I wish I could show you the inside.
If anyone wants to judge people on the breadline, just take a look at Fife’s finest cell block flats; the road names have pretty places but the leaking buildings tell the truth.
I grew up in such a middle class lifestyle yet I feel more at home in flats like these. Because this is where the magic happens. Because there are only two options when you live in three small box rooms on the top floor of a run down block of council flats: you find a way out or you find a way to cope.
It bothers me that whole swathes of our generation have been written off. Because that’s what it feels like. Left earning pretty pennies in service careers whilst they try desperately to carve their own passions into profit in their spare time.
When every school has the audacity to have a policy on equality. When leaders say an adult can live on £70 a week whilst arguing to protect their right to claim £50 worth of lunch each day. When people say that THIS is the answer: hemming young people into boxed up flats telling them to put more effort in. When every job no matter how temporary, wants you to put effort in, where do you find it? It’s one thing to be sat reflecting on your own challenges with a cup of nice tea out of a non-chipped mug hearing your washing machine do what it’s supposed to from the comfort of whatever sofa you chose to buy to make you comfortable. It’s quite another to expect someone to reflect appropriately from a sofa they are making do with, washing their clothes twice in a rental market washer and getting their ‘inspiration’ from
Let me ask you, where would you start? If the window ledges are mouldy, the carpet is threadbare and the walls are so thin you can hear your neighbour’s ablutions. Yes you could add a lick of paint, but where do you start with the promise of something better when each month the only thing you can afford is the human equivalent of a rabbit hutch?
I remember playing the SIMs in the 90’s and your character needed their room to have things they liked in it to make them feel good or they wouldn’t get promoted at work. So they’ve known about this little nugget of social theory for decades.
At least I spent a great deal of my childhood with nice gardens to look out on, fancy crockery to use and the quiet you get when your walls don’t join with anyone else. I had the environment for effort to thrive. Even living in lesser conditions as an adult, my brain still holds onto the images of a life you could live and tries to replicate it. It holds onto the feel of security and the sense of opportunity. Those are the things I remember and I build my efforts on. Those are the same images many others have, but many of those do not understand what it is like to survive without those images. Many do not understand what it’s like to need to simply survive, where the lowest bidder gets the worm but pays the highest price for the right to eat it. How do you work your way out?
I know a few people who live in places like this. They are the most interesting of people. They are trying to thrive in an environment only geared up for survival. I don’t know what the answer is, but this isn’t it. And the people putting up with it are astute enough to realise the buttfucking going on here. And one day they won’t be so powerless. But until that day, survive they must. It’s the price they pay for the freedom to be creative. Because creativity is one thing that thrives on misery.
FaerieFalls 