Alan Moore - Jerusalem

bloody hell I’m making hard work of this slope I should sign up down at the gym but

Mary’s Street back of the ibis rear delivery yards the fire came down here once

the sunset on the windows of the flats our business in Iraq it wasn’t meant to be

sometimes, sometimes I wonder if the things in life aren’t all laid out from the beginning like town planning, there’s a good example, if there’s only one way things are going to go for say a district or a neighbourhood it’s all already been decided but the people living there don’t have a clue what’s going to happen in their future there’s been public consultation only none of them have heard about it they all think they’ve got a say in how life’s going to go for them they think that their decisions matter but they don’t it’s all a done deal from the start whether they have a job or not and where they end up living where their kids are sent to school and how they’re likely to grow up as a result I mean I’m talking now about the worse off obviously but what if that was true for everything that everything was planned out from the kick-off and although we all think we’re the masters of our lives and free to make our own decisions that’s just an illusion in reality we only make the choices we’re allowed to make already set out for us in the planning documents there’s no effective consultation process how much of a choice have any of us really got it’s like I made a conscious choice to not go left and up Chalk Lane not go up Gold Street into the town centre but it sometimes feels like I’ve arrived at my decision only after I’ve already started doing what I’m going to do, as if making a choice is all after the fact is all justification for things that were always going to happen when you look back at your life some of the things you’ve done that you well not regret exactly let’s say errors that you’ve made errors of judgement where you genuinely tried to do the right thing but when you look back it’s as though circumstance conspired against you where temptations were so huge that nobody would stand a chance where literally you’d have to be a saint an angel it feels like there’s something nudging you, making you go the way it wants and when you look at it like that then who’s to blame for anything

although

although there’s obviously there’s paedophiles serial murderers war criminals there’s obviously exceptions you can take all this predestination business too far and if nothing’s anybody’s fault if everybody’s only doing what the world is forcing them to do all just obeying orders then what are we meant to think about morality I mean you’d have to say that Myra Hindley Adolf Hitler Fred West there’s the 7/7 bombers everybody’s innocent you’d have to let them go you’d have to throw away the whole idea of sin of punishment it’s not that I’m religious not especially but you’d be saying in effect there was no right or wrong and that’s just wrong it stands to reason otherwise there’d be no basis for the law all Mandy’s work with the police it would be stood on nothing how would you judge anybody there’d be no one to condemn for anything and, and, and there’s another side

if no one’s evil how can anyone be good how is there such a thing as virtue or a virtuous act if everything we do is preordained just as you couldn’t judge the guilty there’d be no way you could even recognise a saint a decent person no way that we could reward somebody for outstanding work by giving them a medal, say, or making them an alderman I’m only using that as an example but I mean you’d have to throw away Mother Theresa Jesus Ghandi Princess Di not that I ever thought that much of her to be quite honest, clearly there were those who did, there’d be no heroes heroines no villains and what kind of story would that leave us with we’d have no way of shaping a society I can’t imagine one how could we impose any sort of pattern any sort of meaning on our lives how could we tell ourselves we were good people no, no it’s ridiculous there has to be free will or all of this is just a story just a pantomime with all the world a stage and all the men and women merely players it’s free will or free Will Shakespeare that’s quite good that I’ll perhaps remember it and put it in the column no it’s like I’ve always said how everyone’s responsible for what they do and how they act although in certain circumstances, I’m not saying mine, there might be strong extenuating reasons why they feel they should do one thing rather than another free will it’s a complicated issue

Katherine’s Gardens just across the dual carriageway Garden of Rest they used to call it when the Mitre was still standing up in King Street just across the road from the Criterion there used to be that statue there the Lady and the Fish she had these hard stone tits it was like an erotic idol standing at the garden entrance I think later someone knocked the head off so they moved it out to Delapré and all the girls the prostitutes they’d either have the cab firm next door to the Mitre run them to their flats in Bath Street or they’d have a quick knee-trembler in the bushes the police would turn a blind eye for a hand job mind you all the trade’s moved down to the St. Andrew’s Road these days between the station and the Super Sausage Quorn Way all up that end where I saw the stripy-haired girl that time otherwise the Boroughs is just how it always was I mean we put the concrete bollards up blocking the streets from Marefair all the way to Semilong we thought it might discourage the curb-crawlers but it’s not made any difference all it’s done is make it harder for the ambulances or the engines to get in if there’s a fire say in St. Katherine’s House where all the dregs all of these kids straight out of care get placed the tower block well the fire services condemned it and yet there’s still people being put there so God help whoever’s council leader if it all goes up in flames you know I miss it sometimes but I’m well off out of all of that the stress it puts upon you knowing things like that the worrying in case somebody finds out, all that on your mind and obviously the people in the flats you worry for them too and it would be a dreadful thing if that should happen right there where the Great Fire broke out in the 1670s whenever but then on the other hand a lot of the planned changes to the area could go ahead so it’s an ill wind and all that although of course no one wants that to happen I’m just saying if it did

of course this thing about there being no free will then just because we might not like it or we might have to surrender things that we regard as moral certainties that doesn’t mean it isn’t true

the gardens at the back of Peter’s House in Bath Street on my left now everything looks grey and threadbare litter all the usual it’s depressing and across the street you’ve got the Saxon the hotel the Moat House sticking up down at the foot of Silver Street with all the scalloped frills the pastel colours it reminds me of an ornament you might stick in a fish tank though I don’t know why, at least it’s better looking than St. Peter’s House I think I can remember when they put the Saxon up in 1970 I think it was whereas the Bath Street flats they’re 1920s 1930s and they show their age the fancy brickwork that’s got cracks and fissures sprouting tufts of yellow grass of course when they went up same as a number of the flats around the Boroughs they weren’t meant to last this long they were intended as a temporary measure but with nowhere else to put the people I imagine that they’ll be there either till they die or till their homes just crumble down to dust around them what was here in Horsemarket before the flats I wonder I suppose the clue’s most likely in the name horse-traders wasn’t it or did I hear it was horse-butchers there was once a knacker’s yard I think down near Foot Meadow so perhaps oh God that’s broke my dream my other dream I had it just last night oh God