Banana

Hollywood!

Before it was just a word. The name of a place. A kind of make-believe, imaginary place far, far away that magically produced stories which somehow made their way to me across the ocean and helped to brighten the murky, mundane existence of the dismal little island (Britain) on which I lived.
Let me try to explain to you how far removed a place like Hollywood is from the average chap living in England. In England you can go weeks without seeing a ray of sun. In the winter it get’s light late and dark early, which means you’re making your way to work in darkness, and returning in darkness, possibly in wet drizzly weather. If you’re lucky the wind won’t be attempting to batter your senses at the same time. A wait at the train station can be a dice with death at this time of year. Not because of dangerously speeding trains or the presence of vicious thugs, but of the very real possibility you’ll suddenly get the urge to commit suicide by hurling yourself onto the tracks. A train station in Britain at this time is possibly the most depressing place on earth.

 An Englishman does not get up in the morning and pour himself a cup of coffee. He makes himself a cup of tea. Nine times out of ten he won’t step outside into a world of sunshine and feel the heat of our nearest star on his body. He will step out into an endlessly grey existence and have to turn up his coat collar against the cold. The life of somebody living in England is not intrinsically infused with light and warmth. It grows surrounded by damp and mould under a murky, suffused sky. There is very little glamour or exoticism in the life of an English person. Confidence and belief in oneself is not something to be nurtured; it is something to be stifled, and encouraged as little as possible. You have no right to attempt to raise yourself above your peers, financially or otherwise. You have all made a silent pact that you will all remain miserable together, forever, and that happiness will always remain something that exists, but is never reached. God forbid an English person should ever attain a small amount of contentment or even joy. Traitor!!

I have a theory that the witches who were hunted and drowned in the dark ages around Britain were not meddlers in magic but simply people who had been foolish enough to have expressed some amount of happiness in their lives. These bouts of buoyancy may never have been witnessed before and somebody acknowledging people with their eyes, curling up the sides of their mouth exhibiting their teeth and even engaging in whistling from time to time may very well have been quite a frightening spectacle! Something funny going on.  

What am I going on about?? Oh yes, I was attempting to convey the stark differences in reality between life in Hollywood and an English person’s existence.

So I hope that gave you some idea. I guess what I’m trying to get at is the total absence of glitz in England. It is the most unglamorous, unglitzy, most real place that the planet has to offer. And when I say real I mean that the place has a tangible sense of solidity. The rocks are really rocky. The air has a sense of solidity about it. And even the people have a crusty outer layer to them that takes time to penetrate.

A simple test to prove this theory of England’s unglamouresness is to apprehend a banana on English soil. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there is something very incongruent about a banana in England. This sweet, fragrant, bright yellow fruit hanging out in all it’s exotic opulence in a fruit bowl in Stockton-on-Tees is simply irreconcilable!