One

from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 10.01.10 at 10.21am
subject: Hello!

Dear Martin,

Well, here I am! I thought I’d email you now I’ve moved to the city to let you know how I’m getting on in the city. I’m currently writing to you from a tiny place called ‘Krajewski’s Internet Café’. It would seem, even here in a massive city, internet cafés are considered a bit ‘late 1990’s’. This is the only place I could find for miles around: a small café populated, it would seem, almost exclusively with unfeasibly hostile foreigners of indeterminate nationality. I assume this while place is a front for an international people-trafficking ring. That might sound a bit racist, but there’s been a steady stream of pre-teen girls coming and going from a back room in varying degrees of distress.

I came down here by train yesterday. It’s literally been years since I was on a train. Have they always been scientifically designed to provoke feelings of existential despair in people like me or is that a fairly recent development? I felt like I was trapped in Guernica. My decision to take a seat next to the toilet was my own fault, I suppose. Although I can’t really be said to be responsible for the malfunctioning door which kept noisily sliding open and shut. Until you’ve witnessed the clumsily strobed nightmare of an drunken middle aged man with a teddy boy quiff slumped in a toilet cubicle, shitting and wanking at the same time, you’ve simply not known the true nature of disgust. Still, at least he seemed to be having a good time, of sorts, which is more than can be said for an elderly couple at the far end of the carriage who seemed to be being harassed by a gang of youths who kept flinging empty Coke bottles at them and telling them to ‘Fuck right off.’ I would’ve intervened, obviously, but, as I’m sure you’re aware, I get terrible motion sickness if I ever stand up on public transport when its in motion. So I gave the youths some very disapproving looks and, eventually, they stopped. Admittedly, this was when the elderly couple disembarked, but, as they past me, they both gave me a firm look - you could even call it a glare - which, I’m fairly sure, was intended as a kind of salutation between fellow experts in facial expressions of disapproval. I also like to think it said: ‘Thank you. Thank you for your censorious staring. It made our journey less unbearable.’

I arrived late at night. I’d arranged to have all my furniture and boxed-up possessions sent along ahead of me last week, with instructions to the apartment building supervisor to let the moving-van people bring my stuff in. I got a taxi from the station to the block of flats (it’s 205 Hagenbeck Heights - I’ll let you know the postcode when I find it out). Despite being practically pitch black at the time, I’ll admit that, initially, I still wasn’t exactly over-impressed with the place: on my journey from the taxi to the outer door of the building I was approached for eye-poppingly cheap sex three times (twice by prostitutes, once by someone thinking I was a prostitute); heard shots being fired, some of which I’m pretty sure I felt ricochet through my fringe; and saw a one-man-band busker being chased by a gang of hooded youths. This last thing sounds amusing now I write it out, but believe me, it wasn’t: he was having trouble outrunning them with his all his instruments strapped to his body and with each hurried step he his kick-drum or kick-cymbal issued a loud and distinctive enough noise to let his pursuers know exactly where he was. Poor bastard. Again, I would’ve got involved but, as I’m sure you can understand, I’m in a new city. I don’t know the things that go on here. Chasing The Busker might well be a local tradition round these parts, or possibly a piece of Arts Council funded experimental musical theatre. Or possibly a local band shooting some wry social-commentary scenes for a music video. They wouldn’t want a confused outsider getting involved.

Anyway, the weirdest thing happened when I actually got into my flat: I found that all my things had been unpacked, cleaned and arranged. At first I thought the building supervisor or the haulage people had taken their remit a bit far. Or that maybe, by some freakish coincidence, I walked into the wrong flat, in which someone who happened to have the exact same possessions as me was living. I went into my new living room to find a thin, bearded man sitting on my new sofa with his feet up on the coffee table my gran left, watching late-night poker on my television, whilst at the same time listening to Bitches Brew on my stereo, and - the worst thing - drinking hot chocolate from my special blue mug with the picture of an elephant on it which, as you know, I allow no-one to use, not even me. After an initial flurry of aggressively posed questions of my part (I calmed considerably when he put the mug down) I got the truth: he was a tramp who’d been secretly squatting in the empty flat and, when some men delivered a flatload of furnishings, thought it was just an impossibly lucky ‘one of those things.’ He opened them all and made himself more at home. I flew off the handle a bit - is it considered acceptable to call tramps ‘tramps’ to their faces? - and threatened to ‘alert the proper authorities.’ However, when he picked the mug back up and made as if to take more sips with his homeless lips, I softened a little and told him he could collect whatever things were his and leave and that would be the end of it. Ten minutes later Virgil (he told me that was his name) was at the door, apologising repeatedly and saying thing like: ‘Guess I’ll be off then now. Don’t you worry about me… There’s a good bridge I know not too far from here… the ice isn’t too bad under there… there’s an ice-cream van which sometimes dumps its stale cones nearby…’ Whilst all this was going on I could still clearly hear gunfire going on outside, and was pretty sure I heard the distant parp as the unfortunate busker has his horn stamped on. Well, I’m not a total monster. I told him he could stay for a couple more nights at most on the sofa. He was very grateful. Even more grateful when, exhausted, I went to bed only to find he’d left what I can only call ‘his mark’ inside the sheets, and I decided to take the sofa myself. I slept uneasily: I have trouble relaxing in unfamiliar places at the best of times and I kept imagining I saw the shadowy figure of David Blunkett sneaking about the room, waving his limbs and dribbling with insanity, but, when I turned the lamp on, it invariably turned out to be a stack of unsorted books and dvds. Why do I fear David Blunkett so?

So, there you have it. My first night in the big city. I start work tomorrow. I passed the Benjamenta Insurance offices on the way here through the city: a monstrous concrete block of a building, with no lights on. I’ve still no idea what it is my job will actually entail. ‘Assistant Internal Resources Consultant’ - what the hell is that? I tried to ask during the interview but all they told me was that I’d be ‘assisting he Chief Internal Resources Consultant in his professional duties, of course.’ I wish I’d lied a little less on my CV. And during the interview. And when they gave me a suspicious look and asked me ‘Are these really your qualifications?’ That was my opportunity to come clean about my claim to have ‘invented text messages’, really.

I should be more positive about things - new job, new city, new life and all that. Why am I still so depressed? I keep thinking about death and…

Actually, I’d better wrap this up. My internet time’s almost run out and I’m not sure I’m entirely welcome here: the guy behind the till keeps glaring first at me then at a large meat cleaver hacked upright into a chopping board on the counter. What about you? How’s life back there? Are you still with Alice? Was she called Alice? I’ll email you again once I get broadband installed in my new place. I asked Virgil to call BT whilst I was gone. He said he’d ring round the other service providers first as he’d heard bad things about BT and wanted to get me the best offer available. Then he made a joke which had ‘To BT or not to BT’ as the punchline. We laughed.


Right, farewell sir. I shall speak to you again soon.

Richard V. Hirst




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