SOMETHING IN THE WOODSHED

There are lakes under the sea. There's a snail that's made of metal. There is a shark that eats its siblings while still in its mother's womb and then there are people who do things that you and I find unbelievable. So, my feet had hardly touched the motherland and the flames of discontent ignited to welcome me home. It was ten years ago that I upped tools and downed sticks or whatever it is you do when enough is enough. Enough being sick of having stuff, spanners, dog shit, you name it, thrown at me by kids who dared me to stare at them so they could threaten me with my life. Kids in the street accosting an old Jamaican man for cigarettes and when he told them to piss off they started on me. 'Why you lying?' they asked when I told them I had no money or fags. The list goes on. The stories my mum told me she had learnt from her neighbourhood. The bacon put on a dead Muslim woman's body while she lay in the hospital morgue. The couple over the road who disappeared suddenly because the wife was embezzling money, got caught and ended up in prison. The woodshed next to her house someone was using to make up their bags of heroin to sell on. The police running across my mum's garden in a no longer gentile London suburb as there was a crack den down at the back of someone else's garden. Crack den down, crack den down. Sounds like a bloody hoe down. Ho' down the crack den down the back of my garden. I love Britain. I love England. I love most of the people but whenever I come back I feel like I am in one giant lunatic asylum.