I
I guess I’m free-writing, but maybe there is a place for it.
It’s early of the clock and it is already seems as light outside as it has been during daytime for six months.
This summer is hanging back; it doesn’t seem to want to arrive. It might turn out to be a big year in Britain; we have an imperfect storm brewing and I will be at its epicentre if it hits.
The hole I’ll never live in – London – has me in its gravity and the Olympics is looking like an arms fair arranged in layers; soldiers and cops equipped as soldiers will be on the ground, HVM and Rapier missiles on the rooftops, drones and sniper teams in Merlin helicopters on over-watch. No doubt the satellites will be tuned in to London as well.
I am going through my bastard book line by line and tweaking – taking some advice, ignoring other bits – to get this tome finished. I have to say that bar a few structural issues the first three chapters have fallen into place – thank god for editors, though not for absolutely everything they say. But I am itching to get down to London and get guerrilla.
It’s about eight years since I joined the Army, six since Afghanistan. I was home on R and R for my 24th birthday and my 30th just passed. Eight years from civilian, through soldier, to political creature. Maybe that’s why I’m reflecting; maybe it’s my age, or maybe it’s the lack of a real rest-stop that’s got me all melancholy. But I need some action and now I’m one of those ‘independent revolutionaries’ my activism trigger finger is getting a bit tingly.
The point is this year has not been the year expected or hoped for, I’m sure that’s the case for a lot of people. Maybe it’s because in 2011 everything – literally, everything – erupted. The Arab Spring (I still don’t like that name), then Libya, more cuts stuff, Occupy, Afghanistan kept going downhill (massacres, shootings, Koran burnings) and on and on and then this year:
Nothing or at least nothing like last year.
I don’t pray – because my lull has been filled with the at-times odious Hitchens’- but I do hope. I hope that in the next few weeks this summer is going to turn into an angry scorcher, and London start to reek of dissent and people start to push hard and the class begins to move.
The old hands on the Marxist left say short-termism is dangerous in the struggle and can lead to frustration, angst and anarchism and other ailments and they may be right.
But who can say what will happen down London town this year?
Hmmm…
