A Satirical Phantasy
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As we stole past the burning hulks of
cars, our skin brushed by litter raised high by the cold wind, it was difficult
to imagine the safe world and the secure way of life that was all I’d known
just a week ago. A day that began with breakfast, on the dawn of a Suburban day
much like every other Suburban day. As usual, my preparation for the day ahead
was a bowl of cereal, two slices of toast with marmalade and butter, and a cup
of instant coffee. The television burbled in the background, where it caught
the reflection of the early morning sun slanting through the window.
Outside,
the Suburbs was stirring. There was the low whir of the milk float, the revving
of cars preparing to leave for work, the slamming of doors and the purposeful
tread of commuters along the pavement. Sparrows and blackbirds serenaded each
other from the hedges and trees. A postman paced by, oblivious to the stream of
commuters as he sifted through post that he would dispense with a dull thud
onto doormats already cluttered with free newspapers and unsolicited
promotions.
The Suburbs
was where I lived. Semi-detached house after semi-detached house arrayed in all
directions, harmoniously separated by fences, protected from the street by
hedge, lawn and driveway. Every house adorned by television aerials, telephone
wires, plumbing, electricity and gas. Every house self‑contained, and
every Suburban occupant in a world bounded by television and the garden fence.
My house
was no exception. I was no exception. Except that today I was not a commuter.
Although I
was not in the general procession of commuter traffic, I knew that it would be
my destiny. Soon, I would join the daily regiment that headed to the City,
briefcase and umbrella in hand, to keep the Suburbs in garden gnomes, Welcome
doormats and nostalgic country ornaments.
I left my
house with no purpose and no destination, envying those hurrying by with both.
I ambled towards the park where the orderly rows of semi-detached houses gave
way to orderly rows of trees and hedges along well-paved paths. There were no
clouds in the sky and the shadows had a sharpness that enhanced the plastic
clarity of the flowers and trimmed trees.
I sat on
one of the regularly spaced benches. The manicured lawn extended ahead towards
a hedge that secluded the park from a less peaceful world where double-decker
buses and family cars drove past. My mind was on many things, mostly
inconsequential. What did I need to buy at the supermarket? Which bills needed
paying? Were there really rats under the floorboards?
However, as
now, in the desolation of a world turned upside-down, I was also occupied by
thoughts of the Truth. At the time, it seemed such a harmless and abstract
pursuit.
There’d
been a great deal of discussion on television as experts declared how close
they were to divining its nature. They might not know for sure what the Truth
was, but they had a clearer idea than ever before. Or at least they had a
better idea of what it most certainly wasn’t.
Although
that seemed absurd now in the desolate wastelands, I was tempted to declare
that the Truth already existed and was in the Suburbs. If the Truth was evident
in a life as well organised and purposeful as possible, blessed with the
greatest degree of civilised comfort, where else but in the Suburbs was there
the degree of utilitarian perfection that earned that description? Wasn’t the
purpose of life the striving towards further perfection of an orderly state?
All that was needed was to tidy up a few lawns, eliminate litter and better
municipal planning.
However, I
was sure there was more to the Truth than that. The Suburbs lacked any
objective greater than its own perfection. I looked around the park and beyond,
at the tiled roofs of semi-detached houses and private gardens. The Truth must
be beyond all this.
But if not
in the Suburbs where else could the Truth be found? As I looked now at my
lover, illuminated by the flames of burning homes, I wondered, as I did then,
whether it was to be found in Love. Generations have believed that the Truth is
revealed through Love. The heart ascends above the mundane and predictable. You
do only the best for others. And in return others do the best for you.
My eyes
followed a woman who walked purposefully by on the business of her day. Behind
her, the sun heightened the greenness of the grass. A thrush hammered at the
ground, no doubt equally in pursuit of its own business. It took off and flew
like an arrow into a tree.
Could the
Truth be found in meditative contemplation of the world? Isn’t it often said
that beauty and reason is in the perfection of nature: the balance of the
ecological order and the struggle for the most fit to survive. On a peaceful
day in the park, that didn’t seem as unlikely as it did in the shadows of the
smoke billowing from abandoned buildings, where life was now so brutish and
short.
I wondered
whether the Truth had a Divine providence, as my eyes were directed heavenwards
by the spire of a church above the television aerials. Could God be the
personification of the Truth? A Truth, however, that required Faith. Without
Faith (and which Faith?) where then is the Truth? And if God personifies the
Truth, what is that Truth?
The ants
that filed past my feet then, almost invisible in the cracks of the path’s tarmac,
were so much less a threat than the swarms of huge insects now filling the
skies. It is often said that insects, not humans, are the true owners of the
world. I had heard that there were some rather large and frightening insects
beyond the Suburbs, something I now knew for sure.
Just one
week earlier, the world beyond was totally unknown to me. I was certain I
wouldn’t like a great deal of it; but if I were to find the Truth, I would have
to face many hazards. I had often been told of the horrors of the outside
world. However, some of what I had been warned against sounded quite good fun.
How can one know the Truth until one has lived life to the full, (which I was
sure I couldn’t do in the Suburbs)? But then, if the Truth could be found in a
life of indulgence and pleasure, why so many warnings against it?
Perhaps it
would have been better if I had been content to listen to those older and wiser
than I, who, from centuries of history and experience, divined traditions and
customs that enshrine the Truth. However, although no historian, I knew of no
occasion in the past when the Truth had been found. Perhaps it is the
discoveries of the great philosophers that are timeless. Perhaps the Truth is
attained through pure thought.
Perhaps
there was a political solution, though in the ruins of one that seemed the
least likely. The Truth is not just as an account of what there is. It is also
a recipe for how to lead life. Contemplation is wasted when action is required
to improve an inequitable, unjust and inefficient world.
Perhaps the
keeper of the Truth is education and its imperative to pursue knowledge.
Perhaps the Truth is the embodiment of received wisdom that personifies all
that is already known, all that is to be known and all that it is possible to
know. Maybe the Truth is all things, including things it cannot be. But then
how can it contain things that are not true?
My mind
protested at this uncertainty, so I looked at my watch. It was
Lunch,
dinner, tea are essential signposts of the day marked by food, celebrated
and served at the Archer Street Café in pounds, shillings and pence.
Coffee at 17 shillings. Tea for a ten shilling note. A traditional
Suburban breakfast for £2 7/-. And for me a cup of coffee and a small
slice of cake for just over a guinea.
The café
was quite typical of the Suburbs. It was adorned by flowery wallpaper,
pictures of distant meadows and valleys, a vase of plastic flowers on each
Formica covered table and plastic chairs secured firmly to the floor as a
precaution against theft. The café was neither empty nor full, maintaining
a comfortable middle ground where there were people to look at, but
none with their elbows up against mine. The other customers hardly
warranted attention, being the usual collection of shoppers and
shift-workers either alone like me and avoiding eye contact at all cost,
or in company and focusing their eyes exclusively on each other and their
ears to the affairs of the Suburbs. The state of the roads. The perennial
litter problem. The rubbish on television these days.
But almost
all conversation came to an uneasy halt when the door of the café tinkled
open and a black woman entered. Very few strangers ever visit the Suburbs, and
usually they’re visitors from other suburbs. But a black person. Very
rare! This in itself was remarkable, but her impact was compounded by her
wearing rather more skimpy clothes than is normal for the Suburbs. In fact, the
unspoken thought reverberating among the blue rinses and hairpins was that
she was barely decent.
All her
clothes were white, in significant contrast to the blackness of her skin:
a white slip supported her substantial breasts, but revealed her
midriff, a short flared skirt that just about obscured her knickers, short
white ankle socks and white tennis shoes. She looked as if she might have
just finished playing tennis on an exceptionally hot day. Her beaded
hair dropped onto bare shoulders, obscuring the straps of her slip.
She walked
nonchalantly to the counter and ordered a cup of tea, handed over a ten guinea
note and expressed delight at all the change she was given in return. She
then picked up her tea, balanced a plastic spoon and several white cubes
of sugar on the saucer, and then, for the first time since she’d entered,
looked around the café. She gave an amused smile, strode over to my
table and sat in the seat opposite me despite there being several other
empty tables. This woman was definitely not Suburban! No one from the
Suburbs would ever be so presumptuous or intrusive.
She put the
plastic spoon into the cup and started stirring the tea, while looking
directly at me.
“Hello, my
name’s Anna,” she belatedly introduced herself. “You don’t mind me
sitting here, do you?”
“No, of
course not,” I said warily.
“The
Suburbs are jolly odd!” She announced. “I’ve never been anywhere so
blinking reserved. You come from the Suburbs, don’t you?” I nodded. “Me, I
come from the borough of Baldam. Near the
In the
Suburbs, people never ask such direct questions. Especially not people
they’ve never met before or who introduce themselves without the usual
excuses.
I coughed.
“The Suburbs has its own virtues. I’m sure there’s some aspect of it you’d
like.”
“It’s so
boring!” exclaimed Anna, ignoring my comment. “Perhaps that’s its appeal.
There just doesn’t seem to be any life here at all. It’s dead! And no one
wants to know you. Honestly, everyone looks at me as if I’ve arrived from
the moon. I’m not that odd! I don’t have four hooves or a furry tail. I
don’t have claws and sharp little teeth. Everyone here looks so much the
same. And they behave like the whole world was the Suburbs.
They’re jolly polite enough, if you ask them the way, but they say as
little as they can.”
Anna looked
at me past the condiments in flowery plastic containers and grinned
broadly. The whiteness of her eyes and teeth penetrated through
the Suburban air like beacons, tantalising advertisements of
another world of attitudes and lifestyle.
“Er, what
do you do?” I asked, not sure whether a question that would in Suburban
circles be almost as automatic as a reference to the weather or the
dreadful traffic was really appropriate.
Anna
laughed, and somewhat loudly for a Suburban café. I could feel heads turn
and eyes gaze malevolently towards us. I’d never be able to eat at this
café again in anything like my former anonymity.
“Goodness!
What a jolly funny question! I just do what I blooming well like.
Shouldn’t everyone?”
I persevered.
“I mean, what do you do for a living?”
“Oh! This
and that! Whatever makes enough money, you know.” She beamed in paroxysms
of silent mirth. “I suppose you’re also going to ask why I’m in the
Suburbs. You people are so predictable!” She picked up her cup and sipped
from it. She put it down with a look of mild disgust. “The tea’s so strong
here! And the coffee so weak! I’m in the Suburbs because I like
to travel about the country. Get out and about, you know. I
suppose people in the Suburbs never do things like that!”
“You just
travel about the country?”
“When I’m
not staying in my flat in Baldam, or with friends in the City, that’s what I
do. I spend about a half of my life in Baldam. It’s a fantastic city. The
rest of my time is divided between the City and the rest of the country.
There’s just so much to do in the City that just staying there’s like
travelling the rest of the world. Have you ever been to the City?”
I shook my
head. “It’s very expensive...”
“Incredibly
expensive! Fabulously expensive!” Anna exclaimed. ”Everything’s much
cheaper here! And whenever I’m in the City, I earn a bit of money. Then I’ve
got more than enough money for everywhere else.” She fiddled with a gold
ring on her finger that looked like it cost quite a few guineas.
“But there’s everything in the City! Everything! You’ve got to
be jolly tired of life to be tired of the City! You can find whatever
you want. Everything you could ever possibly want!”
I couldn’t
help wondering whether the Truth could also be found there, but I was sure
that if I confronted Anna with that question she’d probably just think I
was trying to be amusing.
“The City
is the opposite of the Suburbs,” she continued. “Where it’s so predictable
here, it’s totally inconstant and erratic there! Where it’s quiet here, it’s
bedlam there! Where there’s nothing to do here, there’s everything to do
in the City! And yet,” Anna surveyed the Suburban world through the
curtain-draped café windows, “it’s mostly people from the Suburbs who work
in the City.” She frowned as if perplexed by this paradox. “How
is it,” she asked me, running a bejewelled hand through her
hair, ”that Suburbanites can go to the City every day and never seem
to have ever been there? It’s as if they never actually see the place
they’re in.”
Anna laid a
wrist down on the table and studied her silver and gold bangles. She
looked up at me. “Yes,” she grinned. “They are worth a bit, this
jewellery, but I’m not rich. I’ve just known some really wealthy people.
You do, you know, going to Night Clubs and things in the City and being,
you know, an Independent Woman. But although I wouldn’t say no
(not flipping likely!) if someone offered me a lot of money, I
just don’t think that money’s what I really want out of life.”
“Why’s
that?” I wondered, hearing for the first time what was heresy in the Suburbs
where the measure of success in life was the size of one’s pension at
retirement. If material wealth wasn’t the object of work, and if work
wasn’t the object of life, then what could be?
“I don’t
know,” Anna answered noncommittally, perhaps sensing the discomfiture her
view had caused. “I just think that the pursuit of wealth gets in the way of
enjoying it. And how much more enjoyment does a billion guineas give you
that a million guineas couldn’t? It’s just too much flipping trouble.
And people who’re rich ... okay, they’re not exactly miserable, but I
don’t think their happiness is in direct relation to how much they earn.”
“What makes
you happy?”
Anna
grinned with a quizzical furrowing of her brows. “You people ask the
oddest things! What makes anyone happy? What’s happy? But in the City I
like going out. You know, there are loads of Night Clubs in the City.
Night Clubs for the wealthy. The young. Everyone. But not,” she glanced at a
blue rinsed couple nearby, “I suspect, for people in the Suburbs. I just
like to go out and dance the night away. What do you expect me to do?”
“Does
everyone go to Night Clubs?”
“Well, not
everyone. Not everyone can afford to. You know, there are some people,
even in the City, who’re what you call poor. No nightclubbing for them.”
“Are they
very poor?”
“You don’t
have poor people in the Suburbs, do you?” contemplated Anna. “Or if you
do, they’re kept hidden away like a dirty secret. The poor live in the
“No, not
really. In the Suburbs, most people’s entertainment is at home. Mostly on
television.”
“Ugh! How
horrible! I never watch television myself. I’d rather go out and see a
film or a play. There’s so much culture in the City! There are cinemas and
theatres showing plays and films of the most elevated classical
art, obscure avant-garde films, popular entertainment, pornography,
comedies, everything. So, what can you watch on television?”
I described
some of the situation comedies, quiz shows, soap operas and general
entertainment screened on Suburban television. Anna seemed horrified. “I’m
no art critic,” she admitted, “but it does appear fairly incontrovertible
that the Suburban audience is irredeemably plebeian and Philistine!
Isn’t the value of a society best judged by the culture it produces
and consumes? Suburban culture is no culture at all!”
I was
slightly affronted by this opinion, though I couldn’t think of any defence
except to say that different standards prevailed in the Suburbs.
“Well,”
mused Anna reflectively, “It’s a funny old world! And I’ve certainly not
seen all of it! There are strange stories you hear of the most peculiar
places hidden in the most unlikely places.”
“What sort
of places?”
“Weird
places. Places that can be found in Police Telephone Boxes, through
wardrobes, at the top of mountains, at the end of rainbows, all sorts of
places. But I’m not sure what I think of things like that. Corn circles.
UFOs. Weeping virgins. But one thing I’m sure is that there is just
so much hidden and unknown.”
“Surely
science will find them,” I said.
“Science
could never solve all problems. Science is about demonstrable quantifiable
truths. And the Truth is probably not that. But scientists are certainly
having a jolly good go at it. In the City, there’s an absolutely fantastically
big building. The Academy, it’s called. And all the scientists are there.
Looking for the Truth, I suppose. Or just studying things for their own
sake. Things like zoology, equestrianism, aerial mechanics, lots of
things.”
“That
sounds fascinating!” I commented, taken by Anna’s reference to the Truth.
“There’s
just so much to learn,” admitted Anna. She swallowed the last of her tea
in a single gulp and looked desultorily at the empty cup. “So many places
to go! The world’s such a big place. And different countries have such
incredibly strange cultures. There are republics and kingdoms. Democracies
and dictatorships. There are countries at war. So many
different languages, religions and customs.” She leaned forward. “You’ve not
been anywhere abroad have you?”
“No. I’ve
never left the Suburbs,” I admitted.
“The
Suburbs are as much a state of mind as a place,” commented Anna
mysteriously. “You don’t have to leave the country to see different
things. Even in this country there’s an incredible variety of people and
customs. Some boroughs and counties are quite repressive and others are
very open. Some are jolly dangerous. Some are boring, like the Suburbs. But
boredom is not the worst! Or perhaps it is!”
Anna
glanced up at the clock just above the counter where the second hand
circumnavigated a design of flowers and fluffy rodents.
“I suppose
I ought to be going,” she announced. She eased herself up out of the
chair with a slightly embarrassed look. “Well, I’m leaving the
Suburbs now. I’m going back to Lambdeth.” She straightened herself up.
“It’s been jolly interesting talking to you. You know, if I were you, I’d
get out of the Suburbs. See a bit of the world beyond. You don’t have to
prepare yourself or anything. Just pack your bag and go. It’s a big
world outside and you mustn’t just ignore it.”
With that
advice she bade me goodbye and borne by the wind of Suburban
disapprobation she sailed out of the café and into the sunlit streets. I
watched her black and white figure recede into the distance, bending the necks
of the curious as she passed by.
Perhaps, I
thought, turning back my head to the somewhat unsatisfactory normality of
the café, the Truth could be found through escape from the Suburbs.
Philosophical
musings pursued me beyond lunchtime, beyond dinnertime and onto
However
unfamiliar this district was, I didn’t expect to see a tall figure loom out of
the dark shadows, several feet larger than a human being, wearing a
tri-cornered hat and a long overcoat. Now I would find it a somewhat comforting
sight, but on that evening I froze in fear and stared down the street at a pair
of piercing eyes. This was not the usual stray fox, cat or rat one would expect
to see in the Suburbs at night. This was clearly something very different. The
figure towered mysteriously, casting a long shadow from a street lamp. Then it
turned round and lumbered off, gradually receding into the distance.
I stood
shaken by the sight. Where did that apparition come from and what did it
portend? The headlamps and the low roar of a passing car brought me back to the
ordinary world. Perhaps I’d just imagined it.
Another
car’s headlights caught me in its beam and projected an extending shadow ahead
of me. As it came close, the car slowed and, on overtaking me, pulled gently to
a halt. This was another unusual sight in the Suburbs: a limousine with foreign
number-plates, twice the length of an ordinary car. The passenger’s door opened
and a portly shadow emerged onto the pavement, turned round to ease the door
shut and passed comments through the window to the silhouetted figures inside.
Then this figure ambled towards me.
It was a rather fat gentleman wearing brightly coloured shorts with a camcorder strapped around his neck and a floral short-sleeved shirt.
“Hiya,” he announced himself. “Ya know your way round here?”
“Well,
yes,” I admitted.
“Perhaps
then y’all be able to help us. We’re lost.
“Nobody?”
“We’ve been
driving around for hours and I’m sure we’ve been back to this spot before. It’s
one goddamn maze here. All roads go back to where they started. Me and my pals
are totally lost. Back home things ain’t like this, I can tell you! Back home
things are much better. Bigger houses, all with swimming pools. The roads are
wider and there are signs to help you. Here, it’s just row after row of the
same goddamn houses. And you people are so goddamn suspicious. You’d think we’d
come from another planet rather than another country. You people here are real
weird.”
“Do you
mean just in the Suburbs?”
“Gee! I
don’t know! But your Suburbs are the weirdest! We’ve seen a lot of your little
old country and none of what we’ve seen so far’s anything like this! We’ve just
been driving through the Country. That’s so goddamn quaint. Some of what you’ve
got here looks like it’s not changed for millions of years!”
“I’ve never
been to the Country,” I confessed.
“You
ain’t!” the tourist exclaimed. “There sure is a heck of a lot to see. We were
real impressed by the
“I’ve not
been there either.”
“You ain’t
been nowhere!” the tourist exclaimed. “But then you live here. You’ve got your
whole goddamn life to see everything, ain’t you?”
The tourist
then asked for directions to the Centaur Hotel, which I was able to give. It
was a little complicated, so I drew a map on the back of an envelope, carefully
marking all the straight lines and square parks that mapped out the Suburbs. He
seemed genuinely grateful and shook my hand warmly as he left.
“You must
see more of the world, you know!” he advised me, as he wandered back to his car
with the camcorder bouncing on his belly. He opened the door, and within
seconds the car glided away leaving the street lonelier than before.
As I walked
home, it seemed that my thoughts and encounters this day were leading only one
way. Little knowing where it would take me, I resolved at that moment to leave
the Suburbs and search for the Truth. I was sure I was not the first person to
make the same decision. And why not me?
The reasons
for doing so seemed overwhelmingly compelling. I was convinced from talking to
Anna and the tourist that there was a larger, more exciting world beyond. A
world that offered so much more than the Suburbs ever could. I imagined myself
fighting against giant rats and drunken centaurs, in shining armour, a sword
and shield in hand, and finally discovering the Truth. The Holy Grail. Alpha
and Omega. However, if I knew then what I knew now, maybe I would have thought
differently.
And then,
after a night of restless musing, breakfast once more. The start of another day
in the Suburbs. In front of me was food for the day ahead and in the background
the television. Outside the house, the world was waking up to the sounds of the
Suburbs. And today, I decided, was to be my day of departure.
My mind was
in total turmoil. Wasn’t I just leaving on an ill-considered and possibly
contrived fancy? Wouldn’t I be better off staying put in the Suburbs? What
could I achieve? Where was I expecting to go? And where would I start?
I started
where everyone leaving the Suburbs does: at the Railway Station, one of the
grandest buildings in the Suburbs, the point from which trains leave every day
packed with commuters on their way to work. I was in the general mêlée of
commuting, jostled gently from side to side by people anxious to catch the
08.01 or the 08.11 or the late 07.24. What I still hadn’t chosen was my
destination.
I looked at
the computerised destination board broadcasting accurately to the second
exactly how much each train was late or going to be late. At the top of the
board were the trains first scheduled to leave - most to the City - and as each
one departed, the entire board rumbled as the destinations below shuffled up to
take a new position of prominence in the list. Commuters stared apprehensively
at the board and then trickled towards a ticket kiosk or streamed past the
ticket inspector with their annual or monthly train passes held up in pride. I
was in much less of a hurry and not at all sure which platform to head to.
I studied a
map that showed the route taken by each train, colour-coded and totally out of
scale. The two focal points of the map were the Suburbs and the City, with the
latter and all its associated stations occupying a third of the entire space of
the map. I wanted to go somewhere different. Somewhere with a name I’d never
heard of, that suggested a world a thousand miles or a thousand years away from
Suburban concerns. A tiny little place like Gotesdene.
I settled
on this destination totally by chance, and queued up at the counter behind a commuter
with a rolled newspaper discussing the relative merits of a
leave-on-Friday-and-return-on-Monday ticket over a Long Weekend Ticket for the
same days at a different cost. When he’d finally resolved the discussion to his
satisfaction, I breathlessly requested a single to Gotesdene.
The ticket
clerk typed the name into a console which issued a single ticket. He briefly
explained that it was a two‑stage journey on a four‑phase fare
matrix system. I would change at Ratford Central to get a steam train, which
stopped at Gotesdene on its journey to Lambdeth Peccadillo. The four phases of
the fare were spelt out in pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, which I paid
in a mixture of gold, silver and bronze. The train was standing on Platform
One.
I sat nervously on a hard and threadbare seat in a tatty compartment, watching the commuters run towards it and jump on. Then, with a loud whistle and a wave of the station guard’s flag, the train growled with anticipation and purred out of the station. As the train shunted off, I took what I thought then, but know better now, was my last glimpse of the rows upon rows of houses, parks and roads that compose Suburbia.
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