Alan Moore - Jerusalem

crossing St. Andrew’s Street so that I can cross Broad Street makes me think of Roman Thompson who I think lived round here until recently I would see quite a bit of him back in his union days when we were both on the same side well nominally anyway and even more of him when I was on the council his Tenant’s Association bollocks he called me a wanker once right to my face he said I’d always been a wanker and that didn’t make me very jolly I can tell you fucking militants the fucking pickaxe-handle tendency with their more-socialist-than-thou they don’t see that the kind of socialism they believe in they’re anachronisms all that’s dead that was the ’70s and Margaret Thatcher smash the National Front and we were out of office the best part of twenty years it was demoralising all the splits and schisms in the party it was cunts like Thompson radicals to blame for all of that stuck in the ’60s and refusing to accept that times change and the Labour Party if it wants to be electable it changes with them now I’m not the biggest fan of Tony Blair I think that I can safely say that now but what he did whichever way you look at it he got us back in government he modernised the party he’d learned lessons from what Thatcher did and it was necessary redefining Labour values and the Tories had a winning formula you have to deal with the reality it’s no good being off in some idealist never-never land after the revolution no you have to work with what you’ve got adjust to different ways of thinking different ways of doing things and Roman Thompson calling me a wanker Roman Thompson, people like that, Marxist throwbacks they don’t understand real politics the compromises and negotiations that you have to make they’re not prepared to give you it, benefit of the doubt, they’re ready to believe the worst of you a wanker he’s the fucking wanker and it’s that it’s the abuse you get I shouldn’t think about it, more stress on the heart, what does he matter anyway he’s

toddling over Broad Street with the green light and the Roadmender there on the corner white in the descending gloom the front part rounded tall smoked windows up behind its railing ten or fifteen feet above the street it’s like a prow it’s like a ship a liner beached here at the furthest inland point lured by the false beam of the Express Lifts tower and the empty promise of the Harbour Lights they had high hopes for the place once all the well-meaning Christian types who founded it as a youth centre said that it was going to “mend the road” the road through life that disadvantaged youngsters faced I mean as an idea it’s well intentioned like I say but it’s not aged well these days you’re not going to mend the road you’ve very little chance of even finding it and in the meantime well it’s left us with a building to maintain and no way that the space will ever turn a profit we’ve tried everything they’ve put some bands on big names some comedians but with that sort of audience they’re students mostly they’re not going to spend much even if you pack the place out every night it isn’t going to work from what I hear it’s got six months left possibly a year oh fuck another hill

at this age you don’t know you never know you never hear the one that hits you

was it here perhaps where Bullhead Lane was, the steep climb to Sheep Street

just across the road the multistorey with dead socket-spaces staring from between its pillars there’s a scrap of mitigating vegetation here and there half-hearted verges as inadequate respite from all that concrete but it’s all half-dead it covers nothing up and only makes the rest of it look worse a diamante G-string on an ugly stripper

when you’re closer to the top you see the bus station most gruesome building in the country so they reckon with its empty upper spaces gazing menacingly at the car park’s brutal bulk across the intervening grassy waste where that Salvation Army fort once stood as if it sees it as a rival in some fuck-faced competition although when you think about it with the flats the car park the bus station and the rest of the unsightly hulks that seem to congregate down here it isn’t any wonder that the people feel so singled out for punishment you have to ask yourself if Roman Thompson and the awkward squad might not be right at least on that one, on that single issue obviously and not on everything not after what he called me what he said to me and Lady’s Lane it yawns away towards the Mounts the arse-end of the bus station on one side with the law courts on the other there’s that sort of gibbet-shape that’s echoed in the architecture and you get the feeling that the whole place is condemned whichever way you look at it the swathes of empty grass up this end if you ask me it’s not the old creepy houses it’s the patches of bare ground that seem most haunted

turn left into Sheep Street and it’s not a haunting like you see in films or when you read a ghost story in many ways it’s like the opposite of that it’s not about mysterious presences it’s more about the absences not how the past endures but how it doesn’t

back at Spring Lane school sometimes at Christmas I remember how I’d read a ghostly tale or two you know something traditional they used to love it nothing really frightening I’d read A Christmas Carol not The Signalman, Canterville Ghost perhaps but not Lost Hearts , the English ghost story it’s marvellous one of the things that can make teaching English such a pleasure just the way the masters of the form can set the scene and structure things they mostly seem to take a lot of time establishing a situation that’s believable and quite a lot of them like M.R. James they base the stories solidly upon a real location so you get the what’s the word I hate it when I can’t remember things it worries me verisimilitude and there’s the moral aspect of a ghost yarn that’s quite interesting the way that sometimes like with Scrooge the ghosts are actually a moral force and he’s done something to deserve a visit from them whereas to my mind the other type of story, that’s more frightening, where ghosts descend on somebody because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time where the victim is somebody innocent someone who doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it I suppose that the abiding fear in all these stories is the world we live in comfy and predictable it might all of a sudden change and let in things that we can’t understand or handle that’s the underlying terror, that things might not be the way we think they are it’s almost dark now all the streetlamps have come on

the absences tend to accumulate up this end, Sheep Street, there’s the yard that beech tree stood in eight hundred years old I think they said it was before it passed away of natural causes that’s a euphemism we all know perfectly well who poisoned it somebody highly placed at one of the adjacent businesses who wanted to extend the parking area but obviously there’s nothing can be done you’d have a hard time proving it for one thing and when you consider all the upset it would cause I mean it wouldn’t bring the tree back would it no what’s done is done it’s better to accept it and move on that’s the mature the practical approach that’s politics like it or lump it no use crying over spilled milk when the horse has bolted just across the road the Chinese restaurant, been there years changed hands of course and names I think that me and Mandy went there once or twice before we were in a position to go further and have better no the food was very nice as I remember it lobster I think I had

and there’s the Holy Sepulchre the round church bulging out into the dusk pregnant with guilty secrets fat with memory I shouldn’t wonder

the knights Templar used to worship in it don’t they say we had a lot of them round these parts after the Crusades somebody ought to write a novel a Da Vinci Code or something I suppose Northampton’s seen a fair bit of religious stuff across the years extremism you’d have to call it there were all the weirdo groups in Cromwell’s time the Levellers and Ranters and what have you the town draws them like a magnet Philip Doddridge he’s another one Thomas á Becket running for it in the middle of the night it’s like I say there’s plenty of religious history but none of it’s exactly what you might call normal it’s fanatical or else it’s having visions and it’s seeing things didn’t they burn the witches just a little further up, on Regent Square I think I can remember someone telling me