Moneytime/Nighttime

THEY SAY TIME IS MONEY. CLICHE, CLICHE. So how come I seem to have so very much of the first commodity without ever getting paid very much of the second? Come on, somebody. Don't explain this limp load of verbal poppycock. Just pay me. A nice purple-factored £20 note would do the trick rather pleasantly. Provided there's somebody around to commit alchemy.

For that's all money means to junkies. Notes become magic passports to those tiny topknotted polythene bags of heroin.

***

NIGHT. No idea of the hour. Matran and Laundretta have been up and about for hours which tells me it's late. They are two of the most antisocial people I have ever met. Every time she returns home, which is often, (she's always popping out ofr drinks and cigarettes) - she comes stomping back upstairs and bursts into their room almost falling over (yet again). He has been periodically yelling and exclaiming "Don't f--- with me," (one of his catchphrases; the others are too disgusting to repeat). Both of them go stomping on the ceiling to a ridiculous degree. Laundretta says the guy downstairs from them has made a very vusial pass when "coming" out of the bathroom. Then again she says such stuff about most men. Earlier she was going nuts because she couldn't find her phone. Matran has sold her phones before to get more crack at five, six, seven in the morning - whatever time her whorehouse earnings run out.

Cars are whooshing across the horzon. Sometimes I think it's tyres on road I can hear.

Mother Hubbard's given up smoking! Well over a yer ago she knocked booze on the head and has not gone back. Which makes two out of three (in my mind). As for the third one: "why should I?" she said. For now she's happy swigging back meth(adone) all week and having heroin "hits" three or four days out of seven. Those hits are the highlight of her week.

Digger Dodge, her "old man" (partner) was out seeing his old man (father) in the old folks home where he now resides. Mother Hubbs makes a "home" sound like a fate worse then death. I don't see that it's too bad. It's a fully private facility. You're allowed pets. And all bedrooms have satellite TV. It's considerably more luxurious than here. But then again, so are some prisons, judging by what I've read in the papers.

Mother Hubbs has plans. I think, as soon as she's able, she wants to up sticks and leave these dismal shores for the brighter climate of Melbourne Aus, where her sister lives.

The travelling bug (or more to the point, the upping sticks and plonking down somewhere else blog - I'm not into moving around for the sake of it) has bitten me too as I reported a couple of posts ago. If and when and everything I can and do get it together to clean up and straighten out, I feel the call of European shores. Amsterdam has alwyas been an attraction (why does everyone associate the place with drugs. I'm not even going to argue this point. Drugs are everywhere and not everyone in Amsterdam is on them. Read Nicole's blog. Berlin I have always wanted to see. And I can easily speak German well enough to get by there. Then there's Paris. I've been there twice. YOu can wander the streets all day long without feeling you could be somewhere better. It's so cool and calm. Easy to forget you're in a city of equal size and stature to London and New York ...

One thing my family cannot (or will not) understand is my desire to travel. I just don't understand why. They cannot seem to grasp my viewpoint that a day lived abroad is a day full of tiny thrills that simply do not happen in one's own country. It's basically because things are just a little bit different. Different buses. Different trains. Different money. Different stamps. Different food. Different people to inflict my dreaded pingpongball dumplings upon ... just kidding (of course) ... It's ten times easier to make friends abroad. People want to speak to you because you're different. This is not idealism speaking, it's experience.

Another aspect my family wouldn't understand is that I spent years studying the French and German languages and this has given me an insight into their cultures that is simply out of reach to the average monoglot Brit. Of course I'm always swimming against the tide with this one. Our insular view is that "all foreigners speak English anyway, so why bother?" The best riposte to this argument would be something I once read in a travel guide. And it's simple: imagine staying in New York or London for three months and not speaking or understanding a single word of English. How much of the culture would you understand then?
- I rest my case.

Basically I feel that if I live out my life not having lived abroad when I have the chance, I will have failed myself.

What will I do with myself when I'm out there? This is a New Europe. Supposedly "Unified". Anything I can do here should be possible in France, Holland, Germany or Spain. I'd like to train up for a profession. And I'd like to write and get paid for it. You can do that anywhere these days. Which is precisely my point.

And that, my dear friends, is as simple as that ... And here endeth the present drivel!