LONDON LETTER 18th JUNE 2012
I am writing this in what
is, to all intents and purposes a building site. Indeed was told that I needed
to wear proper footwear whenever walking around ‘the site,’ particularly in my kitchen which is currently
gutted, lying pink with plaster and opened up like an oven ready salmon.
All the workmen are
Polish, some with little or no grasp of English. This can go from being
irritating to being farcical, e.g. one of the site workers was knocking seven
shades of shite out of the kitchen wall, I told him either to cover the cooker
or remove it from the room. He looked at me rather as you would a rather
strange species of gesticulating animal, mumbled something and then returned to
hacking away at my defenceless kitchen wall. I finally managed to explain my
concerns to the foreman.
The Poles are no so much
rude as unresponsive, with a few notable exceptions, though relatively hard
working and conscientious; whilst the electricians, all for some reason white
British tend to be both rude and cocky, to such a degree that I found my self being
patronised by an acne ridden 16yr old, who seemed to be left in charge of
re-wiring my kitchen.
There seems to be some
tension between the Poles and indigenous workers and I rather shamefully got
sucked in to some rather unpleasant friction between the two. My gas water
heater was put out of action leaving me without hot water, when I complained of
this the Polish plumber explained that this was because the electricity was cut
off. I informed him that my hot water was heated by gas and had nothing to do
with the electricity supply. He then for some reason guided me to the bathroom
to illustrate the fact that I had running water! The conversation then went as
follows:-
Me:” I know I have
running water, just no hot water.”
Plumber: “No
ELECTRICITY!”
Me: “My heater is gas,
nothing to do with the electricity supply!”
Plumber: Looking irate,
“No ELECTRICITY NO HOT WATER.
Me: “DON’T SHOUT AT ME,
THE HEATER IS FUCKING GAS, NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ELECTRICITY SUPPLY!”
Plumber walks away, and I
turn to the foreman of the electricians as if requiring a witness, “the water
heater is gas, it is not connected to the electricity supply.”
“Clueless,” he said,
there is an exchange of glances between him and the other workers, “I’ll have a
look in a minute, when you are re-connected. “Bloody clueless,” he declares
speaking to one of the other members of his team, “he was asking earlier where
the cylinder was!” much smiling all around. The poles keep themselves to themselves, talking in Polish whilst working, this adds to a general air of mutual suspicion which on the British side, if that is the right term, is coloured by a considerable amount of racism.
As it happens the Polish plumber came back later and restored my hot water and replaced the sink unit, which the electricians had informed me would be out of action for the night and consequently supplied me with two 4 litre bottles of mineral water! I immediately got on the phone to get this sorted out, consequently the plumber returned. He quickly restored my hot water by cleaning the ignition switch, not connected to the electricity supply!
As I watched him sweat
working replacing my sink unit, silently angry, I felt deeply guilty. He did
not however admit that he had been wrong about the water heater.
Amidst all the chaos I am
reading Orwell’s diaries. I had previously read snippets and all his wartime
diaries which are included in the
excellent four volume Selected Essays, Letters, and Journalism, but have never
read the complete diaries.
One thing that strikes me
again, which I had almost forgotten, is Orwell’s incredible feeling for nature
and the breadth of his knowledge and interest in birds, animals and flora and
fauna. His capacity to live in incredibly dirt and squalor,[1]
situations way beyond anything I could handle without being physically ill, and
his engagement with all aspects of life from recipes for fruit loaf to the
politics of Workingmen’s Clubs. Also worth noting, given his secular saint
status, his priggishness about sex and literal physical disgust with
homosexuality, the latter though being very much a feature of the age in which
he lived. More disturbing is a distinct streak of anti-Semitism running through
the diaries.
Reading the diaries in
tandem with Juliet Gardiner’s book ‘The Thirties,’ it is truly extraordinary
that some eighty years later we are still governed by the same old Etonian
elite, some with attitudes that would not have been out of place in 1912.
Of course the kind of squalor
described by Orwell is no longer a feature of unemployment, thanks to the
welfare state. It is chilling to think that had the same circumstances occurred
to me when I became ill in 2010 eighty years previously I would have become
destitute overnight. We live in a much more civilised age, however bit by bit
the Tories are chipping away at this civilisation, once again creating mass unemployment
and then presenting the unemployed as being basically feckless individuals who
somehow deserve their fate and consequently should face punitive sanctions; the
old old game of blaming the victim.
[1] ‘Down and Out in Paris London Wigan
Pier.’
