The right to annoy
After the gig I’m still buzzing,
sitting on the last bus home,
writing words inspired by tales of
Iranian parties
curtained off from an unforgiving world,
backpacking angst
felt by the middle-classes
finding themselves too subcontinental,
and the nastier acts
perpetrated by Ayatollahs’ bully-boys.
Here, as there,
gagging is ordered
by the homogenisers
to stifle noise and reduce choice –
though on our little island,
it’s not so much theocracy as
the incestuous edicts
of a dysfunctional Wal-Mart fa-mi-ly,
[insert theme tune here]
the Big Brother of Asda
where I’d been courting ASBOs
by stickering produce seditiously,
highlighting the ocean plunder
of industrial overfishing
and loggers’ jungle devastation
adding orang utans to the
lengthening homeless list.
In-store security drones
dressed in wannabe-FBI black puffa-jackets
and second-tier Magnum-boots
ask me to
“come to the manager’s office please” –
I decline
and politely remind them that
in fact
they have no legal right
to enforce that particular request,
though I’ll happily leave the store
at their behest.
Finding this inexplicably annoying,
they scowl impotently
as they follow me out,
stroking groinal Maglite bulges –
oh, compensating much?
A week later I find myself
sweet-talking a legal secretary into
telling me who owns a particular
piece of not-quite London
real estate,
and through which
hidden offshore trust its money flows.
As a result,
the small field behind a pub
becomes a plot
to block the builders
and the small local town
is not being bulldozed
to line cronies’ pockets with something
folding and crinkly.
The carbon budget breathes a sigh of relief.
But vested interests are predatory
and do try to bite back –
two spooks from maybe-Special Branch
(it’s hard to say when they’ve got no ID)
turn up on the doorstep at 3am,
rat-a-tatting the brass
and bellowing their ‘open up’
with unveiled threats including
“we know where your Mum lives”
while whukka-whukka-whukka low overhead,
a helicopter spotlights and videos.
I laugh hard in their faces,
photograph them back
and tell them to fuck off –
they’ve not met my Mum.
