of the crap bit of Brixton, and the vibrant night-gangs of hoodies that the police don't tackle. Walking through Stepney during a normal day, you'd think it was Pleasantville, until you look closer and see the chains on the satellite dishes to stop them being yanked off a wall 15 feet off the ground, or the metal bars on every ground floor window and door, or until you meet the old lady who hasn't left her flat for more than an hour in 15 years as she can't afford to be burgled for the 20th time, or the one on the 12th floor of the tower block in Bow that has her late husband's medals in the frame on the wall with a picture of him and Orde Wingate in Burma when he was a Chindit (look it up), and you'd have to be a lot harder than him to not get choked up as she sheds tears of sadness that all her husband suffered at the hands of the Japs in Changi jail was for nothing, and how she's only glad he never lived to see what they allowed to happen to "'is darlin' East End". 

He's been building a long boundary wall on an estate up North before, and looked up to see that a kid was kicking the other end down faster than he could lay bricks at his end - and he's a quick trowel. He "remonstrated" with the kid, who ran crying to mummy. Her view was that if he didn't kick it down, someone else would, so best let him "play". We checked it up. It's called 'abdication of parental responsibility in the interests of juvenile free expression'. It's caused by excessive exposure to television, and "Sunny D". It's everywhere nowadays.

But that's in a country with a relatively stable socio-economic environment. Not all countries have it this great. He told me about Mac. Mac was Serb. He came from a country that was torn apart by the very people who lived in it. He told Softboy he had been one of the "bad men", but knew it was wrong, and came to England to start again. He left everything behind - except the memories and the nightmares. They came too. He worked with Softby on a large house on the Herts/Essex border. He came in to work one Saturday morning when just the two of them were to be completing a large flank wall. He arrived very drunk, and carrying a bottle of Slivovitz (harsh plum brandy). Softboy came off the scaffold and told him he couldn't come to work in that state. Mac wasn't your normal buildy-geezer, he was a soldier. "I have to stay. I have to talk with you. I have to say to you things I can no longer keep inside".

After he'd loaded out the scaffold that was covered with sheeting under a tin roof that covered the whole site, he slumped in a corner and told Softboy why he'd got drunk. The weather was foul. There was driving snow, and it reminded him of the day his section entered a small village in Bosnia. The communities in that area were very tight and close-knit, and everyone knew everyone from birth to death. It was their way. On this cold and desolate day, he'd noticed there was no movement, or any sign of life anywhere. The place was deserted, and that was unusual for a village of this kind in this area. They made their way cautiously through the centre, to the village hall, where they heard traditional wedding music. It became apparent that the whole community would be at the wedding. He almost relaxed.

On entering the village hall, they found that they were correct, and indeed the whole village were at the wedding. On a traditional "love seat" in the middle sat the beautiful bride and her groom leaning gently on each other. Her dress was red. Her face was grey. His was gone.

He said that Mac, a tall and very handsome young man, cried like a baby as he tried to understand how even in a war zone people could slaughter a whole village at a wedding, and then arrange the bride and groom in a macabre posture like that for others to find. He could deal with most of the atrocities that he'd seen - and committed - but that was a sickness too far. He saw the bride who wore red every single night. Sometimes she would ask him why. She would never go away until she had her answer, and there would never be an answer.

When you add the South American guerillas who would make children in schools (where they'd "banned" education) sharpen pencils, and then bang them into their ears, and the "warriors" in the African Congo who consider it polite to ask young girls of the "wrong" tribe "which hand would you like us to hack off first?" or any other news story available any day of the year, in any year since man first learned how to inflict misery, it really isn't surprising that people wouldn't even think twice about ripping you off financially at the drop of a hat is it?

Me and Softboy have a lot in common. Not liking or trusting most people is one of them. We ain't saying it's right, but it's getting harder by the day to prove us wrong. You lot are still sending the flower of your youth - no, make that the very BEST of your youth out to Afghanistan, to be picked off due to equipment so scarce and substandard that it would make a human lick their arse in disgust, yet your prime minister (we use the term mockingly) rings to ask about the welfare of a woman who sang on telly and got a bit upset by it all. No-one knows how many soldiers have been killed or wounded in the last year, but the whole nation knows how many votes two dorks jointly known as "Jedward" got on a pretend telly programme.

Taking money from your pockets? In the grand scheme of things, you could almost justify it as a minor slip of the conscience. But it still hurts, it still causes fear, pain and anxiety, and it ruins lives. I'm glad cats don't do money. I'm glad we aren't people.

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