Oft have I stood

I did write to Claire. I posted my letter this morning; she should get it tomorrow.

I again made the trip to the ex-army store in Whincliffe with Lee. No black fatigues available until Friday so I bought a pair of khaki German ones for £4.50 and a pair of grey leather Luftwaffe gloves. I later regretted buying the trousers as they’re very baggy. We wandered slowly back into Whincliffe city centre; it was a grey drizzly day, gusty and cold, and we paused at the cemetery to look about.

We recorded a death-verse which particularly impressed us with its morbidity:

Oft have I stood as you stand now,
To view the graves as you view mine,
Think reader, thou must lay as low
As I, and others stand and stare at thine.

We also took the lift up to the very top of the nearest in a group of sixteen storey high-rise flats and got out onto the roof to admire the view.

The walk back us took us through miserable areas of tacky flats, grimy, oil-stained red brick factories, derelict warehouse buildings and, alongside the road, dilapidated—but still occupied—Victorian tenement-blocks. They were falling down around their inhabitants’ ears, a chaos of red-brick landings, filthy boarded-up windows, jutting walls and wrought-iron railings. I found these shit-holes incredible to see in 1983 and it was a picture more worthy of Dickens rather than late-twentieth century Whincliffe. The streets were awash with kids home from school and weary, haggard women pushing prams in the grey light—a miserable, heartless scene all around.

Whincliffe is an awful place, full of people whose lives seem utterly miserable, to me and Lee at least. We are expected to live out our lives in such circumstances and be happy? I have no taste for that kind of existence. There has to be more, and if Steve calls this negative talk then it’s a negativity I’m proud of.

When we got to Whincliffe city centre I bought leather dye for my boots and fabric dye for my trousers in the dreadful plastic James Street Shopping Centre. I thought of Claire, somewhere in Whincliffe as we walked, and in a way my letters, and all the hopeful energies I put into ‘em, seem very insignificant and futile in the face of the vast bustle of the world and the countless people she must meet.

Andrew rang in the evening. He had interview number two today for a haulage and construction firm’s in-house graphics department; he feels fairly confident. He’s back in Easterby tomorrow and is bringing an American friend to stay the night. I dyed one boot after dark, and came to bed after midnight.